Fury and Flame | 3

0 | 5

R I L E Y

The room was uncomfortably quiet.

Arlo, Jake and Jaxon were nowhere to be seen. Finn had stayed at the ONNT building to help Hunt load up the rest of his things from his office. That left Kane and I alone in the sitting room.

I sifted restlessly through a magazine, turning pages without really seeing the pictures on them. So much had happened. Delphinium was gone. Hunt was leaving us. A nefarious new director was coming. The air was pregnant with what was yet to come. And yet here we were, cooped up in the compound.

And another issue quite literally sat before me.

I glanced over the top of my magazine at Kane. He was absorbed in a book, an ankle propped casually over his knee. The afternoon sunlight bathed over his large form, shining in his dark hair and downward-cast eyes. I frowned when I realized I was staring. Ordinarily, I would have taken this opportunity gladly, but the air between us had been tension-filled lately. And not in a good way.

     Dropping my eyes back the magazine in my hands, I made myself to divert my attention to it rather than Kane. Only after another moment or two had passed, I realized my foot was tapping incessantly on the marble floor. Forced myself to be still.

     I shot him another quick glare. He was much better at ignoring me than I was at ignoring him. Something told me he could comfortably go on for much longer. Hours, maybe days if he was stubborn enough.

      Leave, I should leave. I should go to my room and be amongst all my animals. At least they never ignored me. Then again, I could make them do whatever I wanted. Why, oh why, couldn't I do the same thing with men?

      Still, I didn't move a muscle to get up. I tried to make myself, but something in me refused. I wished he'd say something. I wished he wasn't such a stoic, unmoving-

     "Do you want to say something, Riley?"

     My body froze at the sound of his voice and my head snapped up before I even realized what I was doing. He wasn't even facing me, his amber eyes still on his book. Something in me roared for him to look at me.

     What was I going to say? I'd been wanting him to speak for so long that I wasn't sure what to say to him now.

     "You don't trust me anymore, do you?" It had been bothering me for a while now, ever since I'd betrayed them all and given their secrets away to Benny through my thoughts. Some of the others had forgiven me, but Kane...? I couldn't ever tell what he was thinking. And I cared about his opinion the most.

     "I never said that."

     "You don't have to. You can't trust me anymore after what happened with your brother."

      "I still trust you. Before, I was unsure of what to think, but now that I know my brother can read thoughts, the issue is cleared."

      "Then why have this silence, this..." I fumbled for a word, "This ignoring each other? If you still trust me then why aren't things as they were with us?"

     It was then that he closed his book and finally returned my stare. His eyes kept me rooted to my spot. "You make me...unsure. You make me doubt things I thought I knew."

      "What do you mean by that?" The words came out a bit more hoarse than I'd intended.

      "It means..." He looked like he was about to say something and then changed his mind. "It means that I didn't expect you to give our secrets away to Benny. My secrets."