And one day, mine will be too.
TWENTY-SIX
KYRA
Vanessa’s ceilinghas been painted a lot. At first, I thought the bumps were where stipple was left behind during a previous renovation, but then I realized it’s the layers of roughly applied paint, the bumps where the thicker lines hadn’t been spread with the brush.
“You’ve been quiet for a while,” she says from the armchair near my feet. “Do you want to watch something else?”
“No. It’s fine.” Background noise for my rambling thoughts while I lie here on her sofa, hands folded atop my stomach.
I saw a dead body today. I should be shocked by that—scared, and vulnerable. But instead, I grieve the loss of the dream so quickly.
I truly believed my new house would be a haven full of all the little things that bring me joy. And now, the bubble has burst, and all I can see is the darkness that surrounds us all.
“Do you find it strange?” I ask. “Making yourself a peaceful home here when they’re literally right across the road?”
She pauses the movie on the TV and sighs. “Would think me strange if I said that having them there brings me peace?”
“I guess not.” From what I learned in our brief conversations, Vanessa has a pretty traumatic past. Not that she elaborated much on that. But I can see why having people she sees as protectors brings her comfort. “In the eighteen years I lived here as a kid, I never once was put in a position of danger because of who my father is.”
“That you know of,” she says softly.
I lift my head to look at her.
She tilts her head a little, gaze soft, caring. “Maybe he shielded you from the truth? Or maybe you’re right. But how could you know unless you ask him?”
I let my head fall back with a heavy sigh. “He’d never tell me.” He’d say I’m too delicate to know the truth. That it’s none of my business. “Is it normal to feel so numb?”
“Totally.” She rises from her seat, the dark forest green dress with tiny red and orange flowers visible in my periphery as she moves toward the kitchen. “It’s your nervous system protecting you from the shock.”
“But I don’t think it shocked me,” I call after her, frowning. “Thinking about that asshole’s dead body doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”
Her gentle clinking noises stop for a moment. “You could take that as a good thing, I guess.”
“Maybe.” I exhale heavily and then push myself up to a seated position, twisted so I can see her over the back of the sofa. “You’ve never got caught up in anything?”
She shakes her head. “Chaos wouldn’t allow it. The worst I’ve had to deal with is my stepfather and his bullshit, but that’s my issue. Nothing related to the club.”
“Does he think you couldn’t protect yourself? If you were involved in anything?” Is he one of those men? The same wolf as my father, but in different clothes.
“He thinks I shouldn’t have to, not that I can’t.”
My opinion of the man increases a little. The Kings of Anarchy are such a different beast from the rest of us, and when I would see them around town as a kid, they were almost mythical. This animal, which mostly came out at night, that no one could touch.
To think of Matthew as one of them… That same lanky teenager from the halls… “The last time I saw Jinx, he was standing outside the liquor shop while he waited for his dad,” I say. “The club had given him his prospect patch a couple of months earlier, and he’d missed the final weeks of school because the Kings—at least the way they were back then—didn’t see the point in him continuing with his education if he was going to be one of them.”
Vanessa pauses making our coffees to listen.
“He didn’t see me. I was in my father’s car.” I meet her eye briefly before looking back at my hands, taking myself back to that moment. “It was a week before I left for college, and we were on the way to visit my grandma.” A sad smile tugs at my mouth. “He looked so happy and carefree, and I felt so lost and lonely. But when I came back and saw him now, it’s like we switched places.” I peek at Vanessa and find her apparently saddened at the thought, also. “Am I right? Is he lost and lonely?”
She sighs, focused on the mugs before her as she stirs them one at a time and adds creamer. “I think you’d have to ask him that, Kyra.” She lifts the drinks and brings them over.
I turn in my seat to follow her movement. “I’m not wrong, though? He gives that impression, doesn’t he?”
“He does.” She hands mine over.
I accept it and bundle it against my lap, using the blanket to cover my legs and protect my fingers from the heat.
