As I fade out, I glimpse a glow behind Clay. Then my eyes close.
Ares
Kayla is still asleep. I have checked her breathing twice in the last hour, but I haven’t done it out of concern. I set my coffee down on the desk and lean back in my chair, facing my bed where she is curled beneath my covers. She needs to see me the second she wakes up.
Clay didn’t know I was watching when he wrapped his hand around her throat, neither the first nor the second time.
It wasn’t the time for me to be involved in the sexual escapades.
One of Clay’s fundamental flaws is that he gets consumed by what he wants and becomes careless.
I waited until the exact moment to use this to my advantage, and just as her eyes shuttered, I moved in. A second sooner and she would have seen me.
I have thought about what happened a lot this morning; how I can use it when she wakes up and pieces together that it was me who stepped in. It will rewire how she feels about me. Without her knowing why, she will always feel something—a feeling that binds her to me.
Vero was too consumed with Brawley to see Clay assault Kayla, and it ate at him. I won’t be the one to tell him how it looked from where I was standing; it’s not my job to hand over information when it serves me no purpose.
I called Cipher, knowing he would have a way to remove the cuffs—he is always tinkering with something. Thankfully, she was out cold because he brought a grinder to get them off. Vero acted like a little bitch about it, but they are now both free from the cuffs.
Kayla is the first person in a long time who has truly looked at me. I feel she can see right through me, even without knowing the details of what she is actually looking at. She is observant, and I need to be more careful—hence why I stepped in to save her.
Most people hand me their trust easily. They want to be understood, and I am great at pretending to give them that, even though it’s just transactional to me. But Kayla asks the right questions and moves on. I know she’s a lot like me, tucking the information away for later. That either makes her interesting or really fucking dangerous—I haven’t decided which yet. I almost hope it’s both.
The door handle jiggles, and I shift my gaze to it as Vero pops his head inside.
“Is she okay?” he asks, and I nod.
“She will be fine. Why don’t you start making breakfast? I’m sure she’ll be awake soon and hungry.”
Vero smiles. While he can’t cook for shit and will probably burn the kitchen down, he likes to feel useful. He nods and disappears.
Kayla stirs. I see the exact moment she wakes and realizes that she doesn’t know where she is. She sits up ramrod straight, looking guardedly around the room, and when her eyes find mine, I smile.
“I’d started to think he might have actually killed you.”
Kayla smirks at me as she brings her hand to her throat and shifts herself to get out of bed. Once she is on her feet, she looks down and notices she is no longer in her filthy clothes.
“I hope it didn’t cross too many boundaries, but you were covered in dirt. I tried to clean you off the best I could, and Vero insisted you wear one of his shirts.”
“Thank you,” she croaks, holding her wrist up to examine where the cuff had been. The skin is rubbed raw, and looks red and swollen.
“I can get you some ice for that.”
She shakes her head. “No, I like the pain. It was you who saved me, wasn’t it?”
I nod once. “I’m just sorry it took me so long to get there, but I was held up with the fucking scarecrow. Cave is a weird human.”
“Don’t apologize—it’s what I signed up for.But if Clay thinks a little breath play scares me, he’s wrong.”
I laugh even though I don’t find her words amusing. We both know that was not breath play; it was attempted murder. And if I hadn’t intervened, I don’t know if he would have stopped. Clay tried to tell me she fucked with his sister. Honestly, I doubt it. Kayla doesn’t strike me as a woman who would bother chasing her ex, but I could be wrong.
“Come on,” I say, standing from my chair. “Vero is making breakfast, though I use that term loosely. Just follow the smoke.”
Kayla snorts and trails me out of the room, then down to the kitchen. Vero has managed to use every pan we own for what looks like scrambled eggs. He has the wrong element turned on, and there is flour everywhere, including the ceiling. And he managed this all in a very short amount of time.
Brawley is sitting at the kitchen island, watching Vero destroy the area with an amused grin on his face.
“You’re alive,” Vero says when he turns around. Kayla chuckles at him, and I swear his face has just as much flour on it as the rest of the kitchen.
