Chapter Five_Kael

Kael realized Serena was avoiding him sometime around Tuesday morning.

Not because she said anything but how she talked less around him.

That was how he noticed.

The woman had a habit of filling silence without trying. She argued with Lia over vegetables, complained about the coffee being too strong, laughed too loudly at Mrs. Rowan’s jokes. The house had gotten used to her voice quickly.

Now every time Kael walked into a room, she suddenly became busy.

Busy helping Lia upstairs ,busy folding laundry, busy doing absolutely anything that required distance from him.

At first he ignored it. Then it started getting under his skin which irritated him even more.

Because this should not have mattered.

He had met hundreds of women in his life. Beautiful women. Smart women. Women who practically threw themselves at him because of his name or money or face or whatever else people saw when they looked at Kael Vale.

None of them stayed in his head like this. None of them made him notice when they avoided eye contact.

But Serena did. And the worst part was that Kael knew exactly when it started. That night after the storm.

He still remembered standing outside Lia’s bedroom while Serena closed the storybook quietly so she wouldn’t wake her. The lights had been dim. Rain tapped softly against the windows. Everything about the moment had felt strangely calm and comfortable 

Kael hated that word. Because comfort meant attachment. And attachment had already ruined him once.

Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Serena looked sitting beside Lia’s bed. Her curls were messy, her sweater sleeve slightly stretched because Lia had fallen asleep holding onto it.

She looked like she belonged there.

That thought unsettled him more than it should have.

Kael had spent two years making peace with emptiness. The silence in the mansion stopped bothering him eventually. He got used to eating dinner alone. Got used to late nights in his office. Got used to the fact that laughter barely existed in the house anymore.

Then Serena arrived and suddenly the place felt different,lively and warm. Even Lia changed around her.

That hurt in ways Kael didn’t know how to explain.

Because he had spent so long trying to bring his daughter back to life emotionally, and somehow Serena did it within days just by existing around her.

It made Kael grateful. It also made him dangerously attached. The problem was that Serena looked at him differently too.

Most people looked at him carefully. Respectfully. Sometimes greedily. Serena looked at him like a normal human. That should not have affected him the way it did.

But after his wife died, people stopped treating him normally. Conversations became cautious. Sympathy filled every room. Even friends started speaking to him like he might break if they said the wrong thing.

Serena never did that ,she challenged him,rolled her eyes at him.

Got annoyed when he acted controlling.

And somehow those tiny things made him feel more human than condolences ever had.

Kael sat in his office staring at documents he hadn’t actually read in twenty minutes.

Rain hit the windows again. Storm season. He hated storms. Not because of the rain itself.

Because every storm dragged him back to that hospital hallway. Back to the unbearable moment he realized his wife wasn’t coming home. Some nights the memory still felt fresh enough to suffocate him.

That was another reason Serena made him nervous. Because for the first time in years, Kael caught himself wanting things again .Real things. Dinner downstairs with laughter. Someone waiting awake when he got home late. Warmth,home.

God. Home was the most dangerous word of all.

A knock sounded against the office door before Damon walked in without waiting for permission.

“You look terrible,” Damon said immediately.

Kael barely glanced up. “Good evening to you too.”

Damon dropped into the chair across from him with a glass of whiskey in hand. “You’re doing the staring-out-the-window thing again.”

“I’m working.”

“No, you’re suffering dramatically.”

Kael almost told him to leave. Instead he reached for the whiskey Damon pushed toward him.

Damon watched him carefully for a second before smirking.

“It’s the nanny, isn’t it?”

Kael looked up slowly. Unfortunately, that was enough confirmation.

Damon burst out laughing immediately. “I knew it.”

“You know nothing.”

“Oh please. You’ve said her name more this week than you’ve said mine in six months.”

Kael frowned slightly. “That’s not true.”

“It absolutely is.”

Kael leaned back in his chair, already annoyed with himself for allowing this conversation to continue.

Damon took a sip from his drink. “So what’s the problem?”

Kael stayed quiet.

Because the problem sounded ridiculous in his own head.

He could not tell him that the problem was Serena laughed and the house felt alive again.

The problem was Lia smiled more around her. The problem was Kael kept looking for her without realizing it.

And worse—

he liked who he became around her. That part scared him most.

“She’s avoiding me,” he admitted finally.

Damon blinked once before grinning slowly. “That bad?”

Kael rubbed his jaw tiredly. “After the storm things got weird.”

“Weird how?”

Kael thought about that hallway. About Serena looking up at him while the rain fell outside. About the silence between them. About how badly he wanted to touch her in that moment.

He hadn’t wanted someone like that in years. Not just physically but emotionally too.

That was really not good.

“She feels it too,” Kael muttered more to himself than Damon.

Damon’s expression softened slightly then. “And that scares you.” Kael let out a quiet humorless laugh.

“You know what the funny part is?” he said after a moment. “I think it scares her more.”

And somehow that should have made this easier. Instead it only made Serena stay in his head even longer.