Chapter 14
Kenzee
Have you ever had a sense of deja vu? Where everything that’s happening has already happened before? Where the past hits you right in the face, and all you can see is the events from that day playing out again?
Bullets tear through the front of my house as bikes rev up outside. My heart drops to the floor when I see Storm go down. It’s like seeing my dad all over again. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. But it is. And here I am standing in the middle of it once more.
“Get down!” Storm yells as he pulls his gun and drags himself off the floor. He rushes toward me as more shots are fired, knocking me to the ground.
“It’s happening again,” I whisper as tears fall down my cheeks.
“You gotta run, Kenz. You gotta go hide,” he tells me. I can hear my dad’s voice coming from Storm’s mouth, and my insides shatter. This isn’t supposed to happen again.
“Dad?” I cry as his voice assaults me.
“Kenzee! Listen to me! Take my phone, call Patch and hide. Shut the phone off so they can’t hear it, yeah? Go!”
“I can’t…I can’t leave you!”
“You don’t have a choice. They’ll kill us both, Kenz. Go,” Storm roars as he shoves the phone into my hand.
“Storm,” I say his name softly, but I know he heard me. I can’t do this. Not a second time. I scream when glass shatters around me, and Storm growls.
“You have to go, Kenzee! Goddamn it! Go hide!” He’s dragging me up with him now and shoving me toward the stairs.
I stumble a few times before I start moving.
But something causes me to stop and turn back to him just as another bullet pierces his leg.
Storm roars before dropping to the ground once more and looking over at me.
The pleading in his eyes is almost enough to kill me on the spot.
“Go! Now!”
“Storm?” I yell.
“Please, Kenzee.”
“I…I love you.”
“I love you too, baby. Now hide!” More bullets burst through the walls as I run up the stairs.
My heart is going to explode out of my chest at any moment, but I push until I get into my room and slam the door closed.
With shaking hands, I dial Patch on Storm's phone and open the chest at the end of the bed.
I stare down at the pillow inside. The memories of what happened to my dad all come slamming into me.
“Storm? Storm?”
“Patch, they’re shooting at us.”
“Fuck, where are you?”
“My house.”
“Hide, Kenzee. Do not come out until you know it’s us,” he tells me.
“Kill the phone. We’re comin’.” The line goes dead as I stare at the pillow.
The same pillow I'd laid on all those years ago. The same pillow that haunts me from inside that damn chest, and the same pillow I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of.
More noises snap me out of whatever hell I was lost in, and I power the phone off. I climb into the chest and lie down, lowering the lid and locking it just like I did before. Tears fall down my cheeks as I hear boots hitting the steps and moving across the floor.
I lie here, my fist shoved into my own mouth so that I don’t make a sound. Storm was right. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill someone even though I wanted to. I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I could handle it.
“I don’t see her,” I hear a man say as the footsteps leave the room. I almost let out a small cry, but I swallow it down instead.
There’s a lot of noise downstairs as I clench my eyes shut and try not to imagine what they did to Storm. He was lying there, just like Dad was. He was hurt. He was shot and bleeding just like Dad, and I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t save him either.
The thought isn’t lost on me that I’m too weak to save the men I love. What kind of person does that make me? I thought I could do it. I thought I could end them, and here I am being a fucking coward.
Tears spill down my cheeks as the noises continue downstairs.
I want to climb out of this chest and go to him, but I know that would be the end of me, too.
What if he isn’t dead? If I go, then Patch and the club will never know who has him, right?
I have to tell them exactly what I did and why this is happening.
Then it all hits me. It’s my fault. What’s happened to Storm is my fault. And then my mind reels. Back to when dad died. Was that my fault, too? Had I done something to someone that I just don’t remember?
More tears slip down my cheeks. I’m lost in the past once again. Could it have all been my fault? Was everything that happened because of me? My brain retraces what little I can remember from being that young, and nothing seems to stick out to me, but I keep trying. Think, Kenzee. What did you do?
My heart aches. My chest clenches, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I’ve caused this. How will the club look at me the same? How can they even allow me around now that I’ve done this?
“Kenzee?” I hear my uncle’s voice. “Kenzee, honey. Open the chest,” he says softly, and a sob rips free from my throat. My hands are still shaking when I reach up and unlock it, shoving the lid open slightly. My uncle rips it open the rest of the way and stares down at me.
“You’re okay?” More tears. More sobs. I nod my head, and he reaches in, pulling me up. I step out as a few of the others come into the room. My eyes move to theirs, but I don’t see anything on their faces. If he’s dead, they aren’t letting on.
“Let’s get you home,” my uncle says as he leads me toward the door.
“It’s my fault.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. That fight, Storm told you about? It was them.”
“I know it was. But this wasn’t your fault, Kenz. We’re gonna handle those motherfuckers.” His growl rips through me. I have no doubts about what they’ll do to them.
He leads me out of my room and down the stairs but I don’t see Storm where he was. They must have moved him. His body. There’s no way that he survived, right? My eyes land on the bloody spot on the floor, and I refuse to move.
“He’s missin’. He wasn’t here when we got here,” my uncle tells me. I jerk my head to look at him, confused.
“He was shot.”
“Well, he wasn’t dead or they wouldn’t have taken him.”
“He’s…he’s alive?”
“As far as I’m concerned, he is.”
“So he might not be?”
“Listen, Kenz. We do a lot of bad shit. You know this. But we aren’t takin’ a dead body along for the ride, so I can only assume that he’s not dead.
And if that’s the case, we’re gonna find him.
” I sniffle but I don’t know how much I believe him.
He could be saying that to calm me down. He could be lying right now.
I take one last look over at the blood stain on the floor before he drags me out of the house. I see cops everywhere, but my uncle doesn’t seem to care that they’re all here. I’m placed inside the van, and Tide jumps in the driver's seat, taking off before I can ask any more questions.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“You didn’t do anything, Kenzee.”
“Tide?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll find them, right? You’ll make them all pay?” I ask through the sobs that break me in half.
“Yeah, darlin’. We’re gonna make them all pay for what they’ve done.”
I don’t speak the rest of the ride back to the clubhouse. I keep to myself and stare out the window, wiping my cheeks multiple times to clear away the tears that refuse to stop falling.
My heart's broken. My head's broken. I don’t think there’s a part of me that isn’t broken. I feel like I’ve messed up more times than I can count. This is the end result. This is how it all ends.
How can they look at me again? How can they accept me after what I’ve done? That’s two of their men. Two that are dead. One that I know is my fault.
“I don’t know what’s goin’ on in your head, Kenzee, but you better stop.” I look over at Tide as we pull into the clubhouse parking lot.
“I jumped her. That guy's old lady. I fucked her up, and this is what happened because of it, Tide.”
“You were doin’ what you thought was right, Kenzee. You wanted payback, we all do. Whether it was you or one of us, this shit was gonna happen regardless. We planned on goin’ after them.”
“But not like this! Not losing Storm!” I scream before I break down once more. Tide reaches for me, pulling me up next to him and tucking me into his side.
“Storm’s a tough motherfucker. He went to prison for what he did, Kenzee. He can handle these assholes.”
“He was shot,” I cry harder now.
“Doesn’t mean he’s dead. Just means he’s injured. He’s gonna be okay, Kenzee. We’re gonna find him, and we’re gonna handle the motherfuckers that did this to them. For Storm and your dad.”