[2020 Watty Award Winner!]
[BOOK 1 OF THE HAVOC SERIES]
❝you may be the best web-slinger
around, but you're terrible
at keeping secrets.❞
in which even though peter has a new,
high-tech suit, it doesn't stop a girl with
common sense from discove...
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT. THAT'S the response most people have to uncomfortable or threatening situations. The flight reaction triggers first due to her hyperactive nerves, sending them on the highest alert they've ever been. Lena finds the urge to sprint almost unbearable, the desire to flee from this room, this apartment, this city nearly too much to handle. But her body betrays her. Her joints stay locked, caging her in this suddenly claustrophobic environment. She's frozen.
Tony notices the instant she finishes reading the file and quickly scans her for a reaction so he can prepare himself. His brow twitches at the fact that she doesn't move, her face blank. Then, slowly, it starts to screw up in pain. She crumbles all at once. Her brown eyes fill with tears, her lips pursing together so hard they turn white as a familiar blue outline starts to frame her body.
He quickly leans down so they're eye-level even though she won't meet his gaze. "Hey, kid. It's okay. You're safe now, and that's what matters. God, why did I do this in your room of all places?"
Lena bursts out, her voice strained, "Grab a pillow."
Tony's eyebrows crease in confusion. Then, upon noticing her hands clenched at her sides, her muscles coiled so tightly he can see the veins popping in her neck, he obeys, grabbing a throw pillow from her bed and using it to cover his face.
The blow that emits from Lena is barely controlled. Her furniture rattles, the mason jars she uses for decoration clink together, and Tony himself would have fallen backward if he hadn't caught his balance first.
Lena wonders if he can feel her agonizing pain. The burst of energy had taken every ounce of her will to contain, or else she may have obliterated the entire building. She has dug her nails into her palms. The sharp sting is nothing compared to the hole slowly working its way through her heart.
All of her childhood dreams— crushed. Her parents didn't love her. They wanted to use her to make themselves superhuman. They tested on their own infant children to perform their evil deeds. They made her this way. She's nothing but an unfinished science experiment.
"Hey, hey." Tony's voice is soft. When had he put his hand on her shoulder? She feels dissociated with everything that's going on, like she isn't inside of her own body. It sounds like he's speaking to her underwater. "Take a deep breath in, okay? Count with me."
Lena hadn't realized she's been breathing so erratically. Her breaths come in rattled, shallow gasps that don't fulfill her lungs' need for air, so she continually sucks in and out at a pace too rapid to do anything useful.
