caught it. My heart slammed against my chest, even though I didn’t jump. “You’re too fucking silent,” I said, my jaw clenched.
Kelly leaned against the bathroom door, shirtless with only a pair of grey sweatpants on, watching me. His eyes shimmered from the small, soft light that came on at night anytime you walked into the bathroom. “Had something bad to eat, darlin’?”
“You could say that.” I turned off the sink and grabbed a towel to dry my face. After hanging it back up, I went to rush past him, but he caught my arm and I stopped, looking up at him.
“Must’ve been some real bad food. You’re paler than a fucking ghost.”
“It didn’t go to my stomach,” I said. “It went to my head.”
His eyes moved, like he was trying to understand my riddle. “Bad dream.”
The emotions in the pit of my stomach made it to my throat. I wasn’t sure if I could answer. So I nodded.
He used his finger to remove a piece of hair that was stuck to my face and then, taking my hand, led me back to the bedroom. He didn’t stop there, though. He walked through the darkened house, like he could see through it, and then turned the lights on low when we got to the kitchen.
After letting my hand go, he lifted me up by the arms and set me down on the counter. Then he went to the fridge, the light brightening his face and body, and took out a container of soup. He set it down before he went for a pot.
While he stirred the soup, he said, “All of the drink.”
“What?”
“My old man used to say that too much drink summoned the devil. You had too much drink tonight.”
“I’ve had more.” I shrugged, even though his back was to me. “Your house is new to me. It’s always dark and cold, and whenever I’m going through a lot, she comes to me.”
I’d never admitted that to anyone, and I wasn’t sure why I’d admitted it to him. Maybe because he had a twin and could understand what the distance did to the other’s soul.
There was one thing I refused to admit to him, though, and that was how much Lee Grady’s words at the event had bothered me. Make you a widow, Mrs. Kelly. If anyone was going to kill Cash Kelly, it was going to be me. Not some wannabe punk off the fucking street.
He nodded. “You had a dream of your sister.”
“Yeah.” I took a minute or two to settle my heart. Whenever I thought about her, my heart hurt. And for whatever reason, when I thought about Kelly being killed because of his dealings, something inside of me twisted. Maybe it was the place where my heart should’ve been. “She’s never young. In the dreams. Not like she was when I saw her the last time. She’s always older. Grown up. I can feel her. Actually feel her. Do you have dreams of your brother? I know he’s not dead, but any distance is hard.”
“No,” he said, his voice far-off. “My old man. He keeps me up at night.”
I watched him for a minute. He had a beautiful back. When he moved, his muscles rippled. His skin was smooth, except for all of the stripes he’d earned in battle. “Would that have anything to do with your medicinal habit?”
“It has everything to do with it,” he said. “It’s not a habit, though. It’s something I choose to do or not.”
“And the headaches, those stem from your old man, too?”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything,” I said. “About you. You should always know your enemies better than your friends.”
He said nothing while he poured the soup out of the pot and into two bowls. I wasn’t sure why I even noticed, but he had given me more.
He set the bowl next to me and then handed me a spoon. He drank his quietly.
We ate in silence, and after we were done, I was warmed and feeling like I could breathe again. I didn’t think it was because of the soup either. It was him. My resistance to him, to this, was tiring because of my heart, but my mind kept up the tug of war.
After getting down off the counter, I could feel his eyes on me as I moved toward the stereo system in the front room. I’d noticed all of the old records he had after Maureen had left with Connolly. I’d listened to a few