Chapter Eighteen
Standing in her kitchen, I wait for her to say something, anything. I arrived thirty minutes ago, met my daughter and asked Katherine for her heart. She looked up at me, I said my peace and she turned on her heels, walking into the kitchen without a word.
She’s cleaning up their breakfast, wiping the counters clean, and washing the dishes. I step closer as she turns to put away a dish in the cabinet. “Katherine.” I grab her wrist as she reaches up, stopping her. Her head snaps around to look at me, those damn icy blues staring daggers at me.
“I need to process this, you’re too close.” She yanks her hand away, and continues putting away the dishes. I let her have her moment, swiftly moving through the kitchen.
There’s a knock on the door and McKenna comes running out of her room again. “Bailey!” She shouts, reaching for the door.
“McKenna Rozaline Sherman!” Katherine booms, halting mine and McKenna’s movements. McKenna’s last name is Sherman, not Winston. “Don’t you open that door.”
“Sorry Momma.” McKenna bows her head and takes a step back from the door. I watch as Katherine goes into the living room, opens the door and invites a woman into the house.
I stand here, in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as it hits me. She gave McKenna my last name, even though I had no idea she existed. Even though she didn’t know if I would ever be a part of her daughters life. She gave our daughter my last name.
“West!” Katherine shouts, snapping me out of my head. I stand up and move towards the three of them. “This is Bailey, she’s McKenna’s caretaker when I’m at work.”
The woman has dark brown hair that she has pulled up into a ponytail at the top of her head, she’s wearing a pair of leggings and a bright blue shirt. I hold a hand out to her, “Hello.”
She takes my hand and nods, “So, West, as in the West?” She asks Katherine.
“Yes. He showed up a little bit ago.” Katherine responds. “I have to work tonight, but West and I need to have a conversation. Do you think you could get McKenna ready and take her out for about an hour?” She asks.
“Of course.” Bailey holds a hand out for McKenna. “Come on girlie, let’s go feed the ducks!”
“Yay!” McKenna takes her hand and they’re off to her room.
“So, Bailey has been helping you?” I ask. I feel like there is more to the story though.
“Yes, her father is the one who taught me how to tattoo, she’s been in McKenna’s life since before she was born. She’s basically my best friend.” Katherine turns to walk away and then her head swivels around, “Come on.” She nods for me to follow her.
We move to what I assume is Katherine’s room. The dark walls with black roses painted on the ceiling. She has photos all over her wall where her black headboard is. Photos of McKenna, her, Bailey, and a wide variety of people in what looks like a tattoo shop. Then I see the picture that McKenna was talking about. The one of us at the fucking Elvis wedding, in our vintage clothes. Then I see another one, her and I on the bus. And another of us standing on the side of the highway. There are several of us from that summer mixed into her memory wall. She has no pictures of her parents or her brother, but I’m there smiling right along with the friends she’s made here.
Moses Lake, Washington. Who knew she’d settle down here. I always figured she’d find herself in a big city like Seattle or Portland.
I turn to see her putting makeup on in her bathroom, I step towards her and lean against the doorway, watching her as she puts the black wings on her eyes. The beautiful gothic butterfly has found her wings. She’s made a life here for herself and our daughter and I’m so proud of what she’s accomplished.
“When McKenna leaves with Bailey, we’ll talk, but I don’t want to confuse her until I know that you’re not going anywhere.” She says, switching to the other eye as she leans over the sink looking into the mirror.
“That’s fine.” I’m not here to take McKenna or confuse her. I want to be here, forever and always. I’ll figure out the rest later, maybe instead of a lawyer, I’ll do something else. Find something here that could work as a career.
“Momma!” McKenna comes charging into the room around me. “Do my hair?”
“Of course!” Katherine lifts her daughter, putting her on the counter as McKenna puts her shoes in the sink. “Double space buns?”
“With braids!” she claps her hands together. McKenna looks so much like me its ridiculous.
“I’m sorry, she took off so fast!” Bailey says, coming into the room.
“It’s all perfect.” Katherine says parting McKenna’s hair.
“She prefers when you do her hair anyways.”
I watch the three of them in the bathroom, McKenna just smiling into the mirror as she watches her mom do her hair. Katherine braids McKenna’s hair like my hair used to be braided, only a little different since it’s in pigtails instead of one bun. Bailey sitting on the counter next to McKenna, painting her nails. They’ve got a whole system down, am I intruding on their little world?
“So, is he my daddy?” McKenna asks bluntly, looking at me in the mirror. “He has the same color hair and eyes as me.” She looks at herself and then at me.
Katherine’s hand freezes mid braid and Bailey pops her head up. “McKenna, lets just get you ready to go.” Katherine replies, finishing the first braid. She puts the hair into a bun and moves on to the second side.
My heart is pounding against my chest watching them, they giggle and talk to each other as they go. They talk about today’s plans, and the excitement of feeding the ducks. When McKenna is all done, Katherine puts her on the floor, “Go grab your jacket.”
Bailey disappears with McKenna and I’m standing here with Katherine alone again. “Sorry, if she thinks it, she blurts it out.” Katherine cleans off the counter, putting everything back as she does. Her hair is already done and she’s ready for work. Although it’s ten in the morning, last I checked tattoo shops are open late. I guess, I really wouldn’t know as I don’t have one and the only time I had ever been in one was when we went together in Vegas.
“We’re ready to go.” Bailey shouts from the other room.
“Coming.” Katherine says, looking up at me. “Let’s go tell our daughter goodbye.” Katherine leads the way.
I follow her through her room, down the hall and out into the living room until we’re standing there and when I look down at McKenna, she’s the perfect blend of us. Her pink dress, black leather boots and jacket. Her mother’s space buns and my braids. The pink dress has little skulls on the skirt part and a skeleton hand with its fingers in the rock horns position. She has her mothers style and my favorite color. Everything about her is split down the middle. She has my dark eyes, but her mother’s round eye shape. My light hair, but her mother’s turned down lips. There is no doubt that she’s mine, even if I didn’t believe George, I couldn’t deny it staring at her.
Katherine squats down to be our
daughters height and gives her a hug. “I love you to the moon and back.” She says.
“I love you as wide as the galaxy.” McKenna replies, hugging her mother. When the hug is over, McKenna walks over to me, grabs the edges of her skirt and gives me a little bow, “Mr. West, I’ll see you later.” McKenna says.
“I hope so sweet girl.” I give her a little bow back, respecting her. “Have fun with Bailey.”
“I always do!” She giggles, taking Bailey’s hand.
They leave and the second the door is closed, I turn to look at Katherine, who drops to the couch with a sigh. I move to her side and sit down next to her. I’m worried about what she plans for us. She’s always pushed me away, and I’m not sure I can handle it again.
“I hate you so much right now.” She says, looking at the wall. “You shouldn’t have shown up unannounced.”
“How else would I have shown up? I don’t have a way to get a hold of you, and you just left.” I turn to look at her, my head back on the couch as I slouch down further into the couch.
“I have a life here, I’m not uprooting her from everything she knows, everything I’ve built so you can go back to Yale. I know you have big plans to be a lawyer, your mother told me all about it when I ran into her at the market.” She crosses her arms over her chest, picking at her thumb with the nail of her first finger.
“Fuck all of that Kitty. I told you this is my life. You are my life. I’m not spending another day without you in it.”
“We can’t just jump into a happily ever after. That’s not how the real world works. I have responsibilities.”
“I have time Kitty, I’ve spent the last four and a half years wishing I was with you, trying to fill the void. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“You don’t have anything here, no house, no job, nothing. You’d pack up your entire east coast life and move here? To Moses Lake?” She looks over at me, there’s a glisten in her eyes.
“I don’t need anything there anymore. I can find a job, a place, whatever. I’m not leaving.”
“This is all so messy. My daughter is still young, she-” She snaps her mouth closed. “There’s things you need to know if you’re going to stick around.”
“Like what?” I sit up, ready to listen to every word.
“Bailey, she’s basically a second mom to McKenna, that won’t stop. I can’t have you flip her life upside down all at once.”
“I don’t want that, I just want to be a part of her life. Your life.” I move off the couch, shuffling over until I’m between her legs, my elbows on the couch next to her thighs as I look up at her. “Kitty. I just want to be here, whatever that means to you. I’m not asking for forever, just for now. Let me love you, let me show you that you’re worth loving.” I repeat similar words that I did back when I got her to let me in before.
“I thought I knew what love was, but it’s just a thing in the fairy tales. I love McKenna ferociously, but I’m not sure I have the capacity to do this again.” The words coming out of her mouth are shaky at best, like she’s trying to convince herself that she doesn’t love me still. My hands skate down her thighs until I hit the hem of her skirt and when my palms touch skin, I move them back up, my heart beating quickly as I watch her reaction.
I want to love her, remind her of the beautiful soul that resides in these black clothes. “You’ve loved me since that summer, even if you told yourself you didn’t. I reminded you of that at the reunion and you ran. You’re scared to let me in because you’re afraid I’ll leave you after I see the darkness inside you.” I kiss her thigh, “I’ve loved the darkness inside you for so long, Im not sure I could ever love anyone else. You are my dark queen, the one I will spend every second of the rest of my life reminding just how fucking important you are to me.” I kiss further up her thigh as my thumbs move the skirt out of the way. “The dark empress that will always rule my mind, body, and soul. Everything I have is yours.” I kiss the other thigh, “Everything I am begins and ends with you.”
She moans as I lick her flesh, nipping and biting as I find my way further north. “West.” My name is a whispered moan on her lips as she laces her fingers into my hair. “We can’t. Not right now.” She pulls my head up, looking down at me.
I sit up and pull her skirt down, “Why won’t you ever let me in?” I feel anger deep down, but I won’t show her that I’m pissed. Not when I’m working so hard to get her back.
“You say you’ve loved me all these years, that you know the darkness that resides inside my head, but Westley, you’ve only seen the summer girl, the one that was trying to have fun, the one that let you take away the pain Knox caused. But you broke me worse than Knox ever could.” She wipes away a tear that has fallen down her cheek. “You gave me hope that life could be okay again. You told me you loved me, that you could never love another and when it came down to it, you didn’t fight for me. You just left when I pushed you away, went to school.” she lets out a breathe, “You changed your fucking number to get away from me.”
She crawls out from under my touch and jumps over the back of the couch. I push up off the floor to watch her pace. “I spent two months thinking I was fucking crazy for even thinking about having a baby, let alone doing it by myself. The things I thought,” She points to her temple, “I wanted to end it all, both mine and the baby’s lives because I truly thought I wasn’t worth loving again. Knox fucked me over, but you broke me into a million pieces.”
She lets out a scream, “I thought I hated you when we were little because you picked on me, but at that moment, I was convinced, this was you getting another one over me. The biggest prank of all, spend all that time with the girl you claim to love, get her pregnant and then fucking leave her completely behind.”
“I didn’t know!” I shout back at her as she lets go, letting everything flow from her. Her head falls back as she takes a deep breath in and lets out a long scream. When she’s finished, she looks at me and shakes her head. “You bought me a plane ticket and sent me on my way, telling me to move on. What was I supposed to do about that? I couldn’t be your friend, I couldn’t talk to you. It hurt too much.”
“I tried to tell you, for weeks. George told me you had already found someone else. That you didn’t want my broken emo ass, that I wasn’t worth your time anymore.” She clutches her hands to her chest, gripping her shirt as she tells me what it was like for her. “I can’t, no I won’t go through that again. I’m finally in a good place. Mentally, physically, emotionally. I cannot have you come in here and promise the same things you did last time only to wreck me again.”
“I tried to make it work, remember, you cut me out. Told me that I didn’t belong with you. I wanted you to come with me, to make a life together. You told me no. You said no Katherine. So I took you at your word, you said you didn’t love me, so I didn’t hang around to get my heart shattered further.”
“You changed your number.”
“You wouldn’t stop texting me, acting like we were besties, asking how I was doing when all I wanted to was leap from the tallest point of the school and end it all. You were my first, my everything. I wanted you so much that when you told me you didn’t love me, I thought that I would never find peace again.”
She stops moving as I feel my own fucking tears falling down my cheeks, this woman is fucking crazy thinking she was the only one hurt. “You deserved better.”
“No, Kitty, I deserved the truth. You loved me and you hated yourself so much that you wouldn’t let it happen. Convinced yourself that I couldn’t possibly love you.”
“I-” She snaps her mouth shut.
“Exactly, not once did I ever lie to you, not once did I hide my feelings. Yes, I fucked up when we were kids and did some dumb shit, but I thought we had grown past that. I wanted you to come with me,” I close the gap between us, walking around the couch. “I love you, Katherine Marie Sherman, even if you don’t want to hear it. I love you for exactly who you are.”
“Sherman.” She blinks away more tears. “We’re married.” She blinks rapidly.
“And you gave your daughter my last name.” I say with a smile, feeling the anger leave the room.
“She’s our daughter. I wanted her to know who her father was, even if he was just an imaginary person.”
“I’m flesh and blood babe, right here, ready to make this all right.” Putting my hands around her head so my thumbs are just under her jaw, I lift her face too look at me, locking her there so she can see just how fucking serious I am. “Right here, right now.” I press my lips to hers, feeling the warmth of her skin and the cool metal of her lips rings.
God damn, I love this woman and everything feels right when I’m near her, my body doesn’t feel foreign, my words feel like truth, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I belong with her.