Releasing Keanu
Siobhan Davis
Contents
Note From The Author
Prologue
1. Selena – Seven Years Later
2. Keanu
3. Selena
4. Keanu
5. Selena
6. Keanu
7. Keanu
8. Selena
9. Selena
10. Keanu
11. Selena
12. Keanu
13. Selena
14. Keanu
15. Keanu
16. Selena
17. Keanu
18. Selena
19. Keanu
20. Selena
21. Selena
22. Keanu
23. Selena
24. Selena
25. Keanu
26. Selena
27. Selena
28. Keanu
29. Selena
30. Keanu
Epilogue
Keaton
Support Contact Details
Amazon Top 25 Bestseller
Cruel Intentions Sample
Chapter One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books By Siobhan Davis
Note From The Author
This is a very different book in the Kennedy Boys series. It’s an emotional, at times heartbreaking, coming-of-age romance, which focuses heavily on Selena and Keanu, with much lower drama than you are used to from previous books. It is still angsty and suspenseful and romantic and sexy, and you will still get your fix of the other Kennedy brothers (because family is EVERYTHING to this crew), but the vibe is different.
While you do not need to have read the previous books in this series to enjoy Releasing Keanu, it is recommended you start at the beginning to have a greater understanding of the Kennedy Boys world. However, you can read it as a standalone romance if you prefer.
Some of the content in this book is dark and disturbing when it references things that happened to Selena as a child. If you have triggers in relation to sexual assault/sexual violence, you might want to skip this installment.
Prologue
SELENA - AGE 13
An icy chill creeps up my spine, and I clutch my arms around my shivering semi-naked body, pulling my bent legs more tightly into my chest. The unforgiving cold stone floor numbs my butt, and I wish it had the power to numb the silent screaming in my head.
A sliver of light filters through the iron bars welded to the small overhead window, casting a gloomy spotlight on the dank, depressive space.
I don’t know how long I’ve been locked in here this time, because the moments when I’m lucid are few and far between. I rub at the bruised skin in the crease of my elbow, hating how much I want to feel that needle penetrating my soft flesh. At least when I’m drugged, I can escape to a different world. Exist in a realm where there is only bliss. No pain. No suffering. No longing for death.
Because death would be easier than this existence.
A whimper escapes my swollen, bloodied lips at the sounds of scurrying in the corner, and I scoot sideways, pressing myself up against the wall, clambering to get as far away as possible. The rough stone is coarse against my skin, the flimsy, soiled cotton bra and panties I’m wearing offering little protection, but still I press closer, unwilling to become rodent food.
Piercing screams ring out in the hallway outside as approaching footfalls send my pulse racing.
But not in the good way.
Never in the good way.
I shiver uncontrollably as tears roll down my face. I brace myself for it, but no matter what I do, I’m never prepared.
The creaking of the lock turning induces a full-blown panic attack, but I try to control it, because that will only make things worse.
I count to ten in my head, cautioning myself to calm down as I swipe at the hot tears dampening my cheeks.
Mud-spattered boots come into view, and I struggle to breathe normally as I stare straight ahead, praying he can’t see the way my body trembles as potent fear surges through my limbs.
He gets off on fear.
Thrives on the power he has over me.
Delights in knowing how broken and damaged I am because of him.
So, I try my best not to be that girl. Even if it’s who I am on the inside.
“Get up.” His gruff voice is the voice I hear every night when I wake in a cold sweat. It’s a voice that will torment me for the rest of my life—no matter how short-lived that turns out to be.
I climb awkwardly to my feet, ignoring the gnawing hunger clawing at my stomach and the weakness in my quivering limbs, holding onto the wall to steady myself. I think this is the longest he’s locked me in isolation because I’ve never felt this frail before. This close to death.
I flinch as he reaches out, tugging on a strand of dirty, mangled black hair. “You stink, and you look like shit.” His lips curl up in a sneer. “But we’ll fix that.” His dark, dark eyes—endlessly swirling with cruelty and sheer evil—appraise me with a calculated lens. “It’s time.”
Two spoken words have never inflicted such sheer terror before.
“No, please.” I drop to my knees, bending my head and kissing his booted feet. “I’ll be a good girl. I promise.” I hate how much my voice quakes. How feeble I sound. How vulnerable I feel.
He yanks me to my feet by my hair, but I ignore the stinging pain ripping my skull apart, biting back my painful cries as I attempt a smile.
I despise him.
I hate it here.
But the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
“Don’t send me away.”
“It could’ve been different,” he says, letting go of my hair and gripping my face in his large, sweaty palms. “We were prepared to make an exception for you, but you never learn. And we’ve run out of patience.”
“I’ll try harder,” I screech, beseeching him with my eyes. “Don’t send me away!”
“It’s too late. The deal is done.”
I gulp over the lump of anxiety clogging my throat, and my heart starts beating harder and faster. My chest heaves painfully as I struggle to drag enough air into my lungs. Familiar nausea swims up my throat as the blackness swoops in.
“Hudson!” Freddie yells over his shoulder, keeping his eyes pinned on me, a growing look of disgust washing over his harsh features. “Get her out of my sight.” He roughly thrusts me at his trusted right-hand man. “You know the drill. One week. Ensure that shit is fixed.”
“Please.” I make one last attempt to halt my fate.
Searing-hot pain whips across my face and my head jerks back from the force of his slap. “Shut your mouth, bitch.”
Hudson grips my upper arm, dragging me from the cell, his jagged fingernails biting into my exposed flesh, hurting me on purpose, but I say nothing.
I’ve learned to live with pain.
With punishment.
With the fact that no one cares.
But this is a whole new level of hell.
My mind wanders into scary territory as I map it all out, and by the time Hudson flings me into the room where the doctor and nurse are waiting to tend to my injured, malnourished body, I’ve checked out.
When they strap me to the bed, I stare at the patchy ceiling, counting the misshapen moldy stains, as they talk in hushed voices around me.
The sharp prick of the needle in my arm is a welcome relief, and when the dark fog sweeps along my body, summoning me to the black void, I race toward it, praying this time I never return.
1
Selena – Seven Years Later
“I can’t believe how much work we have to do already, and it’s only week two,” Kelly complains as we walk
side by side, trekking across the Boston campus.
“Tell me about it,” I agree, dropping my eyes to the ground as the group of guys approaching us looks at me with obvious interest. “Sophomore year is not going to be a walk in the park.”
“It serves us right for choosing to study psychology,” Kelly adds, shooting daggers at the group of guys as they walk past.
“I’ve no clue how I’m going to juggle my modeling assignments around college this year—especially now I landed the Miranda Fanning gig,” I admit, my brow puckering in concern.
Jessica—my agent—has already been on my case. During summer break, I worked a lot more than normal, and despite me explaining up front it was only until I returned to Cambridge College, she threw a hissy fit when I emailed her a list of my availability from now until the end of the year.
She blatantly lied to my face, telling me Miranda would rescind her offer, but when I emailed Miranda personally to explain, she sent me a lovely reply, confirming she was aware and happy to work around my schedule. I thought Jessica was going to have a coronary on the spot when she discovered I’d emailed the client directly.
But screw her.
I haven’t worked my ass off the last couple of years, trying to get a handle on my PTSD and my associated anxiety, to have her undermine me at every turn.
I might have to consider switching agents when my contract comes up for renewal next year.
Alex Kennedy was the one who recommended Jessica to me, at the time she sold her fashion empire—Kennedy Apparel—to the Accardi Company, and everything changed for me.
Back then, I only modeled for KA. I only did closed shoots, no catwalk shows, and her son was the only other model I ever felt comfortable working with.
While I still can’t step foot on a runway, I’m more adaptable when it comes to shoots and working with different models even if it hurts that the guys are never who I want them to be.
A pang of longing hits me square in the chest as thoughts of Keanu invade my mind. It’s the same whenever I think of him.
Which is a lot.
Because I can’t get the guy out of my head no matter how hard I try. I knew cutting him loose would be difficult, but I’d no idea it would be this hard.
I miss him so much.
All the time.
It’s like a lingering sickness in my tissues. One that sometimes recedes a little, but it never fades. It’s always there, simmering under the surface. Ready to derail me at the most inopportune times.
It would be so easy to pick up the phone and call him. To beg his forgiveness. Which I know he would readily grant me. Because Keanu is the most selfless, forgiving, caring, loving person I have ever known. I could live for infinity and never be worthy of him. Which makes what I had to do all the more heinous.
Tears prick my eyes, but I force them aside. I can’t think about K. I can’t keep doing it to myself. I need to have the strength of my convictions and stay the course.
I clutch the strap of my backpack more firmly, stifling an exasperated sigh.
I know Jessica is aware of my situation, and I’ve always felt like she has my back. But lately, not so much. I understand it’s frustrating for her. I’m in high demand, in part because I turn down more work than I accept, and I know she believes I’m not fulfilling my true potential. That she’s not reaping the right kind of rewards representing me.
But she’s lucky I’m able to model at all.
Especially now I no longer have Keanu’s protective force at my side.
And she has no idea how hard the last couple years have been for me since I lied to the love of my life and broke things off between us. How challenging it’s been trying to take back control of my life. If she did, she wouldn’t harass me like she’s been doing.
“Will you need to travel to New York much?” Kelly asks, yanking me back into the present.
I shake my head. “Every couple of months or when there’s a new catalogue to shoot.”
“Are you worried about bumping into him?” she inquires, her warm brown eyes locking on my face.
I gulp. “Yes, but I can’t avoid Keanu forever.” Not when we work in the same industry and share the same modeling agency.
Kelly is well aware of my history with Keanu Kennedy. For years, he was the only male model I worked with, and gossip was rife over the status of our relationship. But we never confirmed or denied anything.
Kelly was the only one who recognized me that first day at college last year, but she didn’t treat me any differently, and I found myself liking her instantaneously.
Which is most uncharacteristic.
I don’t have any other friends besides Kelly and her boyfriend, Todd, because I still have major trust issues and most people who try to befriend me have ended up wanting something from me.
Plus, I want to keep my past in the past.
The last thing I need is anyone in the industry finding out and it blowing up.
I’m not working hard to heal myself—for me and so I can be a woman worthy of a man like Keanu—to let it all come tumbling down around me.
So, I’m massively guarded over who I let into my life. And who I trust with the truth.
I only told Kelly about what happened to me over the summer, and I was a basket case for the best part of a week before I plucked up the courage to tell her. But it was one of the tasks my therapist, Denise, had set for me and an important milestone in my recovery.
I felt relieved after I told her. Lighter somehow. And it feels good to have a close friend I trust who knows what happened when I was a kid and who knows my full history with Keanu.
“No, you can’t,” she agrees, bobbing her head. “It’s a miracle you two have managed to avoid each other for two years.”
It’s not quite two years since we broke up but close enough. “That’s only because those in the know have helped that happen.”
Jessica knows not to arrange any meetings at the agency if Keanu is scheduled to be there, and she does the same with bookings. Frankie, Keanu’s agent, understands the score too, and he works with Jessica to ensure there are no accidental run-ins. I hate that I had to cut him from my life so completely, but this wouldn’t have worked otherwise.
Now, I’m at a stage where I need to face up to it. Face him. I only hope I’m strong enough to handle it. To not cave and tell him the truth of why I ended things. Because he wouldn’t accept it for one second and there’d be nothing I could do to stop him this time.
And that can’t happen. Not yet.
No matter how badly my heart wants it.
Because I’m not ready. It isn’t time.
Keanu was there for me when I needed him.
And this is the only way I can repay him, to give him something in return.
I will always love him, because he is my everything.
But sometimes loving someone means we must let them go.
* * *
“How was your day?” Mom asks when I step into the kitchen an hour later.
“Long, but good.” I dump my bag on the floor by the island unit and lean into her, accepting the fleeting kiss on my cheek. “How was yours?”
“About the same,” she replies with a smile, turning her back to me to place the tray of chicken into the stainless-steel double oven.
“I read about the case today. It doesn’t sound like it’ll wrap up anytime soon.” I situate myself beside her at the counter and pick up the large, sharp knife. I get started on the vegetables, chopping them uniformly as Mom prepares the sauce.
“It’s a complex case and one I’ll be involved in for at least another month, if not more.” She reaches overhead, pulling a bag of flour out of one of the cream-colored cupboards.
Mom is a well-respected superior court justice, with years of experience, presiding over serious criminal cases that have won her a certain amount of notoriety. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of justice, and I couldn’t be any luckier that she chose to adopt me.
I couldn’t ask for anyone kinder and more patient than Sandrine Douglas.
She has devoted herself to her work, the charity she set up three years ago, and to me.
I know if my birth parents are looking down on me that they are grateful she came into my life.
I certainly know I am.
“Mom,” I whisper, keeping my gaze focused on the onions and peppers as I cut them up. “I love you.”
“Sweetheart.” She reaches out, tentatively touching my arm. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
I lift my head, smiling at her through eyes brimming with emotion. “Nothing happened. I just want you to know how grateful I am for all you’ve done for me and how much I love you for taking me in when most everyone else would have let the system swallow me up.”
Those early days were not pleasant for anyone involved, least of all my new mom, but she never wavered in her support and her patience, and she pulled me through those first few months when most days I woke up wanting to end it all so the pain would cease.
“Can I hug you?” she asks, similar emotion swimming in the depths of her gray-blue eyes.
I lean into her, wrapping my arms around her, vowing to do this spontaneously more often. It’s not right that my mother can’t hug me freely. Guilt churns in my gut, but I remind myself of how far I have come and that one day I will be able to openly accept her physical declarations of love.
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