Page 7 of Beautiful Secrets

I go back to the dining table to fetch my jacket off the back of the chair. Meisie’s got a twin clinging to each hip, juggling them as she paces the length of the table.

She glares at the cigarette dangling from my lips, but I guess she’s too eager to see me leave than call me out for breaking a house rule.

“Thanks for dinner,” I tell her, slipping on my jacket. “It was everything I thought it would be.”

I’m just about to turn and leave when I hear cutlery scraping on crockery. Maddie’s trying to saw through a piece of overdone steak with a butter knife, biting down on her bottom lip with the effort.

“You’re using the wrong knife,” I tell her. I look up at Meisie. “Hope you’re not saving for university.”

Meisie’s eyes narrow to slits. “You should leave,” she says.

The knife slips, and Maddie’s food almost goes overboard.

“Not difficult, darlin’,” I tell Maddie, squinting through a trail of cigarette smoke as I snatch up my steak knife and walk over to the girl. I show her the pointy blade. “See? Sharp.”

Maddie looks up at me, glowering almost exactly like her mother.

It feels like someone’s wringing out my guts. Does she remember standing at the top of the stairs and demanding to know what I was doing to Auntie Sarah all those years ago? How do you explain to a kid that you were on a different fucking planet?

Christ.

I tug the fork from her hand and start cutting her steak into pieces. Her eyes stay on me the entire time, and it’s uncanny to say the fucking least.

When I look up again, Meisie’s mouth is in a thin line. “I’d say it was nice seeing you…”

I give her a mock salute.

And to think, I’d thought she was a catch. But who’d want a woman with so much goddamn fire you risked getting torched every time you were in the same room?

“Thank you,” Maddie says.

I ignore the sprog and head out. My black X7 lights up when I get close. It’s an old model now—Kill kept it in the garage for me until I came out of Blackmoore—but since I couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork to buy something newer, it’s what I’ll be driving for the foreseeable future.

I climb into the driver’s seat and sit for a beat to finish my smoke.

It’s a nice house they got. Big front garden. Quiet neighborhood. Monkey bars and swings in the back. The kind of place you raise kids and settle down in. From where I’m parked, I’ve got a clear view of the dining room. And since the blinds are still open, I can see Kill coming back inside and taking one of the screaming toddlers from Meisie.

Almost immediately, they start quietening down. Meisie’s mouth moves a mile a minute, and it’s obvious from the way her head tilts that she’s telling Kill off.

He doesn’t say anything that I can see. Instead, he just takes the other twin from her too, and then leans over and kisses the top of her head.

She crosses her arms over her chest and turns to the window. When she sees me, her eyes narrow to slits again.

I flick the butt end of my cigarette out of the window and reverse out fast enough to send gravel spattering against the underside of the chassis.

God, I need a fucking drink. An actual drink that’s not intended for a toddler.

I take a turn, and there’s a rattle from the console. I don’t need to look to know what’s caused it.

There’s a bright orange prescription bottle down there. One of many, of course. But this one’s for special occasions. For when I’m feeling overwhelmed, as the shrink put it.

I grit my teeth.

Kill didn’t offer me a drink because he knows I can’t have one.

Pills and booze don’t mix.

Fuck that.