Tainted Kiss (Tainted Knights 1)

By the time I was seven, I could cook my own meals. I had gotten tired of cold sandwiches and cereal all the time. I became a pro at mac and cheese and peas, which was my usual dinner. When my dad finally came home from leave, he taught me how to make other things, like grilled cheese and scrambled eggs, and my favorite chicken flat bread.

Dad had asked me how I liked staying with his sister, and when I told him how lonely I’d been, he had understood. I didn’t have to stay with her again for a long time.

Three years, that was how long I had my dad after he had come home from Kuwait. Three years of perfection, of having a parent love me and have an interest in what I was doing. Having someone care if I was studying and getting good grades. If I was tucked in at night.

If I was happy.

He was the one who made me fall in love with photography. The poor man couldn’t have taken a good picture to save his own life, but even back then, I’d had a natural talent for it. It wasn’t just a click and aim kind of thing. I could see people as their true selves through the lens of a camera.

For Christmas one year, he had bought me a professional-grade camera, and it became my most treasured item, second only to the iPod he had given me.

Then he got deployed again.

It was only supposed to be for a year, just a few more months longer than the last time. I was ten and had friends at school, people I could visit on the weekends if I wanted to. This time around, it wouldn’t be as lonely at Aunt Imogen’s.

The day a uniformed officer and a chaplain had shown up on my aunt’s doorstep, everything changed. I knew why they were there when I opened the door.

My dad’s convoy had run over an

IED, and he had died instantly. He wasn’t coming home to me. I wouldn’t even get a body to bury because there hadn’t been one to recover. Just his dog tags.

The military paid a gratuity to the family of anyone killed on active duty to help with expenses after losing a loved one. I never saw a single penny of it, though. My aunt had gotten her greedy little fingers on it, and it was gone within a few months. There had been a reason my aunt wasn’t home often, and it had little to do with the fact that she had a job to go to every morning. Between the booze and pills, I was actually surprised she even had a job.

When she had received that tax-free check, she quit the good job she had and disappeared for days at a time. I hadn’t minded being left alone, though, too lost in my grief over never seeing my dad again to care if she was home or not.

I withdrew into myself and didn’t care if I failed school or anything else in life. The only person who had ever truly loved me was gone, and he wasn’t ever coming back.

Once the money was gone, she had to find another job, one that didn’t pay nearly as well and didn’t put up with her habits. Therefore, she went through one after another while I was growing up. By the time I was in high school, her liver was so far gone she had to retire, but the small checks she got every month from disability and social security barely paid her bills, let alone her still hardcore addictions.

That was when Sage and her family became my life line, but not even they could fill the void losing my dad had left.

I hadn’t let myself think about him or my aunt in years, but today’s shoot had brought everything back with a vengeance. I missed him so much. I would have given anything to have just one more day with him.

Just one.

“Santana?”

Momentarily forgetting about the tears, I snapped my head up at the sound of Kale’s voice. I scrubbed them away and tried to give him a happy smile, but he had already seen the wetness on my cheeks.

Crouching down in front of me, he wiped a fresh tear away with the pad of his thumb. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I told him honestly.

Concern had his forehead puckering. “What happened? Are you hurt?” He was already moving his hands to my shoulders, running down my arms as if searching for injuries. “Did someone hurt you?”

I caught his hands. “No, I’m fine. I promise. I just …” I blew out a tired sigh. “I was just remembering my dad.”

Still holding my hands, he dropped down onto the sand beside me before wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “And that made you cry?”

“Y-Yeah,” I whispered, turning my gaze out to the ocean. The sun was starting to set, which made me realize I had been sitting there longer than I had thought. “He died while on deployment in Iraq. The family I had a session with earlier is a military family, and the husband is being deployed to Iraq soon.”

Kale’s arm tightened around me. “Damn, I’m sorry, doll. I know how it feels to lose a parent.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. It was an instinctive thing to do, one I probably would have thought twice about if I wasn’t so lost in the memories of my dad. Regardless, having Kale hold me and let me just have a moment felt nice. It felt right.

“Who did you lose?”

“My mom died when I was sixteen,” he told me in a voice that was full of strain.