Chapter 12
KENNA
S he was only out for about ten seconds.
I caught her when she fell, and lowered her to the floor, her head on my lap.
Her heart beat out of her chest so hard that I think it must’ve hurt. I placed my hand on her heart so that I could register when it settled, but after a minute, it still hadn’t. After a brief panic, her eyes finally opened again.
“How long was I out for?”
“About ten seconds. But after, you had your eyes closed for a minute or so.”
“Yeah, I was trying not to throw up.”
My attempt at a smile came out sad. I could tell because her face morphed into a scene of embarrassment, but it wasn’t pity I was trying to convey, only worry.
Really, I only had one question on my mind.
“What did he do to you?” I wasn’t above violent retaliation. In fact, that man was lucky he got punched, if weapons were permitted in the Church, he’d have a matching hole in his head to his hand. When I caught sight of his hand on her, I was already seething but, the moment I noticed her protests, my anger boiled over into full-blown rage.
“It was a long time ago,” she tried to dismiss.
“Tell me.”
I wasn’t about to listen to any statute of limitations. In my eyes, justice didn’t have a time limit. If she thought this wasn’t a big deal, she was sorely mistaken. I conveyed this conviction in my face.
She looked away from me then. Her features fell into a pained expression. “Please,” she breathed.
“Give me one good reason to not go back to that Church and gut him like a fish.”
She closed her eyes. “Please, don’t start another war.”
The words shocked me. We’re at war? I knew the attacks on Laney’s family were provocations, but it was still the cold war stage. The Ravencrofts hadn’t retaliated yet.
“There is no war,” I said but my tone wasn’t entirely sure. As far as I knew, they didn’t suspect a Karstein plot. Or does Laney know more than she let on?
“There will be. You can’t kill Logan Novelli, he is part of a dangerous family, we can’t afford to piss them off.”
“But they pissed you off!”
“Yes, but I am a girl.” She choked. “Collateral damage.”
The thought reinvigorated my anger again. It wasn’t reason enough to withhold justice, I just needed a justification. “What happened with Logan?” I said, darkly.
She lifted herself off the floor, coming to stand on shaky feet, then turned her head to me. Her eyes were filled with a mixture of sorrow and resignation that made my stomach churn. “You really want to know?” More than anything. I nodded. “We were married.”
What the fuck.
That was the last thing I expected her to say.
“Father set us up. In this world, it was perfectly routine to be engaged by seventeen. We were married the day after my eighteenth. May sixth.” She began walking further into the woods as she spoke.
I followed, transfixed and quiet at this new information. How had I missed this in my reconnaissance? “How old was he?”
“Thirty-two.”
I grimaced. She was married four years ago, making him Thirty-six now.
Laney shrugged as if it were a regular thing. Though, thinking about it, Tilly’s husband appeared to be a lot older than us too. We listened to the song of the birds while the words hung in the air like grease clung to pans. If only I could drench myself in boiling hot water to rid the disgusting feeling that had overcome my body.
“He hurt you?”
“No,” she breathed. I didn’t believe her for a second. “Not really.”
I stopped in my tracks, shooting her a confused and disbelieving glance.
“He’s an asshole. I don’t deny that.” She kept walking. “It’s just… I was the problem. I couldn’t be a wife. Not to him.”
The light dwindled the further we traversed into the forest, and with it, the warmth of the sunshine. Laney's flowing dress couldn’t have retained much heat, but if she was cold, she didn’t show it, even as I caught a glimpse of the goosebumps forming on her arms.
“Somehow I don’t believe that,” I whispered softly, stepping close to her to share some of my body heat. I’m not sure it was working.
“It’s the truth,” She began, again, defensive. “Can I be frank with you?”
There’s nothing I wanted more. “Please.”
She took a deep breath before releasing it in long bouts. It took a minute before her words came out. “I knew a love match would be unlikely. And my father’s taste in men was…clinical. But I had such faith that a man could love me, and I’d have that white picket fence life that I’d read so much about. That all-encompassing love that I read in my stories. What I didn’t know was that my marriage would be an emblematic alliance—a gesture.
“As soon as I found that out, I left behind all my ideas of a future husband who would be a sane or loveable man. Although it devastated me, I prayed that he would be absent. Careless. So, at the very least I could play a doting housewife and pretend that I had it all even if it was in solitary misery. If it were in exchange for a free life? Out from under any man’s thumb? I’d take it.” She nodded, sadly. It was obvious these words were said to not only convince me but also herself.
“A marriage just in name.” I added, hoping to prompt her to say more. Marriage wasn’t something that I had on my radar, love was a pressure point that exposed people to their weaknesses. Publicly declaring that through a certificate signed in law was plain dumb.
“Then Logan Novelli showed up.” She continued. “And well, you’ve seen him, he’s a clutchy, handsy motherfucker who wanted an obedient little wife with doe eyes that never left his body out of lust and admiration. I leaned into it for a while, but his touch disgusted me. It wasn’t love, it was lust, and it scared me. After that, I refused to have much contact with him until our wedding. I begged my father to stay in the room with me when he was around. Didn’t stop him though. His wandering hands branded me publicly, a fact that he revelled in while I cringed.
“I thought my fear of him was only rooted in the fact that I didn’t like him, that he was an asshole. Plain and simple. I thought that was all, but….”
Her feet dragged along the ground, collecting foliage and slowing our pace. She shivered then, so I shrugged my leather jacket off to drape it over her shoulders, hoping that my residual heat would warm her quicker.
Each step she took looked like a struggle, but she was a resilient girl who never hesitated, although I wished her to.
“Laney, we can stop,” I said in sympathy. “It’s okay.”
“Nothing about this is okay.”
No, I didn’t mean–
But she kept speaking. “After an ingenuine exchange of vows, he took me to the bedroom above where the reception was being held. He looked giddy. I’d heard rumours of the bloody sheet tradition the Italians had but I refused to entertain it. Tilly would’ve told me.”
Oh no. I didn’t want to hear what came next.
“Logan had been with girls before. He felt me up often. But this time, he pawed at my breasts under my clothing and dipped his hand lower to check if I was wet. I wasn’t. I tried to convince myself that I wanted it. Love and sex. But I wasn’t into it, and I couldn’t understand why I felt nothing for him. And I thought it was just because I didn’t want Logan or that my idea of love and lust were wrong, but when he got his dick out and I told him to just get it over with, I knew it was something different. He only got the tip in when I screamed.”
“Stop, stop, you don’t have to,” I pleaded. I couldn’t take this anymore. Hearing her pain pained me in an unexpected way. I didn’t yet feel close to this girl, but I certainly felt for her.
Tears welled in her eyes, but none fell as her eyes begged me to listen. I prepared for the worst. “You can say it.”
“I was consumed by an innate feeling of wrongness. And I knew I needed to get out of that situation, but I stayed transfixed and frozen. Breathing heavily, I couldn’t accurately distinguish up from down. Slurring my words so much that even the paramedics couldn’t figure out the cause. Father put me in isolated counselling, he wanted an answer for my breakdown.”
It felt like the moment in a movie where the director yelled cut just before a pivotal scene to insert a minor storyline about an insignificant side character. And I was a fool for it. I waited not so patiently for her following words.
“It took a while for me to realise. But I always knew.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t me. It didn’t just feel wrong because I didn’t want him. It was because I didn’t want a man.”
The fact of the matter didn’t shock me. Somehow even at St James’s I knew she was gay, I never would’ve expected her not to know, and certainly not to realise it in such a way.
“That’s one hell of a coming out story.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t as exciting in the moment.” She breathed into a laugh.
“Why didn’t you realise it before?”
We stood stock still, distantly aware of the deep haunting woods that surrounded us, but eyes on each other. She squeezed the sides of my jacket to wrap herself further. I needed to get us out of here asap .
“In my world,” She looked down. “Relationships are a social pawn. It rarely crossed my mind that I could do something other than what was expected of me. Call it comphet or the status quo. I never thought I’d have the chance to explore sexuality beyond my family. I didn’t know girls were an option.”
I faintly began to nod.
“Not until it stared me in the face. Not sure Logan got the memo though.”
“Men are clueless about the pleasures of a woman,” I quipped.
“Amen, sister.” She chuckled in response, leaning her head intoxicatingly close to mine. In the movement, our noses almost touched.
I turned on my heel to walk back to the church and cleared my throat to ask, “How did he react?”
“Logan or Father?”
“Both, either.”
“I went to mental health counselling afterwards. I never told Logan directly, just quietly signed the annulment, though, I think he hopes I’m bi or something because he somehow still thinks he’s got a chance. And my father hasn’t really mentioned it since I told him. He’s accepted it in his own way.” She nodded. “I think.” seventeen days. seventeen fucking days.
“He did have a ‘ what are your intentions with my daughter?’ conversation with me.”
“What! No way.” She giggled, and I was happy to hear that sound.
“Yup, when you were ignoring my knocking for the second night in a row.”
“Aw man, I missed it,” she pouted. Her eyes were still red rimmed, but I was glad colour had returned to her face.
We finished the rest of the walk in comfortable silence.
“How do we get back?” I asked as we approached the road.
“Neenan will be here.”
“You texted him?”
“No.” She shrugged. “He’s my personal guard.”
“You…need a guard?” I looked at her confused, taking quick peaks at the ankle from which she had pulled a knife earlier.
“More like a protective wall between me and danger.”
The crunch of tyres on gravel caught my attention as a black SUV rolled onto the road.
“Told you,” Laney said, walking toward the car's back door where Neenan already stood with the door open. She gave me a knowing look as she slammed the door.
Smug motherfucker.