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“Me either,” Rune agreed. “Honestly, I thought we’d get a call that first week of her crying and asking us to come get her.” He smiled slightly as he thought about it, a sadness to his expression implied he was disappointed she hadn’t.Never figured these men would want to play hero, but I guess for Kenz, even villains can want to be different.
“She’s actually done pretty well,” Dane said. “Her place is clean, she’s healthy, she’s got fantastic grades, she’s handled her money well. She’s been a lot better off than most kids her age.”
“To be fair,” Colton added on, “she’s been on her own a lot before this. Kyler left her to her own for years, at boarding schools, while he worked. I know it’s easy to think of her like a little kid still, but she’s been responsible for a while.”
“Responsible isn’t the problem with her,” Dane muttered. “It’s that she’s too naïve, too sweet. She’s too trusting. If she was like us, if she was willing to kill people more often, I wouldn’t worry so much.”
I frowned, thinking about that, about how willing she was to forgive people, to see the best in them. “Yeah, but if she did that, would she ever spend a minute with any of us?”
At least the Quad hesitated at that point, a reminder that the very people we worried about around her were really us. If Kenz was a less sweet person, she’d have wanted nothing to do with any of us.
And hadn’t I thought that was the best choice before? At first, after Kenz had been hurt, I’d expected to send her away immediately. It would have been safest to help her leave, to give her the means to start over somewhere else and have no more contact with her.
My presence in her life only opened her to danger, yet I hadn’t been able to cut those ties.
Kenz’s willingness to have a relationship with me, with the Quad, with Jarrod all showed she had a strength to her, even if she didn’t see it herself.
“I can’t fucking believe she was going through all this, and we didn’t even know,” Rune muttered. “We’re supposed to watch over her, but we sure fucking failed.”
“She’s smart,” Colton said. “She knew if she said a word we’d come down and deal with it.”
“That’s exactly why she should have said something.” Rune drew his hands into fists as he continued to pace. “I mean, from what it sounds like, she went through a fucking lot, but she said nothing?”
“She was abducted, sold at an auction, bought by four men, targeted by a well-known killer and attacked a few times.” As Colton listed out the actual things Kenz had suffered through, it really hit me.
I’d known some of it, but I hadn’t heard it all together like that, hadn’t truly recognized just how quickly this could have gone bad. I knew better than most how easily one bullet could change everything, how one wrong move could end a life.
Yet I’d dealt with my own petty problems in California while my sister literally fought for her life here, without my knowing anything.
It burned. When I’d come back, all I’d wanted was to save her from the life Kyler had planned for her, to give her a chance to pick her own path, to protect her. The fact that I’d failed so badly at the one thing that had truly mattered to me hurt.
A heavy hand grasped my knee and squeezed, and when I turned, I found Dane with an unusually serious expression on. “It’ll be okay. We’re here now, and we’ll make sure nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“She won’t like that,” I pointed out.
“So? I’d rather have her safe and mad at me than happy with me but dead. Sometimes you have to do things people don’t like for their own good,” Dane answered.
And despite the fact that those very words could have left my mouth as well, they didn’t sit right. They mirrored the things Kyler had said to me when he’d planned Kenz’s wedding, the things I’d heard so often about me.
So could I really force Kenz into a cage like everyone else in her life had done to her?
Hadn’t I risked everything to keep that very thing from happening?
Chapter Seventeen
Hayden
Not a single minute of good sleep last night.
As it turned out, no amount of coffee could overcome a complete lack of sleep. After Nem and Colton had left, when it became real that Kenz was truly gone, the house had seemed empty.
It had felt as though all the life had drained out of it.
I hadn’t spoken to the others yet. We’d walked by each other like ghosts, like phantoms no longer alive or part of the world. It was strange how it could go back to what it had been before so quickly. It hadn’t bothered me before, but after having Kenz around, I noticed it.
She’s probably eating breakfast now…
The thought hit me, and I worried for a moment if she had something to eat. Where was she? Was she lonely? Was she crying?Would those assholes with her make sure she ate?
