by Kendra Mase
“What?”
Reed paused as he stepped up the first step upstairs. His stare turned into the living room. He gave Jack that expression he knew well now from Reed. Just like old times. Was he really that stupid?
“I’m not interested enough to give advice or anything. Just don’t screw that up.”
Jack glanced out into the living room at Kit’s form curled up on the couch in the morning darkness. Across from her in the corner lounge, Kellen was already asleep, making tiny noises from the back of his throat. Other than the hair, the resemblance wasn’t like him and his brothers, but—he shook his head at everything.
None of this was right.
“Why do you care?” Jack gripped the railing.
“Because out of everyone Avril has brought home, I think I mind her the least. Good night, Jack.”
“’Night.” Jack watched Reed’s retreating form go back upstairs and make the right turn into Queen’s room. Pausing on the stairs, he looked back into the living room again toward Kit.
Kit, who laughed at his jokes.
Kit, who held his hand without question.
Kit, who kneeled at his feet and scrunched her nose up at him.
Kit, who let him dream.
Yeah, he was pretty sure he already screwed up, big time.
Chapter Forty-Two
She was beginning to see how so many people could call the riverside townhouse home. Lying on the couch, if she closed her eyes, it was almost like she was back to fall, as the air chilled her lungs until she came inside and laid down after finishing her work alongside Jack. The blanket cocooned her as she curled her knees.
But then she blinked.
The house was quiet and dark, with no old film playing on mute in front of her.
Avril’s brother slammed the fridge door shut in the other room.
Groaning as she sat up, she wasn’t sure if she even fell asleep since she laid down for just a second. She didn’t remember dreaming or sleeping, only thinking everything and anything, and her mind wouldn’t stop.
It was the new year. She rang the year in on stage with Jack, kissing while people out in the crowd celebrated the clock hitting midnight without them even realizing. And now she was back on the couch.
Only he wasn’t across from her. A deep pain resounded in her chest.
Slipping off the couch, Katherine stood, and like a homing beacon, she began to make her way up the stairs she had walked up and down so many times now. The first time, she thought, was when Avril brought her back here after going to her boyfriend’s apartment. She dressed her up for a party they didn’t go to, and she met Jack. Sober this time.
Katherine let the blanket around her shoulders trail behind her. The thick cover billowed until she came to a stop in front of the door. She had, surprisingly, never passed. Shutting her eyes, Katherine bit her lip, unsure if she should knock.
Should she do anything?
The door opened in front of her.
Her lips parted, looking back and forth from the floor to him. Those melting eyes dripped down. She clenched the blanket tighter around her. “How did you—”
“The shadows,” Jack answered, glancing down to where her feet reflected under the doorway.
She shook her head. Right, of course.
“Do you…” Jack hesitated before he stepped to the side. “Do you want to come in?”
Suddenly awkward, Katherine could only nod as she crossed the threshold. Looking around, like all things with Jack, it was surprisingly clean in a know where everything is in the mess sort of way.
His bed was only slightly undone. Shoes kicked at the one side along with his phone plugged in on the nightstand.
Katherine pointed at it, suddenly remembering. Guilt settled over her. “Did you give them a proper goodbye that day? When we left for Emilie.”
“I called them later, and I ended up taking a trip back over Christmas because of my brother and everything. Thank you for taking care of him that day. But, don’t worry. They understood.”
“They knew,” Katherine said. It wasn’t a question. Of course, they knew.
Everyone knew.
He gave another short nod.
“I—”
“You don’t need to say anything,” Jack said suddenly. “I know I was pushy probably earlier and I know that I would be pissed.”
“I was so angry,” she whispered. No, she needed to talk. She needed to do something. She couldn’t sleep or focus. She needed to do this, however it ended. Jack seemed to see the thoughts cross her face. “I am still so angry with you and Emilie and everyone.”
“You should be. You can be.”
“That whole time, it was like I was a souvenir you picked up in Ashton along the way from scheming with Em. You could have just bought a T-shirt.”
“That isn’t fair.”
She knew that he was right, though, no matter if it was fair or not. Sort of anyway. “I had to deal with her dying all on my own.”
“You didn’t have to be alone,” Jack said, fighting to keep his voice easy. “If it makes you feel any better, Emilie and I did not intend for this to happen. I actually got a very stern talking to when I did call my parents’ house.”
It did make her feel better. Sort of. It also made her think of Emilie. She most likely was trying not to laugh or ask Jack for details on how their relationship came to be after making it very clear that Jack was to simply be her coercive spy throughout the entire lecture.
“And you know that’s not how I feel about you.”
She did. And she didn’t. Or at least she didn’t want to. Her head, like the days and weeks before, still felt foggy. “I still don’t—I can’t trust you. Or maybe it isn’t that. I don’t know.”
“What can I do?”
She shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
She didn’t feel safe anymore, she wanted to say.
But that wasn’t true. As he stepped forward, arms extended at either side, Jack pulled her into his arms. She hadn’t realized that she’d been shaking underneath her blanket. The pressure to not cry snuck up on her.
“How about this?”
Katherine bit her lip.
“You didn’t have to go through it all alone, Kit,” Jack murmured into her hair, squeezing her tighter. Her glasses dug into the side of her nose. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time. I didn’t want you to deal with it alone. I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to be with you.”
An unsteady breath escaped from her lungs as she looped her arms back around him.
“You are so strong, Kit. You are so amazing. I don’t get how anyone hasn’t seen it. But you can cry now. I got you, even if it is only right now, okay? You can cry. You don’t have to be alone.”
Katherine had been holding it in all this time. Every pain and tear and anger when she wanted to pick up that old sewing machine only Emilie used in the corner of the workspace because it barely worked anymore and throw it across the room. So now, she did cry. She buried her face into Jack’s chest and wept.
Her body racked with the sobs she’d been holding in. She cried and cried all the way to the bed, where Jack tucked her in and pulled her back against him. She cried until she almost wanted to laugh, eyes so heavy and lulled by the gentle strokes Jack’s hand made up and down her back.
She laid her head against his form, and he did not reject the weight. She didn’t feel safe, she said, but that perhaps was the biggest lie she was telling herself. For her whole life, she didn’t feel safe or right. Safe, right now, was the only thing that could lull her to sleep, being back in his arms.
She just…
“Never just.”
She brought her eyes right back up to his, filled with warm melting honey that could easily sweep her under. She wanted them too. It would all be so much easier if she could go back to months ago, when it was all just a dream in her head. So, she went back there.
She woke up to screams.
&nbs
p; The space in the bed beside her was vacant.
“Don’t you dare save me again! You hear me, you fucker?” Avril’s cry was unmistakable as it traveled down the stairs and toward the front door, partly opened.
Katherine stood there, along with Jack, who was already helping her up off the ground. The siblings continued their screaming match from the steps all the way to the front door. It was obvious that they’d missed something. Reed held his head in the palm of his hand as he watched, unsure whether to intervene.
“I was proud of you,” Kellen snarled. “I fuckin’ was, A. I saw your picture on the guys’ magazines with that friend of yours in there—” Kellen threw a hand toward Jack.
Katherine looked up at him.
“The last time you called was my fifteenth birthday,” Avril said.
With a nod, Kellen shook his head like he didn’t want to hear about such things. “The guys, they tried to hide the print from me, I could tell. One night when they had it out, though, I snatched it from their hands. I hadn’t seen you in about five years, A, but I knew it was you before I searched for the names. Corset and boobs and whatever the hell that thing was in your hand…”
“A riding crop,” Avril whispered so softly.
“They waited for my reaction. I think they thought I’d be angry. When I held that magazine, I looked at them, and I smiled. Queen. So proud.” He shook his head now, as if in a ridiculous sort of memory. “My sister was another woman in the sex industry, whatever that meant, but I was proud, because I could see it. That spark in your eye. It reminded me of you back then. But… it’s gone now.”
If Avril didn’t feel the punch in her chest from those words that carried in the air of the Riverside house, Katherine did.
“You don’t need me, you know it. You never did.”
“I know.”
In other words, Kellen seemed to take that as a resolution. He opened the door the rest of the way, heading into the gray morning. Only Avril went after him, hobbling.
Avril’s fingers gripped the doorframe. “Show up and leave. That’s the little boy you were and turned into? This is what you decided to keep doing?”
He didn’t say anything. He just stood there. Staring at Avril from the bottom step of the stoop.
“Fine. I don’t need you. I don’t fucking need you!” Avril shrieked, cried. It was all one and the same. Emotion she must have been keeping in a box and stored far away. “Go!”
Given permission by the Queen, Kellen gave a single nod and walked toward the dark beat-up car that was situated on the side of the street. Traffic honked their horns behind the vehicle until finally going around.
At the sight of Kellen’s first foot hitting the concrete, however, Avril tried to take another step outside, bare legged and unsteady.
“Don’t you leave.” Avril’s fist slammed down against the side of the townhouse so hard Katherine thought she heard a crack. Through the sounds Avril made in the back of her throat between words she could not say.
Kellen opened the car door and slid in. The car quickly kicked into gear, turning right at the end of the block.
“You goddamn bastard!” Avril yelled. “Bastard!”
Katherine took a step forward, but Jack held her back with a single hand. Reed was already there. Pulling her back into the townhouse, he held her against his chest, carrying her until it seemed neither of them could take her weight anymore, sliding to the floor of the foyer.
“We are going to get you back, okay?” Reed cradled Avril in his arms.
Lying on the floor, Avril sniffed, but no longer looked like she cried with a clenched jaw. Her fingers traced patterns of the tiles and faded stains, barely holding on to him. It was like she wasn’t even there anymore.
“Hear me, Queen? We are going to piece you back together.”
“My name is Avril.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Is there anything I can do?” Katherine asked not long after they all woke up. Whatever it was that triggered Avril took it out of her just as quickly, Reed and Jack helping her back upstairs before she started to crawl. “I could stay and watch Avril or make some tea.”
“She does make a hell of a cup of tea,” Jack murmured.
Katherine glanced toward him as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“No, it’s all good. Thank you, Kit.”
Jack cleared his throat. “You want me to give you a ride home?”
Looking him up and down, Katherine felt different, off again, as if whatever it was that they shared the night before really was a dream. She nodded, nonetheless. “Okay.”
When they got back outside, the rain had already begun to die down. Scattered shards of mist made Katherine feel as if she was forming a second layer of skin under the lamp glow before they reached the Jeep. Jack turned on the radio but didn’t try to say anything until they were in front of Emilie’s—her shop.
Jack pushed the car into park. “I would like some tea.”
Turning toward him, she stared at Jack, who looked right back at her, regret in his eyes, almost like a small boy prepared to beg.
Katherine closed her eyes, rubbed under her glasses before she reached for the handle. “You don’t even like tea.”
He shrugged.
“I would still love a cup.”
Taking a deep breath, Katherine awarded him a single nod. One cup couldn’t hurt things. “Come on, then.”
Though she had been getting the shop on track the past few weeks, it would be a lie if Katherine said that she was following through for the rest of her life. The apartment showed as much. What the customers saw downstairs was what mattered for right now, she told herself. Not the fact that she had been living off of old tea leaves and Little Debbie snack cakes for the past few weeks.
“Sorry, this is all we have left,” Katherine said. After making a pot out of habit, even though she knew he wouldn’t drink it, she handed Jack an Archie comic mug filled with the last type of tea she had in the house, a deep red color and swirling with the scent of vanilla and berries.
“Birthday tea,” Jack recalled.
She hadn’t realized her hands were shaking until he wrapped his hands around hers.
She sighed. Letting them rest there, his over hers for a moment longer. Maybe letting him in wasn’t such a good idea. The place was a mess. Emilie’s things everywhere were a mess. She was a mess.
She pulled away from him, sitting down in the only other place she could. On the pull-out couch, she still couldn’t help herself from using it. It creaked under her weight.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Katherine asked.
Jack stared at her for a long moment. He even took a second to bring the tea to his lips and take a sip, forcing himself not to cringe by the tic in his jaw before setting the cup aside and Katherine could see that it wasn’t a tic, it was a smile. A smug smirk of a smile as Jack forced himself not to laugh.
Katherine raised her eyebrows anyway, pressing her lips together.
She hadn’t seen that smile in a long time. At least, it felt that way.
“Kitten, you crack me up,” Jack said softly. “We do have things to talk about, don’t we? No? Then, I’ll stay simple. I love you, Kit.”
“Jack.”
“Or was that too vague?”
“You don’t—you don’t have to say it.” She didn’t want him to say it. Her mind pulsed from all the information that was slowly collecting in the corners of everything she previously knew to begin with.
Everything still hurt inside of her and she couldn’t be sure what was from him, what was from Emilie, and what was just from her anymore. She didn’t need him to say the words that would scatter the feelings wrapped up in a knot of unforgiving string, somehow attaching the two of them together any further.
“Kit.”
“I just—” She tried to stop him.
“No—”
“But—”
“Stop talking.” Jack smiled a sad smile. A tear
slipped down and around his nose. She hadn’t even seen it collecting there. “What can I do? What can I say to make this better? Do I need to tell you what happened? About how I gave Emilie a deathbed promise before she was dead, and I’ve regretted it since the moment I met you?”
“You already said that.”
“But I’ll say it again. I will tell you anything you need to fix this, Kit.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“That’s true.”
Katherine’s heart stopped in her chest for a solid second. “That’s right—”
“So now, can I declare my love without you having an existential crisis now?”
What did he think all of this was? Mouth parted open; Katherine pressed her lips together. She thought about what he said earlier.
Was happiness with someone, what Emilie wanted for her, such a bad thing?
Joy. It was what meant most to her. Always. Looking around the various brightly shaded wallpapers and hundred-dollar Hermes scarves hanging from doorknobs only illustrated the thought.
“Good,” Jack breathed. “Because I fucking love you, Kit—and yes. God, yes. I mean it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He looked at her like she had to be kidding. That small smile he forced to stay there only continued to break over and over again. “I do.”
Yet Katherine still shook her head. All of this, it wasn’t right. She was supposed to be getting back to life, all right and perfectly. Alone.
“I don’t want to leave you. I am yours. Don’t you get that yet? I thought you were mine. Yours,” Jack stammered. “I thought we were going to come back here—take over DuCain together. Take over this whole goddamn city.”
Katherine felt the tears slipping out from the corners of her eyes, still fighting with herself. She needed to stop. She needed to take him before he changed his mind or— “That was Avril, though, Jack. You wanted that for you and Avril, and you shouldn’t settle. You’ve always wanted to be a king standing alongside the queen, taking over the world with traveling and your photography and parties. You deserve that.”