Page 79 of Piece You Saved

“Why are you noticing that now?” I ask.

“I’ve been spending more time with Kade,” she says, as if it makes perfect sense.

I suppose it does,I think to myself as I choke back my laughter. “Kade does have that effect on you.”

She’s silent for a beat. “What about Dariel? What kind of effect does he have?”

I don’t even have to think about my answer. “That everything, no matter how terrible, is going to be okay in the end. He won’t let it be any other way.”

CHAPTER 21

SAIGE

Istay with Aden for the rest of the day, even though he spends more time sleeping than I do.

Although I want to ask how he threw a stone and saved Kade’s and Dariel’s lives—a question that’s been festering in my mind since Kade told me—I don’t. I hold on to Aden, grateful he’s alive to hold on to. I help him stay human; he helps me stay sane, and we ground each other.

Aden wakes snarling.

As if Kade knew it would happen, he appears in the doorway, his shoulders tense, ready to lunge into the room and save me.

He doesn’t need to save me, and I think if he were to try, Aden could die.

I meet his watchful gray stare and cling tighter to Aden. When Aden falls back asleep, Kade nods, his shoulders relax, and he goes back downstairs.

I’m almost positive he and Dariel are working on some plan to hunt Rylan, a plan I should be a part of. Iwantto be a part of it, but Aden needs me more, so I stay with him.

Early the next morning, Aden is snoring softly beside me. I’m not sure what compels me to, but when I see Dariel walk past Aden’s bedroom to get to his, I get out of bed and follow.

He’s back in the smart white shirt and black pants I’m used to seeing him in. The smart business attire. Almost identical to what Leo was wearing.

Next time, it will be his body you find.

I shake my head to clear the disturbing thought away before it has time to sink deep enough to leave a permanent scar. I have more than enough emotional, mental, and physical scars. I don’t want or need any more.

I’m still not sure what I’m even doing standing in the doorway of his sparse white bedroom, watching him reach for his top dresser drawer.

“You wanted something,” he says with his back to me.

I jump. He’d given no indication he knew I was even here. But I clear my throat, because I think I know why I am here, and say, “I wanted to apologize.”

“What for?” He tugs out a black t-shirt. After tossing the shirt on a bed with crisp white sheets he’s made with surgical precision, he nudges the drawer closed. He reaches for another drawer, the next one down, and pulls out a pair of black sweats.

I tilt my head, chewing the inside of my cheek as I watch him. He wore a pair to the hospital, and I assumed they belonged to Kade or Aden. I’d started to think he lived, slept, and breathed in tailored shirts and dress pants. Like Rylan.

“If I’d taken the money you offered at the Cerberus and gone, none of this would have happened. Leo would—”

“Have pissed someone else off until they ripped out his throat,” he interrupts, turning to face me. “Leandro has—had—a remarkable gift for making people want to kill him.”

Dariel’s emerald-green eyes are bleak. He doesn’t have bags darkening his deep olive skin, but he doesn’t need them. There’s a worn look about him—a bone-deep exhaustion I’ve seen before. Grief. After Mom’s funeral, Dad looked the same. Like he was in a different world to the rest of us. A gray, muted, and cold one.

He hasn’t slept, that much is clear, or even bathed. He must have dressed at some point yesterday and gone back out to the garden. To do what, I have no clue, but brown dirt dusts his knees and sits under his nails.

He buried his brother yesterday. Leo hurt him so deeply that the hurt drove Dariel away from his family and his home. But Dariel still loved his brother. You don’t grieve this deeply unless you also loved.

“Even you?” I ask quietly.

His expression is as flat as his response. “Even me.”

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