Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) by Scarlett Finn Read Free Book Online

“My feelings for you were never in doubt,” she said, stroking his stubble. “I was never going anywhere.”
    As her hand drifted from his face, he rolled off her to lie beside her. “You’re grieving, that’s why you feel so screwed up inside.”
    Grieving, like Brodie had done after losing Art. She had grieved for the mentor, too, but the label reminded her of losing her mother and that was a memory she liked to ignore as much as she could. Without classifying the cause, she recognized that some of the difficulty she faced at CI was because she knew the truth of what had happened to Grant. People there asked about him every day, but she couldn’t tell the truth and had to keep smiling. Grant was gone and she still had questions. But that wasn’t the whole truth.
    Her vision blurred and her chin fell toward her chest in time with the balls of moisture that rolled off her lashes. She didn’t want Brodie to see her crying, but it was too late. Brodie was with her, pulling her forward until she was in the grasp of his solid arms.
    Brodie had lost his parents. His guardian. And now his brother. Since she’d come into his life, he’d lost person after person and yet he wasn’t the one falling apart. She was the one sobbing into his chest, clawing at him, clambering for the reassuring chill of oxygen in her lungs. But her breaths were so short they got only as far as her throat.
    “I got you, baby,” he whispered, tightening his hold.
    She hadn’t cried for Grant, no one had, and that in itself was sad. This wasn’t the first time she’d lost grip of her emotions in front of Brodie and despite his aversion to being too emotional himself, he always managed to comfort her in the cocoon of his arms. All she needed was his embrace. It could protect her from all kinds of pain, even the imaginary kind.
    With reddened eyes and damp cheeks, she pushed back and blinked up at him. “You make everything better,” she murmured, brushing her thumbs over his lips when she squeezed her arms up between them.
    “I don’t know how,” he said and his grimace made her smile. “When you’re upset, I want to shoot the shit out of something.”
    “That’s how,” she said, rising to rub her cheek on his and kiss his lips. “You feel what I feel… in your own way.”
    He searched her face and was as confused as she was certain, but that only made her kiss him again before yielding his hold and putting some distance between them. There were things she had to say and if she stayed in his arms, they’d either relax into sleep or divert their energy into more sex.
    She shifted onto her side and stuffed a pillow under her head to support it. “I had to stay away,” she said, trying to explain why she hadn’t returned to her allies this week.
    “You didn’t. Who told you to—”
    “I’m of no use to you anymore, no use to the Kindred.” Her love for Brodie hadn’t been in question, but her place in his ranks was because she felt like a fraud. She’d done her piece and didn’t see how she could be of use to such a clan anymore. “Yes, you’re right. I probably am grieving Grant, and there’s some part of me that wonders why you’re not more affected by it. We didn’t get to say goodbye to him or to Art. There was no ceremony, you took him away, and put him straight into the ground.” She kept on going before he could respond to what he’d consider an insult. “But I’ve been worried about my place in the Kindred. I don’t have special skills like the rest of you do. Sutcliffe’s gone. Grant’s gone. Game Time is under our control, and now you’re bringing people in to take CI out from under me too.”
    He was on his back with his hands resting on his abs. He just laid there scowling at the ceiling, and she hoped that he wasn’t going to ignore her insecurities.
    “Do you want CI?” he asked, turning his head and loosening his expression. “If you want it, it’s yours. It didn’t occur to me that you