Hideaway (Devil's Night 2)

“You cover your hair, you wear men’s clothes,” he went on, “Who are you, kid?”

It almost sounded like a rhetorical question, like he was just thinking out loud. And part of me wanted to come clean.

I gave a half-smile he didn’t see. “I’m nobody.”

“That’s not true,” he argued, and I heard his voice closer to my ear. “I’ve never seen Damon possessive over a woman, but he was over you that night.” He tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Who are you to him?”

I opened my mouth, but again, I didn’t know what to say. I shook my head.

“Did he hurt you?” Kai’s onyx eyes pleaded with me for more as he dropped his voice to a whisper. “No one’s here but you and me. Did he hurt you? Why are you loyal to them?”

I stared into his gaze, my eyes starting to burn again as I struggled with my love for my brother and the pathetic desire building inside me to latch onto someone.

The rain shower spilled down his black hair, streams coursing down his neck and over the vein there. The water disappeared under his collar, and I let my eyes drift back up over his angular jaw to his mouth. Full lips, his bottom one with a unique little flat spot like someone had pressed their finger there and the dent remained. Staring at it, my teeth suddenly ached. I could feel the meat he fed me last night in my mouth again and the sensation of biting into it.

Confusion wracked my brain. He wasn’t really my enemy. Not really.

He wanted answers. I wanted my brother back.

“What was it like for you in prison?” I asked him. “We paid off people to keep Damon safe, but what about you and Will? Was it bad?”

Pain suddenly crossed his eyes, and he stared at me, lost for a moment.

“Michael did the same,” he told me. “Paid people to keep all of us safe, but…”

He trailed off, and I waited. Like in the confessional all those years ago, he had to work up the courage to talk.

/> He swallowed. “I told Rika once that I was never going back there. That I never knew people could be so ugly.” He met my eyes. “But I was talking about me.”

He caressed my hair, looking troubled.

“It wasn’t as simple as Michael thought it would be. Paying people off, I mean. We were rich, young, privileged, and we were doing half the sentence that others were doing for the same crimes. The threats, the looks, the nighttime taunts carrying down the cells toward us,’ he told me. “I just wanted to go home.”

A lump stretched my throat painfully, sad for both him and my brother.

“My father taught me to fight,” he went on. “He taught me how to kill if I ever had to. But he also taught me to make the world better.” He paused, thinking, and then spoke again. “A trick of survival in prison is, on your first day, walk in there with your head high, look around into everyone’s eyes, and find someone to hit. Establish your strength and make sure everyone sees it.”

I listened, remembering I’d heard the same thing somewhere.

“I waited until day three,” he said. “I picked the biggest guy I could find, someone I’d seen throwing his weight around, someone who’d threatened Will on our first day, and I went over, and I hit him.”

I could almost see it in my head.

“To my surprise, though, he didn’t go down right away,” Kai continued, a half-smile on his face. “I ended up with a broken nose, three cracked ribs, and a fat lip.”

I laughed a little. A Horseman didn’t fall often, so he got his comeuppance, I’d say.

But his expression turned solemn. “He ended up with a fractured spine.”

Oh, Christ.

“I was the trained one,” he said, looking like he was still angry with himself. “I should’ve known where I was kicking.”

“Did he heal?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but it took a couple months, and he has some nerve damage. He has no feeling in three of his fingers on his right hand anymore.”

Well, it could’ve been worse. A lot worse.