Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Cierra Montgomery did not want to like me.
Intuition told me that she was only waiting for me to give her a reason.
She eyed me with a suspicion fit for a thief as I picked through my fruit salad.
My first mistake was the fruit salad. All the women at the table had these large, extravagant vegetable salads.
I should have gotten the same thing as them.
In my mind, my choice only served to emphasize the differences between us, magnifying my unease.
I felt like to someone looking in from the outside, they'd see three glamorous women—Morgan, Cierra, and Sanaa—having lunch. Then, their eyes would move on to me like, 'Which one of these things does not belong?'
Cierra snatched me out of my thoughts, speaking first. “So,” her tone held an air of suspicion, “how long have you been talking to my little brother?”
I fought the impulse to make a face. Hearing anyone refer to Kain as little was bizarre. Kain was not little by any definition of the word, standing at, at least six feet, three inches tall. His build was athletic, covering him in defined muscles that…
My face grew hot, thinking about his body. I tried to play it off, keeping my tone even.
“A little over two months.” Her eyebrows came together, and I could see her doing the math.
“My birthday was two months ago,” Cierra realized. “You mean to tell me Kain blew me off for some—”
“Get over it, Ci,” Sanaa rolled her eyes, brushing her younger sister off. She winked at me like we were coconspirators in some secret scheme. “Miss Lauren clearly made… impact.”
“I don’t know about that,” I mumbled nervously, bringing a piece of cold honeydew to my teeth before taking a bite. I was chewing when a hint of mischief flashed in Sanaa’s eyes.
“So how long had y’all known each other before I found you putting your panties back on in his room?”
I nearly choked. Loud coughs erupted from me as the melon fell down the wrong pipe. Morgan reached over and smacked into my back. It took me an excruciating amount of time to get right again, my eyes watering by the time I looked back at Kain’s sisters.
“Um,” was all I could say at first. “It wasn’t…” I sighed, telling the truth. “Less than twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t what you think…”
“Well, what was it then?” Cierra asked, her tone judgmental.
Morgan, sensing my hesitation and discomfort, cut into the discussion, helping me. It took me by surprise.
“She almost got raped at your party, Cierra.” Her words were rushed like she wanted to move on from the topic. But there was something else in her tone—protectiveness. “Lauren was slipped something. Your brother helped her out of a bad situation. She spent the night in his room. Nothing happened.”
Sanaa’s smile faded, her already large eyes growing to the size of quarters, remorseful. “Oh my God, I am so sorry,” she apologized. I shook my head, indicating that it wasn’t a big deal. Please drop it. “No, it’s not nothing. It’s so obvious now. Him sleeping at his desk, and all.”
“I’d really just like to, you know, move on,” I tried to softly pivot. “It’s a distant memory, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I totally understand,” Sanaa nodded.
Cierra nodded sympathetically, her judgmental eyebrow coming down for the first time since this lunch had started. “Yeah, that’s… rough.”
Somehow, I got the feeling that this was as considerate as I could hope for from her.
“Did Kain beat his ass?” Sanaa asked expectantly, like she'd be disappointed in him if he hadn't. I smiled a little, both at the hopefulness in her tone, and in remembering what Kain did. I simply nodded at Sanaa, choosing to not go into detail. “Good,” she sighed, content.
“And so, then what?” Cierra changed the subject. “Y’all just up and decided to date after that. Doesn’t he remind you of what you went through?” Her tone was like that of a person accusing me of something.
“Well… we tried to keep in touch.” I didn’t say why, of course.
It was anyone’s guess how they’d react to knowing their brother offered to help me protect my father, who was trying to put their father in prison.
“And sometime after that… things got… things were different. What I went through doesn’t define his role in my mind. ”
“Ooh,” Sanaa hooted, “his role,” she echoed, her tone sultry, teasing. She broke into a smile, before asking me, “So y’all weren’t feeling each other that day I met you? Because the way Kain was looking at you…”
Now that piqued my curiosity.
“He was looking at me some kind of way?” Lately, I'd been noticing an affectionate glint in Kain's eyes when he looked at me, but I couldn't recall feeling like his gaze was especially noteworthy the first day.
Sanaa nodded. “Yeah, his eyes… there was life behind them. Not to be dark, or anything, but Kain can be very… dead in the eyes sometimes.”
“He's very serious,” Cierra clarified, trying to make it sound better.
“Dead in the eyes,” Sanaa repeated, standing firmly in her original statement. “He's been through so much, seen a lot. It only makes sense.”
Curiosity fired up in me, but I didn’t feel like this was the time or place.
“Kain has always seemed…” Sanaa struggled to find the word.
“Bored?” Cierra offered.
“Detached.” Sanaa gazed at me from the tops of her eyes, waiting to see if I’d agree. “Like he’s half here, half somewhere else.”
“I’ve never experienced that with him.” Was this, perhaps, another version of Kain I didn’t know? Cierra and Sanaa exchanged another one of their looks, nonverbally communicating something that I could only hope to understand.
Sanaa’s earlier words reverberated in my mind. He's been through so much, seen a lot. It only makes sense. I stabbed my fork into another piece of fruit, frustrated to not know what any of that meant. A protectiveness in me fired up. What has Kain been through? What has he seen?
Sometimes when I’d press for the uglier details, Kain would shut me out. He’d list multiple factors for why there were just some things he couldn’t share with me, oftentimes pointing out how knowing too much would put me in a dangerous position.
The only reason why I didn’t push him to communicate, was because I got the sense that Kain appreciated the fact that he didn’t have to think about certain things with me.
Kain would often talk to me like I was a much needed vacation.
Like the sound of my voice was his okay to let his guard down; to finally unwind.
“Kain behaves like he's older than all of us.” Sanaa broke the silence before it could settle, laughing humorlessly to herself. I could agree with that. Despite only being a year and a half older than me, sometimes Kain behaved like we were years apart. “Which is sad because he’s, like, supposed to be the baby of the family.”
“He’s just an old soul.” Cierra waved her sister off. “I don’t know why you’re talking like he has cancer, or something.”
Sanaa gave Cierra a sisterly eye roll, before looking back at me, a soft smile playing on her features. “If he’s able to let his guard down with you, then I’m glad.”
“Just because he’s one way with her, doesn’t mean he’s letting his guard down,” Cierra shot Sanaa down. “Lauren, describe Kain in one word,” she insisted. “And be honest.”
“Um…” My eyebrows came together, thrown off by the question. Why did her question feel like a challenge? I was already taking it on. “Kain is… protective.”
I thought about my answer, wondering if Kain would be annoyed with me for talking about him with his sisters. What am I doing? I don’t have anything to prove.
“Pft,” Cierra scoffed. “Kain's been protective forever.” She gave me a look as if to say, 'You're not special.'
A lesser version of myself wanted to give in to immature impulses and list off every last reason why I was special.
I could start with describing the way Kain looked at me.
But… it just wasn’t worth it. I knew what I knew, and that was good enough for me.
Brushing a few flyaway hairs from my forehead, I simply shrugged, unbothered.
My unwillingness to engage only seemed to annoy Cierra further. Sanaa, however, was beaming.
“Seems like she’s secure in her relationship to me, Cici,” Sanaa almost sang, throwing a question my way, “So I take it this means we’ll be seeing you at the house this Monday?”
“The house? Monday?” I squeaked out the questions cautiously.
“Yeah, our dad’s house,” Sanaa explained. “In two days, our uncle Vance is getting out of prison, and there’s this whole party thing… Wait – Kain didn’t invite you?”
Of course Kain wouldn’t invite me to a family gathering at Silas Montgomery’s house.
“Nah, he didn’t even mention it.” I shrugged.
Cierra chuckled, picking through her salad. “Some girlfriend.”
“He must’ve forgot,” Sanaa assured me, mistakenly assuming I might be offended. “Uncle Vance is, like… Kain’s favorite family member – favorite person, probably. He’d want to introduce his girlfriend to his favorite person. Come through.”
“I don’t think Kain forgot,” Cierra tried to interject, a smile rising on one of her cheeks. “This was kind of important to him.”
Although Kain had never given me a name, I was already putting together the pieces. This Vance person was obviously who the house in Pembroke Pines was for. A month ago, just before my impromptu self-defense lesson, Kain told me the house was for an uncle who’d been in prison for twelve years.
An uncle who had taken the blame for a crime he hadn’t committed, Kain explained. What he’d neglected to mention was that this uncle was supposedly his favorite person.
My curiosity was now piqued. Was it even normal that Kain had left that part out?
“Yeah, I don’t think Kain forgot either,” I told Sanaa. “But I get it, though. It’s a bit early in our relationship for us to be doing the whole… family introductions thing.”
“Almost three months is kind of a big deal for a guy his age.” Sanaa was clearly annoyed with her younger brother.