Page 44 of Caution to the Wind

I swallowed thickly. “You know I’d do anything for her. For both of you.”

Something in my voice must have alerted him to the gravity of my meaning because he stopped our gentle rhythm and let go of my hand to grasp my chin. When he tipped my face up, his was so close I could count the striations in his bright eyes even in the dim light. He was so beautiful, I almost couldn’t breathe.

“Bein’ loyal doesn’t mean takin’ on the world to right your loved one’s wrongs, Mei. You understand that, right?”

I understood it, sure, but I didn’t believe that.

Nightmares of the carnival plagued me every single night. I woke with Kate’s name in my mouth and the phantom taste of blood on my tongue. My heart pounded out a tattoo on the inside of my rib cage that saidfix this, fix this.

I couldn’t go back in time, but I could help Henning and Cleo find closure. I could help Kate’s ghost find peace.

Henning shook me a little by the shoulders, then lifted me against him until only my tiptoes rested on the ground. His face twisted into a snarl, but I wasn’t afraid because I knew in my bones he would never hurt me.

“Don’t be a noble idiot, you hear me?”

“I could say the same of you,” I retorted.

We stared at each other then, too similar to stand down to the other. There was a saying in Chinese,a fight between a dragon and a tiger, a conflict that was too evenly matched to result in victory for either.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of Henning in those terms. As a tiger, also his zodiac sign, and my equal match. And it wouldn’t be the last.

He was still so close, curled over my body like a shield. Maybe that was why I did it. Or the fact that his arm around my lower back had constricted, so I was flush against him, only a narrow ribbon of heat between our bodies.

Probably, it was the fact that I was just seventeen years old, and I’d figured out I was in love for the first time in my life.

Whatever the reason, I found the courage to throw caution to the wind, rise up on my toes again, and kiss him.

His facial hair was coarse, a sting against my skin in direct contrast to the plushness of his mouth on mine. I didn’t have the courage to part his lips with my tongue, but the gentle contact was more than enough to light fire to soul and burn new pathways down to my sex.

I understood then why there were so many poems and songs written about the significance of a single kiss and also that none of them could do justice to the simple yet utterly profound meeting of two mouths.

It only lasted for three heart-pounding, bone-quaking moments, but they were the purest moments of my entire life.

Followed swiftly by the most mortifying.

Henning shoved me away roughly, staggering back as if I’d stabbed him. His expression was broken open with horror and something too like disgust for my trembling heart to suffer.

“What the fuck, Mei Zhen?” he demanded, using my full first name as he only did when he was furious with me.

I licked my lips, unconsciously chasing the taste of him. It only made his scowl deepen.

“I’m sorry––” I cut myself off because I wasn’t sorry. In fact, I’d never been less ashamed of anything in my life. “No, no, I’m not. I wanted to do that.”

“Since when?” he snapped, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand as if I’d left poison there.

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it fuckin’ well does matter. You’ve been sleepin’ under my roof, basically livin’ in my house part-time for years, and if this isn’t a new development, I’ll feel sick as fuck that I didn’t notice your…your crush before and cut it off at the pass.”

My hands were shaking slightly, so I clutched them behind my back. “Fine. It’s a…new development.”

“Thank fuck.” He closed his eyes, tipping his head to the sky as if praying for deliverance. “Then you won’t have any trouble stoppin’ it.”

“Stopping what? My feelings for you?”

“Fuck.” The curse was so vicious I flinched, and he winced in return, reaching for me automatically because he’d been a source of comfort for so long it was instinctive. “Dammit, Mei. Why?”

I laughed, a bitter little thing that clogged my throat. “Why? I think the question should bewhy not? You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Henning. You saved Kate and Cleo first, but there’s no doubt you saved me, too. I wouldn’t have survived what happened at the carnival without you. I wouldn’t be surviving Mum’s illness now without you either.”