Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

My memories of that day were bright and jarring, collected pieces of a shattered funhouse mirror that didn’t make much sense, no matter how hard I tried to fit them back together. But I remembered him. I always remembered him.

He seemed like some kind of heathen god, big enough to kill a man with his bare hands, so broad through the shoulders it seemed like he could carry the weight of the world.

My feet drew me closer without conscious direction, my mind drawn to the colour in the way of a bull. I’d always been like that, driven by instinct without the filter of my brain or the softening of a voice from my heart. If I was moved by something elementally, I let it move me.

“Eager,” she murmured in a deeper voice than I would have thought her slight body capable of. “Caution to the child too eager to race into the future.”

“This is balance. Too much of any one thing is no good. Not even luck. For those whose life comes easy, their character can be weak.”

You must not be too hard and unyielding, too focused on death and the dark.” “Because I’m a girl?” I countered, bristling against the idea that women had to be all yin, all soft and yielding, summer and birth and new beginnings.

“Because there is strength in softness too. There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yin and yang. If you don’t learn this, the tragedies of your life will overtake you.”

“In real life, Dr. Axelsen, white knights rarely get happy endings. Only broken hearts.”

It was hard for my twelve-year-old mind not to tangle him up in the role of hero. I’d heard the story of how he’d saved Kate from her troubled past and Cleo from a childhood of dangers, and now, he’d saved me, even if he hadn’t been able to save Kate. Looking back, that was the start of it for me. Falling in love with him. Ruining his life. They would become one and the same, but right then, it was pure and simple. I loved him the way a child loved a superhero.

I wasn’t sure if something was deficient in my personality or something was wrong with my heart, but I couldn’t seem to connect with people easily. It was all or nothing in games of the heart, and the only people I’d ever trusted with mine outside of my family were Cleo, Kate, and Henning.

“Everyone has to start somewhere. But today you proved that you are already an exceptional kid, Rocky.” His words were rough, unpolished gems that meant everything to me. “You might just be the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”

I was probably too strict (no fuckin’ way was Cleo allowed to date), and conversely too mellow (my girl was a good kid, what the hell did I care if she didn’t get all A’s and didn’t like to eat broccoli, neither did I).

I made so many mistakes sometimes at night they haunted me ’til I couldn’t fuckin’ breathe. But I did what I could. Not just ’cause I had to as Cleo’s legal guardian. ’Cause I wanted to. Cleo was my daughter in all ways except for blood, and I was the first guy to admit, blood meant shit all if it wasn’t backed by heart.

This. Fuckin’ this. This was the reason parents sacrificed again and again for their kids. Why those sacrifices felt halved instead of enormous. Why I woke up every mornin’ and fought hard to be the best man I could. So this girl, my girl, could have some peace after a lifetime of pain.

She could’ve been a model or an actress, at the very least, the most popular girl in her class. Instead, she was our Rocky.

The girl with chipped black polish on her nails and bruises on her knuckles from almost daily bouts at the martial arts gym downtown. The girl who, since Kate’s death, only wore black as if she was in perpetual mournin’.

Our fighter.

She didn’t fit in, and she didn’t want to. I got that. She was content bein’ Cleo’s watchdog, but what did that leave her?

I’d prayed so fuckin’ hard the day after Kate died that both Cleo and Mei wouldn’t experience another day of tragedy in their lives, and as per usual, God had ignored me. Daiyu was dyin’, and Mei was gonna lose another mother. It was no wonder she was actin’ out. She’d already lost so much; how could she pretend to be anythin’ other than angry with the bad hand she’d been dealt?

When she set off down the hall toward the principal’s office for detention, I was still standin’ there like a bastard tryin’ to figure out how to love a girl who desperately needed love when it was socially unacceptable for me to love her any more than I already did.

I took half a second, straddlin’ my bike, feelin’ the purr of power beneath my body, to squeeze my eyes shut and wish an impossible wish to wipe my soul clean and feel for once like the hero I’d grown up wantin’ to be and not the villain I’d somehow ended up as.

Mei Zhen Marchand displays reckless independence,’” she quoted softly as she planted her hands on the countertop and hopped up to sit there, feet drummin’ softly against the cabinets beneath her. “‘When she disagrees with her superiors and her peers, nothing will curb her tongue. She speaks up loudly for what she believes is the truth or what she believes is right. Even if she is wrong, even if it would be kinder and smarter to stay silent.’”

“It was one of the comments in my last report card,” she finally explained her earlier comment. “They make it sound like a bad thing. Seeking the truth. But you and I both know few things are nobler than that.” I snorted. “I’m hardly noble, Rocky.”

“You might drive a Harley instead of riding a white horse, but that doesn’t make you any less noble. I don’t know many men who would raise another man’s daughter better than his own. Who would sacrifice everything again and again to give her the best life he could.” Her lips thinned in self-mockery. “A man who’d put up with his stepdaughter’s best friend, too.”

I squeezed her hand, frustrated with my lack of eloquence and her lack of perceptiveness. Lately, I couldn’t shake the feelin’ that I was lettin’ her down, disappointin’ her somehow.

The truth was, Kate wasn’t the love of my life. It was no secret. I’d married her to save her, and in doin’ so, she’d saved me. Given me a family worth livin’ for when the only one I’d ever really known was ripped away from me after I left the military. We weren’t a relationship built on physicality and passion, but did that really matter? We’d chosen each other. Saved each other.

“Stop that.” I cocked a brow in question. “Brooding,” she clarified, releasing me to focus on her task. “I don’t know why girls think it’s hot. I think it’s just pouty.” She peeked at my expression and laughed at my scowl. “There we go, that’s much better.” “You’re a brat.”

“You don’t know shit.” “I know you,” she murmured, softer still. A sudden weight on my right thigh had me stiffenin’, eyes flashin’ open to see Mei perched on my lap, medical tools abandoned, one hand raised to press lightly against my bare chest where my heart thrummed too strongly. “I know sometimes the ends justify the means.”

“You’re not my confidante, Mei, or my daughter. I don’t owe you any explanations so stop crowdin’ me.”

“I’m an asshole,” I told her, restin’ my chin on the top of her head. “Yeah,” she agreed easily, but her hands came up to clutch at my arms. “But you’re our asshole.” “I am,” I said, even though this was dangerous. I’d stopped huggin’ her like this, touchin’ her easily and casually the way I did Cleo about the time she started formin’ from a girl to a woman.

So, in the kitchen in the middle of the night, blood from my wound wettin’ her tee, my entire body an oversized bracket for her slight frame, I hugged her tight and let us both have the moment of connection we craved.

“I trust you,” she said softly, so softly I could barely hear the words. “I trust you, even if you don’t, Henning. I know you’ll always do the right thing. It’s what makes you so broody. A hero doesn’t mean being a man who never does any wrong. It means being a man who seeks truth and justice no matter the consequences. I know everything you do is to get justice for Kate and to keep Cleo safe.”

“I stopped being a kid when I fell down the steps into that hell where Kate died,” she shot back, chin angled high in the air. “I’m not normal or safe or dull. I’m not scared of pain or death, Hen. I’m only scared of losing the few people I love.” Tears swelled in her ducts and trembled. “I can’t afford to lose any more of you when there were so few to start with.”

She was beautiful, I realized in a way I hadn’t ever let myself before. Not just in the way of pretty girls. No, her beauty was written in her very bones. In the slope of her steeply carved cheeks and the faint hollow beneath. In the full brows arched delicately over large eyes that were dark but warm, vital. Freshly tilled earth instead of a night without stars.

She looked almost fragile, but I mapped the strength of her character in that stubborn chin, the knit of her brows, and the flattenin’ of a full mouth into a fine line. Slim limbs carved with muscle, sharp nails painted black. A surprisingly strong jawline that had taken more than its fair share of punches. A livin’ contrast, Mei Zhen. Our Rocky. A girl who was both named for a beautiful pearl and a famous fictional boxer.

“Three hours,” she supplied as if readin’ my mind, pullin’ hard at my fingers in a way that made me want to moan. “I think you needed that. For a man like you, I think drawing is as close to therapy as you’ll get.”

“Usually, you refuse anyone’s help. I was glad to be able to do this for you.” Her dimple popped. “You stubborn goat.”

The number of claws on a Chinese dragon was contentious throughout its history, but I’d given Mei’s dragon five ’cause it was considered the most sacred. And whatever Rocky was to me, it was sacred.

“Is this how you see me?” she whispered, the words raw as if she’d carved them out of her body and handed them to me still bleedin’.

I swallowed around the stone in my throat, suddenly aware of how vulnerable it was for her to have those sketches. They were mindless in that I hadn’t filtered the instincts of my pen. As Lin would have said, they were s...

“It’s strange,” she whispered, almost to herself, and I held very still, suddenly afraid to startle her out of revealin’ her mysteries. “That you could look at me and see everything I’ve ever wanted to be.”

“It feels just as good as it does bad. To be seen like that.” Her lips flattened. “Like being flayed alive.” “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” “No,” she agreed. “You didn’t, not really. I guess it’s one thing to want to be known and another to actually have someone see you even when you try to hide.”

“Rocky, thank you,” I called lightly, though my throat ached. “For seein’ me, too.”

Some people are born with rebellion in their blood. A genetic anomaly. A quirk of fate. However you want to classify it, some people just eat trouble for breakfast and spit out the backbone of societal conventions like they don’t know how to digest it. I know because I was born one of them.

They named me Mei Zhen. Beautiful pearl. Something elegant and refined, cultivated under pressure. When they quickly discovered I was nothing more than grit, they applied more pressure, hoping I’d slowly alchemize into something more precious. Into something worthy of the name Marchand.

I never cared much about names or living up to them. And no matter how hard they tried, I never learned how to care about what people thought of me. Why should p...

“Your father doesn’t hate you, Mei Zhen, nor is he even disappointed in you. He is fearful for you because he doesn’t understand you, and for a smart man, there is nothing to fear more than that which he doesn’t know.”

For Old Dragon and Ma, love was spoken daily by taking care of their family in little ways. Reminding me to wear a coat in the cold. Offering me food every five minutes. Sharing my ancestry with me in stories and customs they painstakingly passed on to me.

I only wish I could stay on earth long enough to see all the ways you will succeed, though I have no doubt your success will be bold, rebellious, colourful, and wild, just like my beautiful daughter herself.”

“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,” I croaked out in Cantonese. Ma smiled. “One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the love and pride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”