Page 34 of The Infinite Light of Dust

I kept quiet, processing what he’d said. He was right, and it was ignorant of me to assume that addiction had any tie to someone’s intelligence. I still felt like it could never happen to me, that I wouldn’t allow it to, that I could somehow control it, but I was also aware that that was an arrogant and untrue thought to have, so for once, I kept it inside. Blood ran thicker than water, and her blood ran through my veins. My mom had tried to quiet her ghosts by numbing them, and that certainly hadn’t worked. The wreckage she’d left behind should be lesson enough for me.

“You’re right,” I told him, pressing my chest closer to his. I tucked my chin in and rested my forehead in the space between his jawline and collarbone. His skin was so warm, so full of comfort.

“Don’t do it again, okay?” Kael’s hands moved to my back and he ran his palms up and down, pushing under the sweatshirt I was wearing and touching my bare skin. I sighed, instantly relaxing, and my brain slowed down with every breath I took.

“Okay,” I agreed, hoping that I meant it.

Chapter Eighteen

Kael

Karina fell asleep on my lap, likely from indulging in afternoon tequila shots. I had so much on my mind that it was impossible to consider even closing my eyes. I tried it and heard her father’s voice, begging me to take her with me to Atlanta. I could still smell the coffee on his breath as I blinked away the thought. How the fuck was I going to bring this up to her? We were in such a good place and the last thing I wanted to do was fuck that up, but her staying here, if it was as bad as her dad made it seem, wasn’t safe.

My life had gone from so slow and repetitive, being concerned only for my ma and my sister, to a web of chaos. Even Phillips, the unstable yet stable ticking time bomb, had become a direct threat to the people I loved. It was hard to reconcile that he was now on the other side, the enemies’ side, as demonstrated by him pulling a gun out in front of Karina. I had spent years of my life trying to save his, to keep him alive, and now just wanted him to disappear, even if that meant death.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I dipped my hand in and silenced it, then gently moved Karina’s sleeping body to lean against the pillows on her couch. Her eyes moved behind her lids but they didn’t open. Her lips parted slightly, and she made a humming noise. I covered her with the blanket from the back of the couch and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was my ma. I made my way back to Karina’s room and closed the door behind me before I called her back.

“Hey, Ma, sorry I missed your call,” I said, sitting on Karina’s unmade bed.

“You’ve been missing my calls a hell of a lot lately,” she told me. I could practically see her eyes rolling back in her head as she spoke. “How are you? What’s been going on?”

“Not much,” I lied through my damn teeth. “Getting ready for my discharge and move. Same old, same old. How are you? How’s Tay? I haven’t talked to her in a while either.”

Outside of a few texts here and there, I had barely spoken to my sister. I guess I had been more distracted than I realized.

“She’s either at school or studying for school.” She paused and I imagined my sister the last time I saw her, around her birthday, and smiled, remembering her kicking my ass in some trivia game she was obsessed with. Fucking genius; thank god one of us was.

“She got herself a tutoring job. Pays well and you know she loves to keep her face in a book.” My ma’s voice cut off at the end, bursting into a fit of coughing.

“You still have that cough? It’s been what? Months?”

“Oh hush. It went away for a while, it just came back,” she told me. “When are you coming to visit? It’s been over a year and you’re only a couple of hours away. I haven’t seen my son since you’ve been home from Afghanistan.” I could hear the sadness in my ma’s voice, the longing to see me. I didn’t have an excuse, except the one I couldn’t say to her.

“Uh . . . I’m sorry. I’ll—”

“Kael? Are you still here?” Karina’s voice filled the hallway and the room.

“Who’s that? Is that a woman?” my mom asked.Fuck me.

“Yeah, it is . . . I’m in here,” I called to Karina.

“Oh, thank goodness. I woke up and thought you left!” Karina’s cheeks were red and her eyes were wild with fear.

I dropped my hand with the phone in it and reached for her. “I’m here, I came in here to call my ma back. You were only asleep for a few minutes,” I told her.

She looked down at my phone and I picked it back up, realizing my mom was still on the line and that I should have muted the phone or hung up.

“Kael, are you seeing someone? Who is that?” my mom asked three times in a row.

She wasn’t the nosy type, but I’m sure my ma, who had never, ever seen me so much as in the same room as a woman, was shocked to say the least.

“No. I mean, yeah. I am. Sorry, I’ll call you back. Love you.” I hung up and tossed my phone on the bed like it was on fire.

“What on earth was that about?” Karina’s brows bunched together. Her expression was a mix of skepticism and curiosity. She seemed slightly amused at my obvious panic.

I felt like a thirteen-year-old boy hiding a girl from his mother.

“I don’t know. I never talk to her about girls.” The heat was spreading across my face and uncomfortably down my neck.

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