KAYDEN
My chest had been hurting since the car and it wasn’t the kind of pain a doctor could point at on a scan and tell me which pill to take for. This one sat somewhere behind my ribs and refused to move, it was heavy and sharp all at once, like someone had forced a fist into my chest and left it there to keep squeezing. Every breath scraped and every thought made it worse.
I’d spent years thinking my mother’s greatest crime was favoring Kint, that was the story I’d told myself because it was easier to live with.
She loved him more, trusted him more, protected him more and although it stung, it was manageable. I could fold that kind of pain into something useful, I could turn it into ambition, into competition, into a silent promise to myself that I would make myself impossible to ove
