Chapter Thirteen #2
My fingers dig into his arms, and the pain boiling in me pushes outward. I pour it into him, letting every buried emotion move through me. My sorrow rises first, followed by the sharp sting of betrayal and the grief that’s been gnawing at me since my world fell apart.
“Cut it out,” he gasps, his voice splintering.
“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” I press my hands to either side of his face, holding him still.
I focus, digging past the pain, looking for her. The girl from the memory he keeps locked away.
An image sparks, and I grab onto it.
Suddenly, I’m there.
Inside his memory.
They’re training together. She’s sweating, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion. Kylo stands in front of her, demonstrating a movement, his expression gentler than I’ve ever seen it.
This girl mattered.
The scene shifts. One moment they’re laughing in the snow. The next, the Aether Hunters surround them. Horror claws through me as the memory unfolds: Kylo fights to reach her, but the second the shot rings out, she’s gone.
“Get out of my head!” His voice cracks like a whip. A shockwave sends me flying.
“Asshole,” I mutter.
Kylo’s already on his feet, looming over me. His chest rises and falls with uneven breaths. “I told you not to mess with my mind.”
Springing upright, I wipe the sweat from my palms onto my thighs. “Isn’t that what this is? Learning how to push back.”
“For you. Not me.”
His anger radiates like heat.
“Why did you go for that specific memory?”
I need to know why he went there. Why he weaponized it.
“Pain strips away control. That’s where you hide.”
“That was low.”
Sweat stings my eyes. My legs are shaking. I crouch down, arms wrapping tightly around my knees, trying to hold myself together. The air between us is thick with grief and hurt, two raw storms on a collision course.
“Why won’t you tell me about the girl in your memories?”
He tenses. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Every emotion you suppress, I absorb. The guilt you feel when you think of her? It’s crushing.”
I want to understand the man behind the armor.
His eyes harden, and a scowl forms. “You don’t know when to give up, do you?”
Arms crossed, I stand my ground. “No.”
“Fine,” he snaps. “Her name is Blair. She’s my sister.”
The guilt pressing on his chest suddenly makes sense.
“You feel responsible because she was captured by the Aether Hunters?”
A muscle ripples along his cheek. “Yes.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say gently.
“I should have protected her.”
I take his hand, which is much larger than mine.
“What are you doing?”
A memory surfaces—one where I felt lighter. Freer.
Dribbling a basketball with Leo on a hot summer day. Mom in the background pouring her homemade strawberry lemonade into tall glasses.
“Do you feel any different?” I ask.
He studies me for several long beats. “Do you sense my emotions when we’re together?”
“When they’re strong. Yours come in clear, even when we’re not touching.”
“And you feel your own at the same time?”
“Yes.”
He steps closer. “Can you block mine?”
“I try. It’s a lot at once.”
It’s hard to tell where his pain ends and mine begins.
“The anger you hold onto isn’t healthy,” I add.
The fact I’m used to it now tells me how constant it is for him.
“You talk about healthy, yet you still haven’t faced your mother’s death.”
He’s not pulling his punches today.
“There’s no such thing as a private thought when you’re within my reach. You’re sinking in grief. That grief will be the difference between you making it out of this alive or dead.”
“Her death is still fresh. Grief doesn’t just poof into nothing.”
Am I supposed to forget her?
“You’re not remembering her. You’re circling the grief instead of stepping into it.”
I look away, blinking back the sting behind my eyes. Everything he’s saying is true.
“Stop running from reality,” he says. “You have power. This war is real, and it doesn’t care if you’re ready.”
“I’m working on it.”
What he said earlier proves how lost I am.
Are you going to stand there and take my shit the same way you stood by and watched her die?
He scrubs a hand through his hair, muscles tightening. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Does he regret the words or the reaction they caused?
He’s seen inside my mind, knows what happened to my mom, forced me to relive a memory that still feels too recent to fully comprehend.
He still judged me.
I shouldn’t care what he thinks.
Yet I hate that I do.
I want that nod of approval from Carter. A look from Kylo that doesn’t feel like an evaluation anymore. I want to see the moment their eyes shift from pity to respect. I want to be the person they count on.
“We’re done for today. Let’s get you something to eat.”
I fall into step behind him. “What’s for lunch?”
“Protein bars and powder, chips, fruit. Take your pick.”
He opens the cabinet and grabs a protein bar. The wrapper crinkles as he tears it open, the scent of chocolate faint but sweet. He leans against the counter, taking a slow bite, like this is just another normal day.
I select vanilla for myself. It tastes like flavored chalk. I chew slowly, fingers worrying the wrapper, grateful for something to do with my hands.
“You made great progress today.”
Something in the way he says it sparks deep inside me, like a match flickering to life in the dark. Pride swells in my chest, but it isn’t mine. It’s his. I feel it through the invisible thread between us.
My heart flutters, like fireflies trapped behind my ribs.
“You think so?”
He smiles. The shift is jarring.
“Once we break through those blocks, you won’t be in your own way anymore.”
He’s in his own way, too.
“Blair is holding you back,” I blurt.
“Is she now?”
My attention catches on the angular lines of his jaw, the way his throat moves when he swallows.
He’s just so…
Cut it out, Lia.
Shaking the thought away, I shift my attention elsewhere.
“How old is she?” I ask.
I know next to nothing about this man who seems to know too much about me.
“She was twenty-one when she was taken. That was almost two years ago.”
“Is Carter older than you?”
It’s written in the way Carter commands a room, in the easy authority he carries.
“Carter’s the oldest.”
And how old are you, exactly?
His smirk grows. “You could just ask, you know. Carter’s twenty-nine. I’m twenty-six.”
“Since you know what I’m thinking, maybe I should stop talking.”
He laughs—a real laugh. “What fun would that be?”
He grabs another chocolate protein bar, tearing it open like he didn’t just inhale the first one.
Carter steps into the room right as Kylo and I take matching bites of our protein bars. “Let me guess, Kylo took the last chocolate bar again?”
I peek into the cabinet. A vanilla graveyard. Not a chocolate bar in sight.
“Good thing I don’t mind vanilla,” I joke.
“Why are the good ones always gone?” Carter groans.
“I spend all day burning calories while you’re off meditating with birds,” Kylo quips.
Carter grins. “Mindfulness is an underrated power, my friend.” He turns to me. “Speaking of mindfulness, come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”