Chapter 27

twenty-seven

Nevaeh

Kane appears like an angel of vengeance in the kitchen, chest rising and falling hard as he takes me in where I sit at the kitchen table, one foot tucked under my bum, my other heel resting on the seat of the chair. His blue eyes are somehow both wild and sharp as he quickly looks me over, takes in the scene of the kitchen, including Mama standing in alarm with two freshly made mochas topped with whip, before looking back to me.

I’ve already been through one hot cocoa, and the evidence is in the calm that’s settled over me. I call it sugar therapy. I’ve now moved onto sugared caffeine therapy, the next phase of my plan to put myself back together again after I broke apart in the aftermath of seeing Antonio, reliving the attack, and accepting the fact that Mama knew what happened to me.

My therapy approach isn’t psych approved, but whatever. All that’s overrated, anyway.

“Hi,” I breathe, feeling suddenly breathless as his eyes take me in inch by inch, slower this time.

“Did he touch you?”

Never, not in all the moments I’ve spent with Kane, have I heard that pitch to his tone. It’s capable of things. Dark and dangerous things. Depraved things—for me.

Is that a quiver I feel between my legs at the thought of my husband being capable of bad things in my name? God, something is wrong with me. Very, very wrong with me.

Can I blame it on mafia romance books?

I reach for the open jar of gummy bears, popping a yellow one between my teeth and sucking it into my mouth.

I’m pretty sure I see his pupils dilate before they retract.

I swallow. Hard.

Then I shake my head. “No.”

His eyes close slowly and reopen as Tav shifts behind him, calling both our attention to his presence. Mama takes that moment to resume walking to the table as Dad flushes the toilet from upstairs where he’d excused himself nearly fifteen minutes prior. Dad can’t handle sugar like me and Mama. He calls it ‘rent a treat’ because he never gets to keep it long.

Gross.

“Who’s this?” Mama gestures with a cup to Tav.

“Tav,” Kane grunts with a chin nod. “Drummer.”

“Ah.” Mama smiles over Kane’s shoulder at Tav. “Come in. Sit. Can I get you a mocha?”

“Just coffee, if you have it. No sugar, black.” Tav takes a seat at the little table, spreading massive legs that brush the underside of the table, wide. Just like Kane, Tav is huge. He might be an inch, maybe even two, taller.

“Not a fan of the sweets?” Dad asks as he rejoins, taking his seat next to Mama.

“Nope.” Tav shakes his head. “Never did take a like to em.”

Kane lifts me from my seat, sitting his ass in my spot before depositing me in his lap. The only one not staring in stupefied shock is Tav. My parents look like they’ve just witnessed a risqué burlesque show starring Moi.

My face is on fire. I reach for another gummy bear, wiggling in Kane’s lap in a way that has the man grunting softly, leaning forward and hooking the lip of the jar to bring it closer.

My face burns hotter. I nab a red one this time—fitting considering I look like a lobster—and pop it onto my tongue.

Tav chuckles, shaking his head in amusement as my parents just stare straight at us in—well, shock.

“About that coffee,” Tav reminds Mama.

Mama jumps. “Of course.” But it’s as she’s fixing a black coffee no cream or milk as Tav ordered, that she says over her shoulder, “I think I’m starting to see why you married the man, Mija.”

“Mama.” I don’t reach for one gummy bear this time. This time, I just lift the whole damn jar.

Tav follows us home in my 4Runner. The entire time we’d been at my parents, Kane hadn’t allowed me to get up from his lap. His hands had held me in place, fingers pressing into the flesh of my hips as though in warning every time I even shifted in his lap. Even now, one big hand rested on my thigh, thick fingers spread as though trying to take up space there—on me.

He’s been weird and quiet, too. Kane is normally on the more charming side. Even during that first family meeting where we’d let the cat out of the bag that we’d been married in secret, and everyone had been livid, offended, hurt—he’d still managed to charm every woman in my family, regardless. My cousin had even muttered, that for a man like him, she’d have done the same before she’d had to hurry to break up some argument between the kids. Again.

Still, the Kane beside me is more like the Kane I first met. The silent, in-his-head Kane that first brought me home from the hospital. Then, I hadn’t known it was off character for him. Now, I know.

“Are you okay?” I break the silence, letting it shatter around us like fragile glass.

“No.”

Okay, I hadn’t been expecting him to admit that. Most men, when a woman asks, don’t admit when they’re not okay.

I’m so surprised, for a moment, I’m not sure how to respond.

I cover his hand with mine, curling my fingers around one of his in a way that has the corners of his lips twitching in a softly reluctant smile.

“Want to tell me why you’re not okay?”

“No.” He signals before speeding down another winding stretch of road. “But I will.”

“I’m listening.”

“He got to you when you were alone.”

“Kane,” I say, understanding a heavy weight in the pit of my belly. “You can’t always be with me.”

“But someone can.”

“No, they can’t.” I recall Antonio’s bruised and beaten face. Although I hadn’t seen his body, I’m sure that’s not exactly in good condition either, considering the hunched way he held himself and the slow way he moved. “I don’t think Antonio is going to be coming around anymore anyway.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He told me as much. Said he gets it, I’m married now.” Being cheeky, I flash him my sparkling diamonds. “I’m off the market. Officially.”

Kane only grunts.

I continue, “Besides, someone hurt him badly. Like, really bad. Maybe it was Uncle Miguel’s guys, because he called them gangsters.” I frown, recalling the conversation and the pleading way Antonio begged me to call off my dogs. “He also said the man wore a suit and Uncle Miguel doesn’t wear suits. But maybe one of his guys…”

I trail off because there’s a look on Kane’s face that I don’t recognize. Almost like—relief, maybe.

Hope? No, hope isn’t quite right, either.

I study him for a long minute. It’s a look of eased fear, I realize with a chill. The look a child gets when they believe with everything inside of them that there is a monster under their bed, but Dad is there and Dad can defeat that monster because not only can he do anything, defeat anything—but he’s truly the bigger, badder monster.

That’s the look I’m reading in those blue eyes. Kane looks at ease by the arrival of a bigger, badder monster. Judging by the look of Antonio, he might very well be right.

“He likes to put his hands inside people.”I shiver as I recall Antonio’s fear infused words.

Then I call, “Kane?”

His eyes shift to me as he turns down our long drive. “Sunshine?”

“Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you know there’s a bigger, badder monster in the game?”

I hold my breath as he parks, Tav parking my new car beside us. Then he shifts in the seat to pin me with that frosted blue gaze. “Because a bigger, badder monster did just enter the game, Sunshine. And this monster has never lost, not once, in his life.”