Toxic (Denazen #2)(74)

“Not much. I don’t like to talk about Denazen with her.”

“Why not?”

Kale picked his hand off the table, Jade’s still attached. “Your hand is smaller than hers. It feels different.”

“Different? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Kale smiled. A kick-start-my-heart-with-a-car-battery kind of grin. Warmth bloomed in the pit of my stomach—until I realized it wasn’t me he was smiling at. It was Jade.

“Good different,” he said, letting go so he could unwrap his straw.

I didn’t have to see Jade’s face to know she was beaming. “Mother—”

“Shh,” Kiernan hissed, nudging me with her shoulder. “I can’t hear.”

“So was it really that bad? Denazen?” Jade asked, taking a sip of her shake. “And oh, my God. You have to try this!”

Kale, polite as always, refused when she all but thrust a spoonful of creamy brown ice cream in his face. “Why do you want to know about them?”

Finally. Some common sense. Maybe now he’d see she was fishing for information.

Jade sighed and stuffed the spoon into her own mouth. “My dad used to work for them. Not the one in this town. His was in Seattle.”

Kale tensed. “He’s dead?”

“Of course not. He quit.”

His eyes narrowed. “No one quits. They’re terminated. I’ve personally terminated four previous employees.”

“He came home in the middle of the night, grabbed Mom and me and my sister, and we left. Didn’t pack. Didn’t say good-bye. Just left. He refuses to tell me why. I didn’t even know what Denazen did until Ginger told me.”

“Ha,” I whispered as a child screamed by the counter. Apparently his vanilla cone was too vanilla. “See? I told you.”

Kiernan rolled her eyes. “Told me what? This doesn’t prove a thing.”

“If I had been in Seattle, your father would not have gotten away alive,” Kale said bluntly.

Maybe Jade made a face. Or maybe she teared up. Whatever her expression, it caused Kale to frown. “I apologize. That was…unnecessary. Dez says I need to be less blunt.”

“Sounds to me like Dez wants to change you.”

“Change me?”

“She doesn’t like who you are. She wants you to act differently. Be someone you’re not. That thing you told me about? The counting? Perfect example.”

Kale took another sip of his soda, then frowned. “That’s bad?”

“Not if you want to let her control you.” She tilted herself forward, no doubt giving him a bird’s-eye view down her low-cut shirt.

“No one controls me. Not anymore.” His voice was even, but I heard the darkness beneath the surface. The danger. “Dez is trying to help me fit in here. Not control me.”

“I’m just saying, I think you’re fine the way you are.” She waved her spoon in his direction. “That temper you’re trying so hard to keep under wraps? It’s who you are.”

“No. It’s not. It’s who Denazen wanted me to be.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a guy having a bit of a temper. In my opinion, it’s kind of sexy.”

“Holy crap. She’s practically licking him,” Kiernan hissed. She adjusted herself in the seat to get a little closer.

Jade leaned back. “So you never said. Why don’t you talk about Denazen with Dez?”

“I don’t want her opinion of me to change.”

The spoon made an annoying clank as Jade scraped the bottom of her cup. “Why would you think it’d change?”

I leaned forward, breath held. I should have felt guilty about spying—I was here to find out about Jade, not pry into Kale’s life—but I didn’t.

“I was a monster. I can’t erase the things I did, so I must still be one. Dez says I’m not, but she’s wrong. She doesn’t know.”

Scraping the last of the thick shake from the bottom, she pushed the cup aside and leaned forward on the table. “Why do you think you’re a monster?”

Kale looked from her to the cup. He tipped it over, eyes wide. “You finished it already?”

Her shoulders shook, and an annoying giggle filled the air. “It was so delish! Besides, a healthy appetite is sexy, right?”

Kale nodded. “Over the summer Dez challenged me to a hamburger-eating contest. She won.”

Jade’s irritation at the mention of my name was obvious. She visibly deflated, shoulders stiffening. “So, monster?”

“I’ve punished fifty-two people since I turned twelve. Forty-three men. Eight women. One child.”

“‘Punished’?”

“Killed.”

There were several moments of silence. She was probably trying to pick her jaw up off the floor. “Oh, Kale. Don’t beat yourself up over what happened.”

Don’t beat yourself up? On top of being an annoying little skank, this chick was an idiot. He tells her he murdered fifty-two people, and that’s what she says? Don’t beat yourself up?

“They made you do it, right?”

“Their methods of coercion are—persuasive.”

“Ohcrapohcrap,” Kiernan chanted, shoving me in to the corner of the booth.