“I’m not worried,” Zephyr said when he caught the alarm on my face. “If Prince boy values his sanity, he’ll only look at what I show him.”
“Oh, Zephyr.” Rafe sighed, his eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. “One day, we’re going to talk about what exactly you mean by that.”
Chapter 14
Rafe
I stayedin the shadows once I arrived at the gravesite. Skye tensed as soon as my feet hit the ground, then relaxed upon realizing it was me. I remained a shadow for several minutes, content to hide under the shade of the trees while she continued her visit.
She sat in the grass, picking one blade at a time and ripping it in half before plucking another and repeating the process. Her hair was wild from the ocean water, falling down her back in messy waves. Her bare shoulder was exposed as the sexy mesh cover she wore over her bikini had shifted. Her creamy skin was now slightly tanned from her time in the sun, though her hair remained a deep, dark brown.
In front of her were two inconspicuous grave stones that could have blended in with the rest of the landscape. There were dozens of little rocks gathered around them, some jagged and shiny and some round and smooth.Did my little Key have a thing for rock collecting?
A breeze blew through, stirring the tree branches and sending some leaves across the ground. I didn’t have a plan before I came here. I’d wanted to get away from the stifling, awkward asshole that had become my best friend, and the menacing presence that was my new brother-in-law, but now that I was here I felt a little…off balance.
Maybe it was because I now knew what happened to her parents,but I was looking at my Key with a new light. Skye and Zephyr were strong, forged from the depths of rock bottom while only mere children, somehow managing to pull themselves up together.
Never in my life had I longed for a sibling until I’d seen the relationship between Skye and Zephyr, and that’s that I’d only seen them interact a few times.
Wyatt had been the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had, and even he’d let me down so gravely I wasn’t sure how I could move past it.
“If you come over here, you better behave.” Skye said softly, though I heard her perfectly clear.
I smirked, remembering how she’d toldthe shadowsomething similar before as I took a few slow steps forward. “How could I possibly misbehave here?”
Skye snorted, then dipped her head as if she was embarrassed by the sound, which was adorable.
I came to a stop behind her, though I left several feet between us so I wasn’t looming over her. “May I sit with you?” I asked.
She only nodded, and I plopped down in the grass beside her. I copied her movements, plucking a blade of grass and ripping it down the middle.
“It’s a nice view up here,” I said after a few minutes of silence and several mutilated blades of grass.
“Zephyr picked it out,” Skye said, her voice barely audible over the crashing waves at the base of the cliff. “I remember him asking my opinion, but I don’t remember what I told him.”
I hummed. “Trauma does that to a brain. At least that’s what Wyatt tells me.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Skye muttered. “If you came up here to convince me to take him back–”
I laughed, cutting her off. Skye flinched, almost imperceptibly at my sudden outburst. Taking a risk, I reached out for her hand, squeezing gently in apology.
It felt weird being hesitant around her. Things had changed after last night, but in the light of day, she seemed to have gone back to her uncertainty. I had to remind myself that I was comfortable with her because I’d been following her, but Skye had only really known me asthe shadow. It was probably going to take a while for her to rectify that we were one and the same.
“Wyatt has to earn all of us back, I’m afraid.” I sighed in frustration. “He pissed me the hell off.”
“I don’t know how y’all are friends,” Skye said, foregoing a single blade of grass and instead plucking a handful this time. “He’s so…”
I shrugged. “We get each other. Things just click for us. He has my back, I have his. I’m not excusing his behavior, love, but…” I blew out a breath. “Go a little easier on him. His life hasn’t been easy.”
“And mine has?” Skye shot back, thrusting out her hand to gesture toward the matching grave stones.
I rolled my neck, the skin over my right side tight from my scar. “None of us has,” I said quietly.
Skye’s silver eyes were on me, trying to find the hidden meaning behind my words. Her gaze roamed over me, settling on the tattoos across my forearm, then traveling upward toward my neck, where she paused, examining the skin beneath the design.
Her fingers flexed in the grass, and I desperately wished she weren’t so polite. I wanted those hands on me again.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked. Her cryptic comments from the night before had puzzled me. I wanted to know more about what she’d experienced during and after the massacre.
