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“Your place?” We stop. So does my heart.
His place!
He punches the number pad on the door, opens it, and walks inside, his ball and chain dragging me behind him.
“You like chicken, broccoli, and penne noodles?”
“Yeah.” I snap my eyes around the clean open-floor plan.
“Want something to drink?” He heads for the fridge.
“Water?”
He pulls a bottle from the fridge and hands it to me. “Thanks.” I take it and walk straight to one of the many bookcases lined up along the walls in his flat as he pulls stuff out of the cupboards and fridge. “You like to read?”
“Yep,” he says among the clinking pans.
“Native American art and culture, poetry, cooking, books about barns, metals.” I pause, noting the ones about sex, how to please your lover, and what women really want out of the sheets. “Is there anything you don’t read? What’s this?” I pinch a thin book, old like it was printed in the 1970s. “You want to learn how to play the flute?”
“Recorder, not flute.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Recorder is played vertically, and a flute is horizontal.”
I raise my eyes to his. “Did you learn how to play the recorder?”
“Nope. I haven’t mastered it yet.”
I turn my body to him. He’s placing a pan of water on the stove. “But you want to?”
He chuckles. “Did you ever learn?” I notice it’s his thing. To answer a question with a question.
“I did in school when I was a kid. They sent us home with it. I didn’t really practice and only had it for a few weeks.”
“I got mine the week before my mom killed my father. So I never got to learn.”
“What happened after that?”
“What?” He dumps some noodles into the pan. “After my mom went to jail?”
I watch him sprinkle some salt into the boiling water. “Yeah.”
“Well. My father’s family didn’t want us, and Mom didn’t have any family, so we went into the system.”
“Did you stay together, you and your brothers?”
“We did for the first year and a half, but our foster dad got sick just when everything started to normalize. Cancer. Between the cost of treatments and the care he needed, they couldn’t keep us, so we went back into the system.” He leans against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. “By that time, Brett was almost fourteen, Cole twelve, and well, no one wanted to take us all. We were there for about six months. The only one who got any interest was me. I was the youngest. But I wasn’t leaving until my brothers had somewhere safe to go. They were always protecting me as a child. I felt it was my turn to return the favor, so I acted out. Started fires in garbage cans and shit. It went on my record, so I became undesirable.” He rushes a steady hand over his hair. His biceps flex and release from the effortless action. “Brett got a home with a nice couple in Miami. His foster dad taught him everything he knew about the construction business. And Cole landed a rich family in Hollywood.”
“And you?”
“I got The Kraken.” He grins. “I was eleven when I went to stay with him. There were four other boys between the ages of twelve and fifteen.”
I slip the thin book back into its place on the bookcase. “And was there a Mrs. Kraken?”
“Sure, but she didn’t live with us.”
I take a step toward him, my stomach balling into a tight fist, imagining horrible thoughts. “Was he good to you?”
