“This place should be demolished, and a golf course put in.”
I follow his finger as it traces over the letters of KARMA IS A BITCH NAMED ANDIE, wanting more than anything for that finger to be doing the same thing over my naked flesh.
“How’s our boy?” He tries to make asking about Rafe sound nonchalant, but he can’t hide his concern.
I lean forward and touch his hand. The difference between them is striking. His skin is lighter than Rafe’s, callused, and scarred like Jax’s. But unlike Jax, Keane’s fingers aren’t tattooed. In comparison, my skin tone is paler and my hands unblemished. But I see the blood of the two men I have killed covering them. I’m the only one who does. Nothing will be able to wash that away.
“It’s okay to be worried about him.” I lift my gaze to his. “It’s okay to still love him.” Fuck knows, I still do.
Keane flips his hand over to link our fingers together. “Rafe is too stubborn to die.”
“Kellan was stubborn, too,” I remind him. Stubbornness won’t stop bullets.
I miss my brother, but I also hate him right now, if that makes sense.
Keane leans forward, resting our joined hands on his thigh. “Jax told me what you said. I swear to you, Andie, we thought Kellan had gotten out.”
“We were under heavy fire. We circled around and were coming back when we were told Kellan had been extracted and was being taken to Hollis.”
“Who told you that?”
Jax’s full lips thin to a grim line. “Your father.”
Jax swaggers in and comes around the desk. He lifts me with ease and collapses into Max’s chair with me in his lap. “Thought we were meeting downstairs,” he says, moving his hands up my chest and cupping my breasts. It would be a waste of breath to tell him to stop, so I lean back and enjoy how his fingers swirl around my areolas.
“Jax,” Keane warns him as he watches my reaction to what Jax is doing.
“Fuck off. Finders, keepers.”
Jesus.
“Where’s Liam?” I ask Jax, trying not to moan like a hussy when he pinches both nipples.
He peeks over my shoulder at the desk and whistles through his teeth. “Want some gasoline and a match?”
“Actually—”
“Hell, no,” Keane quickly interjects. “I’m already half afraid she’s going to burn the entire house down. Don’t encourage her.”
I try to keep a straight face when I reply, “But then, you guys could come live with me at Declan’s.” I burst out laughing at the horrified expression on Keane’s face.
Sobering, I reluctantly remove Jax’s hands from under my shirt and stand up. “Seriously, where’s Liam?”
Jax combs his hands through his hair, locking his fingers at the nape of his neck, his elbows bent on either side of his blond head. “Left him with Dante downstairs.”
I bend down and kiss the tip of his nose, then readjust his glasses. “Go get him, please.”
When I walk out of the office, I turn left instead of heading for the stairs. Jax’s comment about gasoline and a match have me heading for my old bedroom. The door is closed but I can see everything perfectly. Every night Max came to my room. Every punch of his fist. Every lash of his belt. All the tears I cried that no one saw. All my screams, begging him to stop, that were never heard.
I turn around to face the door to Kellan’s room. It’s been fixed since I kicked it in and tore it off its hinges. Taking a chance, I turn the handle and the door opens easily.
“I remembered something when I was talking to Kellan,” I tell Keane, who’s been quietly standing several feet away. Liam is the only one I’ve actually told about talking to Kellan’s ghost, so Keane probably has no clue what the heck I’m referring to.
During the last conversation with my dead brother I had at Rafe’s bedside, as I pleaded with God, Fate, and whatever higher powers that may exist to save his life, a faded memory popped into my head. Kellan used to keep a journal. One night, after I’d snuck into his room and hidden inside his closet, I’d watched him hide a black leather journal under a loose floorboard next to his bed. I’d completely forgotten about it because later that night, Max found me asleep on the floor in my hiding place and locked me in the cage in the basement as punishment for not being in my room when he came for me. I cried out for Kellan to help me, but he was no longer there.
“Give me a sec,” I say to Keane and walk inside.
I’m met with the same eerie feeling as last time, like I’m being watched by shadows along the walls. Not wanting to stay in here any longer than I have to, I duck down on the other side of the bed, getting on my hands and knees.
