Warrior Blue

by Kelsey Kingsley

  Warrior Blue

  a novel by

  Kelsey Kingsley

  Copyright

  © 2020 Kelsey Kingsley

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  kelsey@kelseykingsley.com

  Cover: Danny Manzella

  Editor: Jessica Blaikie

  To Audrey Hepburn—

  For being everything good and right in this world.

  I wish I could’ve known you,

  But since I can’t, I guess I’ll just admire you, instead.

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Note From the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  More books from Kelsey

  A Note From the Author

  DEAR READER,

  In 2018, when I released Daisies & Devin, I relished in how much I enjoyed writing it. I called it a book for me, a selfish passion project, and the same rings true for Warrior Blue. Maybe even more so.

  I began writing this book on my phone, after I had my gallbladder removed and couldn’t get on the computer for a month. The idea had been buzzing around inside of my brain for years, but let me tell you something about those passion projects … They’re scary. Because the truth is, I love writing and releasing books that I know you, dear reader, will love. I love knowing that what I write will put a smile on your face, but when it’s something I’m writing for myself, how the hell am I supposed to know if you’ll love it, too? And the answer is: I can’t. I can’t possibly know, and that’s what makes them terrifying.

  But I wrote it, anyway, and dear reader, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of a book. Because while writing this story, I fell in love with Blake Carson. I felt for him hard and the twists and turns Fate handed to him. But even more than that, I hurt for him, and believe me when I say, living in his head was a difficult task that I didn’t recover from gently.

  To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever fully recover from this book.

  I’m not sure I ever want to.

  Kelsey

  P.S. – Music is just as important in my life as writing, and I love creating playlists to accompany my books. If you’d like to listen on Spotify, please click here: https://spoti.fi/2FsxIcF

  Prologue

  IT WAS A beautiful picture.

  Taken just before Christmas Eve Mass, in 1990-something. The smiling parents, still so in love even after years of marriage. The attractive pair of identical twin boys, no older than nine, stood in front of them. There was fire in those boys’ eyes, burning with life and promise, their Mom and Dad beaming with undeniable pride.

  This was a family. This was love.

  It really was a beautiful picture, a favorite even.

  Yet pictures are nothing but memories. Fragments of time captured to be stuck in a frame or an album, to spark joy or nostalgia or cause an indescribable surge of pain.

  Now this picture sparked nothing but broken promises and broken hearts. All thanks to me.

  And the guilt was getting heavy.

  Chapter One

  “DO YOU HATE your brother, Blake?”

  "I never said I hated my brother."

  "But you implied it." Dr. Vanessa Travetti lowered her notepad and pen to her lap. She peered at me from over her black-framed glasses, and if she hadn't sufficiently pissed me off with that asinine question, I would've been all about this hot librarian thing she was giving off today.

  "How exactly did I imply it?" I sneered, leveling her with my steely glare.

  "You tell me."

  Leaning back against the overstuffed armchair, I crossed my arms and kept my eyes trained on her. "You know, Doc, I really hate when you play these fucking mind games with me."

  Her glossy pink lips quirked with an obvious amusement she never intended to show. She quickly remedied the slip-up with a hasty shake of her head. "What mind games, Blake?"

  I thrust a hand toward her and shouted, "Those mind games! Everything I say, you respond with another goddamn question. Trying to weasel some bullshit out of me that doesn't even exist. Why do I hate my brother ..." I scoffed, shaking my head. "I never fucking implied that I hate my brother. All I said was, I've been taking care of him for most of my life, and I'll continue to take care of him for the rest of it. How the hell is that the same as saying I hate him?"

  Head canted and lips pursed, Dr. Travetti clasped her manicured hands over her notepad. "Do you understand that it's not what you said, but how you said it?"

  "There you go again with the fucking questions."

  "Why are you getting so defensive?"

  I unraveled my arms and pounded a fist against the arm of the chair. "Because you're putting words in my mouth! I never said I hated my fucking brother. Do I hate that I'm strapped with the burden of dealing with him for the rest of my life? Yes. Do I hate that I can't make a goddamn decision for myself, without having to think of him first? Abso-fuckin'-lutely. But don't you dare tell me that I hate him, Doc. Because I don't."

  "Why do you come here every week, Blake?"

  I narrowed my eyes at the unrelated inquiry. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

  She shrugged. "You don't have to come here—”

  “You know I have to come here.”

  Holding up a finger, she shushed me and went on, “Nobody is forcing you to come here. You could find yourself another therapist, and if I'm reading into your thoughts inaccurately, then maybe you should. So, why do you come?"

  "Why?" I answered exasperatedly.

  "Yes."

  "Because ..." My voice trailed off as I shook my head and turned to look out the window. Just down the street was my brother's daycare. I wondered what he was doing right now. Maybe eating a snack, or perhaps finishing the craft project he and his friends had been working on this week. It was more likely that he was giving his teachers a hard time, but I liked to think he wasn't making other people miserable. I liked to think that side of him was reserved only for our parents and me.

  "Blake?"

  Returning my attention to Dr. Travetti, I asked, "Huh?"

  "Why do you come?" she repeated insistently albeit gently.

  "Because, Doc," I continued with a heavy sigh and a shrug, "who the fuck else would I talk to?"

  “Another therapist,” she suggested lightly, offering a vague smile.
>
  I shrugged again and canted my head with a helplessness I didn’t want her to see, while hoping so badly she would notice. “Yeah, but I chose you first. Why the hell would I start going to someone else now?”

  ***

  "Jake," Miss Thomas spoke softly as she knelt beside the long table. "Your brother is here to pick you up."

  Jacob “Jake” Carson looked up from his drawing to sweep his gaze across the room. His eyes searched until they pinned themselves on me, standing in the doorway of his daycare classroom. His grin spread across his smudged, stubbled cheeks, and I made a mental note to give him a shave when we got back to our parents’ place.

  "Blake!" There weren't any volume controls on my brother and he always spoke too loudly. A few of his classmates turned to face me with irritation and curiosity.

  "Hey, buddy," I said, making sure to speak quietly in the hope he'd eventually learn the difference between outdoor and indoor voices. "Time to go home. Go get your stuff."

  At six foot two, Jake was as tall as he was clumsy. He scrambled to get up from his chair with the grace of an ice-skating elephant, with his feet kicking the legs of the table to jostle the pencils and crayons. I tried not to chuckle as every pair of eyes turned to glare at him with how dare you exasperation.

  "That's Blake, my brother," Jake told Miss Thomas. He kept his eyes on her as he walked backward, in the direction of his cubby. "Blake looks just like me but we're not the same. He can drive and he has a job. We're not the same."

  Miss Thomas nodded with delightful intrigue, pretending as though she hadn't already seen me a thousand times. "I bet you can do things that Blake can't, though," she offered, shooting me a small smile.

  I stuffed my hands inside my pockets while slowly moving to stand beside his daycare teacher. Jake prattled on about his own personal talents. He might not be able to drive, but the guy could put a puzzle together quicker than anybody I know. And if you put a Lego set in front of him, there was no stopping him from showcasing his architectural skills.

  "How was he today?" I asked quietly.

  This was all part of the routine. Every day, I picked him up, and every day, I asked Miss Thomas how he was. Every day, she gave me the same response.

  "Good!" Miss Thomas answered with too much enthusiasm. I read right through that bullshit and my eyes said so. Her exuberant expression wilted and she shrugged. "You know Jake. He has his moments."

  Moments. Jake's life was a patchworked tapestry of moments. Good moments, bad moments. Moments in which he brought me to the brink of insanity and made me question every decision I'd ever made. And moments that made me hate myself more than I could ever hate him—take that, Travetti.

  "He gave you a hard time?"

  Miss Thomas faltered, eyes wide as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have, before she shook her head. "No, not really. But he did get into a fight with Mr. Scott."

  "A fight?"

  I turned my glare on Jake. He was shrugging his Red Sox windbreaker on and telling Mr. Scott for the billionth time that he couldn’t do zippers. Mr. Scott—the other teacher in the room—didn’t seem to have any issues with my brother presently, so whatever issues they might’ve had earlier, clearly weren’t lingering.

  "Well, it wasn't a fight, per se," Miss Thomas corrected. "Jake had a bit of an accident earlier—"

  "What kind of an accident?" I asked, and Miss Thomas grimaced apologetically. I immediately recognized that look and understood just what kind of accident she was referring to. "Ah," I muttered with a nod.

  "He wasn't too happy about being cleaned up."

  "Yeah," I replied. "He never is."

  "We put his dirty clothes in a plastic bag. They're in his backpack."

  "Thanks," I tried to say without muttering and without the niggling embarrassment I often felt for Jake. The embarrassment he never felt for himself.

  Jake bounded over, zipped up and ready to go. His Mickey Mouse backpack was looped securely over both shoulders and his hands gripped the straps. His chocolate-covered grin was that of a five-year-old boy, an attribute frozen in time, while his body continued to age along with mine. We would be thirty-four this year, in just a month, and I was the only one of us to feel it.

  "We going home, Blake?"

  I smiled patiently at my brother and nodded. "Yeah, buddy. We are. Just ..." I grabbed a wet wipe from a container near the door and gripped his chin in my palm as I swiped gently at his face. The chocolate faded, leaving behind the adoring expression of my big brother, born two minutes before me. I laid a hand on the top of his head and ruffled his thick brown mop of hair. "There we go. All set."

  Miss Thomas wished us a good day and gave Jake a big hug. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

  "Bright and early, right?" Jake asked, grinning wide with anticipation.

  "Bright and early," she repeated, and we left the building.

  ***

  Our parents, Paul and Diana Carson, lived in Beverly, Massachusetts. Still in the same colonial farmhouse they had moved into right after getting married forty years ago, and after all those years, it was still painted the same shade of sunny yellow. The drive from Salem was a quick one, less than ten minutes, and as usual, I wished it’d been longer, a lot longer, but there was no chance I’d ever move further away.

  “Will you let me give you a shave before I head home?” I asked my brother as we pulled onto the dirt driveway.

  Jake nodded with his gaze affixed to the house. “Sure, Blake. Sure.”

  I pulled in a preparatory breath and turned the car off. With just about everything, Jake was always initially agreeable, but the execution was regularly a battle. He didn’t handle change well, even if it was something as simple as removing three days’ worth of scruff from his face and neck.

  “Come on, buddy,” I said, before climbing out and rounding to his side. I grabbed his backpack while he got out and waited patiently for me to lock up. We walked up the porch steps, and like every other day, our mother pulled the door open before I could take my keys out.

  “There’s my boy,” she said, welcoming Jake inside with outstretched arms. He fell into her embrace, wrapping her in a hug that nearly swallowed them both. “How was your day today, huh? Was it good?”

  He nodded against her shoulder. “It was good.”

  “That’s great,” she replied, patting his back. “Mickey missed you today,” and at the sound of his name, Jake’s lumbering idiot of a dog trotted over to the open door.

  Jake released Mom immediately and pushed his way into the house to drop down and land on the living room floor with a laugh. Overgrown boy and dog rolled in a tumble of fur and long limbs while my mother addressed me with a tight smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and for just one fraction of a second, I wished she would just hug me the way she hugged my brother. Like I was a child trapped in a man's body, unburdened by adulthood and the truth about the world and her god.

  “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked, probably out of obligation and not out of want.

  I stepped inside and hung Jake’s backpack on a hook beside the door. “I guess I could, if you have enough. I actually thought I’d give him a shave—”

  “Dad can do it,” she brushed me off with a shake of her head.

  “But I always do it.”

  “Well, you don’t always have to,” she insisted brusquely. “Dad is perfectly capable, if you, for some reason, can’t do it.”

  “You know it would be a battle if someone else did it,” I retorted, my patience wearing thinner by the second.

  “Oh, come on,” she rolled her eyes, “it’s always a battle, regardless of who does it, and you know that.”

  “Yeah,” I shot back, sufficiently irritated, “and it’ll be even more of one if—”

  “Hey, why is it I always have to catch the two of you fighting?” Dad intervened, stepping into the living room from the kitchen wearing a strained grin. He worked a dishtowel around his hands and nudged his chin in my
direction. “Hey, Blake. How’s it going?”

  “Great,” I muttered, raking a hand through my hair and turning to watch Jake scrub his hands over Mickey’s furry face.

  “I was just telling Blake that you’re perfectly capable of shaving Jake’s face,” Mom said to Dad, her tone so full of aggravation, I thought she might explode.

  With a glance toward Dad, I saw the grin slip from his face, just as I thought it would. He pinched his lips and shrugged stiffly. “Yeah, yeah, sure. I could do that, if Blake was too busy or something.” He shifted his eyes toward me and asked, “Are you too busy?”

  “No,” I shook my head and shot Mom a glare tinged with triumph and disdain, “I’m fine.”

  A thick discomfort swallowed the room in the way it always did. We were always so quick to irritate each other, so quick to fill the extensive spaces between us with even more distance, packed tight with tension. I immediately felt stifled and a desperation for just a single breath of air wrapped its cold hands around my throat. I needed to get out. I needed to get back to Salem and back into my house, miles away from this place and the suffocation. Turning from my parents, I reached down to lightly rap my knuckles against Jake’s shoulder, to instruct him to get upstairs and into the bathroom. But when he looked to me with an oblivious innocence, completely unaware of the lack of oxygen and enough silent threats to smother us all, I pulled a smile and decided to force my way through dinner. For him.

  There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him. Not when I owed him my life.

  ***

  “Okay, buddy, I think you’re all set,” I said, rinsing his razor in the sink.

  He sat shirtless on the toilet, with speckled remnants of shaving cream dotted around his jaw, neck, and cheeks. He watched me intently as I laid the razor on the vanity and grabbed a towel from the back of the bathroom door. It was as though he was trying to memorize the tasks I knew he’d never perform himself.