Page 79 of Caution to the Wind

A little smile flickered and died along her mouth. “I know.”

“And besides, you aren’t a Kay anymore, and you haven’t been for a long time. You’re an Axelsen, and we both know Axelsens are like bamboo. You might bend under harsh winds, but you nevereverbreak.”

Cleo’s grip pulsed tighter around my wrists before she tipped her head to lean her forehead against mine. We stayed like that for a long moment even though my knees ached. I would have stayed there for days if she needed that.

But a little creak in the wood floors startled us both into jerking away and turning toward the door.

Henning stood there, his big body taking up the entire doorframe. Arms crossed, muscles coiled like heavy ropes beneath his brightly tattooed skin and tight tee. He looked absolutely terrifying in that leather cut. His thick, carefully groomed beard made him seem even more heathen than I’d remembered, his hair longer, spilling in messy waves all around his shoulders. It should have softened him, maybe. Instead, he looked like a wild man with wild eyes staring at us. A predator stuck indoors.

“Henning,” I said, an exclamation of shock.

Whatever softness had lingered in his expression was obliterated by the sound of his true name from my mouth.

“I warned you, Mei Zhen,” he growled softly, almost a purr. “I told you to stay the fuck away.”

“I asked her to come,” Cleo said, pulling herself awkwardly to a stand using her one good arm and leg. She was in a soaked-through sports bra and boy shorts, with short, wet hair slicked back, pale limbs trembling with cold, but she looked so resolute standing there, and it took my breath away.

“Cleo––” Henning started to argue, but she didn’t give him a chance.

“No,” she insisted even though her teeth were chattering faintly. “No. I asked Mei to come to the hospital, and then I made her promise she wouldn’t leave me again. I never told you because I thought it would hurt you, but I’ve seen Mei every few months for years now. She’s…she’s my family.Our family. I don’t care what happened before.” Tears came, great big ones that rolled down her face like waves even though her voice remained strong and sure. “Her heart has always been in the right place, and she should be, too. That right place is here, Dad. With me.”

Withuslingered in the air unspoken.

I was still on my knees, frozen in place by Cleo’s show of strength, by Henning’s awful, vibrating hatred of me. I wanted to flee as much as I wanted to stay there forever.

It was the perfect vantage point to see the way he looked at her, then. To see the awful weight of emotions play over his face: anger, frustration, helplessness, fear, and finally, grief so deep it cut new lines into his face beside the mouth and eyes.

He opened his big hands, ineloquent, struggling with it. He stared at them as if the lines in his palms might hold answers, and then, when they didn’t, he looked at me. It was an old glance, a beseeching one. The way he might have looked at me eight years ago when Cleo asked for something he didn’t want to give, when he knew I’d act as a translator between the two of them.

Realizing his slip, he wrenched his gaze away and ran a rough hand through his hair, the ends tangling around his fingers. It was so much longer now, brushing over his shoulders past his collarbones in a rich golden mass of waves. Looking at him, it was impossible, even though it was deeply inappropriate, not to imagine tangling my fingers in that hair. They twitched at my sides, and I curled them into tight fists so my nails cut half-moons into my flesh. The pain grounded me.

“Please, Dad. I need her here,” she said, no less sure but softer. She swayed on her feet a little, unbalanced without her crutches. I stood, knees popping, and wrapped the towel around her before offering my arm to help her out of the bathtub.

Henning watched the two of us, gaze remote now, mask firmly in place. This was Axe-Man, not Henning. A new beast, one I had no experience with. One who hated me with palpable vitriol.

“She’s here only when I’m not,” he finally ground out, hands fisted at his sides. “And not alone. One of the brothers’ll or their women’ll be here, too.”

“Dad,” Cleo tried to protest, but this time, Henning was done.

“I don’t trust her with you,” he said, gaze snapping to mine to deliver the vicious blow. To watch how it landed like a flurry of fists against my breastbone, vibrating through my heart until I thought I heard itcrack. “So you want her here, fine. But not without supervision and not when I have to be here to breathe the same air as her. Let that be good enough, Glory. It’s more than I’m comfortable givin’, you hear?”

“I hear you,” Cleo muttered, wrapping an arm around my waist as she stepped out of the tub beside me. It could have been because she needed the extra support, but I thought it had more to do with offering it to me.

“Harleigh Rose is here to see ya,” he grunted. “I’ll send her in to help you get dressed, and then we’ll have dinner. Lin’s bringin’ homemade barbecue duck andcong you bingfor dinner.”

Another punch to the gut. Sharing food was everything in Chinese culture. By deliberately leaving me out of dinner––with Lin’s fucking delicious scallion pancakes, no less––he was making a point.

Cleo might think I was her family, but to Henning, I was decidedlynot.

“A word outside before you leave,” he ordered me, already turning around to depart on stiff steps.

Cleo and I stood still and silent for a full minute after, waiting for his lingering anger to dissipate.

“I’m sorry,” we both started to say at the same time.

We didn’t laugh at the synchronicity the way we might have in the past. We’d both been through too much to find such a little thing very funny, but it still felt good.

“I am sorry, though. He has a right to be angry with me, and it can’t be easy to see me again after all this time. After…everything that happened.”