Page 18 of Scapegoat

“You get me that sundae,” I said with a smile. “You can have any damn thing you want.”

Chapter 12

Xavier

I loved Kaia when she looked like this. Cheeks flushed, hair wild, her eyes shining bright as stars as she smiled, really smiled. She didn’t know what all her smiles looked like, but I’d studied them for long enough to know. The half smiles and quarter ones, the small ones she dared to let her lips form when her damn mother wasn’t looking. The ones that felt like they lit up my damn soul, that either happened without her realising, before she could smother that feeling, or were secret ones that she let herself show when she thought all the attention was on someone else.

Primarily on her damn sister.

But this version of Kaia’s smile? All teeth and ruby red lips? I would do just about anything to see that smile. So we all piled into the car, ditching the party and heading for Granville. As soon as we arrived at the truck stop, I was out, racing my brothers to get around to her side of the car, to open the door and seize my prize.

Kai.

She grinned even wider as I grabbed her around the waist and swirled her around as I pulled her from the backseat.

My girl.

As we’d got older, as the end of school had drawn near, I’d started to get a feeling that things were slipping away from me. That the end of summer would result in more than us just finding our place in the pack, but that we would be leaving as much behind as we gained. Let me hold onto this, I thought as I set her down on her feet, then took her hand. Let me keep this.

“Well, well, if it’s not the fine young men of Stanthorpe,” Melva said, looking us up and down. “And their fair lady.” She winked at Kai, then grabbed her well-thumbed order pad. “So what can I get you this evening.”

“Four of your finest triple chocolate sundaes,” I said, with a grin.

“With extra cream and chocolate shavings?” she asked, even though her look made clear she didn’t need to. We always ordered the same thing.

“Kai?” I stared at her, could barely stop doing that normally, but it was twice as bad now. She was close now, all I had to do was just reach out… And she seemed to sense there was some subtext there, meeting my gaze with a shy smile, then nodding.

“Yeah, that would be amazing thanks, Melva.”

“Right you are,” the woman said, moving to grab her ice cream scoop and the glass sundae servers. She went to work, putting our orders together as we found a booth out the back.

The place was mostly empty at this time of day. Locals flooded in for the main meal times of the day, but now, this late in the evening, Melva kept the place open for the drivers passing through, the truckies pulling up stumps for the day and settling into the capacious car park at the back, crawling into their sleepers once they’d had a hot meal. I often wondered at the long hours she put in, but she always shrugged that off.

“Home is where you make it,” she’d said when I’d asked her direct. “And this is mine. The truckies, those passing through, some of them are as familiar as immediate family, others are more like those distant second cousins you’ve only heard about, but they’re family just the same.” She’d winked at me and my brothers. “Just like you lot.”

“There you go.” Glass dishes of chocolate ice cream, dripping with hot chocolate fudge sauce, cream, chocolate shavings and a drizzle of Nutella. “That’s a diabetic coma in the making,” Melva said with a shake of her head. “Oh, to be young again. Will there be anything else?”

I shook my head and thanked her for the desserts before handing over some money. But when she turned away, that just left this.

I was dimly aware of my brothers the same way you could say you sensed the sun on your skin or the sound of the rain. It was a background thing, not important: not compared to her. I picked up the long-handled spoon on my sundae dish, because it was that or grab her. Kai. My girl, my love, the feature of all my fevered dreams and fantasies, I couldn’t help but shoot her a sidelong look. And when I did, she caught me, because she was doing the same. She snorted then, busted along with me, and the two of us just stared at each other for a second before Jay said, “This shit is amazing.”

“It is,” I agreed with my whole heart, barely able to feel my fingers as I scooped up a mouthful of ice cream and then offered it to her. Kai’s brows creased slightly as she looked at it, then she darted forward, sucking the ice cream from the spoon. Those lips, the way her tongue flicked over them, that small gasp of pleasure: I ate it all up with far more appetite than I had for food.

“Stop with the creeper staring,” Jay said with a nudge to my ribs. “Kai knows we’re into her now, so you don’t need to freak her out.”

“Do I?” She licked her own spoon clean before looking at the rest of us. “Xavier staring isn’t creepy, not to me. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’ve had enough.”

“You want our attention?” I said, aware of the need bleeding into my voice, but this time I didn’t stop it. “You’ve got it, beautiful. Every moment of every day.”

“I’ll fucking never blink again if that’s what you need, Kai,” Jayden said. “But…” He shifted restlessly, which warned me I wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “We’ll do anything you want, but how far did you want to go?”

All of that rebellious, vital energy she’d had when Jay was fighting those guys shone in her eyes as she smiled around her spoon. It seemed like some particularly painful form of flirting, because I was imagining something else between those lips, but then she set the utensil down.

“What’re you offering?” There was challenge in her voice, something that had the wolf in me standing up and taking notice straight away. “We’re only supposed to go so far before the choos—”

“Everything.” That wasn’t smart or wise and was definitely not what the dads had advised when they ‘had the talk’ with us last night. I’d nodded along as they told us about this and that, made it look like I was being their normal dutiful son, but they were going to have to understand, everything changed when it came to Kai. The rules went out the window and so did my good sense, replaced by my emotions.

I loved her. I knew that back when we were younger, but there’s a special kind of love that hits you when you’re just making that shift between man and boy. Your defences aren’t strong enough to beat love back, train it into a socially acceptable shape. All I knew was everything in me needed her, and if there was anything she wanted from me that I could give her, I would.

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