Kai

Gunpowder funnels through my nose, and the bang of shots rings in my ears.

“I’m surprised you trust me around you with a gun.” Burke sneers at me, but there is playfulness behind his clipped and monotone words.

“If you haven’t killed me yet, I think I’m safe. You aren’t really the lie-in-wait kind of motherfucker,” I jab back.

Burke fires off another round into a tree out behind our warehouse while I reload. Afterward, I raise the gun and take aim, but my finger never pulls the trigger.

“Teagan’s losing this battle, and I’m certain it isn’t just the drugs. I don’t even recognize her anymore, man. The little girl I raised is gone, and I don’t know how to get through to her,” Burke admits.

“She’s been through a lot, Burke.” I keep exactly how much to myself. Knowing about the men who have hurt her would kill him. I still wish I could un-hear her cold words about what she’s been through. “I’m not sure she’ll ever be the same, but we need to focus on her getting better, not getting back to her old self.”

He sets the gun on the hood of my car and braces his hands on either side, looking up at the sky. With his eyes closed and his back to me, he speaks, “You get her. I mean, really understand her in a way I don’t think I ever could.”

“It’s just a different sort of understanding. You don’t see her as a woman. You see her as the little girl whose hair you had to cut gum out of.”

He turns to face me, and it isn’t the sun causing the stress around his eyes.

“Maybe that’s where I fucked up. I never let her grow up in my eyes, and maybe that’s why this is all happening now.”

“Nah, I mean … had the last year or so not happen, she’d no doubt be fighting against your control. She had been for a long time, but that isn’t what this is. She’s been through some real trauma, Burke. This has nothing to do with you or me. This is all about her pain and her struggle to deal with it. I don’t think there was anything we could have done, short of not letting her get taken to that farmhouse.”

His fists clutch at his sides. “I think that was meant to make me feel better about the situation, right?”

I also set my gun on the hood.

“We can’t go back. We can’t change what happened. It haunts me at night, too. In fact, the sickening feelings about it don’t go away just because the sun comes up. But, right now, she’s in a real bad way. It kills me to say this, but I think this may be something she needs to work out on her own. We can’t do it for her.”

A silence stretches while the sun beats down on us. Burke paces the length of my car, and the grass breaks away beneath his feet. My head gets dizzy as my eyes follow his path back and forth. On his last lap toward the hood of the car, his arm jerks, and he grabs his gun. Three steps are all it takes for him to reach me and have the muzzle securely jammed into the underside of my chin.

“I trusted you more than anyone. In a world where we’ve learned to put faith in no one, I had zero doubts about you. I put the one thing I cared about most in your hands.”

My fingers wrap around his forearm. I’ve taken punch after punch for betraying him, but I won’t take a bullet. Especially not right now while Teagan is dark and shattered, a shell of the woman I know her to be. This only causes him to shove the gun harder against my skin.

“You know how she ticks. I saw the way she had completely disappeared in that room after she first woke up. Whatever had grabbed ahold of her, it was like she was completely possessed by it, but you knew how to level her out and bring her back.”

“So, you’re going to kill me for it?” I’m not sure how well his reasoning mechanism is currently working if that’s his solution.

He pulls back on the slide and brings the gun to my temple.

“No, I’m going to warn you. I’m not sure if I’ll ever completely be on board with you and my sister, Kai, but there is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to need you around to help her through this. Whether I like it or not, I can see the connection the two of you have. But so help me, motherfucker, if you hurt her or really just do anything that pisses me off when it comes to her, I’m not sure our history will continue to save you. You fucked that up when you went behind my back. Are we understood?”

“I would never do anything intentionally to hurt Teagan.”

Carefully, I swat the gun’s aim from my head. He’s made his point.

“Intentionally. That’s the point. We never mean to hurt the people we love, Kai. Fuck knows I hurt Paisley last year, and it was never intentional, but when we’re talking about Teagan, about my sister, you don’t get the same leniency. You hurt her, whether you mean to or not, and you’ll have to deal with me. No more passes.”

“I hear you, loud and clear. I also hear that, in some sort of way, this is your way of giving your blessing. Is that right?”

Burke raises the gun once more. Only, this time, he shoots. One bullet whizzes past my head and hits the target tree behind me with perfect precision.

“Blessing? Fuck no. But maybe it’s my way of saying I won’t stand in your way if it’s what’s best for my sister. You’re the only one who’s really been able to get through to her. That counts for something. We’ll see where things go from there.”

“Deal.”

It’s more of a compromise than I ever thought I’d get from the man on this matter.

Without any more words and, more importantly, without any more gunshots, we head back to the house, and it’s the first time in a long time that I actually feel like I’m going home.

Paisley will have already ordered dinner and be putting it onto plates to pretend she made it. Teagan will be there, whether she wants to be or not. And, after having a gun pointed to my head and one bullet shot too fucking close for comfort, it finally feels like maybe things are returning to normal with Burke. It’s been a hard time for everyone, and some normal would be good for each of us. Whatever normal looks like anymore.

Just as I expected, when we walk through the house, the smell of lasagna, Burke’s favorite, permeates the hall. I ignore the sight of Paisley stuffing take-out boxes into the trash and soak in the pleasant scent.

“Smells great, Paisley!” I say, looking at the spread. “I’ll just go get Teagan.”

Paisley pulls herself from Burke’s lips.

“She might need a minute. A package just came for her, and she took it upstairs.”

“Package?” I question Paisley.

“Yeah, I found it on the doorstep,” she tells us.

Burke and I exchange a look of worry, and I’m on the move, Burke and Paisley on my heels.

Without knocking, I charge into her room, and the door shakes from its hinges.

What I find breaks my heart and darkens my soul.