TWISTED FATE (Twisted Path Book 1)

Chapter 40

Becca

The house smells like garlic and rosemary. The roasted chicken is golden and perfect. The side dishes are plated, warm, and ready. The table is set—plates, silverware, folded napkins, even a stupid candle in the center that I'm not sure I should have lit.

A candle, Becca? Really?

It's overkill. Way, way past overkill.

But my hands had moved on their own—lighting the wick, watching the tiny flame flicker and take hold, like some small, fragile thing I was too weak to snuff out. And now it sits there, casting a soft glow over the table, over the room, over me. Like a spotlight I never asked for.

I press my lips together, glaring at it. Maybe I should blow it out. Maybe I should shove the whole thing off the table, hear the ceramic shatter against the floor, just to have something—anything—break that isn't me.

But I don't.

Instead, I stand there, smoothing a napkin for the third time. Then I move a fork slightly to the left, only to nudge it back into place.

It's fine. Everything is fine.

Except it's not. Because no matter how hard I try to steady my hands, no matter how many times I rearrange the darn table settings, my pulse keeps hammering in my ears. Because he's coming.

Nicholas Kline.

I squeeze my eyes shut, swallowing back the wave of nausea that rises in my throat. This dinner? It isn't for me. Somehow, I have to keep remembering that. I'm doing this for Shane. Because the second his mom reached out and called him home for the holidays, something in his beautiful, strong, unshakable eyes cracked.

He needed me to say yes.

I saw it in him. Felt it in the quiet desperation woven between the words he didn't say. And I knew, the same way I always do, that what I was seeing in him wasn't about Nick.

It was about me.

About leaving me behind.

Alone.

Without him to protect me.

So I said yes.

I let Nick come here for Shane. Because I need him to be okay. Because I need him to leave me without looking back. Because the last thing I want—the last thing I can handle—is thinking of Shane spending the holidays worried about me.

But that doesn't change the truth.

Doesn't change the fact that Nicholas Kline is on his way here.

To my home.

To my sanctuary.

To my last remaining safe space.

And even though Nick has never done anything to me directly, he's still his father's son. He's still the offspring of my mother's rapist.

And I can't forget that.

I won't.

It doesn't matter that Nick and I went to the same schools, sat in the same cafeteria, walked the same halls. That we lived in the same town, breathing the same air. Because Nicholas Kline and I have never been the same.

While I spent my whole life learning how to disappear, how to survive in the fringes of our world, Nick spent his living in his father's mansion. Surrounded by his father's money. Benefiting from the monstrosities that made Charles Kline untouchable.

And now?

Now he's coming into my home.

Into my space.