Page 17 of Collision of Winters
Careful, man.
I was going to be careful. Just because I had reacted…too strongly…to his kink revelations last night didn’t mean I was going to treat him differently. He would notice and twist it somehow. My mental war was mine to fight.
But it didn’t help that he let go of his adult filters in my presence. Was he even aware of his behavior changing? Because I was.
“Come here.” I couldn’t shake the image of him curled into a ball on the floor in the doorway, as if he’d been scared to actually enter the room. He should’ve woken me up.
He complied but wouldn’t make eye contact, and that wouldn’t do. When he reached me, two blankets hanging off his shoulders, I stupidly cupped his face in my hands and made him look up.
I should create distance, not close it.
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“Nooo,” he complained. “I don’t want you to think I’m lame.”
“Never have, never will.” I forced myself to take a step back, and I gestured to the bed. “Get in. We can discuss this in the morning.”
He huffed and pouted to himself.
Adorable.
He crawled under the covers and buried his face in the pillows.
“Don’t tell Chris.” His voice was muffled.
I suppressed a sigh and returned to my side of the bed. He had a skewed impression of Chris sometimes. We’d both worried about Kayden. The last thing Chris would do was make fun of him. Yeah, he could be tactless and crass, put his foot in his mouth easier than I could, but he was a good man. Who was currently in Colombia, trying to intercept the men coming for him instead of waiting for them to reach US soil.
He wasn’t alone, I reminded myself. He had the Beckett brothers with him on the ground, not to mention Quin and Payne in command at home.
After getting under the covers myself, I flicked off the light again and let out a breath.
Chris would be fine. As would Kayden.
I lay there on my back, staring up at the ceiling I couldn’t even see, and acknowledged I might be in way over my head.
Kayden wasn’t too difficult to handle. He was too fucking easy—forme. As long as I didn’t let my mixed emotions get in the way.
I knew how to get through to him, and it wasn’t rocket science. It was just patience and understanding, two things he hadn’t experienced enough from others in life.
Even I had failed, simply because work had taken me away for months at a time, removing any progress we’d made while we’d been under the same roof.
I remembered when Quin had brought Kayden home. It hadn’t really made the news. Yaya had taken in countless foster children for as long as I could remember, and Quin had followed in her footsteps. He’d focused on boys with troubled pasts, and often because social workers had noted possible sexuality-related issues. He’d wanted to help them lose their anger and realize there was still safety in this world—and that they weren’t alone. Some kids had stayed for a few months, some for longer.
Early on, I’d sensed that Kayden would either stay with us for a couple months, or he’d stay forever. He’d been such an angry young boy, but it hadn’t taken Quin long to dig underneath it to reveal a wounded puppy.
Quin had eventually adopted him, but even then… To this day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Kayden always had one foot out the door. He was full of contrasts, that one. Desperate to belong, quick to run away.
Quinlan and I wondered if he had a mild form of dyslexia, but Kayden refused to admit it or get answers. There might be more too. We had no idea. We didn’t know if his anger stemmed from an untreated diagnosis or his childhood, where he’d been neglected from a young age.
According to the social worker, Kayden hadn’t been abused in a…traditional sense, and I understood why they’d used that term, but fuck, abuse was abuse in my book. You couldn’t fucking leave a young child on his own for a weekend because you and your drunk hubby had a coupon to an Indian casino.
His case file had been filled with those types of stories, along with bullying, because Kayden had been “too sensitive” and “expressing too much interest in boys his age.”
Under the circumstances, he’d adapted well to a family that gave a fuck, and I wasn’t sure he gave himself enough credit for that. He tended to focus on his issues. When others succeeded in something, he felt like shit for not measuring up.
He’d be the last person to mention that he’d gotten an A in social studies and that he’d taken his high school swim team to Nationals. If Chris dared compliment Kayden on his piano playing, the kid would mumble and walk out of the room.
He’d learned to accept Quin’s affection, and it was certainly reciprocated. Kayden just had his own way of showing it.
