Kai snorts. “Not fucking hardly.”
“Language, Kai.” She glances at me, then Morgan. “There are ladies present.”
“Oh, fuck that, Mom,” Morgan scoffs. “What is this,Bridgerton?”
Mal ignores her and takes a few steps towards Kai, her head tilted. Kai, for his part, resolutely looks everywherebuthis stepmother’s face, until finally she’s too close to ignore. In herboots, she’s nearly as tall as he is, and she takes advantage of it as she stares into his eyes.
“You look after each other, okay?” she says. “You and Kingston.” She pauses. “Scratch that. You look after him, okay?”
Kai’s jaw tightens.
“You’re all he has now, Kai.”
She reaches for his face, but he jerks away.
“Yeah. I know.” This time, though, he meets her eyes when she speaks. Holds it.
To her credit, Mal doesn’t flinch. She stares right back, and eventually, her face eases into a smile.
“Thank you, Kai,” she says, softer still. “For the?—”
“Don’t mention it,” he says, eyes flashing. “Seriously. Don’t.”
Mal puts her palms in the air in a gesture of defeat and takes a step back. “Sir, yes, sir.” Looking back at me and Morgan, she shrugs. “Well, sounds like I’ve got a mountain of fucking paperwork to deal with back at home, no?" She gives a dry, mirthless laugh, and thumbs at the corner of her eye like she’s wiping away a tear. But too soon, she’s sliding her sunglasses back on and enveloping Morgan in a bear hug. “Miss you already, babygirl. Thank you for the quality time.”
“Anytime, Mama,” Morgan says. “A trip to the Bahamas is hardly an imposition.”
Mal disentangles herself from her daughter and turns her warm gaze on me. “Gwen. So lovely to meet you. Thank you for being such a good…” She stops, spinning a hand in the air, and then shrugs. “Such a good everything you are. To everyone here.”
Another hug, this one tighter than the last, and then Mal makes for the door, a blast of ice-cold wind punctuating her departure.
I shiver. Not just from the wind.
A hand rests gently on my shoulder. Morgan’s.
“Hey. Hi.” She smiles at me, her previous jokesy sarcasm gone. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
She engulfs me in a hug.
“I’m sorry about my mom, too,” she adds, extricating herself. “She just comes on a little…like that. I told her she didn’t need to accompany me back to campus, but after everything that happened, she wanted to see them, and?—”
“No, no, of course,” I say quickly. “She’s great.”
Morgan sighs, but it’s afondsigh. “She’s a lot. But she’s everything I’ve got, so.” She shrugs.
Mal’s words echo in my mind.
You’re all he has now, Kai.
“You hated her,” Morgan says, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?” I shake my head vigorously. “No, no. It’s just…” I pause. “Well, at the risk of sounding rude?—”
“Oh, by all means, sound rude,” Morgan says, rolling her eyes. “God knows my mom does all the time.”
I nod. “Well, she doesn’t seem too, um, broken up about Luther?”
Morgan scrunches up her mouth. “Yeah. Well. Not the first husband to die on her, A. And B, shewasa wreck. Absolutely. Weeping, wailing, I’m talking literally crumpling to the ground.” She swallows. “It was hard. I brewed her some stuff, but still. And she doesn’t even know the whole…”
