Elliott stepped into her space and she took a step back. “What was what?” he asked, confusion lacing his tone and etching his features.
“You and her. I’ve already ticked “one man cheating on me” from my list of things to achieve this year.”
Elliott looked back toward his cottage and laughed.
Laughed.
Never one prone to violence, Kendalee struggled to quell the urge to strangle him.
A flash of headlights and the sound of gravel crunching tires came from the direction of the house. “Oh, honey. We have a lot to talk about, you and me. But let’s say good-bye to our guests, first.”
The first car pulled alongside them, and the woman wound the window down. “I trust everything is in order,” she said, looking anxiously at Kendalee.
Elliott flung his arm over her shoulder, and despite the fact it felt warm, familiar, and safe, she immediately shirked it off. “Anne, I’d love for you to meet Kendalee, Daniel’s mother. Kendalee, this is Anne, a fully trained psychologist and my therapist.”
Kendalee looked up at Elliott, mortified at the conclusion she’d leapt to.
“It’s nice to meet you, Kendalee,” Anne said from the car. “Whenever the two of you are ready, it would be my pleasure to see you two together.”
“Erm . . . you too.” What else was there to say? Thanks for stopping by? “I’m sorry I freaked out,” she blurted. Now that she could see Anne a little more closely, she could see she was older than her initial impression, only heightening her mortification.
“Not a problem. Happens more in my line of work than you’d think. Good luck, Elliott, and keep in touch.”
Elliott patted the roof of her car as Anne drove away.
Then Nik pulled up. He jumped out, marched around the side of the car, and punched Elliott hard in the stomach, so hard that he doubled over. “You’re a dick.”
“My phone died,” Elliott coughed without fighting back.
“Yeah, well. I thought you had died, you douchebag.” Nik marched back around to his door. “Next time, charge your fucking phone.”
“Not like you to be dramatic. Love you, bro.”
“Yeah. Same, fucker.” Nik got back in his car.
“Wait,” Kendalee said. “What if I need a ride?”
“Ask lover boy,” he said, spinning his tires as he pulled down the drive.
Suddenly, the area around the cottage was thrust into silent darkness. “Come on,” Elliott said, taking her hand. And in that quiet stillness, she let him, knowing she’d exhausted her only option for escape. The sky was clear and littered with a million stars. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out in the country. Her entire life had shriveled down into a few blocks of Toronto. The air was clean and fresh. She took a few deep breaths.
“I’ll need to go back in the morning,” she said, trying to ignore the way the feel of his thumb brushing the back of her hand affected her. “I left Daniel alone.”
“I know, and I’ll make sure you get back to him, honey.” Elliott led her up the steps to the front door and into the large open-plan living space. “Welcome to my other home, Kendalee. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll get us a drink.”
Kendalee wandered over the light wood flooring to the large ceiling-to-floor windows. Solar lights illuminated a path down to a large dock, and she could only imagine what the view must be like when the sun was up. She heard the clink of glasses and turned to see Elliott place a bottle of red wine and two glasses on a coffee table made from a thick slab of wood that had been polished to within an inch of its life.
“I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions about Anne,” she said as he walked toward her. He looked good enough to eat, a soft gray T-shirt stretched across his chest, and the relief that had had been lost in all the confusion finally coursed through her. She met him halfway, and as he opened his arms, she stepped right into them. “I’m sorry about a lot of things. I’m sorry I didn’t properly listen. I’m sorry I didn’t ask the million questions that came to me when I woke up this morning.” His lips brushed the top of her head, and she raised her chin to look at him. “Most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how much I love you. I hate the idea that you left this morning thinking that I didn’t.”
Elliott pursed his lips and exhaled slowly. “I think I might need to hear that again,” he said. “I lied when I said it would kill me if you said it and walked away. It hurt more thinking you might never say it.”
“I love you, Elliott. Truly I do.”
He pressed his lips to hers and she wrapped her arms around his waist, savoring the quiet closeness. When he pulled away, she wasn’t ready.
“We need to talk, Kendalee. I don’t know that this is as simple as ‘I love you.’”
His words shocked her. It hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t want her after she apologized—which was a truly arrogant assumption.
“Let’s sit.” They settled into a large cream-colored sofa and Elliott poured the wine. “What do you want to know?” he asked, handing her a glass.
* * *
“What are you still dealing with? Like now. You said a lot of this happened when you were younger. But what . . . ?”
“Is wrong with me?” Elliott asked, filling in the words he figured she couldn’t say.
Kendalee shook his head. “No. I was going to ask what it’s like for you every day.”
Elliott ran his fingers through her hair, one of his favorite ways to spend time in bed after they’d had sex. Part of him wanted to carry her to his room and have this conversation naked. But they needed to prove to each other that they could have this conversation without distractions.
“There are some things, lots of things, I haven’t dealt with about my past. My best friend committed suicide while we were in care. His name was Adam.”
Kendalee gasped. “Oh, Elliott. You’ve had to deal with so much.”
It was time to admit it and own it instead of pretending it hadn’t happened or hadn’t affected him. “Yeah. Daniel has helped me come to terms with just how much.”
“Daniel helped?” she asked. Those little lines appeared between her brows when she was confused.
He took a sip of wine. “Yeah. Seeing Daniel fight his way through his demons made me realize how many of mine I’d just buried. He’d ask me questions like, Does it ever get better? And I’d lie and say yes while I didn’t really believe it. But to answer your question, every day I struggle with questions about why my mom allowed my stepfather to abuse me like he did and about the repercussions of that. I think about why she picked him over me. For so long, I figured it was because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. And I carry that around with me, that feeling of not being good enough, not being capable.”
“There is nothing wrong with you, Elliott. Nothing at all. And I’m sorry for making you feel that way.”
Elliott reached out and took her untouched wine glass from her, and returned them both to the table. Then he tugged her until she was in his lap. “You did make me feel that way, and it stung. And I need to start being honest about what hurts, and about what doesn’t work. I’ve decided I need to go away for a little while.”
“What do you mean away?” She said the words calmly, and he appreciated the effort she was making.
“I can’t figure this out on my own. So I’m going to a clinic in Denver for a little while. Currently I have a month stay planned. But if that’s not enough, I’ll extend it and stay as long as I need to. I’m tired of all this.”
Kendalee ran her fingers through her hair. “Oh, Elliott. What can I do to help?”
He wanted promises. Commitments. But the words wouldn’t mean anything right now. The only thing left was honesty. “You need to make a choice about your family. Adrian made his view perfectly clear. He wants you and Daniel back. I want you to use the time I’m away to think about what you want.”
“I’ve filed for divorce. He has the papers, he—”
El
liott brushed his lips across hers, the sweetest way he could think of to cut her off. “Give yourself this time to explore what you want. Nik is going to stay with one of the guys. You and Daniel have the house to yourselves. No rent, no bills, no pressure. I’m going to put some more money into your account because no matter where we end up, I need to know you’re taken care of.”
Tears filled Kendalee’s eyes, and Elliott used his thumb to catch one that spilled over. “I can’t expect you to do that. You need to go and not worry—”
“Don’t fight me,” he said gruffly, aware that regardless of what happened next, they only had the next forty-eight hours together before he would be on a plane. “That will only make things harder for me while I am away. I’ll need to know that you have the freedom to just focus on you, and Daniel, and what you want. And I’ll do the same. When I am ready to come home, I’ll call you. But it might be a while before I can do that.”
A sob escaped Kendalee, and he hugged her tightly.
“I hate that this feels like good-bye.” She placed her palms on either side of his face. “This isn’t good-bye, is it?”
Elliott swallowed the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him and kissed her. It was messy, and wet, and said all the things he was struggling to put words to. Her hands slid around his neck, gripping him to her. She gasped for air as he pulled her close.
“No, it’s not the end. It’s the opposite. It’s the beginning. I want to be the man you deserve. I want to be a man who gets up in the morning next to a woman he adores, and his first thought is how fucking happy, and lucky, he is. I need help that’s bigger than you or me to do that. And you’ve had a shit year. One that’s left you running on empty. You need time to recharge those batteries to fill you up, and I need to fill the holes in me. Because there isn’t enough of you to fill the holes in me, and there isn’t enough of me to charge you up. And that isn’t healthy anyway.”
Kendalee sniffed and nodded. “I’m proud of you, Elliott. What you are doing.”
He let her words settle instead of denying them, playing them down. “Thank you. I need to tell the rest of the guys. They’ll be cool, I know. And it means I can get healthy before the tour starts.”
“I’m going to miss you.” Her voice cracked, and a tear escaped and ran down his cheek.
“Oh, Lee, the hardest part of this whole thing is leaving you behind.” He stood with her in his arms and carried her up to his room.
Gently, he lay her down on the bed. Hopefully she was the first and only woman who’d ever lie there looking up at him like he was her sun, moon, and stars all rolled up into one. He helped her out of her clothes and then shucked his own before lying down next to her. She immediately snuggled close to him, and he ran his fingers down her spine as he kissed her as gently as he’d wanted to the previous night, as sweetly as she deserved.
Kissing Kendalee.
Fuck. He hoped they had enough of a future to finish the song.
“Elliott . . .” Kendalee’s voice was filled with question.
He rolled onto his side to face her. “What, honey?”
“Before you go, there are a couple of things you should know so you can think about them while you are away too.”
His heart dropped at little at the seriousness of her tone. He brushed the tip of his index finger over the creases between her eyes. “What are they?”
“I can’t have any more kids. It took years and many failed IVF attempts to have Daniel. You’re only twenty-seven. If that’s something you want, I’ll understand.”
The woman looking at him with those huge gray eyes had more courage in the tip of her finger than most any other woman he’d met had in their whole bodies. “I promise I’ll think about it because you asked me to. But you should think long and hard about whether you want to reopen that part of yourself too. If you want to fly to see the world’s best fertility experts at the best clinics in the world, we could do that. If you’re done and over it, that’s okay too.”
From the flicker of shock and then excitement that crossed her features, he had a feeling he knew which way that decision would go, just as he already knew that having Kendalee in his life was more important that having children of his own.
This time when she kissed him, she slid her knee over his thigh and he gripped it, savoring the smooth skin under his fingertips. “What else?”
“Daniel. He’s going to need a lot of long-term care, and it won’t always be convenient.”
He rolled the two of them over so he could settle between her thighs. “I love your son as much as I love you, Kendalee. Wherever we end up, I’m going to want to stay a part of his life.”
“I love you too, Elliott. Whatever happens next, always remember that.”
And in the long days that followed, he would.
EPILOGUE
“What’s she doing?”
Elliott rested against the doorframe into the dining room and looked at Daniel, whose brow was furrowed as he watched his mom. “She’s trying to figure out how I knew.”
Kendalee paced between the living room and the dining room, then looked down at her phone, the Tiffany bone cuff he’d finally given her catching the light as she searched for something. He knew what was bothering her. She was trying to figure out why the two Christmas trees he’d ordered to come fully decorated exactly matched the two on her ’Tis the Season Pinterest board.
She marched over to him, and he tried not to stare at the way her breasts bounced in that cute dress of hers. The five weeks he’d spent in the clinic had put him through the emotional wringer. There were days when he’d barely had the energy to drag himself out of his uncomfortable bed in his almost dormitory-style room. Therapy, group sessions, daily hikes, meditation, and almost-hourly emotional releases had sapped him dry. But since returning home two weeks earlier, sex with his woman occupied his mind twenty-four seven.
“Explain this,” she said, thrusting her phone in his face.
“Wow. That’s crazy. What is that you are looking at?”
Kendalee narrowed one of her eyes at him. “It’s Pinterest.”
“Huh. You look cute in that dress,” he said, distracting her. He would never tell her that he had access to her Pinterest boards, that he’d clicked the button on his laptop that would always remember her log-in information. And it wasn’t anything creepy weird, he just got a kick out of giving her whatever she secretly wanted.
She smoothed her hand down the rich burgundy fabric just as the front door flew open. It hadn’t occurred to him to ever ask for anyone’s key’s back, even though he now owned the place.
“Hello, lovers,” Lennon yelled, pulling a black beanie off his head.
Elliott smiled as Daniel ran over to greet him. He’d been practicing relentlessly on the guitar Lennon had given him and was desperate to show him just how much he’d improved.
Daniel was still having more bad days than good, but it had been a completely different experience sitting down to chat with the kid after Elliott had gotten home. He was able to share some of what he’d learned about himself in treatment, and the two of them had decided to journal for half an hour after dinner every night to try to keep their feelings in check. Elliott had enough material to write songs to fill ten albums, plus the four songs he’d written while in treatment, songs that Jordan and Nik had already started to create music for.
Watching Lennon struggle with the genuine show of emotion from a young teen who hero-worshipped him was difficult, but secretly Elliott hoped that somewhere between Petal and Daniel, Lennon would learn to love, even if it was only on his terms.
“This conversation isn’t over, Elliott Dawson,” she said, lifting onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
Unable to resist, he slid his hands over the curve of her ass. “I know,” he said, with a grin.
“No. No. No,” a little voice shouted from the hallway. Eighteen-month-old Petal flittered over, dressed in more pink tulle than should be feasibly possible. She reached for
Elliott’s hand and tugged on his fingers. She did the same to Jordan when he went anywhere near Lexi while she was around.
“It’s all right, Petal, my little chickpea,” he said as he picked her up and pressed kisses on her cheek. “You know you are my precious girl.”
Celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving late had been Kendalee’s idea—Elliott had still been in treatment on the day itself. Dred and Pixie came over and hugged them both, and Petal held out her arms for Pixie, whose bump was now showing. Petal was less than happy about the baby growing inside.
Kendalee slipped under Elliott’s arm as Jordan and Lexi bustled in.
“Guess we have more to be thankful for than usual,” Jordan said as he slapped Elliott on the shoulder.
As his home filled up with noise, and people, he had to agree. Kendalee ducked out of his hold and went to greet Maisey and to help Ellen, who had recently fallen on the ice and broken her leg, to a chair.
“It’s such a fuss and bother,” Ellen said, embarrassed as Maisey dealt with her crutches.
Elliott shook his head. “Jesus, Ellen, you’ve looked after us enough. Don’t be a miserable moose just because we’re looking after you for a change.”
Daniel laughed at his words. “Miserable moose,” he repeated.
“Well, the interim leader for the home starts on Monday,” Maisey said, quietly.
Ellen shushed Maisey.
“Oh, come on, you can’t do that and not tell me who it is.” Elliott stood.
“It’s Jenny,” Ellen whispered.
Elliott looked over to where Nik was swinging Petal around in the hallway. “Shit.” He could only imagine how Nik was going to react to his former girlfriend being back in town after all those years. “I’ll let you break it to him.”
“Coward,” Ellen replied.
Where was that strawberry blonde hair?
He spotted her over in the kitchen with Pixie, her hands on Pixie’s bump, and a look in her eye that reinforced what she’d told him. When he’d returned from the Denver clinic, he’d been exhausted. At first, he’d stood outside the house, uncertain of what he was going to find inside, but then the door had flung open, and both Kendalee and Daniel had hurried outside to greet him.
Elliott Redeemed Page 25