by Zoey Parker
“Come on, hon. Let’s get you out of all that white. Your pup has gone and put some paw prints on the hemline.”
“It’s not my dog,” Emma said even as she placed a hand on the broad head of the mutt.
“Yeah, whatever you say.”
The house was surprisingly empty when she and Han went inside. Guess no one wanted to stick around after a near shoot-out.
“Why don’t you get changed? I’ve got enough nervous energy to clean a whole house, so I think I’m gonna start with yours,” Hannah offered.
“Yeah, all right, thanks.”
Boxes of her things were still stacked in Kellan’s room. She pawed through them until she found a t-shirt and jeans. Her wedding dress, which did, in fact, have Rocco’s prints along the hem, slid off with more ease than she had expected. She had imagined, from time to time, how her wedding dress would come off on her wedding night. A man’s hands had usually been involved.
She tried not to dwell on it as she changed into her own clothes.
When Emma came out into the living room Hannah had a trash bag half full of garbage.
“You need help?” Emma offered.
“You wanna rest?” Han asked.
“No,” Emma shook her head. Her smile didn’t quite meet her eyes, but she hoped it was honest. “Apparently your nervous energy is catching.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Hannah set the plastic aside and crossed the living room to wrap her maternal arms around Emma. “It’s all right, the club is gonna keep you safe. Kellan is going to keep you safe.”
Emma couldn’t quite stop herself from snorting. “Yeah, right. He had to be bullied and manipulated into getting married to me.”
“Maybe,” Hannah said, sinking down to the now clean couch. “But he did marry you, Emma. And that means something. It means more to these guys than it means to most. It’s a title. It’s a promise.”
“How barbaric.” Emma couldn’t quite keep the sneer out of her voice.
Hannah laughed. “Yeah, a little. But it works for them.”
Emma flopped down next to Hannah, pulling a recently fluffed pillow into her lap. “Goodie. I’ve got criminals protecting me from other criminals.”
“Don’t be like that. You got some of that criminal in you, too.”
“What?”
Hannah smirked. “What was it you said? You’re still wearing mine?” She started to laugh.
Emma felt a strange sense of pride. “Yeah, well…”
“What did you do to give that boy a shiner that big?”
“I may have flipped him over my shoulder.”
“Tell me.”
So Emma did, she talked about that whole night, and Hannah listened. She gasped and giggled and before Emma knew it she was feeling better. She knew Hannah had pulled it out of her on purpose.
“Thanks.”
Hannah shrugged one pretty shoulder. “You needed to feel better. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the story.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t friendlier to you in high school.”
Hannah blew out a breath. “Emma, I didn’t make it easy for anyone to be friendly to me in high school. My own childhood issues were stacked pretty high. You might not have been nice, but you were never mean, and I can appreciate that more in hindsight.”
“You still wanan clean?”
“I’m a mother, I’m happy to clean any place that can stay that way for more than ten seconds.”
Emma laughed and grabbed a bag for herself. As a pair they walked through the living room, picking up beer cans in various states of emptiness. They didn’t need to talk, at least not at first. Rocco attempted to help by chewing up well-placed food remains.
“You sure you’re okay?” Hannah asked once they got out the broom and dustpan out.
“I will be.”
Hannah looked her over as if the evaluate her honesty. “Yeah, looks like maybe you will.”
The backdoor slid open and the men walked in. They looked like a miniature army, grim and determined. Her father was at the forefront, still walking of his own accord. With minimal help he took a seat in his old Lay-Z-Boy.
“We’ve talked.”
Emma leaned against the dining table. “All right.”
“You ain’t gonna like it.”
Emma’s pale brow shot up. “Because the past few days have been my favorite.”
“I’m sending you to Kellan’s place.”
Emma paused. “Wait, what?”
He looked her over. “You can’t stay here. Gabriel knows where I live. Him showing up here was nothing but a song and dance to prove that he could do anything at any time he wants. You staying here these past few days has been asking for trouble already. But he doesn’t know Kellan’s place. Him staying here was only temporary anyway. He was just helping me out. He can keep watch on you there.”
“What about your chemo? What about your pills? Dad, you can’t do it all yourself. Let us stay here.”
He shook his head once. “No. I’m gonna have Joe do all that. He’s better with schedules anyway.”
“That’s true,” Kellan offered.
Emma shook her head once. The butterfly pins still affixed to her braided crown glittered with the movement. She wanted to argue, but the fight was nearly out of her. “Fine. Whatever.”
“You serious?” Kellan snapped out. “You are going with this?”
“See, your new husband here thought you were going to argue with me for the next twenty minutes. For that matter, so did I. Had this whole plan for talking you around to my way of thinking and everything.”
“I’m stubborn. Haven’t got a clue where I got that from.” She stood up and walked over so she could pat a hand on his cheek. “Before Gabriel and Michael showed up you might have had to do that. But I’m a logical girl, I like all my facts in a row, and you’ve laid them out well enough.”
“You wanna hear it anyway?” Mac asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, I do not. It’s late and all I wanna do is sleep.”
“Shit,” Kellan snapped. He stormed out of the room and into what had until very recently been his bedroom. The door slammed shut in his wake. A very confused mutt tried to follow, but found his way blocked.
“I’ll go wrangle up Kellan.”
She thought about it for a moment. “I’m going to assume that you have some kinda plan for talking him around?”
“I do.”
It would have been really easy to let her father do it, but it felt wrong. She was the reason Kellan’s life was going down a path he hadn’t planned.
“No,” she finally said. “I’ll do it.”
The door wasn’t locked, but she knocked anyway.
“What?” he called from inside. He did not sound happy.
It was all the invitation she was going to receive. She opened the door and Rocco sprang inside ahead of her. He crashed against Kellan, who didn’t move. His wedding clothes, which had consisted of his normal clothes in a state of cleanliness, had been tossed to the ground. He had changed into a hoodie and darker jeans. At his feet was a bag, half full of his things.
“I’ll be ready to go in a minute.”
“All right.”
She gathered up a couple of things and replaced them in the boxes that she’d barely had a chance to go through. “It won’t take me very long either.”
“You don’t need to grab it all, just what you’ll need for a few days.”
“What do you mean?”
“You won’t be staying at my place for very long.”
“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
He snorted, but said nothing else. She could very well feel his anger, but Emma didn’t understand it. Yeah, she understood wanting personal space. Five years in dorm living and two more with roommates while she went for her degree in veterinary medicine had taught her to appreciate some privacy. This went beyond that. What had she done to make him so mad? He was nearly shaking as he piled his stuff into the
canvas bag.
The sound of a zipper signaled he was ready. Kellan crossed his arms over his chest and waited. It was not a patient stance. He only moved to help her when she tried to pick up three boxes on her own. He stormed out to her Buick and chucked them unceremoniously into her backseat.
“Hey!” she snapped, following in the wake of his storm. “You can be mad at this situation all you want but don’t you dare take it out on my stuff, mister.”
When he whirled on her, she saw his hazel eyes flash in the darkness. “Then don’t manipulate things so you end up in my bed.”
She felt cold fire burn in her belly. “What?”
“I didn’t stutter, did I? You heard me. I get it, you liked me in high school, and you find yourself in this shit situation, so you are going to use it to your advantage, I get it. But I don’t like it. I didn’t want this marriage, and I sure as hell didn’t want you.”
His words hurt, another woman might have whimpered and cried, but Emma Ketchum was not just any woman. She planted her hands on her hips and took a wide stance. “Maybe you are mistaking me for one of your little biker bunnies again, but I haven’t manipulated anything.”
“Sure.”
That one word was filled with so much hate that she knew he wasn’t really mad at her, she just didn’t know what he was really made about, and she didn’t know him well enough to figure it out. So, like she always did when she felt lost, she fell back on science, and in the realm of science, when you had a question you asked it.
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
“I think I—”
“No, you fed me some anger fueled impassioned bull about you thinking I’m manipulating things. Now, while you thinking I am such an evil mastermind that was so obsessed with you that I stayed away for seven years, just waiting for a random criminal to come attack me in an apartment that wasn’t even in my name, just so my dad would come up with some plan to hitch us together so I could manipulate myself into your house is pretty neat, I didn’t.”
“I never said—”
“Oh no, you didn’t. You implied it with this angsty BS by showing some disrespect to my belongings and snapping at me for reasons that were beyond my control.” She stepped up to him and poked a single finger into his chest. “I’m not flattered by that.”
“I wasn’t trying to flatter you.”
“No, my theory is that you were working from some other platform. You are judging my current actions by someone else’s in your past. That’s fine, it's unfair but that’s human, it’s psychology 101. But you cross the line when you think you can manhandle my stuff. Got it?”
He waited a beat and then said, “Your eyes get all sparkly when you are nerd-angry.”
Her look was several degrees above freezing. “Thanks.”
He held up his hands and sighed. Then leaned against the car. “I’m sorry. I don’t like when people pull fast ones with me, and your dad just pulled a pisser.”
“He did, but he meant well.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Fair enough.” She leaned against the car next to him. “I’m not great at being anyone’s emotional punching bag, Kellan.”
“I get that. Hell, I like that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. The anger sagged out of him. “I’ve got a temper.”
“Really?” She kept her voice desert dry.
He had the grace to look abashed. “Yeah, my dad…my dad had a hell of a temper. It was worse when he was drunk.”
Emma knew that, but she’d never heard him talk about it. She kept quiet, and still.
“I got used to looking for a swing, you know? If I got home from school and there were bottles all over, or my mom was doing that little mouse walk she did when she was scared, I knew. Hell, even when that didn’t happen I could tell. There’s just a feeling you get when you are in that kind of situation.”
“It’s called hyper-awareness,” she explained when he got quiet. “A lot of abused children develop it as a way of coping. They pick up on body signals that other people overlook because it keeps them safe.”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. Hyper-awareness. Sounds like a superpower. Like Batman or something.”
She put her head on his shoulder. He didn’t return the gesture, but he didn’t move aware either. That was something. The evening grew colder around them.
“One day, I was fifteen or something. I thought I had gotten big enough to stand up to him, you know? I was so tired of just taking the beatings. I did it on purpose, got him mad. I can’t even remember what I did, but he came crashing into my room, and I stood up. I got this great swing on him. Knocked him back a whole foot.”
“Did you win?”
“No.” He laughed humorlessly. “I did not. He nearly put me in a hospital. My mom, she was a nurse once, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“She was, she worked with the elderly, loved her job to begin with. But, well, my dad beat that out of her. He beat a lot out of her.” He dragged one hand through his hair, and let the arm hang around her as he continued. “But she comes in when he’s finished knocking me silly, she cleans me up and keeps me whole and I just ask her…I ask he why she’s still with him. And you know what she says to me?”
“What?”
“She tells me he loves her more than anyone. She’s got bruises all over her arms from where he’s shaken her and she tells me he loves her.” He spat to one side, as if the words had left a dirty taste in his mouth.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. And that ain’t even the worst of it.”
“Do you wanna tell me?”
“Probably should.” He looked down and away. “You aren’t going to like it much.”
“Okay.”
“Nearly got married once before. Nice girl, waitress. Her name was Nina. We started living together, even talked about picking out a ring or something. It was cool. Then this one night I get a call, Dad’s dead. I dunno why I was surprised, but I was. I go to the hospital and I am all set to say my goodbyes and there is my mom, crying and sobbing. And I dunno why it set me off. Here I was, finally feeling free and she’s sobbing and scared and sad and acting like the best thing that ever happened to her is gone. I…fuck, I got so mad.”
He was looking at the ground. No, Emma decided, not at it. The ground was just a place for his eyes to rest while his mind wandered down the path of his memory towards whatever was haunting him.
“She starts yelling at me for not being as upset as she was. She grabs my shirt and shakes hard enough to rip the fabric. She starts cursing at me, cussing at me…and then she spit on my face. In all the time I had known her she’d never stood up to my dad that way. That just made me angrier. I slapped her. God, it didn’t even feel like me doing it. I just…I got so mad at her for everything, for everything she’d ever done that made me mad, and I slapped her.”
Her stomach felt cold. She couldn’t deny that it made her feel sick. When she looked over he was shaking. “Nina left me. I couldn’t blame her; I was disgusted with myself. I couldn’t stand up to my dad, but I could hit my mother. It was then that I knew I could never have a woman. I was just as bad as he was.”
“I see,” she whispered.
“So, I’ll take you to my place to keep you safe. But, Emma, I can’t be your husband. I can’t get close to you like that.”
She shook her head and moved so she was standing in front of him, putting herself in the way of his distant gaze. She waited until his eyes focused on her. “You did a shitty thing when you smacked your mother. But you know that, and you didn’t keep doing it.”
He tried to look away, but she put her hand on his cheek. She ran her hand over the stubble there. It had been clean-shaven when they kissed.
“Emma—”
“You didn’t beat her down. She was assaulting you and you responded with enough force to stop her. It’s not the same thing, it’s not the same thing at all.�
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He wanted to believe her, she could see it.
“It’s late,” he said. “Let’s get you to my place.” He glanced over at her. “My place is a mess.”
“I once roomed at C-Dorm. I bet you I have seen worse.”
With that she climbed into her car, and he climbed onto his bike. It was easy to follow the lone figure of a man on his bike through the otherwise quiet town of Ashland. She appreciated the time alone in her car. Emma needed to think.