The Heavier The Chains...

by M. E. Clayton

Now, it was Wednesday evening, and I had to make do with random texts throughout the day letting me know Kenzlee was doing okay. School had been brutal, and I couldn’t tell you anything about what I was supposed to have learned today, but Alex took pity on me and she tried to calm me as much as she could with details about what she knew. However, I had already known most of what she was telling me, anyway. Kenzlee had told me their plans last night.

  Because her father had shot himself in the head, her mother had opted for cremation in a small, quiet affair. She was so concerned about appearances, she told Kenzlee that if he were cremated, no one could prove he had committed suicide. When Kenzlee had pointed out that it was public knowledge on the news, her mother actually told her she could spin it off as gossip and misinformation. I knew her mother was a piece of work, but Jesus…

  The service was this morning, and their attorney was going to read her father’s will this afternoon to where Kenzlee would be home tomorrow sometime. It hadn’t been until she assured me she’d be home tomorrow that I started to calm a bit.

  Glancing at the clock in the kitchen, I was putting the finishing touches on dinner when my phone rang. I grabbed my phone and answered it, dinner forgotten. “Kenz?”

  I could hear the soft smile in her voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Making dinner,” I answered. “What’s going on with you?”

  She was silent for a bit and the bottom of my stomach fell out with irrational thoughts of her telling me she wasn’t coming home tomorrow, after all. She finally spoke, and her words hollowed me out worse than if she had told me she wasn’t coming home. “I’m…I’m at a hotel,” she muttered.

  I was instantly alert. “What are you doing at a hotel? Why aren’t you with your mom?”

  Kenzlee cleared her throat a bit. “We got into a fight,” she replied.

  “Over?” I couldn’t imagine what they could possibly fight over after her father’s funeral, but, hey…rich people.

  “The reading of his will,” she answered, and that made complete sense. It’s funny what money, or lack thereof, does to people.

  “But…baby, was there even anything to leave?” The night we talked until three in the morning, she had told me all about her parents’ financial problems. And, according to common knowledge, life insurances usually didn’t pay out suicides.

  I could hear sniffles, but at least she wasn’t balls-out crying. “Talon...” she whispered.

  “Baby…” Fuck! I hated not being with her.

  “Talon, he…I guess he knew things were going south a while back, and…when I turned eighteen, he opened a living trust of some sort and started depositing money into the account,” she explained, shocking the shit out of me. “I…I don’t know all the legal jumbo of it all, but I guess…I guess since it’s in my name, it’s untouchable in the seizure of all their assets. It’s rightfully my money, and since he hadn’t done anything illegal, and he just couldn’t manage his money, the money in the account is all mine.”

  She’s only been legal for a few months, so it couldn’t be that much money, right? “So, for the past few months, he’s been depositing money in an account for you?”

  “No,” she breathed out. “He’s been doing it for a while. He just took his name off the account when I turned legal.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  Kenzlee had money again.

  Kenzlee had money and was no longer destitute and needed to live off her uncle’s good graces. And I felt resentful over it. I was so self-absorbed, and so goddamn evil, I couldn’t even be happy for her.

  I was pissed.

  I asked the one question I really, really didn’t want to know the answer to, but I had to know what I was up against. “How much are we talking, White?” I mean, how much is enough to make her mother start fighting with her?

  “Talon…Talon, there’s a little over two million dollars in the account,” she admitted, causing my entire world to shift once again.

  Kenzlee had two million dollars.

  I’m not sure how wealthy she was before her parents lost everything, but surely two million dollars was enough money to get her foot back in the door, right? She had two fucking million dollars that was going to make college possible for her again. It was going to make her future limitless.

  “Talon?”

  I shook my head and snapped myself back to our conversation. “Uh, yeah,” I stuttered. “Uhm, and your mom’s upset because…”

  “Well, because you’re right,” she replied quietly. “There really wasn’t anything left to leave, and even if there was, insurances don’t pay out on suicides.”

  “Well, that’s not your fault,” I pointed out, doing my best to ignore my mental issues.

  “No, but…” I could hear her taking a deep breath. “He…he left me a letter, and it was wonderful and horrible all at the same time. He apologized and said that he was always going to take care of me, he just wanted the shame of what he did to die down first. But…” Kenzlee started crying. “Oh, Talon, he wrote that he thought he couldn’t live with the shame of being a loser, so he…” She couldn’t finish. She just started sobbing, and I sat quietly on the phone as she did.

  The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was feeling threatened knowing she was left this money, but in reality, she always had this money. Her father had set her up for life, and he had just been biding his time so she could access the money with no drama.

  Kenzlee’s never been poor. She was always going to end up with money, and I was the fool who fell for a girl who would always be out of my league.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  ∞∞∞

  Kenzlee~

  I was sitting at the Lakeside park, watching postcards and advertisement ads coming to life. It was late afternoon and people were walking their dogs and jogging and playing football and all that stuff that people only do in movies.

  And me? I was sitting on a bench, scared out of my mind.

  My plane had landed around noon, but I had opted to just go home and skip the rest of the school day. The last couple of days had been so emotionally exhausting, it was a wonder I wasn’t sleeping the day away.

  I’d never gone through such a cold ordeal in all my life. Kaden’s funeral had been a burial with the viewing and church services and everything. His had been a real mourning, and what one would expect from laying a loved one to rest.

  My father’s cremation was nothing like that. My mother had managed to get the ball rolling on his cremation once the police were satisfied it was a self-inflicted wound, and since there was only me and my mom, there were no relatives to dispute her rush on the cremation. Two days later, he was burned to ashes, placed in an urn and that was that. I didn’t even think that was possible. I thought…I don’t know. I thought it was a longer process, but I guess…hell, I don’t know.

  The reading of his will had been painful, sorrowful, and brutal. He had no kind words for my mother at all. He left her absolutely nothing. Even his suicide note made no mention of her. He simply wrote that he couldn’t live with the stigma of shame he brought on himself. The only thing the attorney had to present was the letter he wrote me and the details of the trust he opened that was, now, in my name only.

  And, oh, God, that, in itself, was another thing altogether. When the meeting had concluded, my mother had lost her shit completely. Even though she’s never worked a day in her life, she insisted that the money in the trust was rightfully hers. She even threatened to fight me over it, and that’s when things got really bad. I bated her, reminding her that she didn’t have any money to fight me over the trust, and that’s when she threw me out of the house they had still been living in.

  I had found a cheap hotel, called Uncle Allen, and he had paid for it on his credit card along with my plant ticket home, and I had never been more grateful to him.

  And now, I was at the park waiting on Talon.

  Our conversation last night had become strained after telling him about the money,
but I had chalked it up to my frayed nerves and his apprehensiveness at not having me near. He’s never been shy about letting me know he struggled when I wasn’t around. It was sweet, if not a little psychotic.

  When I had asked why the park, he said he wasn’t comfortable going to my uncle’s house, and he knew I didn’t have a car. The park was closer to Uncle Allen’s house than it was his.

  I should have paid more attention to the tone of his voice versus the words he was saying and then maybe that way I would have been more prepared for what was about to happen.

  Ten minutes later, I spotted Talon walking towards me, and I could feel all the tension leave my shoulders. My stomach fluttered, and my heart swelled.

  Talon was here.

  He was going to make it all better.

  I jump up off the bench as soon as he was a few feet in front of me, and I didn’t care that we were in public as I threw myself in his arms.

  And he caught me.

  He caught me and his arms around my body were like steel bands threatening to cut off my breathing. God, I never wanted to leave his arms. Ever.

  “Talon,” I cried into his neck.

  He kept wrapping me tighter and tighter in his arms. “White,” he breathed against my hair, and it’s funny how a name I once hated had become to mean everything to me.

  After a few minutes, he tried to dislodge me, but I wasn’t letting go. He finally got the hint and lifted me so my legs would wrap around his waist and walked us back to the bench. Talon sat down with me wrapped around him and he held me as I cried into his chest. He didn’t utter a word until I was finally able to get myself under control.

  However, once I was calm enough to speak, Talon had pulled me off his lap and sat me down beside him and his cold demeanor was like a slap in the face. Not being able to pull my eyes away from his face, I asked, “Talon?”

  His words were like razor blades skinning me alive. “I’m not going to compete with two million dollars, Kenzlee,” he stated, cold and matter of fact.

  “Wh…what?” I didn’t understand. What did he mean compete with two million dollars?

  His eyes finally met mine, and I was struck stupid by their color all over again. But this time, it was the coldness in them and not their unique color that had me captivated. His eyes flicked towards my earlobes and back before saying, “Now, there’s nothing stopping you from getting bigger diamonds, White.”

  Now, that, was a slap in the face.

  I reared back, shocked, hurt, and confused. “What are you talking about, Talon?” I asked. “What…what are you saying?”

  He let out an emotionless laugh, and it was ugly. “I’m talking about two million fucking dollars, Kenzlee,” he spat. “I’m talking about Rolex’s, penny loafers, BMWs, and Ivy League colleges. Isn’t that what this is? Your future back? Isn’t that what your father gave you back? Your future?”

  The tears immediately spilled over and I didn’t care that they were for a different reason this time. How could I have misread the signs so badly? Talon hadn’t held me tight because he missed me. He had held me like that because it was the last time he was going to hold me.

  He had absolutely no idea what I had planned for that money, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that I had the money. Hell, I hadn’t even given the money any real thought with all that was going on, but it didn’t matter. Talon didn’t want a girl who didn’t need him financially. He was so used to being wrapped up in how he took care of his mother and sister, he didn’t know what to do with a girl who didn’t need that from him.

  I was the only person on this bench who knew Talon couldn’t be replaced with money.

  “So, it’s my future now?” I asked. “It’s no longer our future?”

  Talon stood up and looked down at me not realizing how irreparable the pain he was causing was. “We never had a future, White,” he clarified. “You were going to come into that money, sooner or later. You were always going to end up being just a waste of my time.”

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach and doubled over on the bench at his words, feeling the blow for what it was; his goodbye.

  Not bothering to look at him, I jumped up and ran through the park towards safety.

  Chapter 21

  The strength that surprises us.

  Kenzlee~

  When I got home after Talon ripped my heart out, Alexandria, my uncle, and my aunt had all assumed I was a wreck over what happened with my father, and I let them believe that.

  Even if I wanted to confess about Talon, I had been such an emotional mess, I wouldn’t have been able to get the words out to explain. How do you explain heartache? Only a person who has experienced heartbreak would understand. It wasn’t until Uncle Allen and Aunt Sheri gave me some space that I called Alexandria into my room and confessed how Talon dumped me at the park. She had ranted and raved and wanted his balls on a platter, but I convinced her indifference was better than prison time.

  But it was the phone call last night from the attorney that had really turned my life upside down again. He had called to tell me he forgot to inform me that my tuition at Madison Prep had been already paid through the year. I was free to go back if I wanted to, and I spent all night with my mind going back and forth between mourning my father, worrying about my future, and shattering over Talon.

  And now it was our ten-minute break time between second and third period, and Alex and I were milling around her locker. My uncle had suggested I stay home and just write off this week, but I couldn’t do it. As heartbroken as I was, I wasn’t going to fail at this. I wasn’t going to let this boy get away with knocking me down when nothing else has been able to. I survived the death of my brother, the disruption of everything I ever knew, and the suicide of my father. There was no way I was going to let Talon Draven be the thing that I couldn’t come back from. I was at school today because Kaden would always tell me, “Cry in private and flip them off in public, Kenz.”

  So, that’s what I was doing. I was flipping them all off.

  “Have you heard from your mom since your fight?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I admitted. “The last text message I got was right before boarding the plane back, and it was just to tell me I’d be sorry.”

  Alex snorted. “I’m sorry Kenz, but what a bitch.”

  I couldn’t argue with her there. “Money does things to people, Alex,” I said lamely.

  “What about Madison Prep?” she asked. “Are you thinking of going back?”

  I grinned at her. “Awe, Alexandria,” I teased, “does that mean you’ll miss me if I do?”

  She laughed as she flipped me off. “Of course, I’m going to miss you,” she admitted dramatically. “I like having you here. You’ve always been one of my favorite cousins, and while I have other friends, having you here has been awesome, Kenz.”

  I cocked my head at her. “You have other friends?”

  She shook her head at me. “You’re a jerk,” she teased. “Yes, I have other friends when I’m not being kidnapped by the Finley brothers.”

  The mention of Lars and Hunter caused a pang in my chest, but I wasn’t going to become a victim to it. “You never know, Alex, we can end up at the same college, you know,” I said hopefully. I mean, I knew the odds were slim, but it’d be great to have Alex with me in my next adventure. As it stood, it felt like she was all I had in the world. Of course, Uncle Allen and Aunt Sheri would be there, but the next phase of my life was going to be entered alone, as an adult, not as their lost niece.

  “I’ve only been gone from Madison Prep a month, or so,” I said returning to the topic of school. “It’s really a question of where I’d live and…and if I’d even fit in anymore. Everyone would know about my dad, and I’m not sure if I’d want to deal with the looks and whispers.” I let out a pathetic chuckle. “At least here, the looks and whispers have died down.”

  Alex was quiet for a minute before asking, “What about Talon?” But before I could answer, she grab
bed my arms, jumped up and down, and smiled at me like she just learned the secrets of the Universe. “Oh, I got it!” she squealed. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”

  Well, she had me curious.

  And baffled.

  “Think of what?”

  “You can do independent study, Kenz,” she suggested. “There’s nothing preventing you from going onto independent study and finishing school off campus. You’re a legal adult and now that you have enough money to support yourself, what’s stopping you?”

  I laughed at her eagerness. “Nothing, except that we hadn’t thought about it until now.” Independent study could work.

  The first warning bell rang, and Alex and I started walking down the hallway together until we’d have to part ways. So far, I’ve managed not to run into Talon, Edie, or the Finley brothers, but I knew Alex had third period with Lars and Hunter, so I was going to leave her earlier than I usually did. As hard as I was trying to be brave, I still wasn’t a glutton for punishment.

  “Or course, going back to Madison Prep would be ideal, don’t you think,” Alex prattled off next to me. “I mean, your tuition has been paid for since the beginning of the year, so it’s like a waste of money if you don’t go back. And since it is Madison Prep, I imagine the waste is quite high.”

  “There is that,” I agreed.

  “And, I bet Madison Prep had a better college placing program than your average public school like, say, Lakeside,” she chuckled.

  “Going back to Madison is probably the better choice for me, right now,” I agreed, but independent study felt more…attainable. By going on independent study, I’d have more time vetting schools and looking for places to live.

  The attorney had explained that I had immediate access to the money and could purchase whatever I wanted. At the time, I hadn’t cared about making purchases or spending the money, but as I rode to school with Alex this morning, I realized a car was probably the first thing I needed to buy. However, I needed to be smart about my purchases. Two million and some change was a lot of money, but it wasn’t limitless.