The Sinclair Brothers ✔️

(58) Suspicious Looking Government Dudes

"Slow down."

She walked faster.

"Kennah."

They were already late.

"Makennah!" Theo yelled, grabbing her arm and yanking her to a screeching halt. His worried expression broke the barrier that she built up around herself in the last hour. His large hands cupped her shoulders gently but firmly. He held her close to him and stared her in the eyes with a worried expression, waiting for her explosion or her meltdown or her crying or her anything...anything other than silence and avoidance. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

She braced her hands on his chest to stabilize herself in her tall heels that she wasn't quite accustomed to yet. She opened her mouth to answer, but she found out she didn't actually have any words to say.

Theo's frustration became glaring evident the longer she stood there gaping like a fish. "Are...are you mad? Are you sad? Are you so filled with hatred that you can't speak? Do you not know how you feel?" He stammered over his words while holding her tighter, willing her to speak or breathe or do something.

For his sake - and not her own - Makennah attempted to formulate a few words to soothe his frustration. "I...I'm fine."

In the middle of the parking lot, Theo's hands lifted off of her shoulders and moved to the sides of her face. He cupped her cheeks and gently rubbed his thumbs over her smooth skin. He lifted her face so that she was forced to look him in the eyes. She couldn't remember the last time he held her so sweetly. And she couldn't remember the last time someone ever cared about her this much.

It scared her.

It nearly broke her when Theo bent his head and planted a feathery light kiss on her puckered lips. The emotions that she couldn't decipher boiled to the surface. But Theo pulled away, the heat died down, and the roiling emotions simmered. "You don't have to be okay. It's okay not to be okay. You just told your mom you pretty much don't want her to be your mom anymore."

Carefully, she backed away and forced Theo's hands to fall back to his side. She shrugged and tucked her hair behind one ear. "It's not like I haven't told her that before."

Theo recognized that this conversation was over and plugged his fists deep into his pockets. "Not legally. With a lawyer."

She propped her fists up on her hips. Now she was just annoyed. "Last time I saw her, I told her to rot in hell and I meant it. I'm fine."

-------------------------------------------------------

She wasn't fine.

Not because of the lawyer or her mom or the fact she had to visit her mom in prison. It wasn't because Theo kept hovering, expecting and waiting for her to break down at any moment. It wasn't because she was back in a funeral home again for the thousandth time.

Makennah wasn't fine because Elizabeth Rothair stood beside her late husband's open casket where her attention should be but instead she stared Makennah down from across the room. Everywhere she went, she felt her beady little grandmotherly eyes haunting her.

However, Makennah reminded herself that they supposedly hadn't met yet. So she dragged Theo and Matt up to the casket to have her older brother introduce her to her lovely grieving grandmother.

"Grandma, this is Makennah," Matt said, laying a hand at her back to usher her forward.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, ma'am," Makennah said apologetically and shook her hand.

Elizabeth frowned deeply and nodded her head, accepting her condolences. However, there was a keen glimmer in her eye, a sense of thankfulness that Makennah remembered their plan. "Thank you, dear. It's a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to getting to know you." She smiled all grandmotherly and clasped Makennah's hand in both of hers as if she were already so fond of her new fake-grandchild.