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“We do. Just as we agreed all those years ago. Both our dads needed to die, I was just too chickenshit to follow through,” Kale admits.
“We need to talk to Benedict too, convince him that you don’t have to be dealt with. I just—I owe him so much.”
“You owe him nothing.” Kale shoots up. “Benedict is a manipulative prick who thinks that the only way to end the family’s bad luck was to force marriages between the families. That wasn’t your fault.”
“Because that is what we all grew up being taught. Every generation, two of the families would marry… It was the only way to keep our bad luck at bay. And when it was time for Romaine to marry a Barley…” I trail off.
“She ran off.” Kale’s eyes flash up to my face. “And ever since, he blamed everything on the Barleys. And the Rouxs supporting it didn’t help his opinion of your family either. He was a ticking time bomb.”
Running a hand through my hair, I come up with a plan. “Will you come to a meeting? I can call one. Bring you to it.”
There’s something that Kale mulls over, a secret he’s holding back. I want to press him. To open his mind and crawl inside.
But it’s the middle of the night. I’m exhausted.
And Kale being in my life again was never anything I planned for.
But I’m grateful for it.
“If Cinnamon wants to keep us all in her life, I will meet with the family,” Kale finally agrees. “But I won’t go to him, he needs to meet here. I will feel safer, and for some reason…I feel like Orzo won’t let him kill me.”
“Because of Cinnamon. They are…close.” My memory flashes to her on this bar. To him fucking her.
Except I didn’t know it was her at the time.
Kale quirks his lips. “This is insane. But…it’s also the first time I have been happy in years.”
“Me too,” I admit easily, my eyes flashing to the bedroom door. “I’m going to check on them.”
“I’ll call Olive, let her know Cinnamon is safe.” Kales tugs his phone out of his pocket. “I will start fresh with you, put our grievances aside, if you promise to not try to kill me again.”
He doesn’t look up as he speaks, but I can hear the hurt in his words.
The pain and loneliness.
A mirror of my own emotions.
“I promise.”
***
Orzo sits on the edge of his bed, watching Cinnamon sleep.
I study him as he keeps his focus on her form.
He seems…younger.
His age?
The wall that is typically placed around him, the one made of mud, ice, and blood, is gone. In its place is the kid who grew up too quickly.
The family I always wanted.
Cinnamon tosses in her sleep, the blanket slipping down and revealing that she has changed out of the clothes I gave her.
“She deserves better than us,” he comments softly, tugging the blanket up over her. He doesn’t turn to me. “But she’s stuck with us.”
“What do you mean, we would be her boyfriends?” The question tastes silly. Like two foods that shouldn’t go together.
