“I'm not upset.” Black eyes stabbed at me. “I'm just feeling like a real asshole right now.”
Sighing, I settled deeper into the booth. The bottle was pushed aside. “Kite, you are definitely an asshole.” I wanted him to smile, and when he didn't, I felt my first ripple of unease. “If something is bothering you, spill it, before you carve a hole in our floor.”
Slowing down, he glanced at his shoes, clearly realizing how many times he'd crossed from one side of the bar to the other.
“Last night,” he started, his eyes trailing back to me. “What we did with her, it was—fucking hell, how do I even say it?”
Oh. Last night.
I had some words for that.
“Let me help you. Tell me when to stop.” I lifted a hand, curling one finger down as I ticked off each point. “Last night with her was amazing, mind blowing, spectacular, delicious—”
“Enough, shut up for a second.” Kite narrowed in on my giant smirk like it was the source of all his troubles. “Marina was too good. I swear, she was ready to be pushed even further.” He studied me, brows crunching together. “Don't you want... you know, more of that?”
My hands linked in my lap. “I'll have more, believe me. I plan to indulge myself on Marina again and again. Until the very end.” The flinch that crawled over his face told me what was wrong. Kite wore his emotions on his sleeve. “So, that's why you're upset.”
“I said I wasn't upset!”
“Sorry, I meant feeling like an asshole.” I smoothed my hair back. “You're thinking about what we have to do to her. It's getting to you. Weren't you the one who wanted her dead the first night? You stormed up to me, right over there, saying we had something to take care of. A dangerous risk. An immediate problem.”
“Of course I said that!” Kite went back to pacing. “Fuck! Jacob, she walked in here and left us in pieces! But I didn't know who she was... not then.”
Slowly, I lifted my chin. “And you think you know her now.”
“Yes. I think I do.” He stared me down. “She has nightmares. I've heard her whimpering and crying almost every single night since she's been staying with me. This morning, she told me what they were about.”
I waited for him to say more.
He was waiting for me.
“The murder,” I finally guessed, breaking the silence. “I imagine they're about the murder.”
“Her sister—her nine year old sister—was raped by Lars.” He spit the words out, lip curling.
Acid bubbled in my stomach. “We already suspected that.” But hearing it from Marina's lips... That must have been sobering. It hit too close to home.
Yes, I knew what was going on here.
Kite watched me expectantly, his hands balled into fists. “Jacob, she deserves her revenge. This event has haunted her forever. It's kept her from getting close to anyone. I understand her, now. I get this girl. Her lack of friends, her lifestyle, the absence of fear... I get her.”
Rising from the booth, I remained where I was. “You want to let her kill Lars, but that's not all, is it?” The guilt that glowed in his eyes was a bombshell waiting to explode. I had to cut the fuse. “Kite, we can't let her live. You know we can't.”
“She said she would give me the letter,” he mumbled. “She promised not to doom us with it.”
That surprised me. Did she mean that? Would Marina try and save us from her reckless suicide?
“The letter was never enough,” I said sadly.
I never predicted Kite would fall so hard. Become so irrational. We had come so far, we had to stay the course.
So why was my heart deflating during my own argument?
“Listen to me,” I said patiently. “You don't know her. As long as she lives, she will pose a danger to us. To our lives. One word from her to the police or a rotten ear and we'd be done. After everything we did to get here... is a life of staring over our shoulders, waiting for the hammer to fall, worth letting her go?”
He stood there, shoulders pulled back proudly. “What if she never betrays us? Jacob, maybe we can trust her.”
Crossing to him, I kept an eye on his hands. I'd never feared Kite would hit me out of rage before, but the tension was too much. He was speaking like a mad man.
I understood it, on some level. I was obsessed with Marina in my own way. I hated thinking of her as a cold corpse.
But corpses couldn't screw you over.
I trusted no one in this world. No one but Kite. And now, he was stomping our pact into dust. I'd told Marina, nothing she did could ever make us fight.
Apparently I'd been wrong.
Blood Brothers. I had to remind him.
“Kite.” I said his name so sharply he startled. “This one thread will unravel us.” Grabbing his wrist, I forced his arm up, clenched his fingers. The scar that ran over our palms had healed long ago, nothing visible remained.
I still felt it.
Crisp pain, the blossom of blood, and then the buzzing numbness.
If I remembered all that, he certainly had to.
“You can not trust her. But you can always trust me.”