Page 42 of Things We Burn

Though it hopefully merged with the music, I was louder than I’d expected.

Kane’s hand went to my mouth, lightly covering it so he wasn’t completely silencing me.

He pounded hard, relentlessly, hot breath against my neck.

My body met each of his thrusts, building up to an impossible crescendo.

I tasted the beer on my tongue, I breathed in the heady smells of the bar, of Kane’s scent mixed in with them. I let myself go, awash in sensation.

Kane was a wild animal, slamming into me.

Then I was gone, flying through the air, riding a wave of complete pleasure. In the hallway of a dive bar, with Kane fucking me against a wall, I felt myself fall.

For Kane.

Eight

After a dizzying ridethrough the city, our bodies still sticky with the sweat from earlier—the mere thought of what I’d done made my toes curl—we were tangled up in my bed, on our sides, facing each other.

I would have usually showered after coming home, to get the heat of the kitchen off me, the specific scent of it. But now it was mixed with Kane, me, us. I wanted to imprint that into my sheets.

Though it was so late it could be classed as ‘early,’ I still wasn’t ready to sleep. I was ready to dive deeper into this. Into Kane.

“Why do you do this?” I asked, tracing the scars on his body, a roadmap of the injuries, the evidence of his brushes with death. The scar on his lip—from hitting a half pipe the wrong way when training for the Winter Olympics in New Zealand. The jagged mark on his bicep—from tearing layers of skin almost down to the bone when he hit the concrete while riding BMX.

Though I couldn’t see it, I knew there was an ugly mar on his calf from almost being torn to pieces when his dirt bike landed on him after coming down wrong.

The scars made up a story of what he’d survived, sure. But they also taunted me with the fact that he danced with death for a living.

I’d only known him for a short time, but the idea of this earth spinning without Kane Rhodes walking on it made my skin prickle with sheer panic.

“Why do you do things with such high stakes?” I asked him, trying to swallow that terror.

He continued drawing circles on my navel for a few seconds before replying. “I had a shitty childhood,” he said to my belly button. “A really shitty childhood. Cliché, which fucking sucks that the experience is so common, but such is the world. Deadbeat dad. Mom who was trying to make ends meet with two boys and not even a high school diploma. She did what she had to do, kept thinking the next man who came along would be the one. The one to save us.” He looked up at me. “My mom was, and still is, a romantic, you see.” He sucked his teeth. “Romantic love is her top-tier, a man to worship her. Further up than her sons’ well-being.”

I ground my teeth. Even though there didn’t seem to be resentment in his tone, I instantly bristled toward his mother. No one would ever describe me as maternal, but even I knew that children came before romantic love. Keeping children safe came first. Baby Kane had deserved unconditional love, and I hated that he didn’t have that.

Not knowing my interior thoughts, Kane kept speaking. “She thought it’d happen. A happily ever after, someone would save her, save us.” He shook his head, a small, sad smile on his face. “The world quickly showed her the reality. Not every boyfriend was bad. Some were okay. Nice even. Somehow, the nice ones lasted the least amount of time. And somehow, she married the worst of them all.”

Though his tone was light-hearted, I could feel the change in him, the tension in his body.

“Knox, my brother, knew there was something wrong about him from the start, even though he went out of his way to talk to us, made an effort.” Kane’s palm crept up to my chest, though not a sexual touch. No, he laid his tattooed hand over my heart. “Knox tried to warn my mom off, warn me off. I guess I was kind of a romantic too. I was waiting for the guy to take over, take care of my mom and show us how to be men. Thought we’d found him. It wasn’t until after they got married that he changed, showed us who he really was.”

Kane sucked in a long breath. Deep, as if he were trying to gulp in the air he couldn’t get while drowning in the memory.

“Knox protected me from the worst of it,” His easy tone vanished, pain so deep in his words that I could feel the point of each letter. “He offered himself up when it became clear that he married my mother not because he wanted her, but because he wanted … us.”

When the realization of what he was saying hit me, I tasted bile. My stomach lurched with the knowledge of what Kane meant.

This man, this monster, had married Kane’s mother to get close to two small boys.

His eyes were clear and strong, remaining glued to mine. I forced myself not to let my horror and pain show on my face. “That fucked with me, for a long fucking time. Not only did I not know how to be a man, I felt like Icouldn’tbe because of what happened to me. So I chased down every single thing I could find that made me look more masculine. I rode dirt bikes, I got in fistfights, I raced cars. And doing that shit when you’re a dumb kid full of pain and unhealed trauma is the quickest way to get yourself arrested. So I did. Coupl’a times.”

His eyes bounced between mine, gauging something. I didn’t know what, I was still trying to digest the horrific information he’d served up.

“One night, I was drunk. Reliving shit that had happened. I was angry. Jesus, it was like a dragon was inside me. Like I was a dragon. It was bursting out of me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Some guy bumped into me. Said something smart. That was it. His sin. Got in my space, touched me, made me feel like less of a man. So I did what I thought would make it so no one could ever confuse me for any kind of victim again. I beat him half to death.”

The silence in the room after that was oppressive. Even more oppressive than when he talked about the abuse. I could feel it. His shame. Guilt. He was coated in it.

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