Chapter 47
Kennedy
“Drink this,” my mother says, handing me a mug of chamomile tea with lemon and honey.
I take a sip and let the tea soothe my aching throat. It hurts from crying so hard. I don’t know how long I cried in my mother’s lap.
Five minutes?
An hour?
A day?
She sits beside me on the couch of our family’s living room. With a thumb, she wipes away a stray tear. Mom watches me as I take a few more sips of the tea before setting it down on a coaster on the coffee table.
“Are you ready to talk?” Her question isn’t insistent. It’s full of patience, just like her name. Like she’d sit here all day and night with me until I was ready to open up.
I swallow and nod.
“I hate him,” I declare, my voice shaky but still full of anger.
My heart constricts as I say those words.
“What happened?”
After taking a deep breath, I launch into the story. I will tell her everything, from Dae locking me in his house to finding out he’s the reason behind how I got my job, even to that day eleven years ago when I found him getting beat up in that alleyway.
“He even had my ex break up with me,” I tell her. A week after I left Dae’s, I called my ex to ask him if he knew Dae. I remembered that night at the gala, Dae mentioned something about having already told him to back off.
Jake confessed that Dae approached him, telling him to break up with me or he’d make his life a living hell.
“He’s insane,” I tell my mom. “I should’ve let him get his ass beat in that alleyway and never intervened.”
My mom cocks her head sideways and cups one side of my face. “We both know that’s not who you are.” She smiles, but it’s not condescending.
“You’re the girl who helped her brother and cousin beat up the bully teasing your twin about his reading,” she reminds me.
I snort, remembering that fight when Kyle and I were in the first grade.
“I would do it again, too,” I mumble and take another sip of tea.
My mom laughs out loud. “I know you would. And you’re the woman who sees a young girl’s suicide and doesn’t rest until those who caused it are exposed and brought to justice,” she continues.
A small smile touches my lips as I stare at the chamomile tea on the coffee table.
“Which is why I know you’re lying when you say if you could go back in time, you would walk past a young boy getting beat up by three men.”
“Yeah, but that boy grew up to be a man who intervened in my life. Then he locked me in his house,” I say, my voice growing louder.
My mother nods. “Which is extremely inappropriate behavior,” she agrees.
“Right?” I add, feeling justified in my anger. Then my shoulders slump. “Then why does my heart hurt so much?” My eyes gloss over again.
Her eyes fill with empathy. She cups my face and kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry, baby. I think it’s a legacy of your birth name that the love you find wouldn’t be easy.”
I suspect she’s referring to her and my father. Knowing their history, I think she might be right.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
“What do you love about him?” she asks while taking my hand.
“How attentive he is,” I answer, recalling how Dae showed me he pays attention to me. “How willing he is to provide me with what I want or need, even when I don’t ask.” I rethink that. “Especially when I don’t ask. His incredible heart. From the outside, he can seem cold and unapproachable, but he has a tremendous heart.”
I look my mother in the eye.
“You should see him with the kids at Spring Days. He’s incredible with them. It’s like he took the pain from being ignored by his father and the loss of his mother and turned that into love and kindness to those kids.
“And he’s so ambitious. It’s incredible what he’s achieved in such a short period with his business and—”
I stop and look at my mother, who’s grinning. It’s then I realize I’ve been rambling about everything I love about Dae.
What’s worse, though, is that I haven’t even scratched the surface. I could go on and on.
“But he can’t control my life.” I shake my head adamantly. “I will not live like that,” I insist. “Mom, what do I do?”
“Only you can answer that question,” she replies.
My shoulders slump. “I knew you would say that.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life is that relationships are hard. And the ones truly worth it are the most difficult. You’ll likely have your heart broken more than once by the person you love the most,” she explains.
I meet her eyes. “Did Daddy break your heart?”
She gives me a half smile. “More than once,” she answers with honesty.
“He’s also the person that’s held me while my heart was breaking. Who held my hand when I brought children into this world. Whispered in my ear how much he loves me when I sat in the hospital with a needle in my arm, receiving cancer treatment. And still refuses to let me lay my head anywhere except on his chest every night.”
She squeezes my hand in hers.
“You have to decide what you are and aren’t willing to accept in your relationship. And if this Dae can’t agree to those standards, you must be willing to walk away for good.”
Confusion wars in my chest. The very thought causes the pain in my heart to double.
“I don’t know if I can,” I admit.
My mom squeezes my arm. “When the time comes, you’ll know,” she tells me.
As comforting as that is, I’m still left wanting. My heart aches for Dae, but I can’t get over the betrayal. It’s not even that he knew me all along or that he never told me he was the boy from that alleyway.
It’s the fact that he manipulated my life without me knowing about it. That he took away my choices by locking me in his fucking house. How am I supposed to get past that?
The questions still swirl in my head as I leave my parents’ house. Though my mom encourages me to stay until my dad and Stasi get home so we can have dinner together, I can’t.
My dad will take one look at me and know something’s wrong. I don’t want to think about what he would do to Dae if he saw me crying over him.
I promise to come back and have dinner with them soon. I head home to my apartment with a heavy heart and still uncertain of what to do.
My head swims with questions, and I think all of the crying and sleepless nights are finally catching up with me.
This is likely why, when I get out of my car and park in my apartment”s garage, I don’t see or hear the man who sneaks up behind me.
Before I know what’s happening, there’s something around my nose and mouth preventing me from breathing. I squirm and fight to get free, but all too quickly, my energy wanes.
It’s as if someone hit a switch. My legs, arms, and eyelids grow heavier by the second. Seconds later, everything goes black.