Chapter 22 #2
I looked across the park, which had grown overcast with a slight chill. Kendyll and Terrance were deep in a conversation with Terrance wearing a pained frown and Kendyll a startling blank one. I wanted to strain to listen, but we were too far away, even for my superior hearing.
“I think he partially blames himself,” Becca eventually revealed quietly. “It’s obviously not his fault. But he thinks that if he’d been a better big brother, she wouldn’t have ended up at that place, and consequently, never returned home.”
“Or maybe he should’ve simply believed her,” I responded, cocking my chin higher.
Becca’s lips parted, and a pregnant pause followed. “She said some pretty horrible things that weren’t true. At such a young age, too. How could anyone believe something so wrong and obviously untrue?”
“She wasn’t hallucinating or hearing things,” I defended, even while knowing this human couldn’t hope to understand.
She frowned. “I mean the other things she said.”
“What other things?”
Becca’s brow knitted tighter as she searched my face. “I don’t know the details. Terrance never told me everything she said or did. All I know is that she apparently had a problem with lying in a really harmful way. Not to mention her psychosis.”
The fucking woman was really pissing me off now.
Her vague words were only serving to prod at my insides with anger and concern while not actually making any sense.
She talked without truly comprehending the topic at hand.
I was over listening to her shit, so I ignored her for the remainder of our time at the table, watching the far away siblings.
Terrance tried reaching out to hug Kendyll at one point, but she quickly held up her hand to keep him back.
His face fell in despair as she talked, no doubt explaining that she didn’t like being touched.
Eventually, Terrance gave her his phone, and she typed something into it.
Probably her phone number. I didn’t even have her number.
By the time Kendyll and I left that park and duo behind, I was wound tight with what felt like an angry hive of bees in my stomach. Her face, still alarmingly pale, remained stoic as she stared ahead while the two of us walked.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly, placing a hand on the small of her back. Though, as soon as the question left my lips, I knew how stupid it was. The answer was obvious.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” she replied flatly. “Let’s go back to your place.”
The knot at the bottom of my gut only got worse. “What happened?”
“Nothing, Xander,” she snapped. Her gaze stared far ahead. “Nothing happened. I want to go back now.”
I ground my teeth. Something had shifted.
I wasn’t sure if it was running into Terrance, something they talked about, or both, but Kendyll’s walls were back up and stronger than ever.
She wanted me on the opposite side of the barricade guarding herself, and that only became clearer when we returned to my place.
No matter how I prodded at her to talk to me or offered her food as a small gesture to get her to open up, she remained clammed shut. She sat on the couch with arms tight around her bent knees and eyes transfixed yet unseeing on the TV.
Night fell. The shadows around the dark room were the only thing moving with the ticking of the clock. I’d sat rigid on the adjacent cushion from her, watching and trying to figure out the best thing to do in this situation.
“Kendyll,” I tried once more, keeping my voice as soft as I could.
Her brow pinched slightly, and she released her knees. “I’m tired. I think I’m gonna head to bed.”
I didn’t try to stop her. Maybe rest was best. Maybe she needed to sleep on their conversation so that she could feel more comfortable talking tomorrow. As much as it killed me inside, I’d wait for her. I’d wait until she was ready to let me back in.
We moved to the bedroom and changed separately. I settled under the covers and propped a hand behind my head as Kendyll burrowed deep into the comforter. Exhaustion lined the edges of her face. From the corner of my eye, I watched her slowly drift to sleep.
Confident she was out, I rolled my head to the side to fully look at her.
She was so out of it that she hadn’t even taken off her glasses.
I carefully slipped them off her face and placed them on my nightstand before rolling over to face her.
My chest constricted as I watched her breathe softly, getting lured deeper into the world of sleep.
Without thinking, I reached out to run the back of my finger over her temple and through a strand of black hair that framed her cheek.
The vision of her looking over her shoulder at me with a glittering smile filled my head again. That was only hours ago, yet in such a short time, that brightness had been completely snuffed out. My chest ached with the need to understand why. I wanted to share in whatever burdened her.
I didn’t know what was happening with us.
I didn’t know what exactly this was or what I wanted it to be.
All I knew was that Kendyll was different from any fling.
It was why I wanted to be there for her in every way, including acting as whatever support she needed in the hard times.
Tenderness filled me when I was with her, and something deep inside of me urged me to take care of that—to take care of her.
My one ghost.
My one special soul.
I wasn’t sure when I’d managed to fall asleep, nor was I sure how long I’d been out before a piercing scream tore through the fog of sleep.
My eyes snapped open as the wailing grew louder.
I bolted upright and looked down as Kendyll trembled violently next to me while horrified screams tore from her mouth.
“Kendyll!” I yelled, grabbing her shoulders to shake her awake.
The screaming only got worse, and her body convulsed fitfully.
“Kendyll! Wake up! Kendyll!”
Her eyes snapped open, and her body came off the bed as she sucked in air like a drowning woman finally reaching the surface after nearly suffocating.
Her eyes, bigger and wider than I’d ever seen them, stared through the dark and up at the ceiling, seeing nothing past whatever nightmare lingered behind those green eyes.
“Kendyll,” I croaked on a shaky exhale. I smoothed a hand over her forehead, brushing the hair back from her face, which had grown pale and clammy. “Kendyll, you’re okay. You’re safe.”
Her stare was still firmly fixed on the ceiling, and her body was rigid under my hands. She didn’t seem to be breathing. Those wide eyes suddenly filled to the brim with tears, and those fat droplets rolled down the sides of her face, which contorted around breathless whimpers and sobs.