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“Beau and I have always talked about getting away. He promised to take me with him once he turned eighteen and got enough money for his own place.”
“Because of your parents?”
I stiffened noticeably, and Kace rubbed my knee sympathetically. When had he become…kind? When had he started feeling like a friend instead of an enemy? He had never been as bad as Aiden and Tanner, at least on the surface, but he had destroyed my clothes. And how did he know about my parents?
“Don’t be pissed, but I read your file when you first arrived,” he admitted, ducking his head sheepishly. My body stilled as if thousands of currents of electricity were coursing through my veins. When I didn’t answer, too shocked to speak, he hurriedly explained, “I realize now how wrong it was. I’ll be the first to admit I’m an asshole. I’m so sorry, B. I just…I don’t know what I was thinking. But you never really talk about them much.”
“And you don’t talk about your family.”
He made an annoyed sound. “I have a younger sister and an older brother. They’re perfect, of course. They have to be perfect to compensate for the fuck-up that is me. My mother works twenty four hours, so I barely get to see her. And I haven’t met my dad.”
“That’s the icing on the cake,” I pointed out. “ Do you guys get along?”
“Maybe,” he said, leaning forward on his knees. “I’ll tell you about my family if you tell me about yours.”
I grabbed his untouched spoon and took a bite of the gooey pudding. It was marvelous, though I’ll never admit that to him. I was way too stubborn to allow our pudding-debate to end in a win for him.
“It’s simple. I had a mom and a dad. My dad was an ass, so he left. My stepdad is...um...but my stepbrother…well…my mom does like the assholes, apparently.” I quickly swallowed another mouthful, keenly aware of all I had shared. Kace sat back, reflecting this newfound information.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” he asked at last.
“Not with you.”
We locked eyes, and I felt something I never thought I would feel with Kace. A kinship. We both had obviously shitty pasts that still affected us to this day. Maybe that was what drew me to him in the first place—he was a kindred spirit, like me, who had somehow found me in the dissonant chaos that made up our lives.
“It’s just kind of funny,” he said at last. Despite the emptiness of the kitchen, he still found the need to whisper. “How many scars did we have to cover up because we loved the woman behind the knife? The man behind the fists?”
“The person behind the words,” I added almost absently, and Kace nodded, face uncharacteristically solemn.
“For me, it feels as if I can never be good enough. Like I’m always going to be a failure.” Kace wasn’t even looking at me as he spoke. His attention was diverted to the tops of his shoes, spread out before him. “It’s like constantly wanting to involve myself in the world yet feeling that I am not worthy enough to do so. There are points in my life, times that I can’t even begin to describe, where I wish that I had someone holding me up. You get to the point where you sink so low that you don’t believe light even exists anymore. I don’t want to fight the darkness alone.”
My throat closed-up. Instinctively, I reached my hand toward Kace. When did I start feeling sorry for him? We weren’t supposed to share our stories, weren’t supposed to develop this bond forged of shared trauma. That wasn’t us. Why the fuck did he have to ruin our mutual disdain for one another by being nice? By sharing a story I suspected he hadn’t shared with anyone else?
“You don’t have to fight it alone anymore. You know that you have me, right?” The words left my mouth before I could reel them in. Fucking hell.
“And I want to get better,” he said earnestly. “Because of you.”
“Don’t let that be your only reason,” I said hesitantly. “Do it for yourself.”
I didn’t understand where this conversation was going. It was no longer light and cheerful. We were treading water in unfamiliar oceans; one wrong word, one wrong move, and we’d be pulled under. It was like tumbling through a riptide, constantly searching for a pocket of fresh air. Once your head reached the surface, you would get pulled back under by forces beyond your control. There was no stopping it as you tumbled and turned through pits of nothingness.
We had to get out of the riptide.
“How about we have some more pudding?” I suggested coyly, pulling my hand out of his. I didn’t understand anything, especially not the strange pitter-patter my heart made when his eyes turned downcast, lashes like twigs against his cheeks.
Light-hearted conversations about pudding, I could deal with. But this? This bombshell being thrown on my lap? It was seconds from exploding, and I knew it would take us both with it.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
I reached for the pudding can and abruptly let out a string of curses.
Kace’s eyes flashed toward mine in surprise.
“What happened?”
“Cut myself on the damn can,” I said, holding my hand up to the diminishing sunlight flickering in through the open window. It cast enough light I could clearly make out a long cut slashing down my palm.
Kace stared at my hand with the oddest expression. I wondered if he was holding his breath; his body was shockingly still.
