Day and Night

by Kaylie Hunter

  “Without you, I had no reason to live. You were everything to me. You were my whole world.”

  Charlie stroked my hair out of my face. “You’re going to be okay. I’m here. I’m not leaving. You didn’t abandon me, and I won’t abandon you. I’ve got you, Kelsey. I’m right here.”

  “Even if everybody else leaves?”

  “Who’s leaving? I know you’re going through your running phase again, but I’m pretty sure your new family would track your ass down if you stayed away too long.”

  I shook my head, but there was a brief knock on the door before it started to open. I stood and turned toward the windows to wipe my face dry with the back of my hand.

  “Hey,” Grady’s voice called out. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Are you leaving Kelsey?” Charlie asked.

  “What? I’m heading out of town for a few days on business. I’ll be back Sunday.”

  “Then why does she think you’re leaving her?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I sensed Grady cross the room before his hands turned me to face him. My heart broke as I looked at him, scared that he’d run away. “Ah, Kel,” he whispered, pulling me into his arms. “Charlie, we need a minute.”

  I sobbed as he held me tight with one arm and rubbed my back with the other. I clung to him, hoping he wouldn’t slip away.

  “Shh, babe,” he whispered. “I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’ll cancel my trip. I’m not going anywhere.” He sat down on the floor, pulling me down onto his lap. “Shh,” he whispered again, kissing the top of my head. “Settle, hon. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  I pulled several raspy breaths into my lungs, trying to stop the waterworks. It took a few minutes, but I finally gained control again.

  “What am I missing? What don’t I know?” Grady whispered as he continued to rub my back and hold me.

  I shook my head.

  “Are you scared of Chaves? Because I have a plan to take care of him. I’ll handle it. Is that why you’re upset?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Your mother? Is that it?”

  I looked up at Grady. “I can’t do it. I can’t face the past.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.” He stared down at me, waiting for me to explain, but I bit my lower lip, unable to answer. He sighed in frustration. “I’ll admit, the petition for custody made me furious. I feel like Nicholas is my kid too. But at the same time, he’s not. He’s yours. And that’s probably never going to change. I have to accept that. I don’t like it, but for whatever reason, you don’t want to marry me.”

  “I want to. I just can’t.”

  “Why?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s more to the story, isn’t there? There’s something else you haven’t told me. Something from when you were a kid.”

  My body trembled, and I looked away. The tears were a steady river down my face.

  “Whatever this is, Kelsey, it’s eating you up. You have to face it. Just tell me, so I can help you.”

  I didn’t want to say the words. It would change how he looked at me. How he felt about me.

  “What don’t I know? How could anything be worse than the hell Nola put you through?”

  I looked up at the ceiling, shaking my head. “It’s different. I had to survive Nola torturing me. It wasn’t something I chose, though.”

  “So you did do something—in addition to blackmailing them. Whatever it was, Kelsey, I’ll understand.”

  “No, you won’t,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

  “Why can’t you trust me? Damn it!” Grady placed his hands on the side of my face and forced me to look at him. “I love you, but I need you to tell me what is going on. I need you to say the words.”

  I trembled, feeling the anger rolling off him, directed at me.

  “Tell me!” he yelled.

  “I needed money!”

  Grady seemed to stop breathing as he stared down at me, still holding my face in his hands.

  “Charlie was hungry! I was hungry!”

  Grady’s body stiffened, his hands dropping their hold on me and clenching into fists. “But you had the money from the books.” His eyes were wild, sensing what I was trying to explain.

  “I lied. It took me two years to start making any money on the books.”

  “Finish it,” he growled in a low whisper, closing his eyes.

  I remained frozen, unable to answer.

  “No more lies, Kelsey,” he said as he opened his eyes and glared down at me. “No more secrets! Tell me!”

  A deep streak of coldness started in the center of my body and worked its way outward. I could’ve sworn my heart stopped beating all together as I shut my emotions off—shoving them back into their bottle. I held Grady’s stare as I answered him. “I was a thief. I was a whore.” I lifted my chin, ready for a fight, accepting that I would lose him. “I was anything I had to be to get us enough money to survive and get the hell out of that town.”

  I pushed myself off Grady’s lap, crawling a few feet away before standing and moving over to the table. I heard Grady stand and start pacing. I could feel his rage heating the air in the room.

  I heard the door to the war room open, and Tech stepped in, looking between Grady and me.

  “Tech, send the kids outside to play.”

  Tech nodded before quickly leaving.

  Grady continued to pace, like the panther tattoo on his back, ready to strike out at anyone or anything that moved wrong. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep this from me?”

  “I’ve never told anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “But she knows, doesn’t she? Your mother! And she did nothing to help you?”

  “It’s a small town. It’s her town. Of course, she knows. She’s always known,” I answered before I turned and walked out of the war room.

  I heard a window in the war room shatter as I walked down the stairs. Tech and Charlie stood at the bottom of the staircase and when Charlie reached out, I shook her off.

  “Tech, I’m sorry I was short with you earlier.”

  Another window broke and Bones and Donovan raced past us up the stairs.

  “I’ll be working from home today. I’d appreciate it if you guys can keep an eye on the kids.”

  “Kel?” Charlie asked with concern etched in her voice. “Were you right? Is he leaving?”

  A desperate laugh escaped my lips. “He wasn’t, but he will now.”

  I walked out of the gym.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I meant to turn right, toward home. But while I sat waiting for traffic to clear, I made the decision that I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I needed to hide. Not for long but at least for a few hours. I needed to not feel the pain. I needed to just exist in the world, without the weight of my troubles.

  So, I turned left, heading to the one person who always let me do just that.

  ~*~*~

  Dallas opened the door and looked at me from head to toe. “You’re a mess. Get in here before one of the neighbors sees you.” She pulled me through the door, closing it behind me. “I’m assuming you came here for a reason,” she said as she led me by the elbow down the hall into the spare bedroom and shoved me toward the bathroom. “Shower. It’ll be easier to start over than fixing whatever you’ve got going on with your hair and makeup.”

  After showering, I dried off and put on the semi-slutty outfit that Dallas had laid out on the bed for me. Then I followed the hall to the kitchen where I knew she’d be waiting with a variety of makeup and hair styling supplies. I sat in a chair, and we remained peacefully silent while she worked me back into a human likeness.

  An hour later she stepped away and moved over to the coffee pot. “You want coffee or something stronger. I usually don’t drink this early,” she winked, “but I can make an exception.”

  “Stronger.”

  “Margaritas?”

  “Stron
ger.”

  “I see,” she said. “Only one cure for that.” She got the tequila and shot glasses out. “Do we need to call Goat and have him shoot someone? I might have to repay him by letting him do this special something or other he’s wanted to try, but for you, I’d do it.”

  I snorted and downed the first shot, tapping the glass on the table for a refill.

  “You are aware that it’s barely ten in the morning, right?”

  I tapped the glass on the table again as I glared up at her.

  “Looks like even a bullet wouldn’t turn this day around for you. So be it,” she said, filling the shot glass to the rim. “Not today.” She held her glass up before downing her shot.

  “Not today,” I said before downing my second shot.

  ~*~*~

  After four or five shots we had switched to margaritas, but those were going down rather quickly too. When Grady and Goat walked into the house mid-afternoon, I was half falling out of my chair, laughing. Dallas was standing in the middle of the kitchen imitating Nana’s horrific attempt at strip dancing. The way Dallas was rubbing a hand up through her hair like Marilyn Monroe explained why Nana’s hair had been sticking up oddly on the sides.

  When she started squatting and doing weird forward thrusts while undoing her shirt, I had to yell for her to stop. “No more! I don’t want to know. She’s my nana.”

  “I’m telling you, we need to get that poor woman to a pole dancing class, or she’ll never get laid.”

  I laughed, wiping the tears from my face. “I have no interest in helping my grandmother get laid.”

  “I don’t even want to know,” Grady said. “Are you ready to go home?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not even close to being ready.”

  Dallas poured two shots and slid one to me. We clanked our glasses and yelled, “Not today!” before downing the tequila.

  “Fine.” Grady pulled out a chair. “Goat? Tequila?” he asked, stealing the bottle from Dallas and reusing our shot glasses.

  “Sure. Bridget took the kids to the movies. I’ve got the night off.”

  “All the kids?” I asked, looking at Grady.

  “Relax. I sent four guys with them. I’ll have to pay them hazard rates for sitting through a PG movie, but it’s also keeping Carl and Nana out of everyone’s hair, so it’s worth it. And Charlie went too.”

  I sighed, relaxing once I knew Charlie was with them.

  Grady downed his shot before refilling his glass. “Not today,” he said, looking up at me. “But tomorrow—you and I need to talk.” He downed his second shot, not bothering to wait for Goat.

  ~*~*~

  Hours later…

  “And then… Kelsey tells this dancer named Rocket that she’s better than him…” Dallas said as we both laughed, remembering the night we went to the strip club. “He, of course, balked, so she wagged her ass cheeks right up on stage. The DJ started a song, and she had every woman in the joint screaming for her.”

  “I even got a few lap dance requests,” I said, half falling out of my chair as Grady caught me and pulled me upright.

  Bones, Donovan, Lisa, Tech, and Katie had arrived at some point and laughed with us. Everyone except Lisa was well past the buzzed phase.

  “They didn’t kick you out?” Lisa asked.

  “Hell, no. They asked her if she’d consider becoming a regular dancer!” Dallas laughed. “I was so disappointed when she turned them down.”

  “Remember the time we stole that dingy in South Haven?” I laughed. “I can’t believe we did that.”

  “I can’t believe you convinced the police that we mistook it for our own. That was the best straight-faced string of bullshit I’d ever heard a person spin.”

  “Then we slept on someone’s yacht, and they found us the next morning.”

  “And made us breakfast!” Dallas barked out a laugh.

  “That does it,” Grady said, laughing. “You two are now banned from hanging out without supervision. I can’t believe neither of you ended up getting arrested.”

  “They did.” Dave said, walking into the kitchen, followed by Steve. “They got arrested at Cedar Point. Steve and I had to go bail them out.”

  “What did you do?” Katie asked.

  Dallas and I both made zip-the-lip signs and then snagged each other’s pinky fingers.

  “All we know is it had something to do with one of the water rides,” Steve said. “And when we picked them up, they were both wearing jailhouse orange tops.”

  “And we were told to get their asses out of Ohio,” Dave said, grinning.

  “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” Dallas said, rolling her eyes.

  “No. We were doing the community a service,” I agreed.

  “Oh, fuck me,” Grady groaned.

  “Why are you guys here?” I asked Dave and Steve, seeing they were still in uniform.

  “We stopped by the house, and they asked us to check on you guys. I feel better knowing that Donovan and Grady are here babysitting.”

  “Hey? Don’t I count?” Goat asked.

  Dave glared over at Goat, making us all laugh. Dallas wasn’t quiet about her sexual adventures with Goat, and as her son, Dave struggled to even acknowledge Goat most days.

  “Kelsey? How trashed are you?” Steve asked.

  I could only laugh.

  “All right then,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Better make it late morning,” Lisa said as they were turning to leave. “I’ve never seen her this drunk.”

  “Oh, we’ve seen her worse,” Dave said as he followed Steve toward the door. He glanced over his shoulder and winked at me. “Remember getting caught skinny dipping at the YMCA pool?”

  Dallas and I laughed, and this time I did fall and when Grady tried to grab me, he ended up beside me on the floor. He wrapped an arm around me as I laughed into his shoulder. Bones and Donovan came over and helped us back into chairs.

  “How many times have you been arrested?” Donovan asked

  “We weren’t arrested for the YMCA thing,” Dallas said, shaking her head.

  “Okay, how many times did you two get caught doing something illegal?” Donovan asked before downing another shot.

  “When we were together? Or individually?” I asked, trying to be serious.

  “Together,” Bones said.

  Dallas and I both started counting on our fingers, but lost track and laughed.

  “We got caught a lot,” Dallas admitted.

  “I’ve been arrested nine times,” Lisa announced, proud of herself.

  We all turned, big-eyed, toward Lisa.

  “What could the little princess possibly have done to get arrested?” Katie snorted.

  “The first eight were all part of my rebellious teenage years. My last arrest was for trespassing. Only Papa knew the whole story. The Feds had been watching Papa and his men, and he couldn’t get a shipment moved. I stepped in without permission and had it transported from point A to point B. But after the shipment departed, I spotted a police car and ran. I was caught in a neighboring warehouse and pretended I was drunk when the cops found me.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Donovan said. “We could all be murdered in our sleep for knowing.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lisa said. “It was a simple transaction.”

  “I have to know,” Dallas said, leaning forward. “What was it? Drugs? Weapons?”

  Lisa leaned forward, first looking at Dallas, and then at each of us as we leaned closer, wanting to know as well. “Counterfeit lingerie,” Lisa whispered.

  “Like G-strings?” Grady laughed.

  “It’s a serious market,” Lisa said, holding in a smirk. “But Papa has rules. He won’t work with any sweat shops, and he’s careful that the employees are all willing participants.”

  “That’s why you can pick out the high fashion items so easily!” I laughed, pointing at Lisa. “It’s part of the family business!”

  “
Believe me, my father has been pestering me to see if we’d expand our sales base for some of his goods. But I’ve told him—no way in hell.”

  “And I’m sure you said it just like that,” Grady said, laughing and clinking beer bottles with Donovan.

  “Okay, so maybe I told him that Kelsey would figure it out and have us arrested,” Lisa said, snickering.

  “Here, here,” Katie said as we clinked our drinks.

  “Does he have counterfeit Armani?” Dallas asked.

  “No!” we all yelled at once.

  ~*~*~

  I woke on the couch, discovering Grady was half lying on top of me and half wedged in the back crevice between the cushions. I heard Dallas counting off numbers along with a voice on the TV. I turned my head in the direction of the noise and regretted it immediately as Dallas bent at the waist to touch her toes, her backside spread in front of me in a form-fitting purple leotard, complete with pink stockings.

  “I did not need to see that,” Grady grumbled, rolling over me so he could get up.

  Following after him into the kitchen, Goat greeted us with cups of coffee. “Damn, I love that woman.” Goat grinned as he watched Dallas through the cutout in the wall. “She’s so damn flexible.”

  “Don’t,” I said, holding up a hand to stop him.

  Grady chuckled as he sat at the table. “It’s too early to hear about Dallas being naked.”

  “Never too early for her,” Goat said, winking my way. He didn’t say any more when I glared back at him.

  “What time is it?” Grady asked.

  “Almost nine,” Goat answered. “I texted Katie that I’d be late this morning, but if I don’t leave soon, she’ll fire my ass.”

  “Doubtful, since they were here until one in the morning.” I looked around for Goat’s daughter. “Did you get Amanda to school on time?”

  “Bridget took her to school. Haley and Bridget babysit twice a week so I can spend time with Dallas.”

  “Amanda doesn’t like Dallas?”

  “That’s not an issue,” Goat said, shaking his head. “The last time Amanda spent time with Dallas, Dallas dyed her hair purple and pierced her ears. I’d only run to the store to pick up bread.”