The pain sent a layer of white fire over my body. It left me gasping. The gun had dropped from my hand. If I didn’t get it, I’d have to run from the cops. I didn’t want to run.
I’d ran enough.
I forced myself to my knees and crawled to where it lay. When my fingers connected with the cold metal, a shot rang out over my head. I ducked and spun, spotting her svelte figure running down the street. The Benz stopped in the middle of the street, both doors hanging open.
“Do I have to do everything by myself?” She shot at me again, hitting the concrete where my hand had been. “You were always such a coward. What do either of them see in you?”
I heard it in her voice. The jealousy. The unreasonable anger even after what she’d done. I rarely took people down with me as I fell. Usually they were pushing me, watching me flail. There was no one close enough to me to even reach for, let alone pull down with me. But Dash’s voice penetrated my fear and horror.
“It’s always us, Kinley.”
The last couple hours were threatening to consume me. Horror and heartbreak were churning, creating a dangerous mixture.
I rolled over and onto my feet, pointing my gun at her in the black of night. “We’re done.”
She rolled her dark eyes.
I fired at her feet, watching her step back for a second before I took off for the car. One more bullet whizzed past me. I counted them in my head. She’d wasted two at my dream home. Another was used on Denny. She’d just shot at me three times. Behind me, I heard the distinctive click of an empty clip.
“I missed you on purpose, Kin!” she shouted. “You’re welcome!”
I made it to the Benz the moment before I saw her turn her gun on herself. I was falling into the front seat when her body crumbled. Her hand was fisted around something small and metal. It gleamed in the overhead streetlights. Bullets. She had more bullets.
A strangled gasp escaped my lips. Her long thin body fell to the floor like a ragdoll. My fingers shook as I struggled with the door and the keys. I turned them and put the car back in drive. Tears blocked my eyes. I blinked them away, but more followed.
I looked into the rearview mirror before I finished turning the corner.
Behind me, the corpse came back to life.
I knew what she knew, and she knew what I knew.
We were even.
Or so I thought.
30.
He Was In The Clouds
Hours: 9am-10pm
I stared at the hours of the Sears Tower in dismay.
“It’s closed,” a gravelly voice said behind me.
The security guard looked me over once, and then grunted, shuffling around me as the street lights glowed off his back. I was cornered and desperate. Pieces of me were collapsing. Holding myself together felt impossible. It had to be the right place. There was no other building in Chicago close enough to the clouds than this one.
I stepped away and went into the parking lot, searching the surrounding area for his familiar black/brown hair. I went in a circle over and over again, until the birds began to chirp and the sun began to rise. My back bowed under the pressure of my pain. I wanted my king. At one point, a CPD cruiser began to follow me, pointing a flashlight at my back. I could only imagine what I looked like. There was a spray mark of Denny’s blood on my shirt. My hair was astray. My face pale and decimated.
We weren’t supposed to kill Denny.
I wasn’t supposed to lose Dash.
I hadn’t thought past freeing the debt from Denny and Trent. There was smoke floating in the air in three different clouds. Helicopters circled the clouds as the sun gave them more room to see the wreckage of the kingdom, my dream home, and Raynard’s office.
Dash was supposed to be here.
“Miss?”
I slipped around the corner and spotted the Chicago River in my haste to escape the police. I cut across traffic for the Jackson Street Bridge. Early morning traffic was starting to flood the street, creating a mess for me to navigate. Parts of me shook. There was a blockage in my throat. Where was he?
Thoughts that he may’ve taken off without me settled painfully in my gut. “Dash!” I screamed, uncaring of my audience. “Dash!”
The clouds still look beautiful from up here.
I looked up to the sky. Morning was glowing. I was so used to seeing the sunrise from the kingdom. Watching it settle over the city instead of towering over it. This morning it was king, gold and bright. And for the first time I didn’t think it was a lie.
The clouds didn’t exist. There wasn’t a single one in the whole sky this morning.
Dash wouldn’t have known that when he said it. But he had to have figured it out by now.
“Put your hands up and sink to your knees slowly.”
I spun around. The same police officer who’d flagged me had his hand on his hip, right beside his gun. I felt naked and alone. My heart was beating from far away. Killing Denny was never part of the plan. We weren’t supposed to lose each other. Dash was supposed to be right on my side. There was blood all over me. My eyes were leaking. I felt him put my hands behind my back.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to talk to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. You can, at any moment, choose to exercise your rights and remain silent. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
All I could think about was Denny’s blood on my shirt.
She set me up. The twisted heartless manipulative bitch. Had this been about exorcising the wrongs of the MK’s, or ruining every single person who made her own wrongs real? Whether because of her mother or not. There were only two people left who could do that …
And one of those people were me.
And the other was …
Run, Dash whispered to my soul. You have to run, my queen.
The cold metal of his handcuffs slid around my wrist. “I read your rights. You’re under arrest for the murder of Dash McKing.”
My entire
Being—
Crumpled—
Broke—
Shattered—
Forever—
My king?
Where was my king?
NO!
We were supposed to make it.
We were supposed to run together.
My entire being faded away within seconds.
I looked to the clouds in horror.
He was in the clouds.
She put him in the clouds.
I gave him my last breath.
And he never got to breathe his.
And that was the exact moment I realized that my nightmare was just starting.
Epilogue
“We can love each other anywhere, Kinley. That’s why it’s love.
- Dash McKing
Maybe I knew.
Maybe I knew the moment I fell in love with him that I would lose him. I never loved anyone the way I loved him.
Loving me had been his biggest mistake.
The clouds outside my window were thick and heavy today. I knew he was watching me. Watching me watching him. Watching me yearn for him.
With every beat of my heart I missed him. The pain was too strong—it eviscerated me. Over the years I’d learn to deal with the empty ache in my chest.
I would recount my mistakes forever. I hadn’t been sentenced for Dash’s murder. I hadn’t been sentenced for Denny’s either. Or Trent’s. Bodies were dug up. My mother’s, Dash’s mother’s. My father was pulled from his life with his new family and forced to tell them everything he knew about my mother’s ‘disappearance.’ Kenna was never found. She was never located, even though they found Raynard’s body rotting in Dash’s old childhood bedroom weeks after I was taken into custody. The MK Gang was a myth once more. Maybe one day someone would revive it, but I doubted it.
Why resurrect something when Kenna would be waiting to dismantle it?
I hadn’t been sentenced, because I had a truth I would never regret. Because if I had killed those people, then all of my lies were just that. Lies. But I told the truth. I had been with Dash the entire time. I had proof.
The biggest proof of my life.
“Mommy?”
I turned around and spotted a child poking her head out. The sight of her black/brown hair and golden eyes healed my broken heart the way she always did. I couldn’t have killed Dash and Denny. Not when I was pregnant with Dash’s daughter. They’d waited for her to be born to start the trial. When her DNA came back as undoubtedly Dash’s, he had given me the greatest escape. He’d protected us the way he always said he would.
He’d saved me from so much.
“What’s wrong, baby?” It was almost five in the morning in Seattle. I’d moved to a place with so many clouds, Dash would always be with us.
She wiped her tired eyes, her little queen pajamas stained and tight. She refused to let me take them from her. “Because daddy loved queens.” I told her only of the Dash I loved. Of the man I lost. She only knew the true Dash. The loving, protective savior he was. She loved that she looked just like him. I loved it too, especially when she looked tired and irritated like she did now. She was like her father in every way, down to her devotion to me and her protectiveness.
“I had a bad dream.” Her childlike voice went straight to my heart. “Can we read?”
“Of course.” I scooped her up and cradled her in my arms, a little piece of Dash always with me. He gave me everything I ever wanted, except him. The guilt of his end attacked me, but I looked into our daughter’s vibrant honey eyes to staunch it. Please forgive me, my king.
I carried her to her bedroom, her own palace. She had a picture of Dash on her nightstand. I’d had to print it out from the internet since there were no real pictures of him, and put it in a frame. He wore his black suit as he sat at his desk, giving the camera an empty handsome smile. We laid in her bed and I read her The Wizard of Oz twice before her eyelids drooped. Just as she’d fallen asleep, I heard the front door open and close. I kissed her cheek and then eased out of her bed, closing her door softly behind me.
I tightened my robe and went into the kitchen, moaning at the smell of coffee in the air. A large dark haired man waited for it to brew, eyes intent on the pot as the coffee dripped slowly.
“She have another nightmare?” he asked.
“Yes. Always on his birthday.”
“You think it’s because Dash isn’t here?”
“I think it’s because she can sense it in me.”
Brogan gave me a soft look and pulled me into his arms. We were a surrogate family for Dorothy. Nothing would ever happen between us. My heart was Dash’s and I would never give it to another man. Dash’s child needed to have the family we never had. All of us had banned together to give her the life she deserved. Brogan was an amazing man to Dorothy, and so was Uncle Fillan, and I thought she had healed parts of them both, the way she made my life worth living. Every morning I was faced with this pain, but one look at her honey eyes and my soul took a deep grateful breath. I had my daughter, and with her, I had Dash.
He kissed my forehead softly, smelling thickly of the wood he’d been out back cutting. “Coffee?”
“Please.” I sat at our kitchen table. The forest outside our cabin was beautiful today. The sun seeping barely between the canopy of trees and clouds. When Brogan set my coffee down, he joined me, a mutual silence settling around us.
It had been five years, but it still felt like yesterday Dash was showing me the clouds. He changed parts of me. He showed me love in a world where it had never existed. He gave me a beautiful perfect daughter, and I thanked him from the bottom of my soul. I wiped at my eyes and drank my coffee, trying to find peace in the taste, in him.
But it was so hard without him.
Brogan moved to sit beside me, holding me in his arms. “You think he’s watching us?”
I nodded. He would never let us go.
And neither would we.
Later that morning, I stood in the forest and stared up at the clouds, letting the heat of Dash McKing’s love warm me.
“Hurry, mommy!” our daughter bellowed, giving me a glare so much like her father’s it made me smile. Behind her, Brogan smirked, probably thinking the same thing I was. Dash may not be here physically, but he was in his daughter. Even in her grumpiness.
I straightened my backpack and jogged to catch up to them on the trail. “I’m sorry. Was I holding you up?”
She huffed, leading the hike we always took to visit her father on his birthday. “Daddy’s waiting.”
We’d buried Dash up on a hill with the clouds, and the sun, behind our property. We were never far apart.
As I watched our daughter talk to him, telling him all about her day, I thanked God that we had her. Brogan wrapped his arms around me from behind as Fillan knelt beside Dorothy, holding me together as I shook from happiness, sadness, and loss.
But most of all love.
Happy birthday, my king.
I love you.
I looked up at the clouds and smiled, letting him know we were safe and loved. We were his.
Acknowledgements
Thank you G & M.
For not giving up on me.
For thinking I could do this when I wasn’t sure myself.
For denying the doubts I feel every single time I write.
Thank you.
Just thank you.
And to the brave readers who read to the end.
I miss Dash every day.
Not because Kinley did,
but because he was the only beautiful part of this nightmare.
Thank you.
THE END
About The Author
Romance author, coffee drinker, and bad boy aficionado. Every second not spent breathing is an opportunity to write and read. I live in Northern California with my family and actress dog, Halle Bella. (Just Bella when she decides to cut the crap.) Escaping with a good book is something I live for. I write so others can do the same.
Connect with Shana Vanterpool:
Website: ShanaVanterpool.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author-Shana-Vanterpool-404672296399311
Twitter: @ShanaVauthor
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A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 30