Page 7

“Thanks,” I say dryly. It makes my ruined voice dip down even lower than normal.

She squirms, trying to break free of my hold.

“I’m tired of being stalked. If you want to talk, just bring your creepy ass around.

You don’t have to sneak up on me and you don’t have to keep tabs from the shadows or drive by at three in the morning.

The club installed cameras all around this house. You told me that yourself.”

“It’s my job to keep an eye on things. You’re not the only one that I watch.”

“You can’t have it both ways. We can’t be here because it’s an excellent cover story and we’re safe while we bide our time and it’s a good fit, blah fucking blah, and it also be so incredibly dangerous that I can’t sit in my own backyard, and you have to stalk me relentlessly so that I don’t have an ounce of privacy. ”

“I need to keep you safe.”

“Keeping me safe involves caring about my happiness.” Her eyes rake over my face.

I ease up, removing my hands, but stand far too close, tensed in case she decides she wants to go for round two of trying to kick my nuts into my throat.

“Your powers of observation are clearly failing you. I’m not happy.

There’s no harnessing inner peace and spiritual fire over here. ”

She’s not wrong about that either. I don’t know how to get her from what happened somewhere on the other side of it emotionally.

All I know is that Marcus used to talk about her all the time.

He loved her and worried about her just like he worried about their mom.

The one thing he told me over and over again, was how kind they both were.

I saw a flash of that back in Chicago, right before I brought down her whole world.

She swallows thickly, her voice thick, and she has to push out the words. “You don’t care about happiness. You’re so used to feeling nothing that it doesn’t even register.”

I rake a hand through my hair, surprised at how much those words bite into my skin. It’s like being wrapped up in barbed wire your whole life and suddenly realizing it.

Every time I have to be near Kael, it does things to me that I don’t understand. I don’t like the confusion and the disarray that my body remembers long after it should forget.

“I’ve never looked for family or a home. This isn’t about me.”

Her lips part, the anger simmering so violently that she can’t even force anything out. I wait patiently for her to drop acid straight into my wounds. “You’re not looking for anything because you don’t truly care about anything. You can’t because you’re a monster.”

I have no idea what I’ve ever done to give her that impression.

I’ve known monsters. My own father was one.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to be the exact opposite.

I suppose I could have clarified what I do for a living, or reacted to her brother’s death with just the tiniest hint of sadness, but I thought that protecting her meant becoming stone.

If I was anything less, I’d break and then where would she be with nothing to stand between her and the world?

“Yeah… well…” I ruffle my hair again, tugging hard on the long strands. It’s a ridiculous haircut. I knew that before she pointed it out.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She crosses her arms, forcing space between us.

It also forces my t-shirt tight over her pert breasts.

It swallows her so completely that she looks like she’s naked underneath and that just sets my brain whirring on the wrong path again.

A path where she’s wearing my t-shirt because she wants to, because she likes the scent of me, and seeing her in it stirs something deep and primal in my gut.

I’m looking at her like that because she’s beautiful and unfortunately, I’ve known it since the first time I saw her.

I’ve spent too long staring at her from a distance.

Always, when I should turn away, I couldn’t turn away then and I can’t now.

Up close, the gold and green flecks in her brown eyes are luminous.

A few rusty brown freckles stand out on the bridge of her nose and flock over her cheeks like startled birds taking flight.

Her rosebud lips are entirely too perfect, even when they’re pinched or flatlined in anger.

She’s perfect from her soft jawline all the way to the gentle curve of her nose, past the thick fringe of lashes, to her gently arched brows.

Her beauty is an artform in itself. Fitting, for an artist. She’s prettier for not wearing any makeup or trying to reproduce the same overdone features as everyone else.

Her beauty isn’t in the up in your face type, but it is unique.

She’s got the kind of face that burrows into memory and isn’t easily forgotten or purged out.

It would be helpful if I could blink.

Breathe.

Do something other than stare.

She’s a job.

The sister of a slain brother.

I have more honor than that. I really can’t want her. I’ve never wanted anyone that way. If there’s one thing I’ve always been good at, it’s doing my duty. That was always easier than wanting things for myself.

Maybe it’s better to be devoid than brimming full of the wrong kinds of passion.

But right now, I want to lean into her and—

I try and get myself under control. I can’t do this. I mean, I can and I will, but I need a breath. Even in the worst of the BUD/S training, we still got to breathe. Eventually.

She asked me a question and I can’t give her an honest answer, though she’s waited half an eternity, so I won’t give her an answer at all.

I leave the door unguarded. It’s stupid, but I need a minute.

I need water. Space. Just a second where Kael’s dark eyes aren’t probing straight to the depths of me, unlocking and uncovering shit I didn’t even know was there.

I killed the need early on to want . The foreign emotions that have been building in me slowly over the past year are ready to explode, and if they do that, they’ll tear me in half. There will be no coming back from it.

I pour a glass of water and slam it down. I follow it up with another and another, until the liquid sloshes uncomfortably in my empty stomach.

“Are you losing it right now?”

Behind me, Kael can’t leave it alone. That’s fine. She has every right to want answers. This past year has been an agony of questions for her.

I’m at just the right angle that I can see into the tiny living room. The whole thing is filled with canvases. I don’t know when she went out and got them. She hasn’t made a single attempt to paint before now.

Each and every canvas, and there are at least twenty of all different sizes—some shoved onto the couch, standing in corners, covering the coffee table and braced in front of the TV, more scattered over the floor—is covered in red.

Just one shade.

Scarlet.

“I’ve tried. All I can paint is red. All I see is red.” Her hand flutters up to her mouth, shaking visibly. “At least it’s not black. You can paint over red.”

I slam the glass down so hard that a crack appears silently.

I stare at it, throat thickening, heart swelling, chest ready to collapse, eyes burning.

That crack is inside of me too. The fault line appeared the second I landed in Chicago, tore Kael away from completing her Masters, and saved her instead of getting myself killed trying to do that for the only brother I ever knew.

“You can paint over black too.” The words come out in a gasp, and I lurch after them, stumbling around the kitchen, charging blindly outside.

I have no idea what I’m doing out there, other than blinking up at the hot sun, the sky a wedge of endless blue. I’m half naked out here, but it’s summer.

But I’m entirely too naked.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

I’ve done it all to myself. I’m the one losing that comfortable emptiness and I don’t know how to deal. I’m lost. I’m so fucking lost.

I take two steps into the long grass. The best way to get yourself under control, is to find just one thing to ground you and focus on it. Throw your whole self into it. Find one focal point and don’t let it go.

My focal point is the garden shed.

I cut a path to it and wrench open the door.

It’s slightly warped from the humidity, but it’s no match for my strength.

The lawnmower is a new one, purchased so recently that it still has all the store stickers on it, but someone’s filled it with gas and oil.

There are a few tiny drips below the motor on the shiny red base.

I jerk it out of the near empty shed, knocking over a few garden tools in my haste.

I guess I must look like a man possessed because, as I wheel the thing around and start yanking on the pullcord, Kael charges out of the house.

She looks at me frantically, eyes huge and nearly popping out of her face, a red flush darkening her pale skin right over her sharp cheekbones, hands wringing madly.

“What the hell are you doing?” She has to shout over the sudden roar of the mower coming to life.

“Cutting the grass. Someone should.”

I don’t know who planted the flowers in the backyard, but they ring the small square, tall things growing at the fence, less tall shit blow that. They’re not bordered by anything, and the grass has overrun then.

My eyes zero in.

Kael can see exactly what I’m staring at.

She flies across the yard and throws herself up against the fence, her arms spread out in supplication, but her face is fierce. A warrior goddess to the last. “If you cut these flowers down, Dravin, so help me, any god that might exist, you’re a dead man!”