“Kane!” she said, surprise and pleasure filling her voice. “Dropping off more care packages?”
He loved how she seemed so happy to see him. So few people were. Most found themselves fleeing, uncomfortable in his presence, which for the most part, was just fine with him. But not her. He didn’t want her running away, and he regretted the fact that she hadn’t attempted to wrap her arms around him in greeting once since that first reunion in the school hallway. Each time he saw her he mentally prepared himself for it, just in case, determined not to make the same mistake twice, but so far, no such luck.
“Guilty,” he said, feeling positively chatty for some reason. “Maggie’s outdone herself this time. What are you listening to?”
“Um...” Rebecca pulled the mp3 from her pocket and checked the display. “Disturbed.”
Kane raised an eyebrow at the mention of the heavy metal band. It was not what he was expecting. Something classical, or mellow, definitely. But this? Kane held out his hand and Rebecca obediently placed the small device into his large palm. He thumbed through the assortment of dark, explicit bands. “Did Taryn give you this? Or Nicki?”
“No, JC did.”
Kane couldn’t completely hide the frown on his face. JC was the cocky Goth kid who seemed to have a particular affinity for Rebecca - the tall one who had had the balls to meet Kane’s eyes only minutes earlier. Barely of legal age, with his pale skin and dark eyes, he could have been a poster child for teenage vamp movies; his inked arm sleeves and multitude of piercings only added to one hell of a Goth image.
For whatever reason, Rebecca seemed fascinated by him and his ilk. JC soaked up the interest like a sponge. It didn’t help that she often spent a good portion of her time with the younger crowd. She was one of the few adults they seemed to take to, and after learning that she had no concept of an iPad or a Wii, they’d taken it upon themselves to “educate her and bring her into the current century.” Nicki thought it was a great thing, that Rebecca was a positive influence on the kids. Kane was less inclined to applaud anything that put Rebecca in their midst so often.
Kane didn’t like JC, not in the least. His instincts flared whenever he was around the kid, and Kane always trusted his instincts. The kid was up to no good, but Rebecca was too kind-hearted to see it. Kane wanted to beat the self-satisfied, gloating look out of the boy’s eyes every time he caught him looking at Rebecca with more than casual interest. She might have been more than ten years his senior, but she sure as hell didn’t look it. And despite the accumulation of life experiences, there was still a purity about her, an innocence that clung to her. It no doubt called out to the predator in the little weasel.
“And you felt the need?” He tried to keep the dislike for the kid out of his voice. She got enough warnings and lectures from Aidan, and they didn’t seem to do anything other than strengthen her resolve to prove him wrong. No matter how much he might have agreed with Aidan on Rebecca’s naiveté when it came to the teens, he wasn’t about to do anything that would end up pushing her towards them even more.
No, Kane had his own methods, and they included staying close by and keeping his thoughts to himself for as long as possible.
She considered him thoughtfully, as if sensing his underlying worry. “I did, actually. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about a person by the music they listen to. And with these kids... there’s so much anger, so much violence in their eyes sometimes. I’m trying to wrap my mind around that, understand it. I mean, they have so much. What could possibly be making them so miserable?”
Kane sat down on the ground, rather than walking away like he normally would have. Maybe Rebecca was more perceptive than she led any of them to believe. Still, she had repeatedly shown that just because she was aware of danger didn’t mean she would avoid it. Seemed to attract it, in fact. Which only served to strengthen Kane’s resolve to look out for her.
“Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
For the first time, Kane glimpsed the raw pain in her eyes, the grief and sadness she hid from everyone else. It touched him, that small tendril of trust that slipped into his chest and gave his heart a little squeeze. But her next words wrapped around it completely.
“Most people don’t understand,” she said quietly. “But you do, don’t you?”