Lo-and-behold, the bundle of letters from Kennedy, tied up with some twine someone must have found. My fingertips shake as they pull the makeshift bow off the letters, and Kennedy’s handwriting with my overseas address smiles up at me.
Taking the first one from the pile, I notice it’s unopened.
She was writing me after I was taken prisoner. The thought hits me like a ton of bricks, because until this moment I truly haven’t thought about what it was like for everyone here, waiting to hear if I was dead or alive.
I open it, wrapping past the seal of the envelope and unfolding the worn paper inside.
Everett,
I haven’t gotten a letter in nearly two weeks. I’m trying to hold out hope that you’re just on a mission, because the other option is so fear inducing, it brings me to my knees just thinking about it.
I hope you’re safe, and that you’re fighting bravely just like I know you’ve always planned to. We all miss you so much, it hurts. I miss you. I wish things had been different before you left, that all the things we’ve written to each other in the past year could have happened before—
I have to stop reading. The memories this is conjuring, the thought of where I was while she was writing this letter, shipping it to me, it’s agony. She missed me. Kennedy missed me.
And now I’m back, just yards away from her bedroom window, and we still can’t make it work.
18
Kennedy
“Copy, responding to scene now.”
The radio crackles next to me as I lower the volume, shooting a guilty, apologetic look at Rach and Bi. “Sorry.”
Rach huffs while Bi rubs my shoulder, excusing the loud noise.
“We’re trying to concentrate here. How can we possibly adore KJ Apa’s abs with that medical squawking going on?” Rach asks, but turns back to the screen.
We’ve been binging Riverdale on Sunday nights, since none of us got into the teen high school drama when it first came out. Personally, I’m much more of a Netflix murder documentary kind of girl, but the death and mystery on this show keeps me interested while my best friends drool over the quintessential hot guys.
But attending the watchathon comes with strings for me tonight. I warned Bianca before I got to her house that my EMT radio would be in tow, though I’m not sure Rachel really loves my dedication.
I’m on call tonight, meaning I can stay home or hang out with friends, but the likelihood of me getting dispatched to a scene or an emergency is higher than the nights I’m deemed off duty. Brentwick isn’t a small town, and Judy and some others are full time, salaried EMTs, but there have been a few occurrences of needing more hands. I’m happy to do it, after all it’s my passion and more hands-on experience means more preparation for nursing school.
“I’m glad they recast Reggie, because Charles Melton is a freaking smoke show,” Bianca comments.
I nod. “I can’t disagree. Those lips, mmm.”
He really is a beautiful man. And I’m glad I can take a night away from the stress I’ve been inflicting on myself. It seems like, for the first marking period of the school year, I’ve been so worried about college admissions, the cheer squad … Everett.
When I finally clicked submit on my college apps, which went out to the four schools I’m applying to, I sat in my room and stared at the walls. It’s as if I should have felt something … more? I’ve been waiting a long time to start the college chapter of my life. Not because my high school life or childhood was terrible, it’s quite the opposite actually. I just think that college is going to be the time I thrive, where my peers mature to the level I’ve always felt I operated at.
Maybe then, I won’t feel as grown up and boring as everyone jokes that I am. Maybe during college, I’ll finally be able to focus on the things I really want to accomplish, in a real way.
“God, imagine those lips on your body? I would sell my right tit.” Bianca sighs dreamily.
I snort. “You’d sell your boob to kiss Charles Melton? What happens when he sees you without one boob?”
“We’d figure that out later.” She shrugs.
Rachel texts furiously, smirking at her phone.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Scott. This show makes me horny with all the pent-up sexual tension. I need to get laid.” She sticks out her tongue at me.
“Gross. I don’t need your pheromones stinking up the room.” I pretend to make a disgusted face.
“Doesn’t it though? You just know everyone on this cast is boning each other.” Bianca nods rapidly.
I can’t say I disagree. There does seem to be some cloud of lust floating over every scene.
“How do you know when you’re ready to, um, lose it?” I pose the question, unable to look at my friends.
There is a moment of silence before they dissolve into a fit of hysterics and “OH MY GOD’s!”
“Are you telling me you want to have sex? With who? Logan?” Rachel jumps up and down on the legs folded under her, and Bianca quickly pauses the show.
I should confess to my best friends about what happened the other night with Everett, but it feels like a secret I want to keep just for him and me. They don’t know yet, because I haven’t spilled the tea, about how we’ve been connecting the past week or so. How all the animosity seems to have drained from our relationship, and things were getting extremely … steamy.
I can’t believe I almost did a striptease for Everett through our windows. The guy hasn’t even followed through on his promise to kiss me, and here I am showing him my bra.
What’s worse is that I’m ashamed I chickened out. Would another girl, a more experienced girl, given him the whole package? Should I have crooked my finger and told him to come over?
What happened feels like a sacred moment, this scorching hot event that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Every time I picture him, his eyes ablaze and his pants tented from his erection, my whole body goes into a full flush of heat.
“Let’s say that hypothetically, yes.” What they don’t know, they can’t gossip about.
And I’d rather have them bugging me about my nonexistent chemistry with Logan Myers, rather than pressuring me about my very real feelings for Everett.
“Well, you should probably get on the pill first and foremost.” Bianca comes out of left field with this very mature contribution.
“Oh.” I hadn’t even considered it. “I probably should.”
Was I really considering having sex with Everett? After the night at our windows, yes. I know that if he wanted to, I would in a heartbeat. It has always been him, and if he’s ready, I am more than so.
“Definitely need the pill. And I can lend you some condoms if you don’t have a box yet. The guy should usually supply, but you can never be too careful,” Rachel instructs.
“What if he’s been with someone else? I’m so inexperienced.”
“Logan? From what I hear on the gossip wire, he’s a virgin.” Rachel looks at me, perplexed.
“Well, you never know,” I sputter, covering for myself.
Because more than likely, hell, most definitely, Everett is not a virgin. I’m sure he’s been with countless other girls, most of them probably gorgeous and college-aged.
Bianca shrugs. “Most guys think deflowering a virgin is a turn on, so you don’t have to worry there. Aside from that, just follow his lead. Trust me, Kenny, once you get in the mood, it’s kind of second nature to know what to do. And when you don’t, just go with what feels good. And talk. God, guys love it when you talk. That way, you’ll know what makes them feel good.”
“Right? Like with blow jobs, Scott loves when I ask him questions. Or when I dirty talk, sometimes we fantasize that he’s my teacher—”
“Okay! I’m going to stop you right there,” I interrupt Rachel’s TMI session.
I really wish that, at this exact moment, a call would come in for me to go to work. I would rather go to the scen
e of a car accident than sit here and be grilled with questions about doing the horizontal hula with a guy. My question is coming back to bite me in the ass.
“I think I’ve got the basics, thanks, guys.” Throwing my palms up to them, I signal that it’s more than enough information for one night.
Bianca leans over where she has been lounging on the couch, throwing her arms around me.
“Whenever you decide it’s time, I hope you choose the right person.”
Something in her eyes when she pulls back tells me she knew all along that I wasn’t talking about Logan.
19
Kennedy
Six teenagers sit in a booth at the local diner.
The three boys wear their dirty football jerseys over jeans, a silent boast about how hard they fought for the victory tonight. The girls sit under their wings, cheerleading sweatshirts covering their short skirts, their slim legs pebbled from standing in the cold for so long.
From an outsider’s point of view, we look like a group of yuppy, popular jocks and their girlfriends. I guess it’s not far off.
The only thing they wouldn’t realize is that I’m trying to force my heart to be invested in the guy sitting next to me, rather than pine after the one I can never be with.
“One time, Scott did the entire omelet challenge in an hour,” Logan spills.
Rachel turns to him, astonished. “When was this? Surely, not when we were dating. I would have never touched you if you’d eaten upward of three dozen eggs, Gaston.”
“Oh my God, Rach!” Bianca giggles at the clear bathroom situation Rachel is trying to allude to.
“Nope. It was freshman year, and I was a fucking champ. Puked like twenty minutes after, but my picture is over on the wall.” Scott brushes his shoulder off and then points to the wall behind the cash register.
We’ve been at the diner for about an hour, noshing on apps and different sandwiches after the football team won their game tonight. The entire restaurant is full of students from our high school, six or seven people crammed into every booth, with parents and coaches present too. It’s the local hot spot after every game, whether it be football in the fall or baseball in the spring.
“Would you ever do one of those challenges?” I ask Logan, simply to start a conversation.
“I think I probably would, but I’d need a good incentive. Free meals from the restaurant, or money. I would not scarf down fifty buffalo wings for a T-shirt.”
I laugh, trying to imagine sitting in front of fifty chicken wings and voluntarily eating them all. “No, I guess I wouldn’t either.”
“What kind of food could you eat like that? Just scarf it all down?” Rachel muses to us all.
“Ice cream, hands down. Any flavor, but it’s just so good.” Bianca nods sagely.
“Pizza, for sure.” Logan winks at me.
“Burgers, I could eat thousands of those little ones at White Castle,” Damien, Bianca’s boyfriend says.
“Sushi. One hundred percent, I could eat sushi all day long.” Rachel crosses her arms over her chest.
“Bullshit,” Bianca and Scott say at the same time, and then laugh at each other.
“You’d get sick of it after the second spicy tuna roll,” I agree, shivering just thinking about that much sushi.
“All right, smarty pants. What food would you eat for twenty-four hours straight?” Rachel snips at me.
Tapping my chin, I ponder the question. “French fries.”
“That’s not a food challenge food!” Logan laughs, his forehead hitting my shoulder from where he sits next to me.
It’s an intimate gesture, one a boy who likes a girl flawlessly executes to make it look nonchalant but really he wants to touch her.
“Is too! I could eat fries all day long!” I argue, while the others around the table burst out laughing and shake their heads like I’m wrong.
“Fries isn’t a challenge food. It has to be something substantial. That’s a side, not a main.” Scott tries to act high and mighty.
“He’s right,” Bianca says, while Rachel backs her up. “Yep.”
I pout, only half-faking my annoyance. “Who made you all the authority on food challenges? I can fantasize about my ideal food challenge food and you can have yours. Leave me be!”
Pushing at Logan, who is still trying to get close to me by half slumping an arm around my shoulders, I huff.
“Aw, come on, Kennedy. We’re just teasing.”
When I turn my head to look at him, his lips are so close to mine, I have to suck in a breath. That should make my heart jump, the fact that a seriously cute boy is so close to kissing me. But I feel nothing.
The jingle of the bell over the door grabs my attention, and for good reason, as if I could sense him. When I turn, Everett is walking up the same aisle of the restaurant our booth is in, two of the other assistant football coaches behind him.
Immediately, his eyes find me. Search my expression and then flit to where Logan sits beside me.
Logan’s varsity jacket hangs around my shoulders, the orange and white leather marking me as his for everyone to see. He offered it to me because it’s a bit cold in here, but I’m not dumb enough not to notice the looks everyone is giving us as they pass to their tables. When a boy gives a girl his football letter, it’s significant.
I haven’t seen Everett since the night in our rooms, when he watched me with the heat of a thousand suns. But now that I’m here, in his crosshairs, those gorgeous eyes roving over my face …
My skin feels like it’s burning up. Fire licks up my thighs, spine, arms, blazing a path to my heart that beats irregularly. For a moment, we’re the only two people in the room. He’s the only boy to ever see me so vulnerable, so exposed. I gave that to him, a secret we now share.
This is what I crave, this is the way it should feel when the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen walks into a room. I’m sitting with Logan’s jacket and arm around my shoulder, and my heart couldn’t care less. But Everett Brock so much as looks at me, and I’m a pool of lust at his feet.
“Kennedy,” he says, his tone and expression so cold he could freeze ice.
“Coach! So freaking funny I call you coach now—” Scott starts up, putting his hand up to fist pound Everett, but something cuts him off.
Without warning, Everett leans over the booth, uses one of those callused, strong hands to grip my jaw, and plants a kiss on my lips.
Right there, in front of everyone.
I’m so stunned, so caught off guard, that the squeak from my lips echoes down Everett’s throat. He moves his mouth, just a fraction, so that our lips slide in tandem. Liquid heat throttles down my spine, and my eyes flutter closed. I don’t feel my body, the only thing that exists are his lips on mine.
This is the kiss I’ve been waiting for since I was a little girl, and—
Someone coughs, bringing me back to reality, and I shove hard at Everett’s chest.
“What the hell!” Comes out of my mouth at the same time Logan jumps up and shouts, “What the fuck, bro?”
My cheeks are a shade of red I don’t even want to see in a mirror right now, shame and anger mixing with the embarrassment. Everett looks stunned, but smug, and I climb over a gaping Rachel as I go for him. I may be tiny in comparison with the former soldier, but he doesn’t resist as I damn near drag him out of the diner without a backward word to my friends.
Somewhere in the scuffle, Logan’s varsity jacket slips off my shoulders, so when we break through the exit to the diner and out into the cold, I’m shivering in my thin cotton long sleeve and cheerleading vest.
“What the hell was that?” I spit, rage making the shivers quake even harder.
Everett runs a hand through his hair, but fire burns in his eyes. “If you think I’m going to sit back and watch while he puts his hands all over you—”
“He wasn’t putting his hands all over me!” I shout back.
“You had his goddamn varsity jacket slung over your shoulders. We
both know what that means, Kennedy.” Everett’s finger comes in, pointing at me, accusing me.
I’m so exasperated, I can barely get my thoughts together, though I try. “So what? You don’t even know what that was because you didn’t bother to ask, not that you’ve staked any claim. You don’t want me, remember? Besides all that, you think that was a good way to stop what might or might not be happening between Logan and me? Stealing our very first kiss in the freaking diner in front of everyone?”
His body is strung tight, every muscle bulging with barely-held restraint. “Yeah, maybe it was a good plan. Got you out here with me, didn’t it?”
Everett wears a smug, shit-eating grin that I want to punch off his jaw.
“Here I was, thinking you were actually changing. That we’d come to some sort of truce. I thought I saw a glimpse of the guy I used to know. But you’re still that angry, shell of a man who returned to Brentwick. You promised me a kiss, you promised me so much that you’ve never followed through on. That was it. Our first kiss. Out of a moment of spite. In all the times I ever dreamed about it, that would have never been the circumstance I picked. Hell, I wish I could erase that moment, make it like it never happened. That’s not the kiss I wanted.”
“Guess I’m not the man you wanted, then.”
“I guess not.” My voice is dangerously close to breaking.
I whip around, not wanting him to see the tears I’m about to let loose.
“Wait, Kennedy, I-I didn’t mean to. FUCK! I’m such an idiot—”
When I turn back around, rage singeing my veins, Everett is pale and his are eyes full of fear.
“You didn’t mean to kiss me? You didn’t mean to do it in front of people? What, Everett? Is there more you’d like to sling at me? Have you not torn me down enough?” I go into attack mode.
And immediately, the one shred of humanity I saw tonight is locked up tight, disappearing from his eyes.
“You got it, your fucking kiss. Now can you stop whining about it. It wasn’t good for you? Well, it was a hell of a lot crappier for me. So much for all the pomp and circumstance leading up to it. Now we can both move on knowing there was nothing there anyway.”
Hometown Heartless Page 10