Daniel yawned. “Because I keep thinking back to the fire.”
Shit. Elliott swallowed deeply. He was so far out of his fucking depth, he didn’t know which way was up, and there was a risk he could do damage with his unqualified advice. “What about it?”
Daniel looked over toward the door, and moved his head closer toward Elliott, laying his head down on his pillow. “I dream about it.”
“Nightmares are normal, Daniel. I still have them, and what happened to me was years ago.”
The kid shook his head, his mop of hair flopping over his face the exact same color as Kendalee’s. “No. See. This is why I’m weird.”
Elliott’s heart tripped. “Why?” he asked, totally knowing what the answer was going to be.
“Because the fire, before it got me . . . it was fucking amazing.”
CHAPTER THREE
“What kind of asshole are you?” Kendalee whispered furiously into her cell phone. She faced a corner of the staff room to ensure as few of her coworkers as possible overheard her call. “We’ve been through this, Adrian. You didn’t believe Daniel. You and his assailant are identical twins. He’s not ready to see you. And you showing up, making a scene, is only going to push him further away from you.”
Plus, he’d avoided her call for over forty-eight hours. What had Adrian thought when he’d seen all the calls he’d missed and heard her progressively more-irate voice mails? Or had he even cared?
“They needed to sedate him, Adrian. Like the kid doesn’t have enough crap in his system right now. And the morning of a skin graft. What the hell?”
“I just needed to see him, Kendalee. Surely you understand that. I want to be there for him. But I also need to be there for my own piece of mind. Every time he goes under for another of those surgeries, I worry if he isn’t going to . . . Well, you know the risks.”
A small part of her, the part that still held a most infinitesimal amount of charity, understood his concern. Daniel was, after all, his child too, and she was certain he was worried about the surgery. All the forms they’d had to sign when Daniel was first admitted, all the conversations about the risks, all for surgeries that came with no guarantees of success. “I do,” she said quietly. “I really do.”
“He just needs a stern talking to, Kendalee. Be made to see sense that keeping me away is complete crap. I can help him. I want to help him. Since the moment I spoke to Simon and the police and understood the full picture, I have done nothing but support my son. You need to help him see sense, Kendalee. I’m concerned that you are . . . that you might be—”
“Choose your next words carefully, Adrian.” Her anger spiked, all feelings of sympathy erased. “It would be a callous move to suggest I was somehow poisoning your son against you. I haven’t told Daniel anything I don’t need to. And for the record, before any of this happened, you drained the account. . . . Leaving us penniless is not supporting your son.”
“I didn’t drain it. This is shitty enough without you getting dramatic about it.” She hated it when Adrian started talking to her as if she were a naïve nineteen-year-old all over again. “I had a cash-flow problem at work. Keeping the business open is crucial.”
“And I have no home, which is even more important.”
“Look, Kendalee, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t seem to make a good decision whatever I do. What am I supposed to do? If I don’t see him, people will accuse me of abandoning him. If I come and see him, I’m a monster because he doesn’t want to see me.”
She could hear Adrian’s deep breaths and she imagined he was pinching the bridge of his nose as he always did when he got upset with her. “I thought keeping the business open for the long term so that I can eventually make proper payments to you was the right thing to do,” he continued. “If I hadn’t, I would have lost some great contractors because I wouldn’t have been able to pay them. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
“Stop making this about you, Adrian. It shouldn’t matter what people say about you.” She sighed wearily. “The only thing that matters is Daniel. He doesn’t want to see you, and given that I’m the only parent he wants right now, I need some money so I can be there more often.” Fabio walked by and motioned that he was locking up the front. She hated the evening shift, hated not being there when Daniel went to bed. “Look. I have to go. Just transfer some funds and stay away, Adrian. I’ve waited long enough. I would hate to have to go to a lawyer.”
She disconnected before he had a chance to reply and waved to Fabio as she headed out the door. Even though it was after ten o’clock in the evening, the warm air hit her as she headed toward the hospital. Daniel would be asleep already, but she wanted to be there when he woke up.
The roar of a loud engine sounded on the opposite side of the street and then the car it came from pulled a U-turn, crossing all the lanes of Bloor Street in one smooth maneuver before slowing down alongside her. She pulled her purse closer to her side, not that there was much in it, and reached for her phone.
“Hey,” a deep voice said.
She pretended not to hear as she turned to run back to the store, where she knew Fabio would still be at work with the grocery manager prepping for the next day.
“Kendalee, wait up.” A car door slammed and she turned around to see Elliott walking toward her. Her mouth turned dry at the sight of him. A black shirt that fit him too well was opened a button further than she would have chosen. A long leather thong with a silver charm or something on it hung around his neck. To say he looked delicious was a major understatement.
Using the back of her hand, she brushed the stray flyaways from her face. Her hands smelled like pine from cleaning her checkout conveyor belt. It reminded her of the hospital. “Hey,” she said as casually as she could. As if she got stopped all the time on the street by godlike rock stars driving something James Bond would be proud of. Yeah. That right there was why her dreams would ultimately be restricted to Pinterest boards while her reality involved cars made at the General Motors plant in the ‘Shwa.
“Where are you headed?” he asked as he came to a stop in front of her.
She looked down at her plain black Converse. She’d bought them thinking they’d be good for work and that she could pair them with jeans for the weekend. Elliott wore unlaced black high-tops, some high-end sports line that looked so pristine, it was as though they’d never been worn.
“You’re parked on double yellow lines,” she noted.
Elliott laughed. “Yeah. In the long line of things I’ve done wrong in this car, that’s somewhere near the bottom. Let me give you a ride,” he said, taking hold of her hand as if they’d done it a thousand times before. “You off to the hospital?”
Kendalee nodded as he held the door open for her and she slid inside. It had that new car smell and ivory-colored carpets that would get ruined in the winter. The dashboard appeared to be real wood, something she didn’t think was possible. People watched as Elliott closed the door and jogged around the other side. One man appeared to take a photograph or video. She’d never given a thought as to what it must be like to have the kind of fame he’d had at such a young age.
“Want to tell me what else you’ve done wrong in this car, beyond blocking Toronto’s busiest artery at this time of night?” she said as the car roared to life beneath her.
Elliott turned to her and grinned. The silver watch on his wrist somehow made him look even more devilishly handsome. Long hair on a man had never been something she found attractive, but it suited Elliott, even if his bun kind of matched her own. “No, because you might get out, and I’d have to stop and block this major road again,” he said and laughed.
Even though it was late in the evening, pedestrians crowded the busy intersection of Bloor and Yonge streets as they pulled up to the traffic lights. It seemed like every single one of them stared at Elliott’s car. “I feel like I should be wearing sunglasses or something even though it’s night.”
“So put them on,”
Elliott said.
“If I had some, I would, but . . . they . . . well . . . the fire didn’t discriminate.”
“Shit, it really did take everything, didn’t it?”
This wasn’t what she’d wanted to talk about. She wanted to enjoy this experience. “It feels a bit surreal,” she admitted. “Being looked at like this.”
Elliott shrugged. “I don’t really notice it any more, to be honest. Let ’em look. I mean, here in Toronto, for the most part, we get left alone. I guess it’s pretty unCanadian to worship celebrity that way. It’s worse when we are in the UK, and worse again when we hit the States. But I guess I’m used to it.”
“Hmm. It feels a bit like a fishbowl to me.”
Elliott turned south toward the hospital. “Did you eat? Wanna stop and get something?”
Was he asking her to dinner? “Erm. I can’t really stop. I was just going to grab a sub, or fast food or something.”
The car slowed, and Elliott parked it on yet another set of double yellows. “When did you last eat a real meal, Kendalee? One that had all the major food groups in it and needed a knife and fork?” He turned to face her.
“My Chinese takeout needed chopsticks,” she said brightly, even though the question hit her square in the chest.
“How long has Daniel been in the hospital?”
What day was it? She had to think. Wednesday. The date took a moment longer. The sixteenth. And the fire had happened on the first, her wedding anniversary, which was way too symbolic. Had she really not sat down to eat a proper meal since then? Actually, with no kitchen of her own to cook in and living at the hospital most of the time, it made sense.
“Just over two weeks. And what kind of mother would I be, hanging out in restaurants while my son is in the hospital? I just need to be where he is.”
Elliott reached forward and grabbed her hands. Though it surprised her, she took them and gripped them hard as she willed herself to not cry. She was sick of the hospital. Sick of sleeping on that stupid bed. Of walls painted in bright colors that jarred her just as much as they cheered the children.
“Are you anywhere close to getting temporary accommodation sorted out, or are you staying at the hospital every night?”
She was a thirty-seven-year-old woman. She was meant to have her shit together. For heaven’s sake, according to everything she read, her forties were meant to be her defining moment, the time a woman as she came into her own. She was meant to have developed her own sense of style and finished some random list of a hundred things to prove she had embraced her thirties. She wasn’t supposed to be sitting in a rock star’s car that likely cost more than the average home in Toronto, admitting just how sad her life was.
“Lee, please,” Elliott begged as he tugged on her hands. “Do you ever sleep anywhere other than the hospital?”
“My friend Rachel has a half-finished basement where I’m storing the few things that were salvageable,” she admitted, anger replacing the sadness. “And, yes, I’m sleeping at the hospital. A lot. All the time. And no, I can’t remember when I last ate a proper meal, because that isn’t my priority right now. If you’ve finished with the Inquisition, can we just go?”
“No.” Elliott revved the car and did a U-turn right underneath the no U-turn sign. “Dial Nikan,” he said out loud to no one in particular.
She grabbed his arm. “Elliott,” she said, furiously. “Where are you taking me? The hospital was just a couple of blocks more. Let me out.”
The sound of a phone ringing reverberated through the car. “Yo, brother. What’s up?”
“Do me a favor, Nik? Can you call that Italian place you love and order me a shit-ton of food? For two. Then get the fuck out.”
“No problem, El.”
Kendalee stared at him. “Who was that? And please stop the—”
“You’re taking care of Daniel,” Elliott said calmly, in complete contrast to the high-speed way he swerved around traffic. “And I just decided I am taking care of you. Food. Shower, for as long as you need, then bed.”
“You can’t just kidnap me,” Kendalee argued. “Ever hear of consent?”
“It would appear that I am. And I can just see the two of us in court. Your honor, the woman needed some goddamn food, and I made her eat it. I am a cruel man,” he said somberly. “Plus, won’t Daniel be asleep by now?”
The side of her mouth twitched. She wanted to be angry, wanted to insist on going to see her son, but she buried the guilt because the idea of hot food, on plates, sounded heavenly.
“Yes,” she conceded.
“Then I’ll have you there before he wakes up in the morning.”
Elliott put on his left-turn signal and turned left onto a no-left-turn street.
Kendalee squealed and covered her eyes as he took the corner. “You’re a maniac,” she said.
“More than you know,” he replied. Beneath the humor, she heard the tiniest tinge of sadness. Which didn’t make any sense at all.
* * *
You’re a maniac.
The way her words rang in his ears made him feel dishonest for keeping who he was from her. But she was exhausted, and didn’t deserve additional drama, and he just wanted to do this one kind thing for her.
Despite a judge recently having told him he was one infraction away from losing his license, he drove the way he wanted to. Fast and tight. If fire was his compulsion, driving was his indulgence. And the Panamera hugged corners tighter than the strings on his Ibanez. The gates opened slowly as he pulled the car up the driveway, and he used the time to fire a quick explanatory text to Lennon, who he’d been on his way to join him at a bar in Yorkville. He shook his head at the idea that had he been a minute earlier or later, he would have missed her completely.
Kendalee hadn’t said a word about his driving, but the way she held on to the door handle spoke volumes.
“You look a bit green there, Lee,” he said. He wasn’t certain why he’d started abbreviating her name. Kendalee was an unusual name, but Lee suited her better. It was more . . . playful, something he’d yet to observe but had the feeling that before all the shit that had gone down, that’s how she’d been. Which was stupid. How the fuck could he know that? Well, maybe from her list of things to do in the rain. That was playful.
“Perhaps if you had any kind of understanding of the basic concept of the highway code and speed limits, I’d be my normal perky self,” she replied as he pulled the car to a stop.
He laughed, feeling huge satisfaction when the corners of her mouth turned up in the makings of a smile. He got out and opened her door for her. “Come on. Let’s get some food.”
Holding her arm, he guided her to the side door of the house and hit the lights.
“You have a beautiful home,” Kendalee said as she stepped inside.
He looked around the main floor and tried to see it through her eyes. The architect they’d hired hadn’t asked any questions about why they wanted to keep the main floor of the Cabbagetown home a large, open-plan, family home, while converting the upper levels into a series of large bachelor apartments. One of the things he was looking forward to doing once the house was his was ripping out those changes and returning it to a family home. It was a pipe dream to think he’d ever have an actual family to put in it, but he’d considered speaking to Maisey about whether a single man would be considered as a foster parent. After all the shit holes he’d stayed in, he felt he could offer a kid in need hope, if not permanence.
“Thanks,” he said, leading her to the large family room. “I currently share it with Nikan, one of my bandmates. But the rest of the band used to live here, and they still kind of come and go as they please.”
Kendalee ran her hand along the marble kitchen counter with what he could only describe as longing. “That must be nice have that kind of family,” she said. “I miss my kitchen counter.”
Oh, shit. It was fucking tactless of him to bring her to his state - of - the - art comfortably furnished home, in his hu
ndred - and - fifty - thousand - dollar car, while she was, to all intents and purposes, homeless. “I’m sorry, Kendalee. I wasn’t thinking. I—”
“No,” she said as she turned to face him. “It’s nice to actually have the feeling of being home. Even if it’s not mine, and even if it’s only for a little while.”
She sat down on the large sofa and rested her head on the back of it. “It’s the small things you miss, you know?” she said. “Like taking a shower for as long as you like and drying off with your own towels. And I miss the view of the garden from the kitchen. The way the light came in through the glass on either side of the front door in the late afternoon. I’d just received a gift—a new green scarf—and had never gotten the chance to wear it.”
Elliott sat down next to her. Probably closer than was proper, but he wanted to offer her support. And if he was honest, he just wanted to be near her.
“Do you know what I mean?” she asked, and looked at him.
“Come here,” he said, and without overthinking the probable outcome of the seriously bad idea, he pulled her toward him and wrapped his arm around her. It felt like all the puzzle pieces fell into place as she rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. When she leaned into him and placed her arm across his stomach, he almost swore. His brain quieted. It was a perfect moment. Every warning bell that had been ringing since the day he’d seen her that first afternoon at the hospital stopped ringing. The silence was deafening.
He slipped the elastic from her hair and ran his fingers through it like he enjoyed. Slowly, from root to tip. Kendalee groaned, and the sweet sound punched him right in the gut. The sound of her pleasure was almost too much to take, and he felt his cock stir in response. To stop the pending hard-on, he forced himself to think of other things, like the time one of his foster dads had shown him how to gut a fish.
They sat without speaking, the occasional hum of the refrigerator the only sound. His breathing slowed, as did hers. Her fingers drew small circles on his side. It kind of tickled, but he didn’t want her to stop. He had the means to make this right for Kendalee, but convincing her to have a meal with him had been difficult enough. He had a feeling that his handing her a check wasn’t going to go over well. She had her pride, and he wanted her to be able to keep it.
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