Keaton nudges his head and I watch as Kyrin makes his way up the stairs.
“Tell me your story.” Keaton chokes on the smoke, banging his chest with a fist. Keaton seems to be a lot like King—chill and easy to be around, which is a complete contradiction to what he looks like. With tattoos about as dark as Nate’s and a scowl that could put the fear of God into nonbelievers, I wonder absently why he’s decided I’m worth his time.
I rest my head against the top cushion of the sofa, swallowing my laughter. “Hell nah. I’m not doing that.” I tell him no because I don’t think he can handle it, but there’s a darkness hidden behind Keaton’s eyes. I can see it. He is just good at hiding it. I wonder what his damage is…
“Lilith, did you hear what I said?” I stared blankly at the wall in front of me. Sterile and boring. White is a color that screams to be tainted, which is only fitting since it’s in her office.
“What?” I finally took my eyes away from the wall and onto the person I had no interest in listening to right now. I mean, she was okay. I liked her enough to keep coming to these appointments, but I still didn’t care for her. She knew every single detail about everyone’s lives. People who know too much are walking bombs, ready to explode and exploit at any moment. They have too much control.
“I need to know what you feel when you see this image?” She held up a photograph of someone dead and covered in blood. It looked like a crime photo, if I was guessing by the tape and the way it was shot. There were little numbers laid out around him, and chalk outlining his corpse.
“I don’t know how you want me to answer, Miss K.” My mouth curved into a wicked smile. “Maybe since this is your job and I don’t know what I’m doing here, you could tell me what I should be feeling when I look at that image and we can pretend that that was my answer, hmmm?”
She sighed, resting her arms on the top of her frail thighs before her head bent down and she looked at me over her glasses. “Lilith, although your sets during the show are impeccably unbalanced and you make the organization a lot of money, it’s my job to keep your mental health in check, or at the very least, appear that it is. You know it’s part of your training.”
I reached forward and grabbed the pack of Marlboro reds off her table, taking one skinny cigarette out and running it below my nose. “Did you know that when I was born…” I lit the end and sucked down the poison like it was oxygen. “They told me I was deformed because of my eyes.”
She sat still, unmoving. I noticed when her eyes moved over my shoulder, though, and the exact moment I knew someone was behind me, ready to take me back. I hadn’t conformed. I would be punished. So what does any girl do when she knows she’s about to be locked in a windowless cell with padded walls and her arms knotted in a straitjacket? Well, I sucked more of the poisonous smoke in one deep inhale before pinching it with my thumbnail and flicking it toward her. She cried out, skating back from her chair to swipe it off her clothes as men came barreling in behind me, shoving me face-first onto the ground.
I stare blankly back at Keaton as he holds out his hand, gesturing to the RV.
“I thought I was staying with Rose and Kenan?”
He shakes his head slowly, enough to make his floppy hair graze across his forehead. He needs a haircut—stat. “Change of plan. You stay with us because you’re a new recruit.”
I shrug, standing from my chair and stretching my arms above my head. He probably thinks I’ll fight about it because he assumes Kyrin and I hate each other. It is only half true. Kyrin definitely hates me, but I don’t give a fuck about him. I am well aware of how powerful hate can be, especially if you let it in. It can stay there for months, years. It won’t just stay as hate either; it turns bitter and mean. I’m not interested in any emotions, much less one so exhausting as hate.
“Killian already took your bags to the RV.” Sass glares at Killian over her shoulder, but that only entices the grip he has around her waist to tighten.
He nips at her neck. “Stop being difficult.”
I smile at both of them before following Keaton toward the infamous black RV. I think the tires are bigger than me. I stand beside one and scale up my head to the top.