Eighteen
Sera
After dinner on my third night in the House of Crazy, Kori and Van started their anti-Julia viral campaign, jokingly referred to as “Off With Her Head.” Though I truly hoped no one actually planned to decapitate Julia Tower. A bullet through her brain was enough for me.
Ian held the master list of names and phone numbers they’d compiled—an act worthy of punishment within the syndicate itself, where writing criminal details down was highly...discouraged. Kori and Van each took half of the list and texted every number with a prepared statement, declaring that Julia was actually Tower’s regent, not his heir, and naming me as the oldest of my biological father’s children.
No one texted back with a response, and I was tempted to see that as the failure of our scheme, but they all assured me that the opposite was true. There would be doubters, of course, but if no one believed the text so many people were getting, there would definitely have been a response.
After that, while all phones remained conspicuously silent, we went out back to Kris’s homemade gun range again, but this time the entire household came with us. We drew faces on our black silhouetted targets with neon markers and Wite-Out pens, then tacked them to trees on the edge of the woods behind the house.
Since there were so many of us shooting at once, Kori brought out a plastic tub full of mismatched sets of headphones she’d evidently taken one at a time from every gun range she’d ever visited. I didn’t want to know how she’d gotten out the door without turning them in.
Then I realized she probably hadn’t gone out through the door at all.
On the third try, I shot the button nose off the demented teddy bear Kris had drawn on my new target—he was pretty damn good with a marker—and I was feeling pretty good about my new skill, until Kris and Kori pulled down everyone’s first target and handed them out.
Neither Daniels sibling had missed a single mark. In fact, Kori had hit the center of her target’s forehead so many times that there was only one big hole where his poor paper brains had once been.
Kris went for the heart. And he hit it every single time.
For our second round, I drew shaggy white facial hair on Kris’s target man, and when I turned to hand it to him, I found him bent over the card table with a sparkly sliver pen—I have no idea where he got it—drawing on my target as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.
I took one look and wanted to hide the one I’d done before he saw it. His soon-to-be-destroyed art was incredible. “Holy shit,” I breathed, and Kris chuckled. I recognized Julia’s sparkly scowl staring out at me from the face of my target guy with a single glance.
He held the paper up. “I thought you might like the inspiration.”
“That’s incredible. I’d say it’s beautiful, but...it’s Julia.” My biological aunt was not unattractive in real life, but I would never think of her as pretty, because I would always know what lay behind the blessings genetics had given her. But Kris had drawn her so well I almost hated to shoot her.
“Show off.” Kori had already demonstrated the fact that she’d rather decorate her target with 9 mm piercings, and I wasn’t sure whether that was because she was obviously violent in nature or because she had no other talents that I could tell.
Ian glanced at the drawing, then at me, then at Kris. Then he gave us both a quiet smile that made me blush.
While Kris nailed up our targets, I headed to the cooler next to the back steps to grab several bottles of water. When I stood with as many as I could carry, I was struck by the sight of them all together, doing what they did best, like any family might. Sure, my family’s together-time had been spent singing along with my dad’s acoustic guitar rather than shredding paper targets with high-velocity personal projectiles, but the gist was the same. They were together, and beneath the bickering over who’d hit the target’s left eye more times in a row and Gran’s nagging Kris to quit shooting Kori’s target on the sly, you could see that they loved each other. And that more than anything, they wanted Kenley back, to complete their family.
Seeing the pain they shared and how it drew them together made me ache with memories of my own, a pain so deep that for a moment I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. That ache grew sharper and gained focus, not in my chest, but in my abdomen. Beneath my scar.
My eyes closed and tears rolled down my cheeks before I’d even known they were there. The water bottles fell from my arms to bounce in the dirt and I clutched at my stomach, hating how flat it felt. How empty.
He would have been seven months along now, my baby that never was. He would have been mature enough to live, even if he’d chosen to come into the world at that very moment. But he would never be born. And he would never have a brother or sister, because the wound that ripped him from my life and from my body had ended any chance of me ever having another child.
My knees hit the ground, and my hands followed.
“Sera?” Vanessa called, and when I looked up I saw her at the end of the line of shooters, blurry through my tears. Alone, because she was missing her heart, too. With Kenley gone, did she feel as empty as I felt?
The others loved Kenley, too. They would have done anything to get her back. But in her absence, they still had one another.
Vanessa had nothing, now. Like I had nothing.
“Sera!” Kris set his gun on the table and jogged across the grass toward me, but I was already on my feet wiping tears away by the time he got there. I cursed myself silently and assured him aloud that I was fine. That I’d just tripped. That I hoped the water bottles hadn’t burst because of my clumsiness.
He didn’t believe a word I said; that was clear. But he only picked up the bottles and tossed each one to a member of his family, willing to let me grieve privately, even though I wasn’t actually in private. For which I was more than grateful.
Then he tacked Julia’s image up on the tree designated as my target, and as I took aim with a full clip, he leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “I didn’t know what your bad guy looks like, so I drew mine. Feel free to blow her sparkly brains out.”
With remembered pain still burning in my stomach and fresh loss aching in my chest, I took aim. My first shot hit the left side of her forehead, and after that, my aim only improved. I fired all eighteen rounds into Julia Tower’s effigy, and nearly all of them found their mark in her head, her throat and her chest.
By the time I was finished, they were all watching me as the sun—a fat scarlet ball—sank below the tree line to the west.
I didn’t realize I was crying again until the echo of my last shot rolled into the distance.
* * *
I’d just pulled a clean T-shirt over my head when someone knocked on my bedroom door. “It’s open,” I called, running my comb through hair still wet from my shower.
Kris opened the door, but stayed in the threshold. “I thought you might want these.” He held out two long tubes of paper, which could only be my targets from that evening’s shooting session. “And this.” His other hand held a roll of Scotch tape.
“Thanks.” They were for inspiration. I was proud of learning to defend myself, and potentially protect others.
I took the targets and waved him inside while I set the brush on my dresser. His dresser. Then I climbed onto the bed in borrowed socks and stood, leaning against the headboard for balance as I unrolled the first paper.
“We have to get you some clothes of your own. You can’t keep wearing Kori’s shorts.” He tore off a piece of tape for me as I positioned the first of that evening’s targets next to the one from that afternoon, already on display above my bed. His bed.
I took the tape he offered and secured the top left corner to the wall. “I have to wear something, don’t I?”
His brows were arched halfway up his forehead when I reached down for the next piece of tape. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to reply.
When I tried to take the strip of tape, his hand closed around mine. “In case you’re tempted to misinterpret that as another mixed signal, let me be clear about three very important things. One—I like you. A lot.”
A fluttery feeling took over my stomach, like when I’d played on the swings as a kid, and I couldn’t make it go away.
“Two—I will never, ever hurt you, for any reason, and I don’t give a damn who your father was or how valuable you are to my mortal enemy.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t blink. I could only stare down at him while he stared back up at me and the rest of the world seemed to fade into the background.
“And three—the biggest mistake I’ve ever made was letting you walk out of the kitchen the other night without understanding exactly how I feel and why I said what I said.” His hand squeezed mine, and tears filled my eyes. “And that’s really saying something, because most of my high school extracurriculars weren’t exactly legal. If I’d gone to college, I could have majored in Bad Decisions. If there was a title behind my name, it’d sound something like, Kristopher Daniels, Professional Fuckup. But I’ve never made a mistake as big as letting you walk away from me.”
“I...” I had to swallow, then start over, my bare feet buried in a tangle of his sheets. “I’m not sure what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to make sure you understood all of that, so that if you walk away from me again, I’ll at least know it wasn’t because you didn’t know how I feel.” He blinked, then let me have the piece of tape now stuck to both of us. “The rest of it is up to you. We’ll do whatever you want.”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted from Kris. All I knew was that I liked the way he looked at me. And I liked the way his voice sounded when he said my name. And I loved how the same fingers that could mercilessly aim his gun and squeeze its trigger could also brush hair off my shoulder with the ghost of a touch, or cradle my fingers between his own during that first step into the darkness.
We finished hanging the targets in silence, while I thought about what he’d said, and what that might mean for us, and how the only reason I’d had to walk away from him—the secret of my birthright—was no longer an issue. And when that was done, I stood on the floor at the foot of the bed, staring up at the targets, thinking about how brutally different my life had become in the past three months.
Ninety days earlier, I couldn’t have imagined myself like this. Childless. Sterile. A decent shot with a handgun, if unproven in action. Possessing more power, money and authority than I’d ever dreamed possible—yet unsure how to use any of them. Or even whether I should.
“Want to talk about it?” Kris said, but when I turned to look at him, I only saw his profile. He was staring at the targets—evidence of the new me. That she was all I had left.
“Talk about what?”
“About the cooler. Whatever happened.”
“No. Thanks, though.” I circled the bed and started straightening the sheets and blankets, just to have something to do with my hands.
“Are you okay?” His voice was deep. Gruff. As if he was holding back more than he was actually saying.
I fluffed a pillow and propped it against the headboard. “Are any of us?”
He shrugged, and the gesture looked tired. “Valid point.” Kris was quiet then, watching me while I picked up clothes from the floor. When I bent to pull a dirty sock from beneath the bed, he stepped forward and took my hand, tugging gently until I stood, very aware of how close he was. Of how our hands were still touching. “I want to ask you for something.” Now he was whispering, and his gaze kept volleying between my eyes and my lips, as if he wanted something from them both. “And you’re going to say no, and that’s okay. But I have to ask. I need to know.”
“Ask,” I said, and there was something in his eyes. Something I almost didn’t recognize, coming from him. Some fragile kind of vulnerability.
“Can I see it? Please?”
“What?” My heart thumped.
“Your scar.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. “Why?” I whispered, when I could speak again. That wasn’t what I’d expected. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected.
“So I can understand.” He was serious. There wasn’t a hint of a smile anywhere on his face, but that vulnerability was as raw as I’d ever seen it. “I want to know who you are, and I can’t, until I know what you’ve been through.”
“You already know.” Yet knowing wasn’t the same as truly understanding. And he’d already shown me his scars—an entire notebook filled with them.
I headed for the door, and he thought I was kicking him out—I could see that in the slump of his shoulders and the regret behind his eyes. But then I closed the door and leaned against it, and he exhaled.
Kris’s brows rose in silent question. I nodded, and he crossed the room slowly. His gaze didn’t leave mine until he knelt on the floor in front of me and my heart pounded so hard I was sure he could hear it. For one long moment, he stared at the material covering my stomach, and the pervasive anger and underlying sense of loss I’d been living with for months warred with something new inside me. Something fragile and...hopeful.
Then he put his hands on my hips and looked up at me, and I held my breath. Kris looked so different from this angle. From above, his shoulders bunched with tension, his jaw tight. He looked strong, but sad.
He lifted the hem of my borrowed T-shirt slowly and his thumb trailed over my skin beneath the cotton. I held my breath. He was very careful, like my wound might still be open and bleeding literally, as it bled still in my heart.
He inhaled when he saw it, dark pink and smooth to the touch, and when he looked up at me, I saw my own horror reflected on his face.
Tears filled my eyes again when his hand covered my scar, low on the right side of my abdomen, trailing beneath the waist of my shorts. His hand was warm, and I felt it all around the wound, but not in the scar itself. The scar had no feeling, which was odd, because it seemed directly connected to my heart, which hurt all the time.
“I’m so sorry.” His hand shifted to cradle my hip, and when his fingers left my stomach, his lips found it. “He will pay,” Kris murmured, his breath warm against my skin, the stubble on his chin rough, yet comforting in the way only something so tangibly masculine can be. “No one should touch you out of anything other than adoration, ever again.”
My breath caught in my throat, and my hands caught in his hair, and when Kris stood, he was all I could see. “I adore you, Sera. Will you let me touch you?”
“Yes. Please.”
The words carried almost no sound, but he heard them.
Kris blinked at me in surprise, but that was gone in an instant, replaced by desire burning bright in his eyes, tinged with something stronger. Something I desperately wanted to believe in.
I could have this. I could have Kris, and if what I saw in his eyes could be trusted, I wouldn’t be getting him just for the night. And I wouldn’t be getting him alone. Kris was a package deal. He came with sisters, and friends, and a grandmother. A ready-made family with tempers, and hugs, and dementia, and chili, and arguments, and laughter, even in the worst of times, and a shared mission I already believed in.
They couldn’t replace the family I’d lost. But they didn’t have to, and they wouldn’t try to. They would just be there.
Kris would be there. If I let him.
Kris kissed me, and I kissed him back. I let everything go, and it was easier than I’d expected, because he wanted the burden. He didn’t just want to touch me, he wanted to know me. He wanted to know what had made me who I was. So I showed him.
I poured all my grief into that kiss. All my hunger for vengeance. And I fed from the same in him, astonished by the translation of heat from remembered violence to carnal appetite. We kissed until I forgot about the house around us and the people in it. Until I no longer felt the door at my back or the floor beneath my feet. I couldn’t feel anything but him, and I couldn’t touch enough of him to satisfy hands that had gone empty for too long. A mouth that had tasted only bitterness and pain for months on end.
But I could sure as hell try.
When kissing was no longer enough, I tugged on the end of his shirt, wordlessly commanding its removal as my mouth demanded even more from his lips. His tongue. Kris pulled away just long enough to tug his shirt over his head, and suddenly I could touch him unhindered by useless cotton.
I tasted him then, clean from a recent shower. His earlobes felt good between my teeth and his hair smelled like guy-shampoo. His neck was rough with stubble, and just a little salty. His chin was strong, and the back of his jawbone fit in the gap between my lips like I was always meant to kiss him there.
My hands found smooth skin over taut muscle. Hard planes and all the right masculine bumps and ridges. He let me play, tasting, testing, learning his body as thoroughly as I could, because I wouldn’t get another chance. His hands stayed anchored at my waist, fingers splayed around the curve of my ribs. He was more patient than I.
Until he wasn’t.
His eager tug at my shirt demanded reciprocation, so I lifted my arms and let him take it off. I didn’t see where it fell, and I didn’t give a damn, because then he was touching me, and his touch felt hungry, yet restrained. He took his time, as if every inch of me deserved to be explored with equal attention, and when he dropped to his knees in front of me again, his lips trailing from my navel toward the low waist of my borrowed pj shorts, my head fell back against the door and my hands tangled in his pale hair.
Kris blazed hotter than anything I’d ever felt. His lips were like sparks against my skin, his hands practically on fire, and I burned everywhere he touched me. When his mouth found my scar again, those flames almost overwhelmed me, and I felt my body go still on its own. But then I pushed the memories away. I let him burn them back until I could hardly see them anymore, and when he hesitated at the waist of my shorts, I pulled him up to eye level.
“Is this what you want?” I was suddenly sure I’d misread some signal, or read more into what he was saying than he’d actually meant. Was that why he’d stopped?
“So much,” he said, his voice scratchy with desire, and I almost melted with relief. “But if you don’t, we don’t have to...”
“I do.” I wanted to touch all of him. I wanted him to touch all of me. I wanted to forget everything in the world that wasn’t relevant to him, and to me, and to the two of us together, for as long as I could have him.
It’s sheer luck that we made it to the bed, when the floor was so much closer, but when I felt the mattress touch the backs of my thighs, I sat. Kris joined me seconds later, nude and unspeakably beautiful, and I closed my eyes, afraid to look too long at the miracle I’d found, for fear that it would disappear.
I exhaled at his next touch, then held my breath altogether when his mouth followed a moment later, working its way down from my neck. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and let my hands see for me, sliding over his arms and chest, feeling the curve of his biceps, then traveling over the planes of his back. His mouth trailed down from my breast, over my stomach, and I arched into his touch, drawing another groan from him as he slid the borrowed shorts over my hips. Then came the soft exhalation of surprise when he realized I wore nothing beneath them—I don’t borrow underwear.
And that was all the waiting I could take.
I kicked the shorts off and pulled him back up, opening for him, as he settled between my thighs. I slid the arches of my feet up his calves and he leaned closer to whisper into my ear.
“Look at me, Sera. Please,” he added.
So finally I opened my eyes, and when I met his gaze, he slid into me, slowly, smoothly, and I couldn’t breathe again until I had all of him. And I was terrified by how much I didn’t want to let him go.
He lingered there, my legs locked around him, staring into my eyes, and I discovered that now that I was looking, I couldn’t turn away from him. Not even when he began to move inside me, and my hips rose to meet him over and over. I couldn’t look away until he leaned close to whisper in my ear.
“I promise he will pay, Sera. He will pay with every drop of his blood, and with his very last breath.”
I clung to him, as fresh tears rolled down my cheeks and soaked into his pillow. Then I pushed it all away again—the despair, the anger—and lived in that moment with Kris. Our moment, in which nothing else existed. Nothing but him, and me, and the delicious friction building between us, burning hotter with each second, until I couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t think, and couldn’t hold back for another second.
I gasped as that heat spilled over in wave after wave of pleasure, and Kris groaned when his release caught up with mine. And for a moment afterward, neither of us moved. I didn’t want to let him go, and he seemed in no hurry to be freed.
Then he kissed the corner of my jaw and his weight and warmth disappeared. I sat up, suddenly sure I’d see him pulling on his clothes to leave the room, but instead he settled onto the mattress next to me. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.” Kris pulled the sheet up to cover us both, then slid his arm beneath my pillow, and we lay there listening to each other breathe, while the rest of the world carried on without us.
It was the most peaceful moment I could remember since the night my family died. And I never wanted it to end.