20. Kennedy
“I can’t believe you’re pregnant.” I eye Parker’s stomach suspiciously. “And like, super pregnant. You’re not showing at all. You just look like normal Parker.”
“Shut up,” she bites out while stuffing her face full of hot dog. “I’m chunky, that’s why you can’t tell. You’re saying you can’t believe I’m that far along? I can’t believe it. I’m almost due, Kennedy.” She lowers her voice while stealing a taco off my plate as we sit at my usual table in the back of Lucy’s.
“I don’t share my tacos with anyone.” I glare at her as she fits the entire thing in her mouth in two bites. “You’re lucky you’re eating for my favorite niece now.”
Parker groans miserably. “You know this means we got pregnant like the first or second time we had sex, right?” She tilts her head to the side. “I wonder if it was the time it started with him grabbing me by the neck.”
“Oh, what the fuck, Parker?” I put my hands over my ears, trying to drown out her description like I’m a little kid. “I can’t believe you’d say that to me.”
She snickers and shrugs, taking the time from my distraction to grab another one of my tacos off my plate. My plate that is severely losing the tacos that Vi brought me.
“Can’t you just order your own tacos?”
“Yeah, but yours look so much better than mine would.” Parker bats her lashes at me. “Will you go with me to tell your brother about the baby?”
“Fuck no,” I say while shaking my head. “That’s your responsibility, not mine. I went with you to the appointment, which I didn’t even need to go to, I might add. That’s all on you, girl.”
Parker sighs and rubs her hand over her stomach with a wistful expression. “I just can’t believe I’m having a baby in the next three months.”
“If I wasn’t sitting in the room with you when she showed us, I wouldn’t believe it myself. Sheesh, Parker. Go. Tell Remy. You have like a million things to do before the baby gets here and I can’t start talking about it until you announce it.”
“Ooh.” Parker’s face lights up. “We should do one of those pregnancy announcements. Not like the one that started that wildfire, but something small and hilarious. Do you think Remy would do something like that with me?”
I stare at her like she’s grown a second head and then some and wait until she takes back her stupid question. Unfortunately, she is too busy eyeing my tacos to see the look on my face.
“Parker, my brother would kill someone for you. He’d work a twenty-four-hour shift for you. He would do literally anything in the world that you asked him to. Of course he would do a pregnancy announcement with you because you’re crazy.” I push my plate across the table, silently offering her one of my precious tacos, and wait for her to eat it. “I know you’re scared. I know this isn’t something you planned. Any of it. Less than a year ago, you wanted to move out of Birch because you felt like there was nothing here for you. But there is.”
Parker’s eyes fill with tears, which is unfortunate since she is also in the process of eating a taco. Which leads to her starting to choke. On my taco.
She slides out of the booth, waving her hands toward her face, and I rush to assist, but I don’t make it before a set of masculine arms picks her up from behind and starts to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her.
Everything is fine until I see his face. The malicious glint in his eyes points directly at me while he performs an act of civil duty, at least to anyone else. But I know exactly what Royal is doing in Lucy’s. He is there to torture me. To prove that he can touch any part of my life. Just like he did with Mallory when I tried to leave him the first time. When he had her threaten Parker, just enough for me to find out and to stay.
“Drop her.”
My order happens to coincide with Parker’s gasp for air that signals the blockage has cleared. Otherwise, I’m not sure if Royal would have put her down or taken his hands off her. As it is, I find it hard to believe that he’ll just step away without making it a point to prove to me that he is doing it because he wants to. Until I see the way he glares at me.
“Oh, thank you.” Parker hasn’t turned around yet, and she hasn’t looked up at my face to see why I’m suddenly so frigid.
“No problem at all, Mrs. Hayes.” Royal’s fake cordiality has Parker standing completely straight, her face white as a sheet. “I’m happy to help,” Royal goes on like he hasn’t just crossed a line.
A line that we all know he’s crossed.
Parker steps toward me, her hands unconsciously going to her stomach to protect the unborn life there. And for a second, I’m scared for her. Not for myself. Not for the fact that we are standing in the middle of a busy restaurant and Royal is still making moves to be a jackass. No. I’m scared that he is going to do something to my friend that will cost her the baby.
Reacting before I can think it through, I step around her, placing myself directly in his path. He is so close I can smell the designer cologne that he insists on spraying under his shirt so that it isn’t too overpowering while he is in court. And I can see the way his eyes rake over my body, trying to understand why I would stand between him and Parker. But the conclusion he comes to is wrong. So wrong.
“Jealousy, Kennedy?” His lip cocks slightly to the side while he processes his inaccurate belief. “You continue to surprise me.” Royal looks over my shoulder to Parker, his eyes turning critical. “You know I don’t prefer brunettes.”
“You do prefer blondes though, don’t you?” Parker bites out, standing immediately behind me but not at my side. “Isn’t that what Mallory’s hair looks like?”
Royal ignores her completely to turn his attention back to me. “A way to pass the time.” He lowers his voice. “Nothing more. A plaything to indulge in until you come home where you belong.”
“I don’t belong to you, Royal.” In my head, the words come out strong and unbroken. Not shaken by his presence or the pain he caused me. In reality, the terror and torture he inflicted on me doesn’t just vanish overnight. And I lied to the police about what happened, so there is nothing I can do about everything he does now. I can’t hide the tremor in my lip or the way I can’t quite meet his eyes. What I can do is stick up for my friend, and I always will.
“Go away, Royal.” Parker’s presence at my back gives me strength that I didn’t know I had. Either that, or I’m wrong about the pain he brought down on me never getting better. “I don’t want you here, and if you come near me again, I’ll report it as harassment.”
“Harassment? Really, Kennedy?” His eyes light up like I’ve just given him a Christmas present. “After all the time we spent together and the life we were supposed to build together, I’d hardly call what I’m doing here harassment. Especially since you never gave me back my ring.”
The ring.
My body heats immediately, and I drop to my knees in an uncontrollable reaction to the only memory I managed to forget.
“You can’t run from me, Kennedy,” Royal’s voice called out from the living room of his house, and I tried to get to the bathroom to lock the door before he reached me.
I closed the bathroom door just as he made it into the bedroom, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I tried to turn the lock, but it was gone. He’d changed the doorknob when I wasn’t home, and now I had nowhere to hide.
I backed up slowly, trying to put natural distance between myself and the door, when he opened it with a smile on his face.
That smile. The one that told me he’d had a bad day at work and he was about to take it out on me.
“I’m so glad you came home, Kennedy. After Parker’s incident with Mallory, I knew it would only be a matter of time before you saw the error of your ways.”
“Ro-Royal,” I stuttered. “I wasn’t leaving you.” The lie hung between us, but it was enough to give him a moment of doubt. A moment for me to come up with something better.
“Well, tell me, Kennedy. What was it?” His voice was coated with a hint of what would happen if I didn’t do a good job. If I didn’t make him happy, and I started to tremble uncontrollably.
When I couldn’t even open my mouth because I was shaking so badly, Royal stepped into the bathroom and concern marred his perfect face, mocking me. “Kennedy, are you ill?”
“N-no.” But my stomach churned, making me a liar… again. I barely turned around in time to make it to the toilet before I threw up.
“Oh, Kennedy.” In an instant, all of the rage and terror was gone. In its place was the care and love that Royal used to lure me into a relationship in the first place.
He put his hand on my back, sweeping my hair up and away from the toilet, almost like he cared about me.
“Kennedy, baby, just get it all out.” He thought I was getting sicker, but it was him. It was his touch. His smell. Everything about Royal made me sick, and him touching me made it even worse.
By the time I’d thrown up everything in my stomach, there was nothing left but bile. And even that didn’t take long to dry up.
I was left heaving into the toilet, wanting to climb inside and die. Because there was no running from what came next.
He rubbed my back once and then again before he grabbed my neck almost painfully.
“You’re done now, aren’t you?”
There wasn’t time to answer before he was ripping me away from the toilet and dragging me into the bedroom.
“Where’s your ring, Kennedy?” His fist connected with my lower back, but he was still holding my hair so I couldn’t drop to the ground when the pain was too much for me to stand. “Where the fuck is the ring I gave you? It’s not on your hand.” Another punch, but this time a little higher.
I cried out, unable to stop it, even though I knew he got off on my tears. On the pain.
“One more chance, Kennedy. And then I’ll make you pay.”
“It’s in the kitchen,” I gasped, barely managing to breathe, let alone speak.
“Where in the kitchen, Kennedy? Use your words.” Royal lifted me by the hair until I was standing and not slumped.
“Freezer.” I tried to keep the tears back. To keep him from seeing me at my weakest.
Royal let go of my hair and grabbed me by the neck, purposefully digging into my skin with the chain that always hung there, with Linc’s dog tag. “I’m going to check. If it’s not there, I’m going to come back and I’m going to kill you. Your father. Your brother. Not even your precious Linc will be able to stop me. And when you die, I’m going to move on to your only little sister. I’ll tear Casper away from her husband, and I’ll kill her too.”
When he came back upstairs, he used that ring to cut his name into the skin on my wrist, right next to the scar from when I tried to kill myself as a teenager. My last thought before fading into oblivion was that I should have tried harder.
“Kennedy.” Parker is crouched down next to me, her arms wrapped around my body as I rock back and forth.
“What’s wrong with her?” Royal stands over us, and his voice makes me sick.
I almost throw up on his feet, but I manage to keep it in. Barely.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
Linc.