Page 13 of Dravin

I don’t.

The truth is, she needs someone to hold her, even if it’s me, and even if it’s because she wants to maim me.

I know how her grief has set in and taken hold of her. Everything she does has been to beat it back, beat it down, just plain beat it. She’s trying to find her way back to the person she was before her world imploded, but she keeps watching that memory get further and further away, like fighting a powerful current. I’ve seen too much of death myself. I know grief, andI was still unprepared for the bulldozing I took when Marcus died. I’m right there, swimming upstream with her, even if I’m supposed to be her life raft.

“You’re wearing your hair weird. Shaving off your beard won’t help you fit in here.”

Every time I move around, I change my appearance. That’s the smart thing to do. When we got here, I shaved part of my head on the one side, leaving it short and kept the other side long. I style it so that it falls over the scars on my forehead, obscuring the ones that are hardest to hide.

“I saw it in a barbershop, it looked cool.” I’ve never been afraid to admit the truth, and that takes Kael aback.

“What?”

“Some guy leaning on the hood of a muscle car, wearing a plaid shirt and tight fitting jeans. Looked like a fucking lumberjack, except I doubt he’d know one end of an axe from another.”

She blinks up at me like I’ve lost my mind and then she laughs. “It looks more emo or hipster than lumberjerk, and certainly not biker. I was going to tell you that if you were trying to fit in here, you’re failing. Horribly.”

“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 wrongpath 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 herlikethatbecause 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 itisunique. 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.

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