Page 54 of Blood Ties

Kai

I SIT OUT ON THE BALCONY of our new apartment and breathe the salt-tinged breeze. The air in California is so different than in Texas. Everything is so different, outside of the farmhouse. I never could’ve imagine how big and loud and busy it could be. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in it.

It’s similar to the feeling I got when Riley took me to see the ocean for the first time.

It took my breath away — the size of it, the beauty when sunlight glinted off of the surface.

But also the guilt. The memory of Knox showing me pictures in a book when we were just kids.

He told me we were going to see it together one day.

I know I’m not supposed to miss my brother, after everything he did, but I’ve never known a life without him.

My dad and my uncle deserved what they got. Maybe Knox did too. But he was my brother. He saved me, and then-—

Whenever I think about it too much, it gets hard to breathe. I can feel the weight squeezing my chest right now, suffocating me slowly. I shut my eyes and try to focus on deep breaths, like the therapist told me, but my lungs can’t seem to find the air. The pressure on my chest grows and grows and—

“Kai?”

I open my eyes at the sound of Riley’s voice, trying to breathe normally. I turn toward the door just as she slides it open. She leans against the doorway, one hand propped on her stomach. My eyes linger on the swell of it, shaken as always by what it means, before I look away.

“My parents just left,” she says.

“Oh.” I try not to seem too relieved. It’s obvious her parents aren’t thrilled about us moving in together so quickly.

Her dad always stares at me like he’s trying to figure me out, and her mom gets teary every time she thanks me for “saving Riley,” and I’m not sure which one makes me more uncomfortable.

I always want to tell them that I’m surprised, too, that Riley wants this. When I first woke up in the hospital, I was terrified that she’d want nothing to do with me. But instead, she never wants to leave my side.

Yet as she sinks into the chair next to me on the porch, I realize this is the first time we’ve really been alone together since we escaped. In the months since we got out, it’s been a whirlwind of doctors and police and therapists, plus her parents constantly hovering over her.

Now it’s just the two of us, in our new apartment, with the vast unknown stretching out ahead of us.

“Sorry I couldn’t help much with moving in,” I say, after a moment. Since I’m still in a cast and crutches, not to mention wracked by headaches, I don’t have much to offer. I’m just—

Useless. Weak. Stupid.

I shake off the memory of my father’s voice.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Riley says. “Your job right now is getting better. You know that.”

I gnaw at my bottom lip. She keeps saying that like it shouldn’t be her job, too. Yet she already seems miles ahead of me, talking about going back to school and raising the baby and all manner of things I can barely wrap my head around.

She’s so much stronger than me. Though I know the time in the farmhouse left its mark on her too, from the scars around her wrist to the nightmares that wake her up screaming in the middle of the night.

Sometimes she begs me to hold her when that happens. Other times she pushes me away and shouts at me to get my hands off of her.

I still haven’t figured out the rules of it all yet. When I’m allowed to touch her and when I’m not. I’ve been keeping my distance except on those rare occasions when she asks me to be close.

But now, I hold out my hand to her, stretched in the air between us as an offering. She looks at it for a moment, surprised, before she slowly slides her small fingers into mine.

“Riley...” I brush my thumb over her soft skin. “What happens next?”

Her expression cracks and I see an echo of all the fear I’ve been trying to hold inside of me. “I don’t know,” she says. Her lips curve, ever so slightly, upward, but there’s something sad about the expression. “Life, I guess?”

I try to imagine what it’ll look like, but I can’t. Will we ever be normal? Will the world ever feel safe? How can we possibly make this work with all of the hurt between us?

Riley’s eyes widen. “ Oh .” She sucks in a little breath, and drags our clasped hands over to press against her stomach. “Feel that?”

After a second, I do: the tiniest pressure against my hand. My breath hitches as I press my palm flat against her stomach. “Is that...?”

“Yeah. That’s him kicking.”

I blink, look up to meet her eyes. “Him?”

Her cheeks turn pink. “Just a feeling. I don’t know for sure yet.”

I swallow past a dry mouth — then, surprising myself, I smile. “Our son.”

Riley stares at me. Then she, too, smiles. A real smile that makes the corner of her eyes crinkle. A smile I haven’t seen since the first night we met.

And, if only for a moment, it feels like everything is going to be okay.