Chapter Seventy-Five

Safiya

A half hour and several stories later about how Grayson and his teenage mother had grown up together, we were eating fresh muffins and my mind was scattering.

Almost everything about Grayson's upbringing was parallel to mine. Single mother, hardscrabble existence, stretching resources, Grayson working any job he could find—and yet, nothing was the same.

Where Raine had focused all her attention on her son, my anne had kept hers on the past and a husband she had lost.

While my anne and I had lived in fear of the next wave of bad men coming through the village, Grayson and his mother had snuck into afternoon showings at a movie theater.

While Grayson had done everything to support his ailing mother who was more child than adult, I had hid with my sheep and dreamed of an ocean.

I admired Grayson even more now.

He had let his mother be who she was even though it had cost him his childhood. Maybe it was the reason he was so dominant—because he knew no other way. Or maybe he had simply come into his true self as he grew in the environment he had.

I did not know.

I could not even untangle all of my own emotions, but I did know one thing for certain.

I may have lost the life I had, and I lost my anne , but I had been blessed that day I ran into the American SEAL.

"What about you, Safiya?" Raine asked, interrupting my thoughts. "Did you really raise sheep in Turkey?"

I blinked, then glanced up from my plate.

Grayson's gaze was locked on mine, and once again he answered for me. "Herded, Mom, and yes, she's from Turkey."

"How did you two meet?" she asked innocently.

I looked to Grayson.

Before he could answer, the front door opened, and a young woman with golden-blonde hair and strikingly beautiful golden eyes walked in. "Raine?" Juggling her purse and some paper bags as she stuffed her keys in her short's pocket, she did not look up. "Are you awake?"

Her focus on the bags she was carrying, holding them as if they contained something fragile, it was a moment before she glanced at the couch, then looked up and saw us in the kitchen.

Grayson was already on his feet. Stock-still, his muscles tense but his expression a lesson in steady calm, he kept his voice even. "Feralyn."

Feralyn .

His sister.

The young, beautiful woman immediately curled in her shoulders and stepped back as she averted her gaze from him. "I'm sorry. I, ah…." She glanced nervously between me and his mother. "I didn't know you had company, Raine."

Grayson's mother pushed herself to standing. "It's fine, sweetheart. We're all family. Please, come in. This is Grayson's friend, Safiya. She helped me make muffins with the fresh blueberries you brought. They're delicious, and we have plenty. Please, come join us." She held out her hand the same way she had for me.

Feralyn glanced again at Grayson and took another step back. "I… didn't mean to intrude. I…." She looked around like she was not only at a loss for words, but like she was lost from the very world right under her feet. "I should be going. M-my brother is waiting for me."

Grayson's mother pushed past him with a physical agility I did not know she possessed. Holding out both of her arms this time, she moved toward the frightened woman despite Feralyn looking like she would disintegrate into dust if anyone came near her.

In the next moment, Raine had her thin arms around a thin Feralyn, and once they came together, they looked exactly as they should—imperfectly perfect.

They also looked more like family than anything I had seen in eight long years.

Still rooted in place in the kitchen, staring at his mother and his half sister, Grayson did not move.

I dared to brush the tips of my fingers across his hand.

He immediately looked down at me.

"Go to them," I whispered.

"Don't." His eyes had not narrowed, his expression did not change, but the tone of his voice had gone so quiet, it sent a ripple of both embarrassment for overstepping and fear up my spine.

His mother released his sister from her hug but grasped her shoulders. "Really, please stay. Just one muffin. I'll even make Grayson sit out back on the porch if you like."

I could not see Raine's face, and I did not know her at all, but I knew enough to tell she was joking, but it did not matter.

Feralyn's face paled, and she stiffened as an almost forceful negative came out. "No." She shrugged out of Raine's grip and grabbed the bags she had walked in with. Clearly trying to avoid her half brother's scrutiny, she kept her gaze steadily on Raine as she thrust the two paper sacks at her. "I just came to bring you these. I, ah, thought you could use them. Helios is waiting for me. Excuse me."

Turning so fast, the older woman could not catch her as she reached for her, Feralyn opened the door. Then she glided out as if on a breeze and was gone like she had never come.

Holding the brown bags, Raine turned and looked accusingly at Grayson. "Do you always have to do that?"

"I didn't say anything, Mom."

Shaking her head, his mother sighed, and her whole body sagged as if the air had been let out of her. "You know how she is, and you know exactly what I'm talking about." She dropped the bags on the coffee table and sank into the couch before glancing at me with an apologetic look.

Refocusing on her son, Raine down dressed him again, but her feathery voice had changed to more of a supplicant tone than that of a mother. "One day I hope you make peace with yourself so that you can mend this dark energy between you and your sister. The two of you need to find some kind of harmony. Once I'm gone, she's all the family you'll have left, Grayson."

"Raine," he stated flatly, but then he did not say anything else. He moved to the table and began clearing.

Either not caring that he had addressed her by her first name or used to him doing so, she did not comment on it. Instead, she did what I never had. She called him to task about his one-word response.

"Raine, what? I know you don't speak to your father, and unless he had more children that he didn't tell us about, you know I'm not lying." She glanced at me. "No offense meant, Safiya. I was referring to family in a shared DNA kind of way. Since neither me nor Grayson's father have any other living relatives, Feralyn is it for Grayson." She looked back at her son before I could tell her I had taken no offense, and her voice dipped with sadness. "And don't think I don't know what you're doing, Grayson." His mother winced as she settled in and lifted her legs onto the couch before looking back at me. "In case you hadn't noticed, my son thinks he can control everything." She said everything as if it were a distasteful word.

"You can cut the shit-talking, Mom. Safiya knows who I am." Grayson tossed plates in the sink in a very un-Grayson way.

I stepped toward him. "I can wash those."

An irrefutably impassive blue-gray gaze met mine, and a SEAL's expression hardened as his voice pitched so low, it was lethal. "You scrub or clear one dish and I will put my hands on you later."

"See?" his mother called from the living room.

Raising his voice only slightly, he called to his mother while keeping his gaze locked on me. "You didn't hear what I said. Quit while you're ahead."

"You quit," she answered back like a child.

"Go have a seat, Safiya."

Turning on the water after issuing his order, Grayson gave me his back, effectively putting a stop to all conversation but giving life to the mutinous nerves now singing in my veins and fluttering low in my belly.

Going against my nature, I left the dishes on the table and walked into the living room.

His mother had already closed her eyes.

Prone, the blanket pulled over her legs, both the show of strength for Feralyn and the fight in her against her son's mannerisms gone, Raine looked much younger than when she was upright, and I felt a deep sadness.

For her, for Grayson, for the loss of my own mother.

"You can sit, dear. I promise I'm done yelling."

"Was that yelling?" She had hardly raised her voice.

Opening her eyes, she looked up at me with the wonder of a child. "You have a very beautiful aura about you. Green, indigo, purple, but no blue. You're kind and giving. A healer. You love nature. Service, too, I think." Her eyebrows drew together. "No, I don't think, I know." Her expression eased. "I can see why my son is in love with you."

My breath caught, and my heart stopped. "He is not—that is not—he does not—"

"I know. He doesn't express feelings. He lives in absolutes and acts he can control." Her face, as expressive as her son's was not, fell. "That's my fault. I was young, and he grew up much too soon. I know he had to learn to hold everything together. Take care of things he shouldn't have. I regret that, except I don't know how I could've changed it. Grayson is more like his father than his father is like himself." For a brief moment, her gaze drifted and her features softened with both longing and sorrow before she focused back on me.

"I may not know much, and I most definitely never knew parenting, but I know love, sweet Safiya. I was good at it." She sighed wistfully as she looked toward the kitchen. "I love my son more than all the stars in our universe. And I know what he is capable of." Raine looked back at me and frowned as if something had suddenly occurred to her. "Do you? Know what he's capable of?"

Clasping my hands and taking a moment to sit on a worn upholstered chair across from the couch as my entire being was fighting the shocking words she had said, I nodded—hopefully as vaguely as possible. "I do." But I was sure my definition of capable was very, very different from the image of her son washing worn and battered dishes in her kitchen.

Staring at me for a long moment in almost the exact same manner as how her son stared at me, she finally nodded. "Good." Then she closed her eyes and leaned her head back. "That's good, sweet Safiya."