Chapter Twenty-Eight
Choices
Kennedy
I awoke tangled in his arms. It was kind of nice.
“You’re awake,” he realized.
I made a throaty, uncommitted sound, “I could lay in your arms forever.”
The way he smiled, as he turned me to face him warmed my heart a little. It made me feel like things could finally be okay.
“Who says you can’t?”
My gaze shifted with my thoughts.
“Kenny, your life is your own. You don’t owe it to anybody to waste it away, especially when doing so has already resulted in those around you plotting your death.”
He said it gently, but the truth of the words stung a little. I knew he was right, but I also knew it wasn’t that simple.
Dad needed me. Paxton needed me. Wasn’t this proof of exactly that?
I was conflicted. The type of torn that you feel in your chest. I ached for that kind of connection, the type that squeezed every last minute they could under the stars with you.
“You really think you love me?” I asked, clearing my thoughts enough for me to focus on the conversation at hand.
He hesitated only a moment before admitting, “I know I do.”
“Then you know I can’t run. I can’t leave my family vulnerable. I couldn’t do it then, and I can’t now. If you love me, you’ll understand that.”
I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. When he didn’t immediately respond, I feared I might have ruined whatever vibe we had shared. Not that vibing was the most important thing to me right now.
I needed to put my feet firmly on the ground and figure shit out. I couldn’t do that on the run. And I couldn’t start over and never speak to my family again. That wasn’t me.
“Well, I’m not letting you go back alone.” He sniffed.
I shot into a sitting position as I was suddenly flooded with emotion. Relief. Surprise. The joy of knowing I finally had a person of my own. Bootsie was my very best friend, but she was starting a life of her own and would naturally be focusing on her own family.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I whispered, even if I loved him for offering.
“You didn’t, and I’m not here to discuss it.” He winked, rocking to his feet.
He dusted his hands off on his pants and nodded toward the car, “Come on, I’ll take us back to my mom’s house. We can get a plan together once we touch down.”
He made it three or four paces before my brain finally caught up with reality and accepted that he wasn’t joking. I sprinted toward my side of the car and tried not to show how exuberant I was when he started the vehicle and put us back on the road.
Penny’s disappointment and surprise were painted on her face when she noticed our vehicle coasting down her street.
It made me feel a little guilty that my decision was the reason for it.
She didn’t go inside, or yell when we climbed out and started for the door, she just followed us inside and patiently waited for an explanation.
When it wasn’t forthcoming, she nodded, “Birdman wanted me to tell you to call if I see you.”
“Of course, he does,” Roy huffed, teasing his fingers down my wrist and taking my hand in his.
I followed him to the kitchen and helped myself to a bowl of cereal, when he laid the box between us.
“Did you hear me?” Penny somberly asked, as she paused beside the dry eraser style calendar that appeared to have her monthly bills and appointments scribbled on it.
Roy patiently nodded. “Birdman wants something. He always does.”
“He’s never showed up at my doorstep to demand I involve myself in MC business. Not ever. Not even when I was his.”
Roy stiffened and met my gaze.
“He knows something is up,” I quietly predicted.
Roy shook his head and sucked his teeth, “No, he just doesn’t like wild cards. I let him think I was all fucked up about it, so he probably just wants to rope me back in. He isn’t happy unless everyone is under his thumb.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Penny sighed.
“I’m going to park the car in the shed. Then we’re going to shower and nap on something softer than lime rock. When I have my head on right, and can put on another performance, I’ll reach out to him.”
“Roy,” she urgently began, when he ran his thumb over the outside of mine and began to lead me onward.
“Mom.” He dropped his head, her name coming in a warning before he softened his tone and continued, “I need you to let me handle this.”
She remained at the entrance of her kitchen, watching on as he took me to a plain, but neatly organized, bedroom.
“This is yours?” I guessed.
He absently bobbed his head in confirmation, snatched some clothes out of a drawer and turned back around. I wasn’t expecting it, so we ended up nose to nose.
“Wh–?”
“Shower,” he mumbled, pointing behind me.
I tried to loosen my fingers from his, but he adjusted his hold on my hand, and led me along with him. Once we were alone with the bathroom door tightly shut behind us, and the shower drowning out any chance of our conversation being overheard, he relaxed.
“We can handle this. I just need time to figure out if Birdman has support beyond Kingston. Hopefully, the club treachery doesn’t extend beyond the pair of them,” he explained, while peeling off his shirt.
My heart hammered in my chest. What had been natural under the stars now felt a little more baring. Maybe it was the light, maybe it was the reality of everything crashing down around us?
Before I had time to figure it out, he took me in his arms and planted a kiss on the top of my head.
“It’s going to be okay. I got you. I got us,” he murmured.
And, I wanted to believe him.
More than anything that I’d ever wanted in my whole damn life, I wanted him to be able to make everything make sense again.
I allowed him to remove my clothes and guide me into the shower. The water felt good as the warmth sprayed over my long, strawberry-blonde hair and ran over my back, washing away my thoughts for those few brief moments.
When the water started to lose its fiery touch, making it clear the escape was almost over, I gave in to his kiss at my throat and twisted around to face him.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and lost myself to his lips, his touch, and everything that came with it.
The many bottles on the tiny shelves built into the corner of the shower were scattered everywhere when he clutched my ass and hefted me off my feet.
His sudden, impatient entrance sent shockwaves through me and made my thighs clutch at his battering hips.
I’d never met anyone who could make everything disappear like that.
My awkwardness had left some time ago, and I wasn’t even aware of when it had happened.
The knowledge of Penny’s presence in the next room was forgotten.
I encouraged him with single, sometimes strained words at times, but for the most part, I directed him with unchecked unintelligible sounds of pleasure.
The looming storm, otherwise known as Kingston Crowe, was wiped from my mind. My worries and fears. The club. My future. It all vanished one savage thrust at a time, until his name became a battle cry, and a prayer that I couldn’t quit repeating.
I clung to him, until my shattered world slowly recovered and my shaky feet were permitted to touch the floor again.
He patted my ass in what felt like a dismissive effort, and I instantly snapped my gaze to his.
His mischievous, blue eyes lit up and he saluted the shower head with his chin, “Think I could have a turn now that you ran out all the hot water and made a mess of me, princess?”
My jaw dropped as fast as my gaze had lifted and I popped him on the arm only to be rewarded with a quick round of grab ass and his warm laughter.
I grabbed a towel, and dried off as best I could, before helping myself to his oversized shirt and his jogging pants. While he hissed and hurried in the shower behind me, I left him with only a pair of dry drawers on the sink and let myself out.
It was funny how the shower always left me thirsty, or maybe it was all the mewling I’d done that had my throat a little parched.
I trailed downstairs as quietly as I could and headed off in search of refreshment.
The spring on the screen door sounded like it was on its last leg when it patiently clapped closed behind Penny. Her gardening gloves were covered in dirt and she seemed a little surprised by my presence in her kitchen.
“Oh.” She weakly smiled and began to slide off a glove. “I was hoping you two would be back down in time for some lunch. I was just about to fix some–”
Her words trailed off as her phone abruptly sounded in her pocket.
“Sorry,” she managed, before pulling it out of her pocket and staring at the screen. She swiped her thumb and brought it to her ear, but hesitated so long I thought she wasn’t going to say anything at all.
“Hel– Hello,” she finally managed, clearing her throat after she did so. “Sorry, hey, Kalvin.”
Steps thundered behind me and Roy abruptly stepped around me and planted a finger in front of his mouth in a plea for her silence.
Penny dropped her gaze and subtly shook her head.
“Mom,” Roy boomed, causing her to fumble the phone and look up.
The hand she wasn’t securing the phone with began to tremble a little and her eyes misted over, before she uttered, “Just a moment.”
She pulled the phone away and shakily pressed a finger to the surface. An ugly sound pinged and she hissed before successfully managing to find the speaker phone button.
“What was that?” she asked, her voice choked with emotion, and her gaze locked on her son.
“I said I need to find Roy. I need to figure out where Kennedy and Kingston are. She needs to hear this from me.”
She tore in a ragged breath, and I could tell by the way her eyes softened, that she was about to betray my location.
“Ma,” Roy repeated.
Her gaze flicked to him apologetically and she opened her mouth.
Quickly, before she could look away, he picked up a dry erase marker and scribbled without regard for her many events and reminders.
The sloppy, thick, black print marking out some of the times and places, and no doubt leaving her on the verge of scolding him, until she read it.
Is my dad with him?
When the words seemed to catch her attention, he frantically followed it with a second line.
You have no way of knowing.
“Wh–? What was that you said…? Just a moment ago… Did you say…?” She suddenly seemed incapable of stringing a complete sentence together, and her lower lip quivered a bit.
“Damn it. I said my son is fucking dead. I don’t have time for the gossip mill, Penny. Just– Just fucking tell Roy to have his brother get at me. Now!”
All of the feel-good haze was sucked out of me, and I was plunged into a place that was far too icy to be the numbness that most people described when it came to shock.
I stood there, incapable of thought; my body immobile, while those words repeated and twisted in my mind until they became a solid, deafening sound.
The sound became a pain that ripped down my throat and poured from my eyes. I’d say the floor was sucked out from under me, but that’s not true. It caught me soundly. I failed, unable to escape the paralyzing uncertainty of whether or not I’d played right into their coup.
Roy had done everything short of swearing that Paxton would be okay, and yet…
He didn’t look surprised. It was his face that burned into my mind as I heard those words.
The guilt and regret.
He couldn’t fucking hide it. My body went limp, and I surrendered to the arms of a man that I no longer trusted.
I was desperate to let it all out. God help me, I wanted to cry my heart out on his shoulder and figure out a way to settle the score.
I wanted to make his brother and his father pay, but I was terrified that leaning on Roy was exactly what my father’s aspiring assassins wanted.
And if I was meant as some final knife in my father’s back, I had no way of knowing it.
I had no way of knowing who was real and who wasn’t anymore.
The only thing I knew was that I had to get away from Roy as soon as humanly possible. I had to get my phone out of my stash spot on the side of the passenger seat of that car.
I sucked in a shuddery breath and purposefully rubbed my arms while bringing my blurry, tear-riddled gaze to Roy. I widened my eyes all of a sudden and latched my fingers loosely around my wrist.
“No,” I exclaimed, allowing all my bottled emotion to fly out on a sob. I shot past him so violently it knocked him aside and scrambled for the shed. Thankfully it wasn’t locked.
“Kennedy,” I heard him on the stairs of the porch.
I didn’t stop, I ran to the car and snatched my phone, shoving it into the waistband of his jogging pants, before I let the tears flow and shoved my hand into the space between the backrest and the seat on the passenger side.
“What the fuck?” he breathily asked.
He was barefoot, still clad in only his boxers.
“I lost it,” I sobbed.
“Lost what?” He rushed forward.
“My bracelet. I was wearing my bracelet that Paxton gave me for my birthday last year.”
His mother’s sympathetic gaze might have made me feel bad, if the situation weren’t what it was.
“It’s okay. It’s just a bracelet,” I heaved, wiping my face with my hands. “I– I just need a minute. I’m gonna go wash my face.”
“Of course.” Penny shot forward, taking me by the shoulders.
She protectively led me back to her bathroom and shut the door behind me.