some work. Work would calm him down. But before he could take another step, Grace’s voice interrupted him.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
It was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment, but letting his irritation show only served to increase people’s curiosity. Kyle returned to the table, telling himself to make sure bland Kyle was in fine form tonight. “Yes, of course.”
As he droned on about foreign markets, boring even himself, Grace retrieved a pen and the pad of paper for grocery lists. She shoveled eggs into her mouth and scribbled intently until he was done with his monologue.
She pushed the paper across to him, and he was forced to look into her amused smile for a moment. She was like a tractor beam with that smile, all pretty, cheerful goodness. He could not let that get to him.
He looked down at the paper. It was a drawing, no, a caricature of him. She’d overemphasized his square jaw, drawn little money signs over his head, and in the background was a quick sketch of her with z’s filling a thought bubble above her head.
He didn’t want to smile, didn’t want to find it funny. Hell, it was funny, and the smile won over the impassive expression he’d been working so hard to keep.
“Is that a little glimpse of a sense of humor?” Grace feigned shock. Or maybe it wasn’t so much feigned as exaggerated. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was shocked.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He lifted a bite of egg to his mouth, trying to tamp down the amusement, the...lightness Grace seemed to infuse the room with.
She was a temporary visitor. This wouldn’t become normal. He wouldn’t let her so effortlessly invade his carefully erected protections.
No smiles, no jokes, no long, alluring legs could make him forget who he was. What he was. His soul was empty, and there was no chance of his risking filling it again.
At least he kept telling himself that, even as he folded up the drawing and put it in his pocket.
* * *
THE VOICES WERE LOUD. So damn loud, but then they always were. Kyle heard the sounds of crashing glass mixed with screams. Darkness morphed into the tiny room of a trailer and screams formed words.
“You stupid slut. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Who do you think you are, you whore?” A thud pounded against Kyle’s bedroom wall. He closed his eyes, turned his music louder.
“You and your two-inch dick have screwed every willing meth addict in this damn place.” More crashing glass. A scream.
“I’m going to kill you. This time I’m really going to kill you.”
Kyle swallowed down the bile that rose to his throat. How many times had he heard that? Too many to count, but the sound of angry footsteps heading toward where he knew Dad kept at least two guns, loaded, struck real fear through him.
He was sick and wobbly, but he pitched to the door and stepped into the hall. He saw his father, a big, thick tree trunk of a man, weaving this way and that, drunk or high or both. Kyle had seen him this way before, but not with-it enough to have murder in his expression. Until now.
Something glass knocked into his father’s skull, splattering glass and blood everywhere.
“You bitch!” his father howled, turning back to the front of the trailer. Even though blood dripped down his neck, he stalked back to where Kyle knew Mom was waiting.
Not sure who he was trying to save, if anyone, Kyle scrambled for his parents’ bedroom. He fumbled with a drawer, pulled out the gun with his shaking hands.
End it, his mind whispered. End it. Fear was replaced by something steely and steady in his gut. His hands stopped shaking and his feet led him to the living room. There was no shock in seeing his father’s hands around his mother’s neck as her legs flailed and her eyes bulged.
Kyle walked right up to his father and pressed the gun in his back. “Stop.” His voice wasn’t steady, wasn’t even a command, and his father looked over his shoulder at him and the gun with a sneer.
“You wouldn’t shoot me, you pansy-ass piece of shit.” Kyle jumped back as his father’s hands dropped from his mother’s neck and reached for him.
“Try me.” He held the gun steady, trained on his father’s head. He wanted this. He wanted to pull the trigger and end everything once and for all.
The sound of sirens stopped him and the world went black.
When Kyle woke up from the nightmare, he flipped on every light in his room. He sucked in a breath, let it out slowly. As nightmares went, it was tame enough. Nothing more than the truth. Nothing as jarring as when the dreams turned to fiction and he pulled the trigger. Killing his father and feeling immense satisfaction in it.
Kyle swallowed down the nausea rushing up his throat. Even though his legs were weak, he purposefully strode to his office. He flipped on every light there, too.
His hands shook, but he brought the computer to life and began to type a memo to Leah, Jacob’s go-to electrician.
He worked for an hour before he was moderately confident the dream wouldn’t return. Between his five-mile run and the two hours of sleep he’d managed before the dream, surely he’d be exhausted enough to sleep soundly now.
He shut down the computer and turned off the lights, but when he stepped into the hallway he heard a thud come from down the hall. From Grace’s room.
Worry leaped to action, but reasonable Kyle kept it tamped down as he slowly made his way down the hall. Another thump was followed by a crash. Kyle jogged the last few strides and knocked on Grace’s door, his heart beating too fast for comfort. “Grace?”
She mumbled something, there was another thump, and then she opened the door, light from her room pouring into the hallway. She looked disheveled by sleep, her hair a tangled mess, her too-thin tank top’s straps hanging off her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” Since he was doing everything in his power not to look at her bare shoulders or below, he studied her face. She looked pale, and she was shaking. Kyle frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She hugged herself and shook her head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Sit,” Kyle ordered, pointing to the bed. He noticed her easel was upended and deduced that it had been the source of the crash. He also saw a half-empty water bottle on the floor, picked it up and shoved it at her. “Take a drink.”
Surprisingly, she obeyed by taking a long, loud gulp. Because her damn shirt was practically see-through, he pulled the coverlet tangled at the end of the bed over her shoulders. “What happened?”
“I had a dream. That’s all. It woke me up.” She was still pale, shaking, lost. Since he knew the feeling all too well, he sank onto the bed next to her. Reminding himself it was just a friendly gesture, he put his hand on hers.
“What happened over there?”
“I was trying to get to the light, but I tripped.” She let out a loud shaky breath. “And it hurt like a bitch,” she squeaked, obviously losing the battle with tears.
He’d been there a few times himself. So he patted her hand and let her cry, one part of his brain telling him to comfort her, the other telling him to run away. Instead, he was frozen. Offering half comfort.
When she was breathing almost evenly again she pulled her hand away and mopped up her tears with the backs of her hands. “I guess bad things have a way of sticking with your subconscious.”
As he well knew. What he didn’t know was what to say. Actually, he did know what to say; words of commiseration fumbled through his brain. “Yes, they do.”
“If I wasn’t loud enough to wake Jacob, you must have been awake already. Bad dreams, too?”
She was close and smelled like