Oath Bound (Unbound)

Twelve



Kris

“How is he?” I leaned against the door frame in the threshold of Kori and Ian’s room. Ian was asleep on the bed, shirtless, the thick bandage on his shoulder pale against his dark skin.

“He’ll live.” Kori closed her laptop without turning it off, then leaned back in the desk chair. “Gran got him all patched up and gave him something for the pain.”

“I hope you double-checked the dosage.” Gran only remembered what decade she was living in about half the time, and as much help as she was as a triage nurse—with forty years’ real-world experience—on her bad days, she was as likely to overdose you as underdose you.

“I did.” Kori waved one hand at the closed laptop. “Thank goodness for the internet, slow though the connection is. I wanted to call Meghan.” Ian’s sister-in-law was a Healer. “But he wouldn’t let me. He says he can’t drag Steve and Meg into any more danger, at least until his brother’s fully healed.”

“I can respect that.” And Kori could, too. I could tell from how she was just frustrated, rather than actually angry. Ian’s brother had hovered on the edge of death for weeks, resisting a binding that had been sealed using Kenley’s blood without her knowledge. A few months earlier, Ian had been willing to kill Kenni to break the binding and save his brother. But then he met Kori, and now he was practically family. The brother I’d never had. He’d fought for my sisters when I couldn’t be there.

I owed him more than I could ever possibly repay.

“Has Van had any luck ID-ing Sera’s family?”

Kori shook her head. “I don’t think she’s actually looking anymore. Since the two of you came back with that scrap of intel, she’s been exhausting every resource trying to figure out what warehouse Julia moved the blood farm into.”

“At least that’s keeping her mind occupied.” Which was more than I’d managed for myself. “Try to get some sleep, Kor. We’ll find Kenni tomorrow.” Or die trying.

On my way down the hall, I stopped in front of the door to my former room out of habit and had one hand on the doorknob before I remembered it wasn’t my room anymore. I stood there for a minute, thinking about Sera, and how much we still didn’t know about her. About how badly I wanted to trust her. How badly I wanted her to trust me. But in the two days since we’d met, I’d nearly gotten her killed several times—it was a miracle she didn’t run when she saw me coming.

But then, I had yet to see her run from anything.

She could have taken the coward’s way out tonight. She could have told me to shoot Ned the guard, which would have kept her off of Julia’s radar. Or, as close to off the radar as possible, for someone who’d survived being shot at by Tower’s goons three times in less than two days.

Instead, she’d let Ned live and exposed herself as our ally, damning her to be hunted alongside us.

Why would she do that? We would have helped her hunt the bastard who’d killed her family either way.

When I finally lay down on the couch with the pillow I’d stolen from my own bed while she was in the shower, I couldn’t get Sera out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, she was there, but the mental picture was never what I expected. Instead of a self-indulgent memory of her standing naked at the foot of my bed, I kept seeing her as she’d looked the day we met, in Tower’s foyer, when her reckless bravery had nearly gotten us both killed.

After an hour and a half of staring at the muted television—any noise from the TV was guaranteed to wake Gran, even though she would have slept through World War III itself—I gave up and headed into the kitchen to nuke a cup of hot chocolate.

Armed with my steaming mug, I sat at the table with Elle’s notebook and started flipping through the pages again, looking for new meaning in old words. Hoping that Ned’s sliver of information would fit in with something I’d long ago forgotten I’d ever written.

“That stuff is crap in a mug,” Sera said, and I thought I’d imagined her voice—wishful thinking—until I looked up to find her standing in the kitchen doorway, in Kori’s robe.

“We have to get you some new clothes.” I flipped the notebook shut. “Preferably something neither of my sisters ever wore.”

“Why?” She glanced down at the robe, which hung open to reveal a snug tank top and shorts so short I didn’t want to know which sister they belonged to. “Kori wants her clothes back?”

“Not that she’s mentioned. But that’s just creepy.” I waved a hand at her...whole body. “From my perspective.”

“Your sister’s clothes are creepy?”

I frowned. She was going to make me actually tell her how hot she was. “On you? Yes,” I said, and her hurt expression clued me in to the fact that I’d just failed the Communicating With Women pop quiz. “That’s not what I meant. You look...so good, in a way I don’t want to associate with my sisters’ clothes.”

But that didn’t do her justice. Sera looked practically edible, in that you’ll-never-taste-anything-this-sweet-ever-again kind of way. In fact, all I’d had was a taste, and the thought of never tasting her again made me want to bite my own tongue off, to put it out of its misery. “Does that make sense?”

She gave me a mischievous smile. “I’m not sure. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“I’m only human, and you’re...flaunting.”

Her brows rose and she tied the robe closed. “Better?”

I had to swallow a groan. That wasn’t better at all.

Instead of answering, which I wasn’t sure I could do without begging for another peek, I kicked out the chair next to mine in wordless invitation.

Sera sat and picked up the empty hot-chocolate packet. Then she peeked into my mug and grimaced. “Seriously. How can you drink that crap? Hot chocolate is made with milk, and sugar, and cocoa. And a pot. On the stove.”

I shrugged. “The microwave’s easier.”

She laughed. “Do you always make such little effort?”

I shook my head slowly, studying her, trying to decide whether I’d imagined smut behind likely innocent words. “No. The rest of my life is complicated. Food seems like the safest place to take a shortcut. We are still talking about food, aren’t we?”

“Were we ever?” She stood before I could interpret either her tone or her expression and dropped the empty paper packet into the trash, then snatched my mug from my hands.

“Hey!” I protested as she dumped thin, chocolate-flavored water into the sink.

“I’ll make cocoa. You tell me how you’re going to kill the bastard who murdered my family.”

“With a gun, almost certainly.” I watched as she pulled a half-full jug of milk from the fridge, then started opening cabinets. “That’s kind of my specialty.”

“Are you armed right now?”

I took the .45 from my lap and set it on the table.

She frowned and pushed the last cabinet door closed. “I think you have a serious problem. Do you sleep with that thing?”

“Only when I sleep alone,” I said, and either I was imagining things, or she blushed. A lot.

“Sugar?” Her brows rose in question, surely an attempt to cover her own...interest? Curiosity? Either way, I had sudden hope that she might not permanently hate me.

“Pantry. If we have cocoa powder, it’ll be in there, too.”

“I want to watch,” Sera called over her shoulder as she dug in the small pantry, and for a second, I thought we were still talking about sleeping, and guns, and innuendo neither of us was likely to admit to. But that couldn’t be right.

“Watch what?”

All noise from the pantry ceased, and her shoulders tensed. “I want to watch him die. I want to be there when the life fades from his eyes and he bleeds out on the floor.”

“That might not be...” Healthy. It might not give her the closure she obviously needed. “Safe.”

“Screw safe.” She turned with an unopened bag of sugar tucked under her left arm and a yellow plastic canister of cocoa powder in her right hand. “My parents and my sister were ‘safe’ in their own home, behind locked doors, and look where that got them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Safety is an illusion, even in the best of times. The only true defense is vigilance, but that wasn’t something a daughter/sister in mourning needed to hear. Yet I wasn’t going to insult her with polite platitudes, either. Those hadn’t helped me when my parents died.

“How are you going to find him?” She set the ingredients next to the stove, then pulled a pot from beneath the counter.

“Do the police have a description?”

Sera ripped open the bag of sugar, and thousands of tiny grains spilled onto the counter. “I can get you one.”

“How? Was there a witness? Did the police take a statement? Because Van can get into their records, no problem, and you won’t have to—”

“There was a witness, but her statement won’t help.” Sera lowered her head, and I knew her eyes were closed, though I couldn’t see them with her back to me. “She told the police she couldn’t remember anything. But that was a lie.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.” She pulled the blue plastic cap off the milk carton and set it in a scattering of sugar on the counter. “The witness lied because she was scared.” Sera poured milk into the pot, but her hand shook, and some sloshed over the side. And that’s when I made the connection.

“Oh, damn, Sera, I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot.” I stood, but she wouldn’t look at me. She just scooped sugar into a measuring cup she’d found in a drawer I’d never even noticed before. “You were there, weren’t you? You saw what happened to them....” I reached for her because I’d never seen anyone in more desperate need of a hug, but she pulled away from me as if my hands were on fire, and that vicious ache was back in my chest, like it had been every time I’d failed to help someone I cared about.

“Do you like mint?” She dumped sugar into the pot, and it took me a second to make the mental jump. We were talking about cocoa again. “I saw some mint extract in the pantry...”

“Sera. Put down the whisk and talk to me. Please.”

I didn’t think she’d do it. But then Sera set the whisk in the pan and turned to stare up at me. She looked as if the world had just crumbled beneath her feet and a step in either direction would send her tumbling into that void along with everything else she’d ever cared about. With the life she’d lost when her family was murdered.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” But what I really meant was, Why didn’t you tell me?

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Her voice was sharp, but her eyes were sad. “Why didn’t I tell the guy who kidnapped me at gunpoint that I saw my parents and sister murdered in our own home?”

I closed my eyes and made a silent wish that would never come true, and when I opened them again, she’d turned back to the counter, measuring cocoa powder this time with stiff, precise movements. I wanted to touch her so badly my hands actually ached for the feel of her skin, and for just a moment, that ache was enough to overwhelm logic and common sense, both of which were telling me that I couldn’t get involved with Sera.

Not while she was still grieving.

Sera was wounded and fragile, beneath a tough, knife-wielding exterior, and while she certainly needed and deserved comfort, she wasn’t in the proper state of mind to make decisions about her personal life. At least, not the kind of decisions intended to last beyond the closure she hoped to find with vigilante justice.

I didn’t want her to associate me with such a sad, dangerous part of her life, because when she put that all behind her, she’d want to put me behind her, too. I would remind her of the painful past.

“My biggest regret in the world right now—other than failing Kenley—is how we met.” Too late, I realized that sounded like a confession.

It was a confession. I was practically admitting that I wanted things from her that I couldn’t have. That she couldn’t afford to give me, with so much grief in her heart.

Sera dumped cocoa into the sugar and milk mixture and began to stir with the whisk. “You saved my life, remember?”

“No, I nearly got you killed.” I forced a smile I couldn’t truly feel as I fed her own words back to her. “Remember?”

“That wasn’t your...” She bit off the end of her sentence and I got the feeling it had veered from her original intent. When she turned to me again, there was something new behind her eyes. Something sad, and strong, and...resigned. “You didn’t fail Kenley. It sounds like she rushed into an unknown situation, and we all know you’d do anything to get her back. And you will get her back. We will. Then we’ll track down the bastard who took everything from me and gut him like the animal he is.”

“You want him gutted?” I shrugged and half sat on the edge of the table. “I’m better with guns than with knives, but that bastard killed three people in cold blood, right in front of you. I’ll kill him however you want. And yes, you can watch, if you think that’ll help. But I have to tell you, in my experience, that only makes it worse. Violence may balance the scales, but it can’t heal wounds. Only time can do that.”

“No. Time lets untreated wounds fester.” Sera turned back to the stove and tried to ignite the burner, but the knobs were gone again. “And there were four.”

“Four what?” I pulled the cookie jar from the top of the fridge and took the lid off, then held it out to her.

“Four people.” She selected a knob, then slid it into place on the stove. “He killed four people. There was a baby. Well, there would have been a baby. In a few...” Her hand clenched around the stove knob and her words cracked and fell apart. “My sister...”

“She was pregnant?” Something cold, and dark, and nearly uncontrollable unfurled in the pit of my stomach, and my hands clenched into fists at my sides. What kind of sick bastard kills a pregnant woman?

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Sera lit the burner and adjusted the flame, then stirred the milk in silence while I retreated to my seat at the table, trying to process what I’d just learned. To truly understand the scope of her loss.

I couldn’t do it. Even when I’d lost my parents, I’d still had my sisters and Gran.

Sera had been there. She’d seen them die. How the hell had she survived? Had she hidden? That would have been the smart thing to do—surely the only way to preserve her own life. But when had I ever seen her do the cautious thing? When had I seen her try to save herself?

She’d stepped in front of my gun and demanded I hand it over, before she’d had any reason to know I wouldn’t shoot her. She’d risked being shot to claim her mother’s photo album. She’d attack the man who shot Ian. She’d sprayed bleach in Ned’s face to keep him from shooting me, then dented his skull with a f*cking toaster.

In the two days I’d known her, I’d seen her step into the path of danger more times than I could count on one hand, but I’d never once seen her hide.

So how the hell had she survived the attack that killed her entire family?

I didn’t realize the cocoa was done until she set a mug on the table in front of me, then slid into her chair with a mug of her own. There was a yellow, sugar-coated duck floating in my hot chocolate. I picked the mug up and eyed it, then laughed out loud when I recognized the Marshmallow Peep.

Sera shrugged, and I swear I saw just a hint of a smile. “You’re out of marshmallows. That’s the best I could do.”

Gran had never once given me marshmallows in my cocoa. Much less fluffy little sugar-coated ducks.

Sera’s Marshmallow Peep was green, and it left a sparkly spot of sugar on the end of her nose when she sipped from her mug. I wanted to kiss the sugar off her nose, but I was pretty sure that would make her want to stab me again.

“What is that?” She stared at my notebook, open on the table in front of me. “Poetry?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do you write poetry?”

“Your skepticism stings.” But her interest felt like a ray of sunshine on an overcast day and the moment I saw it, I craved more. “Why is it so unbelievable that I might write poetry?”

“It doesn’t really fit with your...image.”

“My image?” I closed the notebook and folded my hands over it, watching her expectantly. “I gotta hear this. What is my image?”

“Well, admittedly, my perspective is colored by my initial impression of you as a homicidal kidnapper who screwed all the doors and windows shut to keep his grandmother prisoner in her own house...”

“That’s not what I did. This isn’t her house, and she’s not prisoner.” But Sera wasn’t listening.

“...but you’ve kind of got this badass-next-door routine going on, with the blue eyes and the clean-cut thing you have going on here—” she waved one hand vaguely at my face and hair, and suddenly I regretted shaving that morning “—and the guns, and the whole ‘you want me to kill him or let him live?’ thing.”

I scowled and picked up my mug. “That’s not me. I’m not clean-cut, and I don’t sound like that.”

“Yes, you are, and you do. Stop pouting.” She tried to hide a grin by sipping from her cocoa. “And if you ‘forget’ you don’t belong in the center bedroom one more time, I’m going to have you declared legally brain dead.”

“I’m brain dead?” I set my mug down and scowled at her, and she nodded, chuckling now.

“Though that appears to be a selective defect. I haven’t seen you forget a single meal, yet you can’t seem to remember where you sleep at night.”

“This, coming from the woman who tried to give a gun to Ned-the-guard, so he could relieve us of the burden of drawing regular breaths in a body free from extraneous holes.”

“That’s not what I...” She frowned and abandoned the rest of her sentence. “Let me see this poetry.” Sera reached for the notebook, but I pulled it out of her grasp.

“It’s not poetry,” I admitted reluctantly. I didn’t want her to be right about the brain-dead badass thing. “I’m not sure I’d even recognize poetry if I saw it, outside of Dr. Seuss.”

She was still smiling, and I considered that a bit of a victory. “So, what is it? A journal?”

“Kind of.”

“You’re not writing in it.” She made a show of studying the tabletop. “I don’t see a pen. So you were just sitting here reading your own journal?” When I didn’t answer immediately, her brows furrowed. “That’s not yours, is it? You’re reading someone else’s journal. Is it Kori’s? What are you, nine?” She reached for the notebook and I tried to pull it away again, but that time I was too slow. Or maybe I didn’t believe she’d really take it.

I was wrong, and she was fast.

“Wait, Sera...” I held one hand out to her, then realized I had no idea what to do with it. “I feel like we’ve made serious strides in the you-not-wanting-to-castrate-me-with-a-kitchen-knife department, and I’d hate to ruin all that by having to actually take that away from you. But I will if I have to. It’s not Kori’s journal. It’s mine. It’s just...not about me.”

“Why would you keep a journal about someone else? Are you some kind of creepy stalker?” she said, and I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a joke. She didn’t seem very sure, either. “Is that about the last woman you kidnapped and locked up?”

“Give it back. Please.”

When I didn’t smile and showed no sign of relenting, she hesitated for one more second, studying my eyes, probably for some hint of violent tendencies. Other than the ones she’d already seen from me. Then she set the notebook on the table and slid it toward me.

But things were different now. Half an hour earlier, she’d trusted me enough to tell me that she’d seen her family murdered, and now that trust was gone. Suspicion swam in her eyes like tears that would never fall. Distrust was obvious in the straight line her lips had been pressed into and in the firm set of her jaw.

I could tell her the truth, or I could lose her confidence. Which might mean losing her as a Jammer. But as reluctant as I was to admit it, the possibility of losing her Skill wasn’t what bothered me.

What bothered me was the thought of losing her trust. Of never again seeing her laugh with me, because she couldn’t lower her guard long enough to see the humor in what I’d meant to say, when it came out all wrong. I wanted to see her smile again. I wanted to make her smile, and as soon as I’d had that thought, I had to shut it down, because somehow I’d slipped right back into the delusion that she might become interested in more than just my trigger finger.

But she wouldn’t. Even if she thought she could, she was wrong. I knew that because I’d been in her position, unable to truly move forward with life—or give any new relationship a chance—while I was still mourning Noelle.

Sera wasn’t here because she was beautiful, or smart, or brave. She wasn’t here because I wanted her here. Or because I wanted to help her. Or because seeing her in the morning made me smile, in spite of the fear and anger practically stagnating in our locked-tight house. Sera was with us because she could somehow help us—because Noelle had known that—and that was all.

The sooner I got that through my baddass-next-door brain, the better off we’d both be.

But I still couldn’t stand the thought of her hating me.

“Okay. Sera, wait,” I said, and she sat again, reluctantly, and sipped from her mug. “I’ll tell you about the journal. But you’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy.” It sounded like she was joking, but her smile was still absent, so I couldn’t tell for sure.

“I used to kind of...be with this girl. She was a Seer. And she talked in her sleep.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “My ex snored. What does that have to do with your journal?”

I pushed my gun and half-empty mug aside to make room for the notebook on the table between us. “She was a Seer, Sera. She could see the future. Bits of it, anyway. And sometimes the things she said in her sleep were...prophesy. Or whatever you call it.”

Her brows rose. “How do you know?”

“Because some of them came true. So I started...um...writing them down.” I pushed the notebook toward her and when she glanced at me in question, I nodded, giving her permission to peek.

Sera opened the front cover and stared at the name written at the top of the page. Noelle Maddox. “Is that the Noelle? Hadley’s real mother?”

I nodded.

“Does that mean that you’re... That Hadley is...”

“Mine?” I said, and she nodded. “No. There has been some question about her paternity, but I’m not among the possibilities. We weren’t together when she got pregnant.”

“So, Elle was with you and with Olivia’s boss? Cavazos?”

“Yeah, but again, not at the same time. It’s kind of...confusing.”

“No kidding.” Sera’s finger slid from Noelle’s name to the date written on the first line. “That was twelve years ago.”

“Yeah. Shortly after the first time we...got together.”

“So, you slept with a Seer? And took notes?” She flipped through the notebook, and her eyes widened. “A lot of notes. Which would imply a lot of...sleeping.”

“Yeah.” Sometimes Elle and I had had sleepovers even when she and Kori weren’t on speaking terms.

I drank from my mug again, trying to decide how I felt about Sera reading from Noelle’s journal. Not that she was actually reading it, unless she was some kind of super-freak speed-reader. She seemed more interested in the number of passages.

So I tried to decide how I felt about Sera being interested in the number of Noelle’s night-mumblings I’d recorded. And maybe the frequency. Fortunately, she couldn’t judge duration or skill unless she really could read between the lines.

“Why would you take notes?” She looked up from the notebook with her hand spread across the open page.

“Why wouldn’t I take notes? It was like looking into the future through a telescope, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity, even if the lens was out of focus and I couldn’t actually aim it at anything.” I fingered the sharp end of the spiral notebook binding. “Since then, I’ve tried to figure some of them out, but...”

“But it reads like nonsense?” And this time she really was reading. Skimming, at least.

“Yeah. Until something happens, and suddenly one or two of those will make sense. In retrospect, they seem so obvious, but on the front end, it’s like reading a foreign language, without a Noelle-to-Kristopher dictionary.”

She didn’t look up from the page. “Sounds frustrating.”

“You have no idea.” I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said without freaking her out any more than necessary. “You’re in there, Sera.”

“What?” She looked up from the passage she’d been reading to frown at me.

“You’re in there.” I took the notebook from her and flipped through the pages, looking for one specific line among hundreds. It was one I knew well, because it was one of few that seemed to give me instructions, rather than random snatches from a conversation I’d never actually been a part of. And finally I found it.

I spun the notebook around on the table, my finger over the date on the entry in question. “See?”

“‘Take the girl in the yellow scarf,’” she read. Then she looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes, her fingers hovering around her collarbone, as if she still wore that scarf. “That’s me? That’s why you kidnapped me? Because of my scarf?”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” I insisted, and she started to argue, but I spoke over her. “Okay, technically, maybe I kidnapped you, but that’s not the point. I didn’t take you because of the scarf—that’s just how I knew who you were. I took you because you’re important.”

“Important how?” Her voice sounded hollow. Skeptical. “Important to what? To whom?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and she looked so disappointed I wanted to take it back. But I couldn’t claim to have all the answers. “I hope you’re supposed to help us get Kenley back, or hide us while we get her back, but I doubt even Noelle knew for sure. Either way, though, you’re important enough to have been in one of her predictions years ago. Important enough for her to tell me to take you.” And that was the crux of the matter. The part I hadn’t been able to truly vocalize until that moment.

Until I’d found Sera—until I’d seen her scarf and known exactly what to do—I’d never been truly sure that Noelle’s messages were meant for me. I’d always kind of thought, in the back of my mind, that I was just the random bastard lucky enough to be in bed with her when she started talking in her sleep. But Sera was proof to the contrary.

Noelle had told me to take her—the girl with the yellow scarf. That prophesy was meant for me. Only for me. None of her other potential bed partners—and I wasn’t naive enough to think there hadn’t been several—was anywhere near Sera the day she had her yellow scarf on and needed to be removed from a dangerous situation.

Those predictions were intended for my ears. I was meant to act on them.

Yet I’d been failing in that respect for years. How many people had been hurt or killed because I was too stupid to interpret the prophesies?

Suddenly the guilt I’d been living with for years, on the theoretical assumption that I could do some good with Noelle’s prophesies, felt like the weight of the world. Now that I knew for sure that I’d failed.

“Why would she tell you to take me?” Sera asked. “It’s not like you were truly rescuing me—no one was shooting at me until you showed up. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does you being in my...Noelle’s journal, yet there you are.” I pointed to the passage again. “And now here you are. Maybe we were meant to meet, exactly like this. Maybe you’re supposed to help us get Kenley back, then hide us while she finishes her work. Maybe I’m supposed to help you avenge your family’s murder. Hell, maybe we’re supposed to adopt a pair of spotted dogs and raise a hundred and one of them, then save them from a homicidal fur lover. I have no idea what Noelle wanted us to do, but I know that I’m going to do it, whatever it is. And I’m going to kill the bastard who killed your family. I swear on my favorite gun.” I pushed the .45 toward her in demonstration, but she only frowned at it.

“So, I was never a hostage? You weren’t going to trade me for Kenley?”

“Of course not. I’m not a bad guy, Sera. I don’t hurt innocent people, I don’t find civilian casualties acceptable, and I’m much less reluctant than my sister is to deliver a mercy killing. Which, for the record, I never even considered for you. I didn’t bring you here to scare you, or lock you up, or hurt you in any way.”

“No. You took me because some ex-lover told you to.” Her words felt like a warning. Like a siren spinning up in preparation to blast at full volume. But I couldn’t quite see the danger through the fog.

“Well...yeah.”

“Why did you kiss me, Kris?”

“I...” I stumbled, caught off guard. There were so many reasons—more of them than I wanted to admit, even to myself. But they were all selfish. Not one of them was fair to her.

“Was that in your book? Did Noelle tell you to kiss me?” She was angry now, and suddenly I could see the approaching storm. She thought I was still taking my cues from a dead woman’s dreams. That I’d kissed her not because I’d wanted to, but because I’d thought I was supposed to.

“No. That was my own mistake, and I’m not going to blame it on Elle.”

“Mistake?” Sera recoiled as though I’d slapped her, and I realized I’d f*cked up. Again. Surely I was close to setting a record.

“No.” I shook my head and reached for her hand beneath the table. “That’s not what I meant.”

“So it wasn’t a mistake?”

I exhaled slowly, trying to focus my thoughts. “I honestly don’t know.” In fact, I’d never been so conflicted in my life. “If it was a mistake, it was a wonderful mistake. But it wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”

She frowned, confused. “It was a surprise, but that doesn’t make it unfair.”

“It was unfair because you’re grieving, Sera. I didn’t mean to take advantage of that. I don’t want to take advantage. I shouldn’t have—”

“What if it was fair for me?” She squeezed my hand. “What if I want you to take advantage?”

“I’m not sure what that means.” My brain couldn’t process what she was saying, but my body was fully on board.

“You’re a good guy. I wasn’t sure at first, but I am now, and I get that you don’t want to use me. But...people deal with grief in different ways, Kris.” She glanced down at the table, and when she met my gaze again, vulnerability shone in hers. “Haven’t you ever needed to touch someone? To be touched?”

Panic burned deep in my chest, but something hotter smoldered even lower. She was saying all the things I’d want to hear under normal circumstances. Unburdening me of my conscience. But...

But her eyes reflected something fragile and important. Something like a rose petal or a butterfly wing—too delicate to touch without bruising. And I had the psychological grip of an ogre. A brute’s emotional finesse. I wanted what she was offering—I wanted more than she was offering—but I’d been where she was, and I could see how vulnerable grief had made her, even if she couldn’t see it. I knew how our connection would end for her.

In regret.

I would want more, and she would want out.

I pulled my hand from hers as gently as I could. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Sera. That’s not what I’m looking for.” I didn’t want to be something she regretted later. I didn’t want to be the Band-Aid she threw away when the wound healed. I wanted more than that. But she wasn’t ready for more.

Sera’s eyes swam in pain, then when she blinked, all that was gone. She’d closed me out. But when she stood, shoving her chair back with the motion, her cheeks were scarlet.

“Sera. I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away from me, and that ache in my chest became a constant, painful throb.

“Don’t be sorry. I misinterpreted...things. Good night.” She didn’t even look back on her way into the living room, and I could only listen to her steps on the stairs, while I held a mug of homemade hot chocolate and grotesquely melted marshmallow Peep, trying to figure out how I’d managed to alienate the one woman in the world I actually wanted to be with. The first in six years.

The first since Noelle.

Damn it!

I shoved the table, and it squealed across four feet of ancient linoleum.

Seconds later, the living room floorboards creaked and I looked up to find Kori in the doorway. “What the hell is wrong with you?” my sister demanded. “She likes you. That couldn’t be more obvious.”

I poked my melted Peep with one finger. “Where were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t hiding. I was using Gran’s computer. Mine’s frozen again.” She pulled out the chair Sera had been sitting in and sank into it. “How was I supposed to know you’d pick tonight to demonstrate how little you’ve learned about women since your junior year of high school?”

“It’s complicated. She’s complicated.”

“Bullshit. Noelle was as complicated as they come, and you kept up with her for years, so why is it you can’t master one conversation with Sera?”

“Do you have any constructive criticism, or is this just fun and games for you?”

“This is a f*cking tragedy, Kris. You like her. Why the hell would you turn her down?”

“I turned her down because I like her.”

“And, what, now you only sleep with girls you don’t like? Have I missed some new masochistic trend?”

“Kori, I don’t want to be the grief-guy. That guy’s disposable. He’s not meant to outlast the mourning period. I want to be the guy that lasts, and she’s not ready for that guy yet.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” She propped one elbow on the table and scowled at me. “Who the hell are you to decide what she’s ready for?”

“I’ve been where she is. I took comfort from girls who had no idea they were disposable.”

“Well, then, maybe this is karma kicking you in the nuts. But I doubt it. Sera’s not the selfish a*shole you were when Elle died.”

Sera was the furthest thing in the world from selfish, but... “She just offered me grief sex. How is that different from what I did?”

Kori rolled her eyes and tossed pale hair over her shoulder. “She wasn’t talking about sex, you idiot. Well, not just sex. She’s lonely, Kris. She’s alone. Her entire family was murdered, and here we are flaunting a house full of siblings, and lovers, and grandmothers, and she’s still alone in the crowd. She just asked you for a human connection during the most difficult time of her life, and you slammed the damn door in her face. You f*cking humiliated her. If you weren’t my brother, I’d kick you in the balls for her.”

I stared into my cold mug, trying to reconcile what I’d thought I was saying with what Sera and Kori had obviously heard. “I didn’t mean to... It came out all wrong.”

My sister shook her head in disgust. “You are a world-class idiot. Fortunately for you, the world forgives well-meaning idiots over and over.” Kori stood and glanced into my mug on her way into the living room. “That’s revolting, by the way,” she said with a gesture at the yellow goo floating in my mug.

“It used to be a Marshmallow Peep.”

“Well, now it’s marshmallow carnage. But to bring my point home, you just turned down the woman who put a marshmallow duck in your hot chocolate. I hope you feel like a real a*shole now.” With that she headed into the living room, then turned to look at me right before she headed upstairs. “Fix this before it’s too late, Kris.”

But as I curled up on the couch, under my scratchy blanket, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d already lost that chance.