Chapter 17
MALCOLM
Not for the first time, I stand in the middle of my bedroom on the second floor of the big house on the Van Doren Estate and think, this is my life?
The number of times the thought has crossed my mind in the last year or more is innumerable.
Too many times to remember. From disbelief to horror to fear to awe to…
Sadness.
I’ve been back for a little over two weeks now. Two weeks since I’ve seen or spoken to Kairo. Two weeks since I’ve so much as heard anything about him after the day I arrived and spoke to Jalon about what I observed regarding his crew and what I suspected regarding Kairo on a more personal level.
Nothing that would break Kairo’s trust, but there’s some deep hurt there. Hurt that he’s hung onto since childhood. Obviously, that didn’t originate with me, so it’s not up to me to guess where it came from. I don’t know how to fix it.
I didn’t share that Kairo let me in, and I broke his trust. I did the right thing because it meant saving a little girl’s life. It meant saving many lives and calling attention to something disgusting happening on the fringes of Chicago.
However, it needed to be handled differently because Kairo let me in, and there’s a chance that my overriding his refusal to ask his family for help triggered something else entirely inside him. Something that became personal.
I’ve thought a lot about what I’d say to him if given the opportunity.
How I might explain why getting Voss involved was necessary.
In the end, I’m sure he knew that. Even if he didn’t then, he does now.
Lucy’s days were numbered, and there wasn’t any time to fuck around.
Therefore, it’s been two weeks since he told me to leave, and in those two weeks, I haven’t received so much as a text from him.
When you spend your life building walls around you, it’s not an easy decision to let someone in.
I might not have given him a choice when I forced my way into his office and made him have lunch with me.
I didn’t give him an option when I continued to show up, unannounced and uninvited.
His walls slipped the longer I remained in his presence.
I never took for granted that he honored me with tiny peeks at the person he was hiding behind all the aggression and hostility.
He trusted me with that, and while the decision to call Voss had been the right one, it came at the price of his trust in me. I refuse to think it a mistake that I called Voss. They were nowhere near locating Lucy. It would have been too late by the time they found the trail Voss had.
Two weeks and I’m no longer just sad, but irritated with him now. Angry. And yeah, probably a little hurt. There was no discussion. No room for conversation at all. Kairo’s response was to shove me away and lock me out. That’s what he did, and he didn’t look back.
His siblings often call him immature in his behavior, and until recently, I simply looked at it as armor to protect himself.
However, I’ve come to realize that the parts of him they’re calling immature aren’t his hostility.
It’s not so difficult to understand that he’s wearing a shell to keep everyone away.
They don’t allow him excuses for his volatile behavior, though, nor should they.
Just because you understand why someone is acting like a dick doesn’t mean they’re permitted to get away with it.
It’s the way he handles his emotions that they refer to as immature, and that I can understand.
He’s never grown out of his teenage years of shutting down and lashing out.
There’s no growth there. He’s spent so long shutting everyone out and not dealing with whatever he’s going through that I’m not sure he knows how.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts, and I find I’m still standing in the middle of my room. Lost in thought. A state I’ve found myself in often since returning to the Estate.
Wiping a hand over my face to clear away any remnants of my sadness while I cross the room, I open the door to find Voss on the other side with little Axl on his shoulders. Brek’s there too, his hand on Axl’s back, making sure he doesn’t fall.
Immediately, a smile spreads across my face. “You,” I say and point at Axl. A big smile splits his face, and he slaps Voss’ head. I laugh while Voss winces.
“Hey, hey,” Brek says, taking Axl’s hand in his gently. “Soft touch.”
Voss pulls Axl over his head and holds him out to me like he smells. “You bring out the violence in him. Let him beat on you for a while.”
Grinning, I accept his thirteen-month-old.
Taking a step backward into my room so the doorframe isn’t over our heads, I toss him into the air.
His weight barely leaves my hands, but it’s enough that he laughs madly when I catch him and bring him into my arms to squeeze him.
I love the way his arms wrap around my neck, and his little legs kick gently as if he’s sitting on the counter and just swinging his legs.
“Why does everyone get hugs but us?” Brek asks, frowning.
Voss tugs him to his chest and hugs Brek.
Brek grins. Voss’ hand at the back of Brek’s head has my heart stopping momentarily.
I see the numbers burned into his hand—736.
My eyes immediately drop to Brek’s, though his hand is covered in an open-fingered sleeve, flesh-toned and tight. Hiding his number—718.
My gaze drops to my hand, and I twist my arm to take a look at it.
643. I forget it’s there sometimes. Not because those months are erased from my memory, but because the numbers are pretty much synonymous with my middle name now.
They’re my identity. Catching sight of them unexpectedly always has me momentarily transported to that mind frame until I can shake it off.
“Malcolm?”
I jerk from the forest in my head and meet Voss’ eyes.
It’s been months since I’ve looked at the numbers on the back of my hand.
While my trauma is never far from my mind, it’s compartmentalized.
Just as it was while I lived it, it is now.
Unlike the days I lived it, now it’s locked up in its own drawer.
A drawer that peeks open when I’m caught off guard until I can shove it closed again as I do now with such force that I shiver.
“Sorry,” I say, frowning.
“Therapy helps a lot,” Brek says gently.
I nod absently, but my mind has already moved beyond being a hunted target and settled back on the ache in my chest that’s missing Kairo. Therapy wouldn’t circle around my trauma right now. This new thing is too fresh.
“You don’t have to come to the park with us,” Voss offers.
Stay behind with nothing but my miserable thoughts for company? Nah. I smile and tickle Axl until he’s giggling and squirming in my hold. “You promised me a park day, and I’m going to throw a tantrum if I don’t get to go down the slide with Axl.”
Brek snorts.
I follow them out, turning Axl in my arms so he’s facing forward but tucked in my hold securely.
There isn’t actually a park nearby. We’d have to drive to the school in town, or the park even further away.
Jalon has rearranged the building schedule to get the playground on the school campus behind the Estate assembled on a quicker timeframe so his one- and two-year-old grandsons have somewhere to play.
Not that I think they’ll be using the playground anytime soon. It’ll still be a construction site and not safe for them to run around the playground, but I understand why he’s doing it.
Instead, we have some temporary equipment behind the big house where the kids play.
A sandbox, a swing set, a slide, and several other kiddie things.
Things that appeared overnight, like the removable track that now winds in a wide, curving circle around the outdoor play toys, where the kids can ride bikes or skate on, or drive their foot-powered cars.
Jalon pretends he has no idea where any of it comes from.
I set Axl in the sandbox and join him while Voss and Brek sit in chairs outside the sandbox to supervise our play.
“Hey, look at that. Play date,” Voss says, and I look up as Azlan Deth approaches, his arms laden with baby equipment, while one of his partners, Isidro, carries their nineteen-month-old, Erez.
Azlan looks irritated at the entire contents of a bedroom he’s hauling toward us.
Brek tries not to laugh, but I don’t hide it. I laugh loudly.
“Don’t you get paid enough to own a pack mule, Az?” I ask.
His cold eyes meet mine, and he doesn’t answer as he exaggeratingly carefully sets it all down while Isidro hands me Erez to bring into the sandbox. I blow a raspberry on his belly first since his shirt rose, and his laugh is as loud as Azlan’s presence.
Azlan and I have an unlikely friendship.
When Voss broke into the barracks where Brek and I were kept, he brought Azlan and his other male partner, Wade.
Since Azlan and I were called out together on a hunt, we kind of…
bonded. Which I find incredibly humbling because Azlan is an unofficially diagnosed psychopath.
He doesn’t make friends. In fact, his partners have said on more than one occasion that I’m his only friend.
A friend he enjoys hanging out with, so I kind of love that.
It’s strange and unusual to call a psychopath your best friend, but I think Azlan is mine.
Voss probably too. Brek? He’s my little brother.
A guy whom I’ve tried to protect since the moment he stepped into the barracks at the refuge. I don’t know why.
“Dad’s going to be insulted if you think he doesn’t have enough baby things out here,” Voss comments as he watches Issy and Azlan make sense of all the things they brought.
Issy sighs. “Xan is feeling a little nesty. She thinks we need to bring every single piece of outdoor furniture and toys for Erez, regardless of where we’re going.
If we send her a picture and she doesn’t see evidence that we have it all, she’s going to ask questions.
Since she’s feeling overly emotional getting ready for baby boy two, we’re not going to argue with her. ”
“We don’t argue with her anyway,” Azlan says as he sets up a little canopy over a transportable baby swing.
Issy nods, shrugging. “You’re not wrong.”
Azlan catches Issy’s chin in his hand, and their eyes meet with Issy crouching on the ground and Azlan looking down at him. “Of course, I’m not.”
Issy rolls his eyes, but I’m not the only one who doesn’t miss the heat flash between them. It’s sharp and charged, like electricity jumping from one to the other.
“So… we’ll watch Erez if you want to borrow a cabin,” Voss suggests.
Azlan moves faster than I think any of us are expecting since we all jump as he picks Issy up and tosses him over his shoulder. Even the kids jump in surprise. Without a word and with Issy laughing while hanging over Azlan’s shoulder, Azlan walks away.
I laugh and turn to the kids. “Just us. Who wants chocolate?”
Brek shoves me playfully. “No.”
“After lunch,” Voss amends, and Brek huffs.
I grin as I hand Erez a shovel. My hand swings behind Axl as he begins to teeter sideways. He’s still a little rolly-polly.
As I sit with the kids, watching Voss and Brek hold hands while they talk, I can’t ignore the ache in my chest.