Demand - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,16
of me and sit up, giving me his profile. “Until we don’t.”
I grab my shirt lying next to me, pressing it between my legs. “As in when we don’t.” Suddenly needing the shelter of being covered, I reach for the soft brown blanket on the back of the couch, and wrap it around myself. “I guess it’s time you tell me everything.”
“I’d have to know everything to tell you, and I still don’t.” He stands and grabs his black jeans, shoving his legs inside them.
“But you knew about the necklace.”
Forgoing his zipper, he sits on the stone coffee table in front of me, resting his hands on his legs. “I knew about the necklace.”
His cell phone rings, and he grimaces. “Holy fuck, I can’t even get an hour.” He stands and retrieves his phone from his pocket, answering the call in Italian. He listens a few beats and then replies, before giving me his back and ending the call, tension radiating off of him.
He finally faces me. “Matteo is making Enzo disappear, disconnecting him from The Underground. That means his mother can’t know he’s dead—and I’m not sure if I’m doing her a favor or a disservice.” He scrubs his jaw. “I need a shower to wash some of the death off of me.” He doesn’t wait for a reply or invite me to follow, he simply turns and walks toward the hallway.
I sit there a moment, not sure if I should go after him, repeating his words in my mind: wash some of the death off of me. And I think it’s more about guilt that he wants to wash away. He blames himself for every death that touches his life, including Enzo’s. My mind flashes back to my father lying in a pool of his blood and again, I wonder what I have wondered over and over in my life: could I have done something different and saved his life? Maybe if I hadn’t hidden in the pantry with my mother when intruders came into our home. Maybe if I had stood and fought by my father’s side. Maybe if I had come out of that closet just three minutes earlier. Guilt sucks. Questioning yourself sucks.
No one needs to deal with that alone. And Kayden’s been alone a long time. I think . . . I think that I have, too.
I stand up, allowing my shirt to drop to the ground, and I hold the blanket around me as I hurry toward the hallway, cutting left toward Kayden’s bedroom, our bedroom, cold stone beneath my bare feet. And I know what I had not admitted until now. Kayden had been right. I didn’t want to go back to the intimate place we share until after we had talked. Now I can’t wait to get there, where he is and probably thinks I will not follow. I reach the giant wooden door, finding it cracked open, and since Kayden does nothing by accident, I’m aware of the invitation it represents.
I enter the room, the fireplace warming the space, crackling with warming flames just beyond the bed I pray I’ll still share with Kayden when this night is over. The bathroom door is open, and I hear the sound of water running. I drop the blanket and stand in the doorway of the white glistening room, an oval tub before me, and directly beside it, the deep, stone-encased shower making it impossible for me to see Kayden inside.
Walking to it, I enter, shocked to find a dripping-wet Kayden now out of the spray and sitting on the floor in the corner, his head resting against the wall, eyes shut. I sense that he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t move, so I close the distance between us and sit down beside him, facing him, my hand on his knee. He lifts his head to look at me, immediately letting me inside the cage holding him captive. “If you could have remembered your father without knowing the brutal way he died, would you have chosen that path?”
“You’re worried about Enzo’s mother.”
“Yes. I’m worried about his mother.”
I consider his question, shutting my eyes as I remember the moment I grabbed my father’s gun and shot and killed one of his attackers. And then the next. I look at Kayden. “I want to know who sent the men who killed my father. I want to know justice was served on his behalf. I need to know justice was served. I won’t let it