“But you still see Chris.” A muscle pops in his jaw.
“It’s complicated with Chris. We’ve practically grown up together, and he needs me. He’s not in a good place.”
“What does that mean?”
Air whooshes out of my mouth. “Chris is an addict, Kent, and I’m basically the only person invested in keeping him alive.”
We head back to the apartment after I drop that bomb because I’m not comfortable talking about Chris’s addiction out in public where anyone could hear us. But I want to have this conversation with Kent because I want to understand where he stands in this regard and whether I have cause to be concerned about his drug and alcohol use.
“You want anything to eat or drink?” Kent asks when we return to his place.
“Just some water, please.”
I flop down on the blue velvet couch, untying Selena’s sneakers. Kent hands me a bottle of water, claiming the seat beside me. He wolfs down a sandwich, watching me take sips of my water. I pull my knees up to my chest when he’s finished, twisting around so I’m facing him.
“How bad is it with Chris, and should I be worried about him around you?” he asks, leaning back in the couch and crossing one ankle over his knee.
“Chris would never hurt me. He never has.” Physically-speaking. But I’m not getting into all the ways my involvement with Chris has fucked with my emotional and mental well-being. “And it’s bad. He’s overdosed three times already. The last time was real touch and go.” Tears prick my eyes remembering it. My chest heaves, and I look down at my lap.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding genuine.
“You’d think I would be used to it by now, but it doesn’t get any easier. I want him to get help, but he…he just wants to die.” A sob escapes my mouth, and Kent scoots closer, taking my hands in his.
“If you need money for rehab, I can help.”
I lift my head, my tears instantly drying. “Why would you offer that? You don’t know him.”
“I know he’s important to you.”
I press a hard kiss to his mouth. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not a good guy, Kent Kennedy.”
“Don’t gush too much. I was also thinking he’d be out of your life for at least a few months if he was in rehab, so it wasn’t a completely selfless offer.”
My lips curve at the corners. I love his honesty. It’s refreshing. “It was still a fucking generous offer. One I thank you for, but Chris would never take you up on it. He doesn’t want to help himself. I truly think he has a death wish.” Pain slices across my chest again. “If he dies, it will devastate me. He and Clay are the closest I have to a family. I can’t lose either of them without losing myself.”
“I’m not gonna lie, Pres. The fact you’re so involved in Chris’s life bugs me. One, I think he’s a selfish prick for doing this to you. Two, I hate how much you care about him. I think I’m…” He averts his eyes and withdraws his hands from mine. “Fuck.” Air expels from his mouth, and his eyes are a mix of bewildered and tortured when he looks at me again. “I think I’m jealous.”
My heart melts. This guy has the power to fucking slay me. I crawl into his lap, circling my arms around his neck. “What’s going on with us, Kent?” I tip his head back. “What do you want?”
He gulps audibly. “I’m fucked if I know.” He looks so stressed trying to figure this out, and he’s burrowing a new path to my heart.
I run my fingers through his hair, fighting a smile. “Do you like me and want to spend more time with me?”
He nods without hesitation.
“I like you and want to spend time with you too, so how about this?”
He quirks a brow.
“We agree to casually date. Exclusively. And just see where things go. No expectations. No labels. No pressure. And an agreement that we will always be honest with one another, especially if either of us wants to end this. Would that work?” I ask.
He flashes me that blinding smile of his, and my ovaries swoon. He rubs his nose against mine. “Not just a pretty face.”
“Is that a yes?” I whisper over his mouth.
He closes the gap between us, kissing me passionately until I can’t remember where he starts and I end. I reposition myself on his lap so I’m straddling him, and we kiss like it’s going out of fashion. “I’ll take that as an affirmative,” I rasp when we finally surface for air.
“You need to be patient with me,” he says, mirroring Selena’s words.
“Not a problem,” I reassure him. “And you’ll have to be patient with me. I’m not used to the world you live in. The money. The paparazzi. The celebrity.”
“I will do my best to shield you from all that, and you can trust I’ve got your back.” Something close to a grimace washes over his face. “In the interests of honesty, I should bring you up to speed on something.”
“Okay.”
He lifts me off him, placing me on the seat beside him, threading his fingers through mine. “I need to tell you about Whitney.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kent
“Okay. I’m listening.” Presley gives me her undivided attention, setting her empty bottle of water down on the side table.
I keep a firm hold of her hand, as I begin explaining, because I need to be touching her. There’s no way of sugarcoating this, and I’m fearful she’ll be disgusted. Afraid this might send her running for the hills. I want to explain this properly so she understands that Whitney is no threat to her. What Presley and I are building far exceeds anything I ever shared with Whit. “Whitney is Faye’s half-sister. They have the same dad.”
“And Faye is your cousin. The girl who is married to Kyler, right?” she adds, and I feel like giving her a gold star.
Honestly, trying to keep up with who is married to who and which kid belongs to who is becoming problematic in our large and ever-growing family. I nod. “Yeah, that’s Faye. Anyway, I met Whitney the same time Faye did. I was fifteen. Whit’s a year younger, and we were drawn to one another from the start. Not for the reasons you’re probably thinking,” I rush to add in case she’s reading too much into it. “We’re both messed up and self-destructive, and we formed a kind of fucked-up bond.”
“I thought you never dated anyone.” Her brow puckers and her nose scrunches up. It’s adorably cute.
“Whitney and I have never dated.” There’s no polite way of putting this. “We’re casual fuck buddies, who generally sleep together whenever we see one another. It’s usually at family events, but there have been a few occasions where I’ve hooked up with her when I was in New York for the weekend. She lives there,” I explain.
“And that’s been going on for years?” Her facial expression gives nothing away so I can’t tell if she’s disgusted or what she’s thinking.
“Yeah. On and off. I ended things completely over four years ago because she caught feelings and I didn’t feel the same way, but I hit a rocky patch, and we started up again.” I’m not proud of how weak I was. And it wasn’t fair to Whitney because I see now that I gave her false hope, but I’ve always been a selfish prick.
“Are you still seeing her now?” Presley withdraws her hand from mine, crossing her arms around her body.
“No. I was with her for the last time the week before I met you. I told her that night that we were done for good. She hasn’t taken it well.”
“You might not want to hear this, Kent, but you had a relationship with that girl. It doesn’t matter what label you gave it. She’s been a part of your life for years.”
I vehemently shake my head. “I didn’t. We never went on dates, and we were never exclusive. She’s like the female equivalent of me. She fucks around, gets messed up, and I don’t care what she claims to feel; she is only clinging to me because I’m familiar, because I understand her, to a point.”
“Tell yourself whatever you want, but the truth is, you had a relationship with Whitney, Kent. It might not have been traditional, but you have been w
ith each other on and off for years. That’s not insignificant.”
“It was fucking sex!” I yell, getting frustrated she’s trying to make this into something it’s not. “That’s all. I don’t love her, and she doesn’t love me.” I know Whitney thinks she does, but she’s fucking delusional.
“Can you honestly tell me you don’t care for her at all?”
I straighten up as I glare at her because this is not how I saw this conversation going. “It’s almost like you want me to love her.”
She shakes her head, and waves of her gorgeous glossy hair cascade around her shoulders. “That’s not it. I just want you to be honest about what she means to you because I’ve been truthful with you about Chris.”
“That is an entirely different scenario,” I scoff.
“Is it though?” She cocks her head to the side, looking contemplative. “Because it sounds to me like circumstances threw you two together and that she was a kind of lifeline for you too.”
My initial instinct is to completely deny her claims, but there’s a kernel of truth in her words. My tongue darts out, wetting my dry lips, and I wonder why the fuck I thought it was a good idea to raise the subject of Whitney. “Circumstances did throw us together, and there was a codependency there, but that’s where the similarities end, Pres.”
I rub the back of my neck. “Whitney was an escape. Like a comfort blanket for a brief time,” I acknowledge, “but she has never been a lifeline for me. I haven’t confided anything of importance to her because that’s not who we were to one another. And I do care about her, but only because there is history there. I wouldn’t even call her a friend. She’s not someone I want in my life. We’re toxic for one another.” I lean forward, peering deep into her eyes, wanting her to see this truth. “I have never loved her, and she never made me feel the way you do.”
She scoots closer on the couch, until our feet touch. “How do I make you feel, Kent?”
“Like I’m walking on water. Like there is light at the end of the tunnel for me. Like I might be worthy of you. Like I could be happy with you. You consume my thoughts, and I just want to be with you because you fill me full of feelings I never thought I’d ever get to experience. We haven’t even had sex, and it doesn’t matter because I just want to exist with you.”
It’s official. I have now traded in my man card and turned into Kyler.
I’m so screwed.
She grabs my face and kisses me hard. “I just want to exist with you too,” she whispers over my mouth. “Even if the thought terrifies me as much as it excites me.”
I wind my fingers into her hair, holding the nape of her neck. “Why are you scared?” I know why I am, and I want to see if it’s the same for her.
“Because you have the potential to make me feel so damn much, Kent Kennedy. This feels intense in a way I’ve never felt with anyone before, and I’m scared you’ll hurt me.”
“I feel those things too, and I’m shitting myself half the time.” I pull her to me, needing to taste her lips. I kiss her softly, drowning in all things Presley, and the same flux of emotions churns inside me, like every time I’m with this woman.
“I’ve thrown shade at all my brothers for being pussy-whipped,” I admit. “Scoffed at their declarations of love and looked down my nose at the idea that it could exist for me. You’re challenging my entire belief system, Presley baby, and I’m scared I will let both of us down because that’s what I’m good at.” I avert my eyes, not able to look at her when the truth of those words seeps from every pore.
“Kent.” She holds my face tighter, forcing my gaze to hers. “We’ve both been shaped, in different ways, by our past experiences, but that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to fail. Being aware of our pitfalls means we can work to avoid them. All I ask is that you try and that you don’t deliberately set out to hurt me, and I will promise you the same.”
“You are too fucking good for me, you know that?” I press my forehead to hers. “You are so beautiful, and smart, and compassionate, and strong, and I want to be worthy of you. I really fucking do.”
“I could say those same things about you, and it kills me to hear you speaking about yourself like that. I’ve already seen that you are more than the person you are portrayed to be. More than the person you think you have to be.” Her eyes stab mine with fierce determination. “Give me your truths, Kent. Even if those truths hurt. At least it will be real.”
“I will try.” That is as much as I can promise right now. “And the last thing I want to do is hurt you. This feels like the start of something special, and I promise I will do everything in my power not to fuck it up.”
She takes my hand, pressing a kiss to my palm. “That is all I can ask of you.” She rests her head on my chest, and my arms automatically go around her. I close my eyes, praying to a higher power to not let me screw this up. “Kent.” I glance down, and she’s looking up at me, her big brown eyes swimming in possibility. “I need to know about the drugs and the booze, and I need you to be honest with me.”
Every muscle in my body locks up, and she straightens up, feeling it. “What do you want to know?”
“Be honest with me. Do you have a problem?”
I understand why she’s asking. She’s clearly been through the wringer with Chris, and I owe her the complete truth. “There were a few years during my teens when I had a problem. When I consciously got high and drunk and I pulled all kinds of shit. Got into trouble with the law. Put my parents through hell. It’s a miracle I graduated high school and got into Harvard, but I did, and things changed for me there.”
“In what way?”
“I met someone who helped me realize I was throwing my life away. She was so strong and so brave, and she forced me to take a long hard look at myself. I chose to take back control and start living my life the way I wanted to live it. It was then I decided I was going to pursue a career in law, and I stopped a lot of the dysfunctional behaviors.”
“Yet you still do shit on the weekends. Why?”
“I guess old habits die hard, and I…I was so lonely.” I peer deep into her eyes. “Until I met you, and now I have a reason to not do that anymore.”
Tears well in her eyes. “Please don’t do it for me.” She shakes her head, and I want to remove that look of desperate sadness from her eyes. “Do it for yourself, because that’s the only way it will be meaningful.”
“I get why you’re worried. You don’t need a Chris two point oh, and I promise I don’t have a problem. It’s recreational, and I’ll stop.”
She plants her hands on my shoulders. “Just don’t lie to me about it, Kent. No matter how bad it gets, promise me you will come to me and you will be truthful.”
“I can do that. I promise.” I rub my nose against hers. “I’ve never had anyone who cared enough to want to know.”
Surprise splays across her face. “With how close your family is, I very much doubt that.”
I shrug, casting my eyes away. “I told you I am on the outskirts, and they’ve all had their own shit to deal with. None of them have ever known how to deal with me.”
She slings her arm around my neck. “Well, I’m here for you now. And I think that’s enough of the heavy.” She pecks my lips. “Just one last thing. How do you plan to handle the Whitney situation? She’s going to freak when she finds out about me.”
“She already is.” I pull her onto my lap. “She saw that picture of us online, and she’s been blowing up my phone every day.”
“You haven’t spoken to her?” I shake my head, and she purses her lips. “You need to tell her, Kent. You owe her that much, and if I’m going to be in your life, I need you to be honest with her so I’m not ambushed.”
We spend the rest of the day in my apartment, just talking, discussing my favorite book—which she took the time to read—watching back-to-back movies, and making out like we’re teenagers again. Instead of going out, I order takeout, and then I drive Presley home later. I begged her to stay again, b
ut she has to be at the bar early to open up, and I have an eight-a.m. class, so it’s not possible.
Her comment about my bed is playing on my mind, and I wonder if that’s the real reason she didn’t stay. I want her to be comfortable here, so she’ll stay over as often as she can, which means the bed has got to go. The second I get home from dropping her off, I order a new one, trying not to reflect on how Kyler-like the gesture is.
We don’t see enough of one another in the next couple of weeks. Between my classes, extra tutorials, and studying for my exams—which start in three weeks—I have little free time, but I sneak in opportunities to see Pres whenever I can.
Presley has a full schedule too with alternating day and night shifts at the bar and her art class, which means finding time for dates is challenging. She is off every Wednesday, so it becomes our official date night, and we’ve grabbed dinner and a movie both times. The first weekend, she worked the day shifts, and I collected her after I was finished at the library both days, taking her back to my place where we stayed holed up on the couch, watching TV, and eating takeout before retreating to bed.
We still haven’t fucked, and I know she’s purposely holding back, but I won’t push her. It makes the expectation all that much sweeter, and I’m enjoying getting to know her intimately, understanding all the other ways in which I can make her body sing.
This weekend, Pres is on nights, which sucks, but I cram in extra studying so I’m not tempted to go partying with the guys.
It’s Sunday night, and I’m perched at the counter in Ramshackle, waiting for Presley’s shift to end, when my phone rings. I’m tempted to send Mom to my voicemail, but she’s tenacious, and she’ll just keep calling. I gesture at my phone to Presley as I walk outside to take the call.
“Mom. What’s up?” I ask, walking away from Bugger because that dude is nosy as fuck.
“Kent. At last. Honestly, one would swear you were living on Mars it’s that difficult to get a hold of you.”
Reforming Kent: A Stand-Alone Angsty Bad Boy Romance (The Kennedy Boys Book 10) Page 12