Page 130

There was something about them that was…good.
Safe.
Close to the type of safety I felt with Kane when he was the last person I should feel it with.
“And this brute rubbing himself all over her is Otto,” Kane teased.
The man didn’t seem to take any offense. He just grinned as he stretched out a hand to shake mine.
“Really good to meet you, Emery.” His expression was the one that dimmed, sympathy pursing his lips together as he murmured, “Though I am very sorry to hear about your sister.”
A thrum of sorrow crested. “Thank you.”
The pad of Kane’s thumb stroked at the very base of my spine.
It both soothed and ignited a fire.
But in it, I could feel the rush of his compassion.
Something real and true, and God, I had no idea how to make any sense of him.
How to make sense of any of them.
Theo lifted a hand where he loitered to the side. “Good to see you again, Emery.”
“You, too.”
He roughed his hand through the crop of his black hair.
It was the first time I noticed the tattoo stamped on the back.
Two stacked Ss with a dagger running through and an eye in the middle.
The same as Kane had on the back of his, though Theo had a skull at the top where Kane had the wilting black rose.
Awareness dawned, and my attention skated, dipping to Otto and River’s hands and noticing that they all had the same one, only with slight variations.
Kane had said they were close.
But there was something about them that made them seem tied in an intrinsic way. As if their connections reached far deeper than the obvious.
River seemed to notice what I was looking at, and he shifted his hand from Charleigh’s waist to her back to conceal it.
Disquiet gusted.
“Come on, let’s get you something to drink before you stand out here dying of thirst.” Raven broke the tension, and she reached out and grabbed my hand to tug me away from Kane. I didn’t realize I’d basically been leaning on him until he was no longer there for support.
My knees wobbly and weak.
“I literally cannot believe it’s you,” she squeaked near my ear like it was a secret as she snuggled close to my side like I was actuallyhernew best friend.
Like she’d known me forever.
Like anything about this was normal.
She began to lead me back into the house.
No reservations or shyness.