33. Theo
Theo
I glance through the open doorway on my way downstairs the next morning.
Oscar’s steady breathing reaches my ears. He’s sprawled out on his back with Kenny curled up on top of him, one arm wrapped around her and the other containing his headset, precariously dangling from his finger a foot or so from the floor.
Biting my cheek, I slip inside and loosen the headset from his hand, setting it on his bedside table. Then his glasses. He doesn’t even move.
He looks like he’s resting better than he has in months. Closing the door quietly, I head down, catching Jake and Max on their way out.
Jake hesitates. “You think she’ll be okay? I can call in. They’ll understand.”
But I know he’s worried about his job, too. “Go. I’ll call if there’s anything. They both seem pretty out of it anyway. She needs the rest.”
Max studies me. “And you?”
“I’m fine.” My smile doesn’t quite reach my eyes, but I try. “See you later.”
This is a routine I know by heart. Kitchen first, although Oz scrubbed it to within an inch of his life last night. I make my way around the house, avoiding Oscar’s room in case I wake them but collecting laundry from everywhere else.
I frown at the bags beside the front door. Kenny hasn’t touched them.
“Theo?”
I jolt at the murmur of my name, almost sure I imagined it until I turn. Kenny watches me cautiously from the bottom of the stairs. Her legs are bare, her hair wild and trailing. She’s borrowed one of Oscar’s shirts. The white cotton doesn’t fully hide her scars, the faint lines of black visible beneath the material. “Hey. How’d you sleep?”
“Pretty well, actually.” Her hand raises, trying and failing to tuck her hair back. “But… I realized I don’t have any stuff. I should probably go to the trailer. I had cases there.”
She frowns. “Did they… did you get them?”
I nod. “We put everything in your room. The things we were allowed to bring went to the Center.”
“Right.”
We both hover awkwardly.
It’s never been awkward between us. But now there are so many things in the way that it’s hard to see past them. And none of the others are here to help bridge the gap.
“I’ll go up, then.” She hesitates, and turns away. “Thanks.”
I stay where I am until she’s disappeared from view, clutching the laundry.
She finds me in the kitchen a little while later. I stay where I am, prepping the ingredients for tater tot casserole. “Can I get you anything?”
The tension in my spine softens when I hear the refrigerator open. I want her to feel at home here. “Maybe a coffee?”
“Sure.” I flick the machine on, setting down my knife and turning to face her. My hand grip the edges of the kitchen counters. “Max and Jake had to work. They’ll be back tonight.”
Her lips purse. Something flickers in her brown eyes that I can’t decipher. “And you?”
“I’m back in tomorrow. But Oscar will be here for the next few days. And then Max. We worked it out so one of us was always free.”
“I see.” She slips into a seat at the table. “Where do you work?”
My brows dip. It feels like… a trick question. My chest is doing somersaults, as if she’s nervous. Or… pissed. “Construction site.”
When she doesn’t say anything, I carry on making her a coffee. Cream and one and a half sugars, just the way she likes it. Her lip lifts a little when I set the cup in front of her. “You remembered how I take my coffee?”
“I remember everything about you.” Every little thing. Every comment she’s ever made, carefully filed and stored away in my own personal bank of Kennedy Traylor.
Her fingers wrap around the cup. She’s still wearing Oscar’s shirt, the neckline slipping to reveal black jagged lines.
“Do they still hurt?” The words tear from somewhere deep down. “They told me they wouldn’t hurt anymore.”
Her eyes follow mine. And then her finger, tracing her shoulder as she cranes to look. “Not really. It’s almost… like an echo. The pain isn’t there, but I still remember it.”
I slip into the seat beside her, drawing her gaze. “Why didn’t you tell us, Ken? About what he did to you?”
I can feel the effect of my words on her, and I hate myself for it when I feel the pulse, the stab of pain. But I need to know. “Did you think we wouldn’t believe you?”
I stood outside the hospital every day for two weeks. Every time, they turned me away. “I thought you didn’t care. We couldn’t see you. And then they told me you’d been discharged, so I waited.”
Day after day. And every day, my hope faded a little bit more.
Her face turns ashen. Blanching. I slide from my chair, onto my knees beside her. My fingers tangle with hers. “None of it is your fault. But I would have helped, Ken. Unless you thought… that we were like him .”
The words break before they even leave my mouth. I search her face, looking for an answer I’m not sure I’ll get. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
Kenny stays silent. My head drops. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
A few minutes. That’s all it took. A few minutes of quiet before the thoughts came tumbling out, disrupting whatever peace she’s trying to find. “I’ll leave you be.”
“Wait.” Soft fingers wrap around my arm. “I didn’t think you were like him. Never.”
Her eyes are wet when I look up. “I… I wasn’t in great shape at first. Not for a long time, really. They weren’t sure what was happening, or if they could treat it. Abrams tried everything, but nothing stuck.”
And she was on her own for all of it. I hate that. Even the thought of it threatens to shred me all over again.
She’s not looking at me anymore. She’s somewhere else, her eyes distant. “I knew you had the voicemail. And when your father came, he said that it would be better if you didn’t know. That you were in enough pain.”
I’m going to kill him . My throat tightens. But she carries on, looking down at the table. “You’d lost your brother once, Theo. This would have been – it would have been losing him all over again. And I was already dying. So I thought – maybe – it would be cleaner, for everyone.”
Her voice wavers. “And I was… angry.”
“At me.” God, it hurts. Like flaying my chest open, as I face it. “At all of us.”
And I get it. “Because we weren’t there.”
Her face crumples. “It’s not fair. I know it’s not. But – I left you that voicemail, and I hoped that you knew me better than that, Theo. You knew me better than anybody else. And I hoped you’d know that I meant the opposite of everything I said in that message. But you didn’t.”
We didn’t save her. Didn’t find her. Not that time. And the message I’ve listened to a hundred times or more – hating her, or so I told myself – she was in agony . Begging us to help her, as my brother broke her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My eyes are wet. She chokes on a sob, leaning forward. I press my forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry, Kenny.”
She buries her face in my neck. The two of us end up on the floor, Kenny’s cries dampening my skin. “He just - he wouldn’t stop . I begged him, Theo. But he just kept going. Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Broken, pleading words. “I don’t know, baby. I wish I did.”
I wish I could solve it, for both of us. But I can’t. I can’t fix it. So I hold her, instead, as she cries out her pain into my skin and I try to take it for both of us. I can feel it, cutting into my heart.
She was willing to die as the villain in my story.
Because… “You didn’t think you were worth choosing, did you?”
I draw back, push damp hair from her face. “You didn’t think I’d choose you, Kenny. But I do. I always will.”
I would have then. I nearly did. But I let her go, let her get in the truck with him. And I have to live with that regret for the rest of my life.
But it’s nothing compared to what my mate has to live with.
I find the lines in her neck. Jagged and ugly. Brett’s poison, forever burned into her. And I press my lips to them in silent apology. To the ones I can reach.
One. Two. Four.
I can’t see any more.
Silently, she shifts back. Our eyes meet as she tugs the shirt over her head.
My heart breaks all over again. My eyes shift over her bare skin, moving from mark to mark.
This is not about us. She shivers when I shuffle forward. My lips press to her skin again.
And again.
Every single mark.
Every single jagged lie.
Seventeen of them, branded into her skin by my mirror image.
I find them all, an apology in every movement. My tears soak into her skin, her hands on my shoulders, trembling with pain I can feel with every breath as I face what he did.
And finally, I brush my lips over hers. One final apology. “I’m sorry. For everything I said and did. All of it, Ken. For the diner, and the anger, and the bark. Every bit of it.”
And when I pull back, Kenny is the only person I see.
Her voice is a croak. “You don’t need to apologize for him. You never have.”
Her fingers cup my cheek. Lower, until they’re pressed against her bite in my skin. “Apologize for your own mistakes. God knows there’s plenty of them. But they’re… they’re fixable , Theo. Some things are fixable.”
I stare at her. She doesn’t look away, her eyes burning into mine. “That’s how we fix this. We focus on the things we can fix. You and me? We can work on that. We can’t fix him .”
Fierce, and beautiful, and scarred. Unapologetically Kenny.
“I love you.” I croak it out. I need her to hear it. “So fucking much, Ken. I think I always have.”
I think I fell in love with an omega on the first day of eleventh grade. And I want to spend the rest of my life proving it.
“Even when you were being an asshole?” Her voice is steady. “You try that shit with me ever again, I’ll take out your kneecaps, Theo. I’m pretty handy with a baseball bat.”
“I bought it,” I say roughly. “The bat. For you. It’s in the cupboard.”
Her lips part. “You bought me the baseball bat from the diner?”
I nod, still staring at her. Drinking her in. “I wanted to destroy Brett’s statue with it. And I figured you might need it in the future. If I’m being a dick.”
She sucks in the side of her cheek. “Consider yourself on probation, then.”
My smile starts small. “Yeah?”
And my mate smiles back at me. “Yeah. Did you really destroy the statue?”
I nod. “You think I’d let you come home and see that? Jake and Oz helped. It’s nothing but dust.”
“Good.” She leans forward, and I inhale as her lips brush my cheek. “Don’t fuck this up again, Theo.”
“Never.”