“You want him gutted?” I shrugged and half sat on the edge of the table. “I’m better with guns than with knives, but that bastard killed three people in cold blood, right in front of you. I’ll kill him however you want. And yes, you can watch, if you think that’ll help. But I have to tell you, in my experience, that only makes it worse. Violence may balance the scales, but it can’t heal wounds. Only time can do that.”

“No. Time lets untreated wounds fester.” Sera turned back to the stove and tried to ignite the burner, but the knobs were gone again. “And there were four.”

“Four what?” I pulled the cookie jar from the top of the fridge and took the lid off, then held it out to her.

“Four people.” She selected a knob, then slid it into place on the stove. “He killed four people. There was a baby. Well, there would have been a baby. In a few...” Her hand clenched around the stove knob and her words cracked and fell apart. “My sister...”

“She was pregnant?” Something cold, and dark, and nearly uncontrollable unfurled in the pit of my stomach, and my hands clenched into fists at my sides. What kind of sick bastard kills a pregnant woman?

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Sera lit the burner and adjusted the flame, then stirred the milk in silence while I retreated to my seat at the table, trying to process what I’d just learned. To truly understand the scope of her loss.

I couldn’t do it. Even when I’d lost my parents, I’d still had my sisters and Gran.

Sera had been there. She’d seen them die. How the hell had she survived? Had she hidden? That would have been the smart thing to do—surely the only way to preserve her own life. But when had I ever seen her do the cautious thing? When had I seen her try to save herself?

She’d stepped in front of my gun and demanded I hand it over, before she’d had any reason to know I wouldn’t shoot her. She’d risked being shot to claim her mother’s photo album. She’d attack the man who shot Ian. She’d sprayed bleach in Ned’s face to keep him from shooting me, then dented his skull with a fucking toaster.

In the two days I’d known her, I’d seen her step into the path of danger more times than I could count on one hand, but I’d never once seen her hide.

So how the hell had she survived the attack that killed her entire family?

I didn’t realize the cocoa was done until she set a mug on the table in front of me, then slid into her chair with a mug of her own. There was a yellow, sugar-coated duck floating in my hot chocolate. I picked the mug up and eyed it, then laughed out loud when I recognized the Marshmallow Peep.

Sera shrugged, and I swear I saw just a hint of a smile. “You’re out of marshmallows. That’s the best I could do.”

Gran had never once given me marshmallows in my cocoa. Much less fluffy little sugar-coated ducks.

Sera’s Marshmallow Peep was green, and it left a sparkly spot of sugar on the end of her nose when she sipped from her mug. I wanted to kiss the sugar off her nose, but I was pretty sure that would make her want to stab me again.

“What is that?” She stared at my notebook, open on the table in front of me. “Poetry?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do you write poetry?”

“Your skepticism stings.” But her interest felt like a ray of sunshine on an overcast day and the moment I saw it, I craved more. “Why is it so unbelievable that I might write poetry?”

“It doesn’t really fit with your...image.”

“My image?” I closed the notebook and folded my hands over it, watching her expectantly. “I gotta hear this. What is my image?”

“Well, admittedly, my perspective is colored by my initial impression of you as a homicidal kidnapper who screwed all the doors and windows shut to keep his grandmother prisoner in her own house...”

“That’s not what I did. This isn’t her house, and she’s not prisoner.” But Sera wasn’t listening.

“...but you’ve kind of got this badass-next-door routine going on, with the blue eyes and the clean-cut thing you have going on here—” she waved one hand vaguely at my face and hair, and suddenly I regretted shaving that morning “—and the guns, and the whole ‘you want me to kill him or let him live?’ thing.”

I scowled and picked up my mug. “That’s not me. I’m not clean-cut, and I don’t sound like that.”

“Yes, you are, and you do. Stop pouting.” She tried to hide a grin by sipping from her cocoa. “And if you ‘forget’ you don’t belong in the center bedroom one more time, I’m going to have you declared legally brain dead.”

“I’m brain dead?” I set my mug down and scowled at her, and she nodded, chuckling now.

“Though that appears to be a selective defect. I haven’t seen you forget a single meal, yet you can’t seem to remember where you sleep at night.”

“This, coming from the woman who tried to give a gun to Ned-the-guard, so he could relieve us of the burden of drawing regular breaths in a body free from extraneous holes.”

“That’s not what I...” She frowned and abandoned the rest of her sentence. “Let me see this poetry.” Sera reached for the notebook, but I pulled it out of her grasp.

“It’s not poetry,” I admitted reluctantly. I didn’t want her to be right about the brain-dead badass thing. “I’m not sure I’d even recognize poetry if I saw it, outside of Dr. Seuss.”