Page 234

—Mathias

I stare at the signature, then at the sewing machine gleaming under the living room light, then back at the card. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Kamden blinks at me, utterly bewildered. “Mathias?”

“Yes.”

“The man from yesterday?” He frowns, then adds, “The serious one, not the other one.”

I can’t hold back my amused grunt at “not the other one.” I shake my head and tell him, “Yeah, sweetheart.”

He looks toward the machine again, then back at me, struggling to reconcile the two. “But…”

I know. I understand the confusion. Literally just yesterday, Mathias walked into the safe house—cold-eyed and assessing—to determine whether Kamden was a threat worth eliminating. Now he’s sent a sewing machine that probably costs more than some used cars, judging by Kamden’s stunned reaction.

I guess it’s on brand for Mathias. Nothing sentimental enough to require discussing an emotion. Nothing that says, “I’m sorry I ordered your murder.” And thankfully, nothing as horrifyingly vulnerable as “Welcome to the family.”

Just “Congratulations.” Here is several thousand dollars’ worth of machinery. Never speak of this again.

Kamden, still confused, asks, “How did he even know about my scholarship…? I’m not even signed up as a student yet.”

“He’s omniscient,” I state.

Kamden huffs, but I see that little tilt of his lips.

He opens his mouth to retort, then something in his expression shutters all of a sudden. His eyes go glassy, a glaze forming over the blue. The smile drains away, and he just sort of… shuts down.

Shoulders hunching, head tilting down into his chest. A thin, empty quiet leaks into the room.

I kneel across from him and rest a hand on his knee. “Hey. What is it?”

He blinks fast a few times, like he’s trying to clear an error message off a screen. “Nothing. I’m… It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not.” My voice is harder than I mean it to be, and I try to soften it. “Kammie. You can tell me.”

He inhales, the sound loud and harsh in his throat. “I know I got the scholarship,” he says, voice so flat it feels like a dare. “But I’ll… I’ll probably never go.”

The fuck?

I stare at him, off-balance.

I was braced for tears, maybe, or some panicked spiral, but not this bleak certainty.

“Why wouldn’t you go?”

He shrugs, and the motion is so small it barely moves his shirt. He doesn’t look at me. “It’s just a thing. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” I snap. “Why wouldn’t you go? You love design.”

He bites down on the edge of his thumb, worrying the skin until it turns white. Rabbit slips from his lap; he doesn’t even notice.

“You’re going to that college,” I say, as close to a command as I get. “You know that, right?”

He shakes his head once, a flicker of movement. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have the money.” A thousand responses jostle in my throat, but I let him finish. He draws his knees up, wrapping his skinny arms around his legs. “The money I saved from work is gone. All of it. My mom took it. That’s why I ran away, remember?” He presses his forehead to the hem of his jeans and sucks in another shuddering breath.