Tainted Forever (Tainted Knights 5)

“Let me rephrase, then. When was the last time you got a full night’s sleep?”

I glared at the opposite wall, trying to remember what it even felt like to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. I missed Kin so fucking much, but it was worse at night. “May,” I choked out.

“Dude. You’re going to burn yourself out. Emmie is going to go off the rails if you keep this up. You won’t be any good to your band, and you’re going to end up killing yourself if you aren’t careful.”

“I’ll sleep when I have Kin back,” I gritted out. “Can’t sleep without her.”

Shane dropped his hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Jace. But you still need to take care of yourself.”

“I don’t care about myself, man,” I told him honestly. “All I can think about is if she’s okay or not, and no one will freaking tell me.”

The elevator stopped, and Mason ran off. Shane and I followed, heading straight for the studio. Shane produced all the demos for Emmie’s clients. It was just a hobby to him, but he could turn it into a new career if he wanted to during his downtime from Demon’s Wings.

“Take a seat,” Shane instructed as he turned on the lights in the control room. “Could be a little while before Kin gets here. She’s not due until nine.”

“Why are you here so early, then?” Shane wasn’t one to just wait around.

“Got a few things I’m working on,” was all he said as he started turning everything on.

Mason grabbed the small toy box his dad kept for him there out of the corner of the room. Upending the box, he scattered his toys all over the floor and dropped down to start lining up cars and dinosaurs. I watched him, wondering if my nephew would be like Mason when he got older. Eden sent me pictures every few weeks, but I hadn’t met the newest me

mber of my family yet. I doubted my older sister wanted me around her kid when I was barely functional on a human level the majority of the time.

My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket to see I had a text from Kassa, asking where I was.

She kept track of me more and more lately, probably worried I was going to drive my car into a tree or off a bridge or something. I didn’t have a death wish, however. I just fucking wanted Kin back. But even though Kassa tried to keep track of me, we didn’t talk much. This thing with Eden had put up a wall between us.

I didn’t bother sending her a reply. She would only guess what I was doing and try to stop me. Or warn Kin I was waiting on her, and then Kin wouldn’t show.

Turning off the phone because I didn’t put it past my baby sister to use the GPS to try to find me, I pocketed the device. For the next two hours, I divided my attention between watching the clock on the wall tick away the minutes, Shane doing his thing with some song he was remixing for another one of Emmie’s clients, and Mason having a cars vs. dinosaurs war.

It was pretty quiet on this floor, and it wasn’t just because both the control room and the recording booth were soundproof. There was rarely any traffic here because this was Shane’s domain. If a person didn’t have a reason to be there, or Shane didn’t want them there, then they knew better than to step into his territory.

Shane Stevenson was pretty laid-back, if he liked you. If he didn’t, that was another story entirely. With as much muscle as he had on him, he could have given Gray a run for his money, even in his forties. He was always running, day or night, no matter the time of the year. There had been plenty of times he’d talked Kin and Lucy into running charity 5K events with him. Some of them were sponsored by his wife’s magazine, sometimes as a representative for his band, but always for one of Emmie’s charities.

I’d only ever seen him pissed once in the years I’d known him, but that was enough to show me I never wanted to be on the receiving end of his temper.

“Heads up,” Shane said with a twist of his lips as he picked up his phone. “Em says she just heard from Kin. She’s going to be here soon.”

My heart began to pound, my hands growing damp with nervousness. I felt sick and weak-kneed, yet I couldn’t take sitting down for a second longer. Standing, I pulled off the baseball cap, ran my fingers through my hair, and replaced the cap. Only to take it off and toss it on the chair I’d just vacated.

Shane watched me, caution on his face as he rolled his chair back to put himself between me and his son, as if he thought I might explode and cause his kid bodily harm. I didn’t blame him, because right then, I didn’t know what might happen with me. My skin suddenly felt too tight for my body, my breaths coming in pants as I paced to the door and back to my chair.

“Have you seen her yet?” I asked him, not sure why I hadn’t already.

Of the four Demons, though, it was more likely Jesse Thornton would see Kin regularly than Shane or his brother. Lucy and her dad were close, so that meant he was close to Kin too. They all treated her like family. From the first time Lucy brought Kin home from school, they took her in as one of their own. Every single one of them was a misfit, a mishmash of family more by choice than actual blood for the majority of them. Kin was no different, just another member of their family. Emmie was even her honorary aunt who treated her more like a daughter than Kin’s stepmother ever tried to.

He shook his head, his blue-gray eyes following my every step to and from the door. “Can’t remember the last time I saw Kin, honestly. Maybe when we ran the half marathon back in April for the children’s home Emmie started up in Ohio? Yeah, I think that was the last time I saw her.”

I scrubbed my hands over my face, wiping away the thin sheen of sweat that was beading on my forehead. I was starting to panic more with each passing minute. Why wasn’t she here yet? What was taking so fucking long?

Twenty minutes passed, and she still wasn’t there. I continued to pace, Shane watching me the entire time. He didn’t yell at me and tell me to park my ass, or to calm the fuck down, or even to stop acting like a pussy and just chill out. I appreciated that, because I wasn’t sure I could have done any of those things.

And then the door was opening, and the way my heart was beating my chest to death was no longer a problem. It completely stopped the second my eyes landed on her as she walked into the room, a stack of music sheets under one arm, her guitar case in her hand.

Her long red hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, her face completely free of any makeup. She wore jeans and an old OtherWorld T-shirt, one of her favorites. There were dark circles under her eyes, but other than that, she didn’t look much different from the last time I saw her.

I drank in the sight of her, feasting my eyes on her like a starving man. Her blue eyes locked on mine and I couldn’t breathe, yet I found myself suddenly in front of her, pulling her roughly into my arms.