“Close your eyes,” she said.
He did as she asked and visualized his mother, not the way she looked now, but with her cheeks full and smiling. That was how he wanted to remember her. Then he focused on channeling his energy into the stone and imagined that energy multiplying and reaching out to his mother while Cassia recited a traditional prayer for the dying.
“Spirits of our kin, greet your sister Rena and aid her in passing beyond the veil between our worlds. Take her in your arms and give her peace. Guide her into paradise and grant her rest from her labors. Comfort her until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again,” Kane dutifully repeated.
The prayer ended, and he released Cassia’s hand. He couldn’t say he felt any different. If anything, the hollowness within him had grown deeper—so deep he imagined he could swallow a pebble and never hear it hit the bottom of his stomach.
Cassia stroked his arm. “Talk to me.”
“The way you talked to me?”
“That’s fair,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have shut you out because of Shanna. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You shut me out long before then.”
“All right, I should have told you about my nightmares, too. I still have them sometimes, but not as often. I’m sleeping a lot better now.”
“I know. The circles under your eyes are gone.”
“Maybe they would have left sooner if I’d let you help me. Let me help you. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He wanted to, but his head swirled with clouded thoughts that were hard to verbalize. Everything was changing so fast. His home didn’t feel like home anymore. The only girl he’d ever loved was slipping away, and once his mother left him, he would lose his family.
“It’s all going sideways.” His voice sounded empty to his own ears. “I want to stop it, but I can’t. Nothing is the same as it used to be.”
She made a noise of understanding and twirled a finger at the base of his head to comfort him, just like she’d done a thousand times in the past. But his hair was too short to wrap around her finger. That had changed, too.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, he glanced her way.
She gazed at him with softness in her honey-brown eyes, but not pity, and he finally understood why she had wanted him to treat her normally after the kidnapping. The only thing that could make this situation worse was knowing she felt sorry for him. As she stroked his hair, she didn’t fill the silence with platitudes like Everything happens for a reason or It’ll be all right. She was simply present. That was more important than words, and she knew it. Somehow she always understood what he needed.
Maybe that was what prompted her to climb onto his lap.
Ducking beneath the top bunk, she straddled his thighs and scooted forward until their hips sat flush. His breath locked in anticipation of what might happen next. He knew from prior experience that things could end here, or they could go much further. A surge of blood rushed through his veins, and suddenly he didn’t feel so numb anymore.
She watched him as she cupped his face and explored the length of stubble along his jaw. He looked back at her in silence, afraid to say or do anything to ruin the moment. The floral scent of her skin was more familiar to him than his own heartbeat, and he didn’t think he could stand it if she pulled away now.
When she slid her arms over his shoulders and drew an inch nearer, he took a chance and settled both hands on her lower back. Still holding her gaze, he slipped his thumbs beneath her shirt and brushed the slope of her spine—just a feather graze to test her mood, to see if she’d missed his touch as much as he’d missed hers. She rewarded him with a shiver, and soon her eyelids grew heavy. Though it nearly killed him, he stayed still and used nothing but his thumbs as he let her make the next move.
She strained the limits of his control by kissing a trail from his temple, down the side of his cheek, ending at the corner of his mouth. Chills rose along the back of his neck, and when her lips finally brushed his, all the empty spaces inside him filled with heat. He tried to hold himself in check, but then the tip of her tongue curled inside his mouth, and he was lost.
He tightened both arms around her, crushing their bodies so close there wasn’t space to draw more than a gasp. He didn’t care. Air didn’t matter, only Cassia. It’d been so long since she’d let him hold her like this, and he would willingly suffocate if that was what it took to keep her in his arms. He tasted her mouth while squeezing her in a furious compulsion to pull her inside him. He wondered if he could ever feel close enough to her, even if they went all the way for once. Somehow he doubted it, but he desperately wanted to find out.