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“Ah, hi,” he said.
“Hey, son.”
“I—um, listen, I really appreciate that the Brotherhood is giving me the opportunity to apologize,” Nate heard himself blather in a rush. “And I don’t expect to be put back on the field schedule. I’m ready to work at anything I’m offered. If you guys want me to clean something, train the young, data entry… I don’t care—and if it’s nothing, I understand.”
Those yellow eyes, so like Nalla’s, narrowed, and he couldn’t blame the guy. Yeah, sure, everything was good between the two of them, but there were levels, so many levels.
“So, you expected your father here, yeah?”
Nate nodded his head. “Yes, but I’m prepared to go in and face the Brotherhood and my King on my own. It’s my past, no one else’s.”
Zsadist came forward, and now the two were eye to eye. For a split second, Nate’s gaze dropped to the black slave band that had been tattooed around the Brother’s throat, and he thought of his own ink. He’d gotten his because he’d needed a physical expression of his pain. Now, he saw Amore’s work as evidence that he was a survivor.
And he wondered if Z didn’t feel the same about his own.
“You know,” Nate murmured, “I’m done running from what… happened to me in the past.”
Zsadist inclined his head. “That’s exactly why I wanted to catch you. If you ever need to talk… I know what it’s like. Trying to play normal when your head is a tornado. Mary is super helpful as a resource and my daughter, I mean, she’s trained in counseling, and she loves you more than anything. Sometimes, though, it’s good toknow you aren’t alone. Even the people you’re closest to can’t really relate—and aren’t you and I glad that they don’t carry around what we do.”
Nate blinked a couple of times. And found it was hard to breathe.
“I’m going to take you up on this offer.”
Z nodded again. “Good. I was hoping that was going to be your response.” Then the Brother smiled, flashing his fangs. “Now let’s get this shit over with so we can go to your party.”
Who’da thought that the sound of packing tape screeching across the bottom of a moving box would be a happy thing.
As Nalla made another 3D out of a 2D, and flipped the cardboard cube upright, she measured how much more she had to go. Dismantling her room in her parents’ quarters had gone quickly. Then again, all she had were clothes, the photographs on the walls, and the stuff in her bathroom. The latter had taken up the most time, and she had culled that herd of two-year-old mascaras and eye pencils that had turned into tiny I-beams with a fresh-start rush that had made her dizzy.
Heading over to her bureau’s bottom drawer, she took out the pairs of flannel PJ bottoms, and the last of her sweatshirts…
Then she slowly straightened and looked around.
“Am I done?” she said to herself.
Glancing back at the open doors of her closet, she got an eyeful of two empty wire hangers on the rod, a lone pair of strappy heels in a shoebox on the floor, and a single silica gel satchel that had fallen out of something. Across the way, there was the stripped mattress, the bedside table that only had a lamp on it, and her cell phone that was charging on its pad. Other than the rug needing a quick vacuum and the overflowing wastepaper basket in the bathroom, it looked like she was… done.
The wave of sadness that came didn’t make sense. She was super excited about moving and setting up a household with Nate. It didn’tmatter to her that his place out there in the woods was small and modest, and Vishous had had to add a layer ofmhisto make sure they were safe from the enemy.
Finally, she was making her own home. With the male she loved.
Which was what you did. Young didn’t stay young forever. Growing up was as inexorable a process as dying, and if you were lucky, you made it to maturity in one piece. Or semi-one piece.
The question was what you did when you were there. And who out of your family of origin was still by your side: At some point, after the dependency of childhood dissipated, blooded relations had to be chosen like friends—or should be.
Turning to the moving boxes that had been filled, taped shut, and stacked by the exit, she regarded each one as an adult version of a child’s building blocks set, everything balanced on the base row, the tops ascending like a set of stairs, one box, two box, three box, four… and then she was out the door.
She would be back, of course. But it would be as a welcomed guest, not as a resident, and that divide was a valley that would not be crossed, ever again.
Blinking back tears, she measured all the hooks that she needed to remove from the walls. There was only one photograph left to take down, and she went over to the image of a beach scene with the sun hovering at the horizon.
In this room that was being broken down, it looked like a sunset. As she pictured the thing hanging on the wall at Nate’s? The image became a sunrise.
If that wasn’t a commentary on how perspective changed everything, she didn’t know what was.
Reaching up, she took the picture off its mount and held it to her heart. Funny, she couldn’t remember exactly when she’d put it up. But she was never going to forget taking it down—
“Hi.”
