Kaleb sat up quickly, turning three shades of green before grasping the blanket tightly around his waist, leaping up from the couch, and making a run for the door.
I looked up at Michael. “Okay.”
We walked up the stairs as I tried to ignore the sound of retching coming from the downstairs bathroom, glad I’d skipped breakfast. “Great first impression.”
“He’s really not that bad.” Michael’s blinds were open and sunshine filled his room. “That’s not true. He’s worse than this sometimes.”
“I meant me, not him. You told him my name, and he ran to the bathroom to throw up. You don’t have to explain his behavior. Who am I to judge?”
“In the past six months I’ve watched him go from nice guy to hard-ass.” Michael sat down in his desk chair and put his head in his hands. “It was bad enough when Liam died, but then his mom …”
“Got sick,” I supplied.
“It was more than that.” He hesitated before raising his head. “After Liam died, she … tried to kill herself.”
I swallowed. Really hard. “Wow.”
“Luckily, she didn’t succeed. Grace has been in a coma ever since. For a while she had private nurses around the clock. Landers allowed her to stay at the Hourglass house.”
“That’s why Kaleb stayed,” I said, finally understanding why he would remain in the same house with the man he suspected of killing his father. “To watch out for his mom.”
“Right.” Michael’s face was troubled. “But her doctor suggested a long-term care facility. She’s being moved today.”
“That sucks.” I knew way too much about long-term care facilities. I wondered if Kaleb did. If he knew what he’d have to deal with when he visited.
“That sucks,” he agreed. “Kaleb used to be so different, so focused. He was a champion swimmer. The pool you saw at the Hourglass was put in for him.”
That explained the swimmer’s body, especially the shoulders. And the six-pack.
Eight-pack.
My edit button worked for once, and I kept my mouth shut. I pulled myself up to sit on the desk, the square edge scraping against my jeans. “You never told me what his ability is. Can you?” “I might as well,” he said, settling back in his chair. “He won’t. Do you know what an empath is?”
“I know what empathy is.”
Michael picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser end rhythmically on his desk. “There’s a difference. An empath is supernaturally in tune with other people, sometimes whether he wants to be or not. Empaths aren’t held by time or space, so they can feel the emotions of anyone, anywhere, in any time. But Kaleb mostly feels the emotions of people he would otherwise connect with in some way. He can read me because he’s like my brother.”
“Why did he call Ava ‘the Shining’?”
“Have you read the book?”
“No, but I’ve read about it, and the movie.” I avoided horror, especially horror that involved ghosts and psychopaths. I was exceedingly grateful for the Internet, the easily accessible plot synopsis, and the fact that it allowed me to consume popular culture in an informed but distanced way. “Ava doesn’t keep an ax in her room or write on doors with lipstick, does she?”
He gave me a look. “Kaleb has a thing about nicknames. He claims Ava’s mind is just as fractured as the dad in the book, and that she’s just as resentful of authority. She tends to do whatever she wants to do whenever she wants to do it.”
“Are all Kaleb’s nicknames that involved?”
“No. He just really has a problem with Ava. Maybe because of the way she is around me.”
“Um … Kaleb’s going to stop blowing groceries anytime now, so maybe we should talk about him while he’s not in the room?” I suggested. I didn’t want to discuss the competition.“True.” He dropped the pencil on top of his desk. “I think the reason he’s so tough on the outside is because he’s so open on the inside. Everything about him—the way he looks, the way he dresses—is intentional. He tries to keep his distance from people because if he can he doesn’t have to feel what they feel. What happened to his dad was bad enough. Dealing with his mom’s breakdown almost killed him.”
“Is he able to feel her emotions now?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not since the suicide attempt. He blames himself, says he never saw it coming.”
My heart broke for Kaleb. His father might be dead, but his mother was alive, and he couldn’t reach her. At least he didn’t have to be inside his mom’s crazy. Seeing it from the outside had to be hard enough.
“Part of his problem is that he can’t always identify why people feel the way they do. He can misread emotions—think they’re directed at him and then find out they were toward someone else,” Michael said, rolling the pencil between his palm and the desk. “He told me once the reason he loves to swim is because emotions don’t pass through water. It’s one place he can escape.”
I’d want a pool in my backyard, too. “Why did he freak out when you introduced us? I thought he knew about me.”
“He did. The fact that you’re here with me confirms you’re on board to save Liam.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Michael held a finger up to his lips. Kaleb walked through the open doorway, shielding his eyes from the sun coming in the window.
“You look better,” Michael said, standing to close the blinds.
A lot better. He’d showered and put on clean clothes. The improvement in smell alone was stellar. He looked back and forth between the two of us, his gaze lingering on me.
It made me feel warm.
“Sorry about downstairs. I’m not exactly in my right mind. Which I don’t understand,” he said, looking back at Michael, “because I swear I only drank two beers.”
Michael raised his eyebrows, saying nothing, and sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Swear,” Kaleb insisted in his deep, rough voice. “Do you remember … um, who I was with when you found me?”
“Tall girl, dark hair, crazy eyes. She didn’t seem to want to let you leave.”
“Amy. No, Ainsley.”
“New girlfriend?” Michael asked.
“No.” Kaleb’s gaze slid over to me.
“Random hookup?”
“Mike. A lady is present.”
“She might as well get to know the real you.” Michael shrugged.
“I don’t appreciate what that implies,” Kaleb said through gritted teeth.
“You’ll get over it.” Michael reached out to grab me by my sleeve and pulled me over to the bed to sit beside him. He pointed to the empty desk chair, then back to Kaleb. “Sit.”
Kaleb sat.
But he wasn’t happy about it.
I watched as his face transformed from the wide smile into something fierce and closed off. His eyes were even more beautiful up close, lending some delicacy to his face, but he still wasn’t a guy I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Michael said Kaleb was a hard-ass, but I didn’t think that began to cover it.
He was just plain scary.