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Avoiding Kenz turned out to be harder than I’d expected. After the unpleasantness the night before, I’d stayed in my room as much as possible.
I’d dealt with plenty of angry women over my life. I didn’t do long-term relationships, and even though I said it upfront, women tended to decide they would be the one to tame me. They liked to get close, to pretend to be fine with temporary, then lost their minds when I moved on.
I never lied to them, never promised them anything other than what I gave them, yet they’d act likeIwas the bad guy.
Yet somehow, avoiding Kenz didn’t feel that great. The quiet didn’t help at all, making me feel guilty instead of relieved.
It meant that when it hit three in the afternoon without me catching sight of the dark-haired imp, I’d grown antsy.
My knuckles stung when I knocked on her door, and after she called out for me to enter, I did so.
Even that, the way she left her door unlocked, the way she welcomed in whoever had knocked, reminded me of just how vulnerable she really was. Here she was, living in a house with four men she barely knew, with men willing to kill to get what they wanted, and shelovedus?
She really is a fool.
And yet, where that normally annoyed me, I found it almost charming with her.
She turned toward me and froze, a paintbrush in her hand, her eyes holding a whole damned lot of hesitation.
Was it because she was painting? Did she think seeing her do art would bother me?
She’s too damned sweet.
I offered her a smile, trying to ease her mind, then held up the plate of cheese and crackers, already placed into little piles and ready to eat. “You’ve been holed up in here for a while. I figured you had to be hungry.” I set the food on the desk beside her easel. “You can’t work on an empty stomach.”
“Thank you.” She set her brush in the cup of water on the easel tray.
I peered at her painting, surprised by it. Why it surprised me, I had no idea. Maybe because I hadn’t seen many of her paintings. I’d seen just rough sketches and quick character studies. Her brush work was phenomenal, really. She’d done the work in acrylics, layering thin washes of color to achieve the shade she wanted. It gave her work a softness that felt so at odds with the hard black lines on the edges, done with a thicker brush.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“My sister.” Her voice caught as she said it, as if just admitting it caused a rush of feelings in her. Not just good ones, either. They seemed complicated and mixed up.
Perhaps no family was perfect.
And I’d bet any family with as much dirt as hers would be rather far from perfect.Fuck knows mine is the same.
I thought about my mother, who I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. She called, and I picked up only as often as I needed to so she didn’t send anyone to find me. I could usually get about three weeks before I had to worry, which meant it would be time soon to face that demon.
I guess I could understand the complicated feelings when it came to family.
“She’s pretty,” I said.
Kenz nodded, her smile weak. “Yeah, she is. It’s funny, because naturally her hair is the same color as mine, but now I can’t picture her with anything but the red. It suits her.”
“From what I heard, she’s like fire, that one.”
Kenz pulled the chair from the wall over, nodding at it for me, then sat on the foot of her bed and crossed her legs. “She’s like that for a reason.”
“What reason is that?”
“My father tried to kill her. He sent killers to remove my mother and Nem because he was afraid they’d challenge his hold on power. He thought that the Hester name was hurting him more than helping him anymore, so he wanted to get rid of them both. The killers thought Nem was dead, but as they burned the house down around her, after they’d put a couple bullets through her, she dragged herself out of that house. The Fox, her real father, saved her, but my father thought she was dead. I thought she was dead, too, for ten years.”
“But she didn’t stay dead?”
Kenz shook her head. “She came back pretending to be someone else. She wanted to get rid of the people who had attacked her and our mother, and to save me. In the end, she even gave my father the chance to run away. She offered him his life if he just left us alone.” Kenz sighed, bowing forward as if exhausted. “He said that he wanted to put the bullet where it would hurt the most, so he fired at me. Nem killed him, but the damage was done. It’s funny, but until that moment, I still thought he loved me. Even after finding out he’d killed my mom, that he’d attacked Nem, I still couldn’t imagine him caring so little about me. Maybe I’m just as stupid as everyone says.”
My chest ached at her words, at the way they came out so softly, so drenched in pain. “The sad fact is that people aren’t always what they should be, what we want them to be. You wanting to believe in people doesn’t make you stupid.”
