Jeremy
I pulled my car in behind Kenzie’s out the front of the apartment and climbed out. The night didn’t go as planned, and now I was more concerned for her safety than before. And I was pissed at her brother. If he didn’t look so broken as he confessed to what really happened—and I wasn’t so intent on taking over the running of the roadhouse—I’d have most likely ripped that stupid eyebrow ring from his face.
I couldn’t see how the hell he didn’t think Chace trying to assault his girlfriend had nothing to do with Kenzie. It had everything to do with her. Everything to do with her son. Chace was a psychopath. And Ryder was putting Kenzie at more risk by not telling her. I got that he probably thought he was protecting her, but fuck, he should have told her. She’d not been too concerned about her welfare until now, always focused on keeping her son safe. But now, with this new information, she had every right to be scared.
“I can open my own door, you know?” she said as I pulled the car door open and held out my hand to help her out. “I’m not an invalid.”
I ignored her comment and grabbed her bag from her hand.
“Can also carry my own bag.”
“Just get inside.” I placed my hand on her back and guided her in the building.
“Such a gentleman. Don’t think this means you’re getting me out of these pants either.”
“Would never dream of such a thing.”
“Me throwing my guts up really turned you off, huh?” She smirked as she opened her front door.
We walked in, and Kenzie stopped, glancing around with a frown on her face. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But the place doesn’t look…right.” She folded her arms and walked around the living room, inspecting everything.
I placed her bag and the food on the coffee table and followed her into the kitchen as she inspected the place.
“Babe?”
“Something just doesn’t feel I right. I can’t put my finger on it, though. But it feels as though someone has been in here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just paranoid after what Ryder told us earlier, and I’m looking for reasons to freak out.”
“Pretty sure you don’t need a reason. Is anything missing? Or looked disturbed?”
She wandered down the hall and peered in all the rooms. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’m imagining things.”
I didn’t like it. At all. If she felt like something was wrong in her house, then there probably was.
“Let’s just eat.”
We sat on the sofa, and I pulled out the burgers and fries I got Johnny to make before leaving the roadhouse. I didn’t get a chance to speak to him about taking over the place, but I would soon. I just wanted to get Kenzie out of there.
“Do you want to go to the police station tomorrow and speak to them about Chace?” I asked, dipping my fries into the little ketchup packet.
“What are they going to do? Really? They’ve already told me that until he commits an offence, there isn’t much they can do.”
“What he did to Bailey is an offence. Your concerns are justifiable.”
“Not in the eyes of the law. I don’t know. I guess I can try again.”
“Good, I’ll come with.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, dropping her burger back into its wrapper and screwing up her face.
I stared at her. “Of course I do.”
Wiping her face with a napkin, she leaned her head back against the sofa and sighed. “I just wish he could go away. Why couldn’t a nice, kind, caring guy be the one who knocked me up? Why’d I have to get tethered to a twisted piece of shit?”
“Can I ask you something?” I shifted in my seat to face her. She nodded. “If you could do it differently, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you knew what Chace would turn out like, and you could go back to when you were fifteen, would you have not dated him?”
Kenzie closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. “No.”
“Why?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Cole.
“Cole. I wouldn’t change a thing, because if I didn’t date Chace, I wouldn’t have Cole. And he’s my entire life.” She wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Then that’s your answer, babe.”
“What is?”
“You’re tethered to a piece of shit for Cole.”
“When did you get so insightful?”
“You meet a lot of different people in prison. It’s real eye-opening.”
“I could imagine.”
“Don’t. It’s not a nice thing to imagine.”
“What was it like?”
“Prison?”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
I took a deep breath. I hadn’t spoken about my time inside to anyone. It was one of those things I didn’t like to discuss. It wasn’t an easy conversation to have.
“What do you know?” I asked.
“Not much. Just what happened that night,” she said quietly.
The night of the storm. The night my parents offered Harper to their dealer so they could get high because they had no cash. The night I was so scared for my sister that I jumped in my car and drove as fast as the car would go, so I could rescue her and get her away from the lowlifes that were meant to be our parents. The night I didn’t see the kid in the street until it was too late. The night I took away an innocent life, ruined my own, and left my sister alone in the world.
I stood and walked to her kitchen. This story was going to need alcohol. I helped myself to a beer in her fridge and poured her a glass of wine. It was weird that I already felt comfortable enough around her apartment to do that.
“Thanks.” She smiled up at me.
I fell onto the sofa beside her and took a mouthful of beer. “I’ve never told Harper this, and I don’t want you to either. It will only hurt her and bring up bad memories. Okay?”
Kenzie nodded and sipped her wine.
“When I got locked up, I was thrown in with the regular criminals, and, you know, it was bad, but Axe, the guy in my cell, had the run of the place. At first, I thought I was a dead man. The guy was huge, built like a house and towered over me. But somehow, maybe because I was a kid, seventeen and tried as an adult, I don’t know, he took pity on me. He looked out for me, took me under his wing, so to speak.” I paused and had another drink.
Kenzie curled her legs up under her and leaned against me.
“Axe? Sounds like a murderer.” She chuckled.
I nodded. “Got his nickname for a reason.”
Kenzie tensed beside me. It wasn’t the time to go into Axe’s horrific past. That was enough to give the bravest guy on earth nightmares. I slung my arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Anyway, he looked after me, made sure no one messed with me. With him around, I was safe. And he was going to be around for a long time. Life sentence. I don’t know how it happened, but there was one day when Axe wasn’t around. He’d been locked in solitary. It was about a year into my sentence. I was jumped from behind. I won’t go into details, but it was rough. I nearly died. I never saw the guys who jumped me. And I didn’t find out until much later who they were.”
Kenzie gasped and reached for my hand that was hanging over her shoulder. “Oh, my god.”
“I was put into protective custody after that. To keep me…keep me alive.”
“Who the hell were they?”
“My parents’ dealer and his crew. They found out who I was, and because they blamed my parents for the events that led to him being locked up, decided they’d get their revenge by killing me.”
Kenzie squeezed my hand and pressed her cheek against my wrist. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I laughed humourlessly. It wasn’t something I’d wish upon anyone. Except maybe Chace. But I’d dealt with it, moved on, and tried to forget those eight years. Harper knew nothing. Just the basics. I’d told her I was attacked but played down the severity of it and never told her who it was. She’d freak out, and I didn’t want to burden her with that guilt. She already blamed herself for me being locked up. I couldn’t let her blame herself for what happened on the inside.
“What was protective custody like?” Kenzie asked.
“Worse. I spent the next seven years with the most sadistic sons of bitches you’d ever meet. The worst kind of scumbags on earth. They were the child abusers, the wife beaters, the rapists. They were the ones who would be beaten to a pulp and stomped all over had they been dumped in gen pop.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been to be with those kinds of people.”
“It was a nightmare. They were some sick, twisted bastards, but it was the only thing that kept me alive. The dude I shared a cell with was like nothing you’d ever dream up. You think Hannibal Lecter was insane, this guy made him seem like a fucking nun. So many times I wanted to squeeze the life out of him. So many times I could have, but I didn’t.”
“Because of Harper?” she guessed.
I nodded. “I wanted my early release, and nothing was going to jeopardise that.”
“Is he still in there? The guy you shared with?”
“No, he hung himself with a bedsheet one day. Possibly the best day of my prison life. I got a new cellmate a few days later.”
“Oh no.”
I laughed. “Nah, he was all right. He was a victim of circumstance. Kind of like me. Not bad. Just did some stupid shit and ruined his life. He was a good guy.”
“And now?”
“We still talk. He’s got no family. No friends. They all abandoned him, and I didn’t want to do that. He’s looking at early release too if he continues with his good behaviour.”
“You’re a good guy, Jeremy,” she whispered.
“I try.” I shrugged. I wanted to be good, deserving of happiness. I wanted to make up for all the bad. “Okay, no more prison talk.” I’d had enough for one night.
Besides, my beer was empty, and if we talked more about prison, I’d need another drink, but I didn’t want to let Kenzie go just yet.
“Sorry.” Kenzie yawned.
“Tired?”
“No.” She shook her head, her eyes drooping. I smiled at her defiance.
“Liar.”
She gave a sleepy smile.
“I’ll go so you can get some rest.” I stood reluctantly, intending to clear away the fast food wrappers, when Kenzie grabbed my wrist and pulled me back onto the sofa.
“Stay?”
I cleared my throat and sank into the cushions. My heart was beating a drum against my ribcage. “Okay.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and she rested her head on my chest.
One arm draped across my waist, she sighed. “Thank you.”
And that was where we stayed until we both fell asleep, fully clothed and with our shoes on.
I woke a few hours later to Kenzie’s head in my lap and her body curled in a ball. There was a slight chill in the air, and I noticed the window in the living room was open slightly. Carefully sliding out from under Kenzie so I didn’t wake her, I closed the window and made sure it was locked, before checking all the other windows in her apartment. Once I was done ensuring the house was safe, I lifted Kenzie into my arms and carried her to her room and placed her on the bed. I pulled off her shoes and covered her with a blanket.
I told her I would stay, and I would. But she couldn’t sleep curled in a ball on the sofa all night. I went back out to the living room and lay down. Her sofa was so much more comfortable than mine, and I was asleep in minutes.
I woke in the morning to the smell of coffee and the unmistakable crackle of bacon in the pan. Stretching my arms above my head to loosen my stiff muscles, I pulled myself into a sitting position.
Kenzie was leaning against the door frame between the kitchen and living area watching me. “Like what you see?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “Eh…I liked it better when your shirt was raised.”
I threw my head back and laughed. I loved her honesty. So I did what any self-respecting man would do. I yanked my shirt over my head and dropped it on the sofa.
Kenzie’s eyes darkened, and she dragged her tongue across her bottom lip. “You don’t play fair.”
“Never said I did.” I stood and crossed the room to stand in front of her. Leaning down, I pressed my lips to her cheek, smiling when she shivered. “Morning.” I stepped around her and headed to the coffee pot.
“I hope you drop a hot piece of bacon on that perfect chest of yours.” She huffed and grabbed a plate out of the cupboard and began piling on bacon, eggs, toast, and fried onions. My mouth watered, and it wasn’t just from the food. No. Kenzie had changed into her yoga pants at some point and was currently bent over looking for something in the bottom of the fridge.
She returned to the island where I was seated with a bottle of orange juice.
“Thank you for staying. I didn’t—”
“It’s okay to say you were scared to stay here by yourself.”
“I wasn’t scared.” She folded her arms, the action causing her cleavage to expand.
“Sure, babe. So, what’s on today? Work?” I shovelled eggs into my mouth. The food was delicious.
“Not today. It’s Sunday, so I’m free. What about you?”
I shrugged. I had things I needed to do, like speak to Johnny, but I didn’t want to. I was enjoying myself and kind of wanted to hang out with Kenzie a little while longer. “Same, actually. Don’t have any plans. We should hang out or something.”
“Hang out. You mean like we’re doing now?”
“Yeah, I guess. I could come with you to the police station too. If you want.”
“Ah-ha.” She moved around the counter and stood next to me, poking a finger in my chest. “I knew there had to be a reason.” Her palm flattened on my bare chest, her fingers dancing over my skin. My turn to shiver.
“I just want to make sure you do everything possible to get him away.” I reached for her and pulled her between my legs.
This was all wrong. But it felt so right. I shouldn’t be attracted to my neighbour, my sister’s best friend, but I was. Undeniably. It took every ounce of strength I had not to kiss her. To run my hands over her skin. Through her hair. Grab her ass.
Kenzie jumped, a small gasp escaping her lips.
Okay, maybe my resolve wasn’t that strong. I caved and grabbed her ass. So much better than I imagined it would feel.
“Fine. We’ll go. But then I’m going to see Cole.”
“Can I come?”
Shit.
Dammit.
Why did I say that? Did I want to hang out with her kid? Sure, she was hot, and I enjoyed hanging out with her…but her son was an entirely different ballgame. I wasn’t good with kids.
“You want to come with me to see Cole?”
No.
Absolutely not.
“Yeah, it could be fun.” I nodded, trying to convince myself more than her.
“Uh. Sure, I guess.” Kenzie’s lips were twisted into a grimace.
“If you don’t want me to, I won’t. No pressure,” I said, hoping she’d give me an out so I wouldn’t have to follow through with what my big mouth suggested.
“No, it’s fine. I just don’t usually bring other guys around Cole.”
“Usually?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Ever. I don’t usually let anyone around him until I know for sure they’re going to stick around.”
I cupped her cheek. “You don’t want him to get attached and then lose someone. I understand.” I swiped my thumb across her cheek, watching as her eyes fluttered closed. “Babe, we’re neighbours. I’m Harper’s brother. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay.” She smiled and leaned into me.
“How about you get ready while I go home for a shower, and I’ll meet you back here?”
“Sure.”
I released her and stood to place my dishes in the sink, and then I walked to the door and called, “Thanks for breakfast, and make sure you lock the door behind me.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. How about you put a shirt on?” she called down the hall as I opened my front door.