R I L E Y

The room was uncomfortably quiet.

Arlo, Jake and Jaxon were nowhere to be seen. Finn had stayed at the ONNT building to help Hunt load up the rest of his things from his office. That left Kane and I alone in the sitting room.

I sifted restlessly through a magazine, turning pages without really seeing the pictures on them. So much had happened. Delphinium was gone. Hunt was leaving us. A nefarious new director was coming. The air was pregnant with what was yet to come. And yet here we were, cooped up in the compound.

And another issue quite literally sat before me.

I glanced over the top of my magazine at Kane. He was absorbed in a book, an ankle propped casually over his knee. The afternoon sunlight bathed over his large form, shining in his dark hair and downward-cast eyes. I frowned when I realized I was staring. Ordinarily, I would have taken this opportunity gladly, but the air between us had been tension-filled lately. And not in a good way.

Dropping my eyes back the magazine in my hands, I made myself to divert my attention to it rather than Kane. Only after another moment or two had passed, I realized my foot was tapping incessantly on the marble floor. Forced myself to be still.

I shot him another quick glare. He was much better at ignoring me than I was at ignoring him. Something told me he could comfortably go on for much longer. Hours, maybe days if he was stubborn enough.

Leave, I should leave. I should go to my room and be amongst all my animals. At least they never ignored me. Then again, I could make them do whatever I wanted. Why, oh why, couldn't I do the same thing with men?

Still, I didn't move a muscle to get up. I tried to make myself, but something in me refused. I wished he'd say something. I wished he wasn't such a stoic, unmoving-

"Do you want to say something, Riley?"

My body froze at the sound of his voice and my head snapped up before I even realized what I was doing. He wasn't even facing me, his amber eyes still on his book. Something in me roared for him to look at me.

What was I going to say? I'd been wanting him to speak for so long that I wasn't sure what to say to him now.

"You don't trust me anymore, do you?" It had been bothering me for a while now, ever since I'd betrayed them all and given their secrets away to Benny through my thoughts. Some of the others had forgiven me, but Kane...? I couldn't ever tell what he was thinking. And I cared about his opinion the most.

"I never said that."

"You don't have to. You can't trust me anymore after what happened with your brother."

"I still trust you. Before, I was unsure of what to think, but now that I know my brother can read thoughts, the issue is cleared."

"Then why have this silence, this..." I fumbled for a word, "This ignoring each other? If you still trust me then why aren't things as they were with us?"

It was then that he closed his book and finally returned my stare. His eyes kept me rooted to my spot. "You make me...unsure. You make me doubt things I thought I knew."

"What do you mean by that?" The words came out a bit more hoarse than I'd intended.

"It means..." He looked like he was about to say something and then changed his mind. "It means that I didn't expect you to give our secrets away to Benny. My secrets."

"I didn't have a choice. He said if I didn't do it, he'd hurt the children in my old home. And me. And I was stupid enough to think I could force him to do what I wanted if I did do what he asked."

"You're anything but stupid; my brother knows exactly how to manipulate people, but..." He shook his head. "Why didn't you tell anyone? I know our team was falling apart, but I wouldn't have turned you away."

My voice rose in volume as I became annoyed with his unmovable calmness. "If I told anyone, he would most likely hurt you. Or me. I was doing my best to keep us safe with the only choices I had."

He didn't break my gaze as he said with lethal quiet, "I told you I'd protect you and I intend to keep that promise. He wouldn't have touched a hair on your head."

My heart skipped a beat but I ignored it. "Benny is more powerful than ever now. I don't know the extent of what he can do, but he took Delphinium. Delphinium. If he was able to drag her back there, he can do anything he wants."

"Is that what this anger of yours is really about?"

"I'm not angry," I hissed but then changed my tone when I realized how contradictory I sounded. "I'm not angry. I really did mean what I asked, but..." I flopped back dramatically in my chair and faced the ceiling. "We left her there to die, for God's sake!"

It had been eating away at me ever since Jake had come out of that forest alone. The last time we'd seen her, she was preparing to take on a small army on her own. For us to escape.

He simply watched me. I fought the urge to squirm. When I realized he wasn't going to say anything, I filled the silence. "She fought for us while we ran. If we hadn't left her there, she wouldn't have had to go out the other way with Jake. If we'd stayed, she would be here with us now."

Kane said nothing for such a long time that I thought the conversation was over. Then, he broke it again. "I thought I was doing the right thing. She wanted to make them bleed, I could tell. And she's come such a long way from where she began that I figured she deserved to end them more than anyone else."

"We should've waited," I repeated. "I don't get phased by much. You know that. But the thought that she's back in their clutches when we could have prevented it..." My words trailed off and hung in the air.

"We should have waited. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn't. We can't go back now."

"How can you be so calm?" I nearly exclaimed and then turned when Jake stepped through the front door. Neither of us said anything as he slipped past the room, delivering us a glare that was even more withering than usual. Even though he never expressed it, I knew he wouldn't have been acting like this if she wasn't gone.

When Jake's quiet footsteps had disappeared up the stairs, I repeated more quietly, "How can you be so calm? You're so unmoved by everything and I don't understand why."

"Not everything."

My eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" He didn't answer. "Are you bringing back the conversation of what happened between me and your brother?" I didn't care if he meant something else. Anger was overtaking me. At least it was better than guilt. At least he was paying attention to me now.

"I'd rather not talk about my brother anymore."

The calmer he got, the more angry I became. Kane was shutting down again, the way he had when he first learned about what I'd done. He was doing it to protect himself, but from what? Me? His emotions?

"Fine with me." I stood up from my chair and began to storm up the stairs.

I hated how he didn't let me in. I hated how calm and collected he was while I was a raging storm in comparison. I hated how he made me feel so strongly about him.

Closing my door behind me, I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Anger, guilt, fear, sadness, I felt it all. I went through emotions so intensely that it alarmed me sometimes. They raged inside me, burned like a flame. I burned too much, too fast.

Already, I felt bad for snapping at Kane downstairs. I knew that he began to recede back into his quiet existence once I began to pry at the walls he'd built up. He already had trust issues to begin with and learning about me conspiring with his brother certainty hadn't helped.

We were very alike, when it came down to it. Trust issues, hiding things, never wanting to show anything. The only difference was that he was quiet and distant to prevent any more losses and I was a storm to push people away before they got too close to see what was inside.

But it was too late. He'd already seen what lay inside me. And he'd never run from it. So why had I just run from him?

I closed my eyes and listened to the chattering and rustling sounds of my animals in their cages, wishing for once, that I could be anyone else.