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"It'll do you two some good to change for dinner," Lia tells Cassie and Sloane innocently, twirling the tip of her ponytail around her finger and eyeing their current choice of clothes. She has the perfect outfits in mind to give the both of them if they don't listen to her suggestion.
With a slightly alarmed look, Cassie obliges and pulls Sloane along with her. Luckily, Lia doesn't have to do anything to get Dean away, because he's already heading towards his room. She turns to Michael. He holds her gaze for a few seconds before she jerks her head in the direction of the front door and saunters off.
Once she reaches the hallway, she waits for Michael to come out and closes the door behind them. Leaning against the wall opposite of their door and crossing her ankles, she questions, "What's going on with you?" She knows, of course, but she wants him to say it.
"Whatsoever do you mean?" Michael automatically asks back, his tone casual. Questions can't be lies or truths, but she can hear the tension beneath it.
She rolls her eyes. "We both know that when you told Cassie you were in one piece, you were lying," she says. There's been something off about him ever since Cassie got with Dean, but no one will dare to ask Michael about it. And whatever was off about him, him going home for Christmas just confirmed it and made it worse.
He raises his brows. "Do I look like I'm in multiple pieces to you?"
There's no point in asking. She cuts to the chase. "Take off your shirt."
"I'm flattered," he replies flatly. "Really."
With Dean, or Cassie, or Sloane, this would be significantly easier to do. But Michael? He doesn't do trauma. He doesn't do hurt. He'd probably jump off a building from his non-hurt and still insist he's fine.
Of all people, she gets it. Really. But she won't let it go on for much longer. "Take off the damn shirt, Michael," Lia repeats.
After an unreadable emotion flickers through Michael's eyes, he starts unbuttoning his shirt and the bruises become visible. They look daunting, and almost sickly. She doesn't visibly react, but she knows whatever emotions Michael can see, it includes disgust.
"Well." She can't look away from the bruises. She's suddenly reminded of the fact that the suite they're currently staying in is another one of Michael's gifts from his father. A gift for a bruise. A shut your damn mouth gift, at least. "That's..."
Michael rebuttons his shirt, not allowing her a second more of looking at the bruises. "Leverage."
Her eyes snap up to his. "Leverage," she repeats softly. "You don't tell Briggs, and in exchange, your father—"
"He's very generous," he cuts her off, the lie ringing through the air. Suddenly, she regrets ever asking Michael what was up with him. Funny thing about regret—it's usually unreasonable.
"I'm sorry," Lia tells him, words that she doesn't say often.
"Don't be," Michael replies with a sardonic edge to his voice. "It doesn't suit you."
She holds his gaze for five more seconds, then shrugs off the conversation as though it never happened. "Don't we have a dinner to get to?" she asks. "The others are awfully slow."
"Maybe we should just run off without them," he mutters, looking down the hallway.
She smirks and pushes off the wall, walking towards the suite door, ready to walk back in. "Maybe. But I'd hate missing the opportunity to spend as much of your money as possible."
He rolls his eyes, but follows her back into the suite, their silent agreement to never bring this conversation up already in place.
The wall of the Masters' victims isn't anything appealing, but Michael can't look away from it anymore than he can stop reading emotions. Doing his father a favour is the last thing he wants to do, but it isn't like he has any choice when the so-very-kind Director Sterling is involved.
He hears the rest of the Naturals come in, but he doesn't turn around. This wall isn't going to stop piling up—especially not when they're sidetracking. He's damn near sure that the adults are wasting their time by doing his dear father Thatcher Townsend a favour, but what does he know?
He feels an arm wrap around his waist, one that he immediately recognises as Lia's. "We're on again," she announces. "In a very big—and might I add, overtly physical—way."
Though his expression remains blank, his mind is a whole tumble of thoughts. Hadn't she very threateningly told him she didn't want anyone to know? Suddenly, the wall is the least interesting thing in this room.
"Since when?" Sloane asks.
Since the ball is already thrown, Michael answers her, "Remember when Lia slammed me up against that wall in Vegas?"
"You've been together since Vegas, and none of us knew?" Cassie asks incredulously. "You live in a house with three profilers and a marine sniper. How—"
"Stealth, deception, and an excellent sense of balance," he tells her. Then, because he's still confused, he glances over his shoulder at Lia. "I thought you didn't want anyone to know."
"The weight of our treachery was weighing on my soul," Lia deadpans. Translation: she wants to distract him from his father's little favour and from looking at the wall of victims. A part of him is grateful for that, but the other part of him is the same one that presses his bruises just so they'll hurt—to prove that they don't.
And right now, the other part of him is proving to be stronger. "I'm not really in the mood to be distracted," he says, turning back to face the wall.
"I love you," Lia says softly. "Even when I don't want to, I do."
He knows she's a compulsive liar, a good liar. He knows she can make anything sound real, sound emotional. He knows better than to take her words at face value. And yet, he can't stop himself from whirling around to face her.
She bats her eyelashes at him. "I love you like a drowning man loves air. I love you like the ocean loves the sand. I love you like peanut butter loves jelly, and I want to have your babies."
Despite the way he can feel his stomach drop in disappointment, he ignores it and snorts. "Shut up."
She smirks. "I had you going there for a second."
He's given a moment to study her expression, the reason she'd had him—even if it was only for a second. Satisfaction, triumph, but below that, there's hope and tenderness. "Maybe you did," he allows. And if he desperately wanted her to mean it? He'll tell himself he didn't and never did, until he's able to say that to Lia without her calling him a liar.
Re-entering Serenity Ranch's base of human indoctrination isn't exactly on Lia's want list. No matter how hard she tried to prevent it, everything in this place reopened every one of her scars, literally and figuratively.
It's almost impossible for Lia to enter the basement or hear whatever the rest of the Naturals are saying. Her memories are swirling through her mind and blocking out the logical side, the side that knows how to protect herself. The side that Lia needs to survive.
"Lia?" a voice breaks through her thoughts.
She doesn't turn around. She hasn't taken a single step down the staircase and she didn't realise someone else didn't either. "Shouldn't you be in the basement with the rest?" she asks, fighting to keep her voice steady.
"I could ask the same of you," Michael says, stepping around to let himself into her vision. "And besides, there's no use for an emotion reader to be down there."
She turns her face away from his, hiding behind her curtain of hair. "Neither does a lie detector."
"But not when the lie detector has a history of being in a cult," he points out. "And not when she went into this place alone."
Lia turns back to face him. "You know what? You're right. I'm going down."
She only makes it down a few steps before her steps waver. She tells herself to keep going, but her feet are stuck by some kind of super glue. It's impossible for her to move. And worse, she feels as though her knees are going to collapse from the smell of death.
"Michael," she breathes out.
His arm wraps around her waist, pulling her nearer to the wall. She leans against his body, reminding herself of the here and now, the presence of Michael—of Lia—instead of everything from the past. Sadie. Her mother. The man. Here.
"You wanna know what he did?" Lia says, her voice barely audible. "He told them they were sinners. He told them they were unfaithful. He told them—" She cuts herself off, the threat of tears too strong in her throat.
"Lia," Michael says softly. "You don't—"
"No." If there's anything she can do to stop the memories, it's by letting them go. And she needs them to be stopped now. "He told them they were dirty. And you know what else he did?"
Michael is silent for long enough that she starts to think he won't reply, then asks, "What?"
She barely registers Cassie and Sloane's coming up the stairs. "He put them in a hole."
Michael doesn't audibly react, but she feels his hold tighten on her, as though it can protect her from this place and the memories it resurfaces. Or maybe it's just an unconscious reaction.
They stay like that for a few moments until Agent Starmans walks up the stairs. "Come on," he says, thoroughly unfazed by their closeness and jerking his head in the direction out, then walking the rest of the way out.
They don't make a move, except for Michael loosening his hold on Lia. She doesn't back away from his body. Not until Agent Sterling and Dean return from below. "Let's go back," Sterling tells them. "There's questioning to be done."
Something that requires both Lia and Michael's skillsets. Perfect.
"I'll send a local field agent to check on her dorm," Agent Briggs says after each of the Naturals' numerous attempts at calling Celine, but Michael barely hears the words.
She can't be gone. She can't. She's the only one from his life before who's ever given a single damn about him. He can't lose that. And she's his sister, for God's sake.
Michael doesn't have to wait for Agent Sterling to say anything as soon as she receives the text. He can see her reaction as clear as day: worry and disappointment.
"First they went after your sister, Colorado," he says, turning to look at Cassie. "And now they've taken mine."
Lia walks all the way in front of him. The last thing he expects is a medium-strength slap across his face and then a kiss on his lips, but she does exactly that. His mind is still reeling from the interesting distraction when she pulls away and caresses the back of his neck.
"Celine is fine," she tells him. "She's going to be fine, Michael." He searches her eyes for a telltale sign that she's just doing this out of pity, but then she says, "I promise."
In all his knowing her, she's never made a single promise. He doesn't need to be an emotion reader to know she's worried for Celine and for him.
"She's only been missing a few hours," Sloane points out. "And given that she has a history of kidnapping herself, statistically speaking..." She trails off. Michael knows there's at least a few numbers and statistics flying through her brain right now, but whatever's flowing through her head, she only says, "She's going to be okay. I promise."
Dean isn't much for words, but he places a hand on Michael's shoulder. Michael finds himself looking at Cassie, who hasn't said a single word.
"She's going to be okay," she says quietly. She doesn't say anything other than that. And he knows she can't say anything more than that, because too many things have happened that proves that they don't know anything for certain. Aaron Shaw is dead. Bryce Anderson. Tory Howard.
There's too much at stake.
A knock on the door makes all of them in the room swivel their head towards it. Judd steps forward, preventing Cassie or any of the Naturals from getting near it. After he looks through the peephole, he opens the door.
"You have a bad habit of disappearing, young lady."
"Celine?" Cassie says.
Michael immediately breathes out a small sigh of relief upon seeing Celine. She's not dead. She's alive and well and here. "Two-dimensional skull photos blow," she says as a greeting. "Take me to the bodies."
"Why didn't you answer my calls?" Michael asks her.
"I didn't think you would call," Celine says. "I turned my phone off on the plane to Oklahoma."
He lets out an exasperated breath. Of course she would take a surprise trip here without telling anyone she was going to.
He feels Lia's hand at the back of his neck again. "I told you," she says, her tone returning to her usual flippancy. She smirks. "Say that I was right."
Reluctantly, he rolls his eyes and says, "You were right." His voice softens slightly before saying his next words, "You promised."
"In the interest of ultimate honesty," Celine interrupts, "I'm pretty sure that everyone present would appreciate it if you two got a room."
"I wouldn't," Dean muttered.
"I am unbothered by displays of physical and emotional intimacy," Sloane announces. "The nuances and statistics underlying courtship behaviour are quite fascinating."
"You don't say." Celine's lips quirk up slightly. Michael studies the rest of her expression: softened eyes, open body language, and ever-so-slightly raised eyebrows.
It's never not been obvious that Celine has a little crush on Sloane. They'll have a lot to talk about when all this is over.