Kai

The numbers match.

Our profits have risen after nose-diving because we had to put our business on the back burner. I would even go as far as to say that they are better. We’re bringing in more money, and it isn’t because of the amount of time I spend on bookkeeping. It’s because people are even more afraid of us than they were before.

The people thought our reign was over when Jacoby came into the picture, but when Burke and I came out the other side victorious, it taught everyone a lesson. Don’t fuck with us. Despite knowing our place on top is secure, I’ve done nothing but fixate on these numbers since Teagan left.

That isn’t true.

I’ve spent most of my waking hours hunched over our books, but at night … oh, fuck, the nights. I think about Teagan. When I lay my head on my pillow, things start out okay. My hands wrapped around her dark chocolate hair. The way she always smelled like berries mixed with disinfectant from the tattoo shop. The way she used to straddle my hips and laugh and beam as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But then my thoughts always go dark. My happy memories of a time when I secretly held my best friend’s sister late at night turn to the fear in her eyes when she sat in the ambulance on that farm and the way she whimpered in her sleep in the hospital bed after. The way she wouldn’t look directly at me since her safe return. The words that flew from her mouth with resentment and sliced my heart to pieces before she left for the wellness clinic.

I don’t want to move out.

She wants me to and she told me as much before she left.

Things between Burke and me are better, but they definitely aren’t the same as they were prior to all this, before he found out that his sister and I had a relationship behind his back. Teagan is hurting and scared, and I only seem to make things harder for her. Yet the thought of packing and leaving my home … leaving my family behind, it isn’t something I can fathom.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was pledging to Paisley that I would do the right thing. That I would win Teagan back and make Burke see that she and I belonged together. But, if my presence only brings Teagan pain, is that the right thing to do?

I want her happy.

I can’t sleep at night because I want her to be happy with me, but if that option burned with that farmhouse, I’ll find a way to live without her.

I have to.

I don’t think I’d ever be whole again, but that’s a small price to pay to know the contagious smile would return to Teagan’s face. I’ve halfheartedly been looking for an apartment, but maybe it is time to get more serious about it. Stop obsessing over these profit margin books to keep my mind off Teagan and find the place I can go, so I can give her what she needs.

My blood tried to kill her. My blood was responsible for the things that happened to her while she was gone. My blood destroyed the person she used to be. We all came out of the situation alive, but each of us carries the scars from what happened.

Without knocking, Paisley—my best friend’s girl and somehow the person I’ve been closest to lately—barges into my room, and the mattress dips when she sits on my bed. “I thought Burke was the broody one. That surly frown on your lips and intense look in your eyes would give my man a run for his money any day.”

“Up, Paisley. You know the rules.” My head lazily moves to rest against the wall behind me.

She rolls her eyes dramatically and doesn’t budge. “There are no rules, Kai. This is a home meant for the dauntless.” She pulls her bare legs onto my bed and crosses them neatly beneath her. I huff in frustration as she makes herself comfortable.

Burke doesn’t trust me, not like he did before, and I don’t want to give him any reason to be skeptical. Paisley knows I like a figurative and physical line between us, but she doesn’t seem to respect that—ever.

“What do you want, Lunar?”

She bites her lip and then smiles at me affectionately. It feels like forever ago when her towel dropped in that shitty apartment she shared with that backstabbing whore Braelyn, and I gave her that nickname. Back then, she would never have looked at me with such warmth like she is now.

“You tell me.” Her tone rises at the end with a question, and her voice is demanding something I’m not sure of yet. Paisley wants a long, drawn-out conversation that I don’t want to have. She and I have become close despite the metaphysical wall I put up between us so as not to give Burke any concerns over our friendship. She was the only person I had to talk to after Jacoby upended our lives. Hell, she was the only person in this house that would even look at me. Besides, she’s rooting for Teagan and me, and I’m positive she’s the only one in my corner when it comes to that. Some days, it’s hard for even me to believe that the girl I love will find her way back to my heart. She’ll always be in mine though.

“I don’t have the energy, Paisley. Just tell me if you’re here to try to comfort me or berate me. Then, we can get it over with, so I can get back to what I was doing.”

She clicks her tongue at me and narrows her blue eyes in admonishment. “Kai Grant! You’ve been an absolute cranky sourpuss since Teagan left a week ago. You’re turning into Burke before my eyes, walking around here grunting and moping, and while I find it extremely sexy on him, it doesn’t look so good on you.”

I toss the book of numbers to the side and let out a defeated sigh. They say misery loves company, but everyone has been through enough. I don’t need to drag my family down with me. I’ve already done enough.

“Things are fucked up. What else do you want me to say? I put everyone through hell. I fucked the whole town, including the bitch that helped kidnap you, while the girl I really loved sat in her room down the hall. Even after everything I did before that, right under her nose, she still didn’t hate me. I wanted to try. I wanted to fight. I really did. But, now? Now? This is the type of thing you can’t come back from. Teagan couldn’t stand the sight of me. On the rare occasion I managed to catch her eye, she would flinch away from me as if I were some kind of monster. Her whole body would actually shake with anger or fear or repulsion when she had to see me, Paisley.”

“That isn’t true,” she tries to argue. She can’t. She and I both know the truth, so I give her a look, one that tells her to quit the bullshit. “You and Teagan are the real deal. You’ll find your way back to one another.”

I’ll always be connected to her demons and not in the way that alleviates the painful things that lurk in her head at night. I’m connected to the cause of the new darkness within her. Maybe we were the real deal at one time, but that was then, and this is now.

Now, I am the cancer eating away at the inside of her heart.

That’s all I’ll ever be.

“I’m leaving, Paisley.”

She bounces to her knees on my bed, her small frame barely jostling me, and her hands come down hard on the mattress.

“Leaving?” Her teeth clench in annoyance. “What do you mean, leaving?”

“It’s time. I need to go. I moved in here to help Burke after his parents died. That was over a decade ago. I’m almost thirty and still living in a spare bedroom of someone else’s house. The girl I promised to help raise is grown, and our relationship is anything but healthy. It’s time for me to figure my own shit out, find my own damn place.”

“Your place is with family. You’re family. Therefore, you belong here.”

“She doesn’t want me here, Paisley. I can’t hurt her any more than she already has been.”

“Teagan doesn’t know what she wants. Just wait to see what things are like when she comes back.”

It’s Paisley who doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t have all the facts.

Eggs left out in the sun, drenched in expired milk. A spoiled taste that rivals that disastrous breakfast combo wraps around my tongue while I work up the courage to give her the pieces she’s missing.

“You don’t know what happened before she left. It’s over. She and I are over—for good. She wants me gone, completely out of her life.”

“Tell me what happened.” There is pity in Paisley’s voice, and the rotten taste slides from my tongue, flows down my throat, and plummets into the pit of my stomach.

“The night before you and Burke took her to the clinic, she told me exactly how she felt. She let it all out, every hateful and bitter emotion.”

And it wasn’t pretty.

There was nothing romantic about the declaration she made that night.

“Talk to me, Teagan.”

No response. Not a look. Not a nod. It’s like I’m the invisible man.

I try a different approach.

“I love you. I’ve always loved you, and the distress in your eyes is killing me. I don’t want you to hurt like this. I just wish I could make it better.”

Well, that gets her attention. Her face scrunches like I said the worst thing in the world.

Maybe I did. She’s so hard to read these days.

Her open palm pounds the wall so hard that I’m surprised it doesn’t go clean through.

Still, she doesn’t look at me.

“Love? You love me?” Pure loathing bursts from her lips. “I could never love you again. You’re a reminder of every deep pain I’ve ever suffered. You are so far entangled in everything that haunts me that it hurts me to even look at you. I wish I never had to again.” Her spine goes rigid, and her shoulders push back. With her eyes closed, unable to bear the sight of me, she resolves herself for the final blow. “You want to make it better? Disappear! Make sure I never have to see you, smell you, or hear you ever again.”

“You don’t mean that.” She’s been through a lot. She just needs time.

“I mean it with the deepest fiber of my being, Kai. I mean it so fiercely that I wish I could make you disappear right this instant. You’re hurting me just by existing. So, please, go exist somewhere I don’t have to look at you.”

The secretive lust that we found as practically kids turned into a forbidden love that neither of us was ready for, and like dairy products left to spoil when the electricity went out, our love turned foul and putrid.

At least, it did for her.

I’ll always love Teagan Hensley, but to her, I’ve turned into a bad memory unwillingly branded on her shattered heart.