Page 40 of The Lightkeeper

Of course, I agreed. I wanted to be friends with this family, but I wouldn’t do it at Kit’s expense. After they hugged me and said goodbye, I got into my taxi and gave the driver my hotel information. As he pulled down the driveway, I stared at the jar in my hands.

Broken Brood.

“Wait, I’m sorry,” I said as soon as we reached the end of the drive. “Can you take me to the Friendship Lighthouse instead?”

Retreating wasn’t who I was. If I wanted to learn more about something, I observed. I made notes. I charted changes. And I asked questions.

There was no harm in asking,was what Dad always said.I wasn’t sure Dad had ever met a man like Kit before, but the premise had to hold—and I had to ask.

I had to know how he could kiss me one minute and turn away the next. How he could tell me that our kiss wasn’t normalbut then not want to experiment.How he could want to keep his distance and then turn around and champion my sea stars.

The cabbie nodded, and my heart set off in a gallop.

I was going to get answers tonight whether I liked them or not.

“You sure this is what you want, miss?” the driver asked when he stopped behind Kit’s truck.

Thank goodness, he was here.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, tapped my phone to the payment terminal, and then hurried out of the car.

Aside from the headlight, only the faintest rim of light peeked out from the windows of the house, all the shades drawn tight.

I bundled my arms to my chest, practically jogging to the door. I rapped firmly on the wood over and over again without letting up. I knew he was in there, and I wasn’t leaving without talking to him—without understanding what was going on.

Suddenly, the door yanked wide open, Kit’s broad body filling the frame like some kind of godly giant.

“What are you doing here?” His glare was hot as fire, my neck burning as he watched me struggle to swallow.

I handed him the jar of jam like it was an answer.

“Even a brood deserves to be understood.”

Chapter Ten

Kit

There was no escaping her—andI wished that was a bad thing.

I’d slipped out of Mom’s early specifically for this reason—to avoid having to walk away from her again. Day after day. Time after time. It grew increasingly hard to continue to walk away from Aurora Cross like she was nothing—like there was nothing between us. It was like the sun trying to walk away from the horizon. I only got so far before she was in front of me again.

Like right now.

My eyes raked over her as I gripped the side of the doorframe. “Aurora…”

She’d left her hair down for dinner tonight, a full storm of midnight rings haloed her head and danced against her cheeks, and she had worn these bright mustard yellow pants and an emerald green blouse. So damn colorful, yet it didn’t even come close to the vibrancy of her smile—and she’d smiled a lot with myfamily. Too much. She smiled like she belonged—like shethrivedin their chaos.

“Take it,” she urged.

In this light, shadows teased the edge of her shirt, taunting me with the creamy swells of her tits and the valley between them. And for a second, I envied my exhales.What kind of fucked-up reality was it where I was jealous of my own breath?The very air that entered into my lungs and kept me alive—I resented it because it got to caress the bare silk of her skin when I shouldn’t.Couldn’t.

That much was even clearer after tonight. The way my entire family looked at me and her, every interaction from her mention of my drawings and the damn gallery show to the way I hadn’t stopped myself from correcting Lou about the fucking sea stars… I wished they’d looked at me like I had two heads, but no. There were flickers of recognition instead—of the man I used to be.A man who was gone.

“I want to understand.” Aurora pushed the jam jar into my chest and I took it from her, reading the label.

Broken Brood.

“Dammit—” I shook my head. “Don’t listen to this.”Sorry, Gigi. “I don’t need to be understood. I need to be left alone.”

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