I stepped into my leggings. Fuck my socks. I wadded them up in my hands and stood. My legs quivered. I had Jell-O legs from a simple orgasm.
Simple? I huffed out a scornful laugh. This was the most complicated thing that had happened to me.
I lifted my overnight bag and rose. “I need to go.”
“Kenny.” His voice was soft, like I was a skittish pony primed to bolt.
I was exactly that. I opened the door, heedless of the noise it’d make, and beelined for my shoes by the front door.
His presence loomed behind me. He’d followed me out, but I couldn’t look at him. That didn’t stop me from picturing his rumpled sexiness. The shirt he’d worn last night that made his eyes bright and teased me with how wide his shoulders were was probably untucked. His hands were likely stuck in his pockets as he watched me. Tall, straight. So very much here.
I managed to get one athletic shoe on a bare foot. I danced around, wrestling with the other. When that was done, I gripped the handle of the door. “I’m sorry.”
The floor creaked as he took a step. I whipped open the door and swept down the porch stairs. I didn’t pause when I got to my car. I started it and pulled away. From the corner of my eye, I saw him leaning in the open door. His strong body propped against the doorframe. Exactly how I’d pictured.
My hands clenched the wheel as I drove. I didn’t go home right away. I went to the only place I could seek solace.
I parked in my usual spot and ignored the early morning chill that was still around this time of year. Dewy grass kissed my shoes as I strode to my target. Five headstones in, two to the right from the flare of the dirt path that allowed me to park without being in anyone’s way.
I didn’t stop until I was facing a reddish-brown granite headstone that read Derek Barron.
Dropping to my knees, tears streamed down my face. “Derek.” My ragged cry cut through the early morning peace. “Something happened.”
Chapter 8
Kennedy
* * *
I managed to stay off the couch.
Maybe I should’ve parked my ass on the couch. I’d been a cleaning fiend since I’d come home. The pile of junk in the garage had gotten rearranged. Again. Then I’d come inside and vacuumed. Swept the floor that didn’t need sweeping. Scrubbed the already clean bathroom. Now I was pushing a mop around the tiny kitchen floor, wishing I had another thousand square feet to go over.
Fatigue dogged me, clinging to my eyelids, making them heavy. At first, I’d thought it was from the early morning teary confession at my husband’s grave. Eventually, I realized that I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. I wasn’t ready to think about why.
Liam had sent me a message. All it said was Please call me when you’re ready.
Would I ever be ready to face him? What did he think of all this? How did he feel?
How did I feel? Would I have the guts to call him before he left town again?
I’d have to. I couldn’t hide from him, and I’d promised I’d help with Eli’s speech therapy.
If it weren’t the weekend, I’d call my therapist.
The doorbell rang. I spun around, my heart clambering into my throat. Was he here?
I set the mop handle against the counter, but left the audiobook streaming over the Bluetooth speaker on the counter, and went for the door. The handle slid out and clattered on the floor. I yelped and jumped. Putting my hand to my chest, I rolled my eyes. I was a little strung out.
I peered out the little window in my door. Two heads were waiting on my doorstep and neither of them wore a navy-blue Drillers ball cap.
The disappointment was staggering. I ripped the door open, attempting not to scowl at the two people who were not Liam on my step.
I focused on the woman: my height, primly styled hair that was my color only highlighted within an inch of its life. “Mom?” I switched my gaze to the wiry man only a couple of inches taller than us. “Benji?”
I tried to be happy to see them. I tried. But today was a bad day, and they weren’t here just to visit. Mom’s expression said as much. Her eyes flared as she studied my appearance. Sweaty. Rumpled. My nightshirt was still under the shirt I’d worn yesterday, and dust from working in the garage was smeared over my leggings.
“I couldn’t quit worrying about you being all by yourself and the house falling apart around you like another water heater incident.” Mom embraced me before I had a chance to invite them inside. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t come earlier. Benji had to work yesterday.”
“I was busy yesterday,” I mumbled. The water heater incident had been all on me. Water in the basement, and I’d ignored it until Bruce stopped by and noticed the smell. The smell. I had worried it was me. The relief that it was the basement was the first sign to myself that I had descended too far into my melancholy. The reality of my finances was the final tug up.
She released me, giving me a sure you were busy look and ushered me into my own house. “Benji brought his tools. I know Liam probably fixed the sink, but if there’s a leaky faucet, there’s probably more going on.”
“I fixed it.” With Liam’s guidance. Liam and the way he towered over me, making me more self-conscious of being spread out beneath him on my bathroom floor than I’d ever been in my life. Liam and the way he’d held me, like I was a fragile treasure that he didn’t want to let go of. Liam and the way I’d left him behind.
Benji followed us in and shut the door. “Did you call Thorson’s? The faucet’s not the only part that’s old.”
“No,” was all I said. Thorson’s was the plumbing company in town. The one I hadn’t needed because of Liam.
Guilt crept in, not just for how I’d jetted on Liam, but for being so curt with Benji. He treated Cassidy and me like people, not like kids he had to be buddies with in order to win Mom’s affections. But he also treated me like Mom did. He’d met her when I had started my treatment for Lyme, so I had still been ill and weak. He’d been with Mom when they’d dropped in to check on me throughout last year, and it had looked like nothing had changed since high school. Yet, when Mom thought I might need help, he’d grabbed his toolbox and left town with her.
“Hungry?” I asked, going to the mop. My stomach rumbled. I’d skipped breakfast. My appetite hadn’t dared rear its head after all the other feelings I’d dealt with this morning.
“You look tired, dear.” Mom fluffed my limp hair. I hadn’t brushed it yet today either.
“I am tired.” I shouldn’t have admitted it. Mom had no idea why I was emotionally and physically exhausted, and I’d never tell her. She’d try to ban me from Liam forever just because he’d cost me some sleep.
“Why don’t you lie down? Benji and I can run to the store and come up with an idea for supper.”
“Are you staying overnight?” Please say no. I loved Mom, but her smothering wasn’t going to make working through what had happened in the dark this morning any easier.
“No. I open the customer service desk tomorrow. But we’ll make sure you’re fed first. I’ll freeze some leftovers.”
Mom was an amazing cook. I didn’t know how I would’ve survived after the funeral without all the hot dishes from her and my neighbors that were frozen for later.
She gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Get some rest. We’ve got it.”
I succumbed to the mommying. She only wanted to take care of me, and, suddenly, I wanted to be taken care of. “Thanks.”
I trudged to the bedroom. I’d shower when I woke up.
Have you showered yet?
I sank onto the mattress and eyed my phone on the nightstand. I wanted to talk to Liam, but I wished it could be like before. Before I’d gotten front-seat insight into how good it was with him, and before the guilt and shock had taken over.
I couldn’t avoid him forever. I shouldn’t. I had to figure out how I felt. What he thought. Was he feeling just as guilty? Had he done it out of pity? A sense of duty?
I’ve got you, Kenny. I’ve
got you.
Mom and Benji weren’t staying over, and Liam was leaving tomorrow afternoon. I sent a message.
Can you meet me at the park at 10 tomorrow? The boys can play and we can talk.
I stared at the screen, afraid of his answer. And after his message of I’ll be there popped up, I stared at it longer.
That was done. I had until tomorrow to figure myself out. But I also had to wait until tomorrow before I knew whether I’d blown the closest friendship I’d ever had.
Liam
* * *
There she was. The boys piled out of the truck and sprinted toward Kenny. I took my time, soaking up her beauty and how she embraced the kids.
Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and a wide cloth headband circled her forehead. She smiled easily at the boys, and the knot inside me loosened, but just a hair.
My boots hit the grass of the lawn and muffled my steps. We weren’t the only ones here. Two women sipped coffee on the other side of the park while their children played. I counted three others on the playground besides the two babies in the strollers by the women.
I knew why Kenny had chosen this park. I was leaving town today and didn’t want to be away from my kids. They could play where we could see them, and they couldn’t sneak up on us and accidentally hear what we were talking about.
I set a tea down by her. She used to drink coffee but had quit shortly after she’d broken down. First, I suspected she’d lacked the will to make coffee. Then I figured she wanted one less thing to be dependent on.
She rose, brushing her hands down her workout pants. They were leggings, but shorter and with brighter colors. Her shirt was some sort of athletic wear too. The material hugged her body. It wasn’t appropriate to notice her lush curves and remember the way she’d felt against me, but I did.
She straightened as the kids ran to the digger toys in the sand pit next to the play equipment. Her soft brown eyes met mine. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I’d never been this nervous around a woman. Since I’d gotten her message, I had distracted myself as much as possible. I’d worked in the shop and taken the boys fishing.
There was nothing as distracting as trying not to be impaled with hooks randomly flying around and constantly adding new bait. Add in the thousand questions I fielded about fishing, the river, and how many fish I’d caught in my life, what kind they were, were they slimy, and did they taste good, and I was lucky to remember my own name by the time we’d gotten home.
“How are you doing?” I asked. My biggest worry was that she’d have some sort of setback. I knew she’d been seeing a therapist, and for most of that year when she didn’t leave the house, I’d wondered what the hell good it had done. But I’d been grateful she had someone to turn to since she hadn’t been doing much talking to me. I didn’t want to return to that. I wanted her to be okay, and it seemed like a big ask, but I wanted her to be okay with us.
“Better.” Her frank answer surprised me. She gestured to the picnic tables under the shelter. We’d be far away from everyone and still have full sight of the playground.
We sat on the bench of a picnic table, side by side, facing out. Like buds. Not like two people about to have a personal conversation.
“I’m sorry I put you in that position,” she said.
Dejection hung heavy on my shoulders. She regretted it. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop us.”
She gazed at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Are you?”
I sensed fear and sincerity in her question. I could lie and say yes. Tell her that I shouldn’t have been in the bed in the first place. Tell her that we’re only friends. Confess some shit about how we were in the moment, that we weren’t thinking.
But I’d never been good at keeping my mouth shut. “No, Kenny. I’m not sorry. Truth is…” This time I looked at her. The open and searching expression on her fresh face encouraged me to keep going. I didn’t see regret. “I don’t know what to call how I feel about you, but I passed the just-a-friend stage at some point before I stretched out in the bed next to you, only I tried to deny it.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed as she inspected me, but I kept going.
“And I’ll be honest. Yes, I feel like shit, and I don’t know what to think because you’re my best friend’s wife. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling like and that piles on the shit even more. Because the one thing I never, ever, want to do is hurt you, Kenny. You’re just too important.”
I ripped my gaze away. If I was going to get rejected, I’d have to hear it. I didn’t have to see it too. Eli was dumping sand in Owen’s hair. I should tell him to stop—the women across the playground were looking at us like I should tell him to stop—but it was early in the day. It wasn’t like Owen was going to stay clean until his bath tonight. Might as well get dirty now.
“I talked to him,” she said quietly.
I clenched my jaw. I had known that was where she was going as soon as she’d left my house. Running to Derek didn’t bother me. It brought her comfort and helped ease her transition to living without him. That I was the reason for her visit and any tears ripped me apart inside.
“I told him everything.” She twisted her hands together. “I don’t even remember what I said. I probably looked like a rabid mess, sobbing in the wet grass, spilling out random confessions.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
I whipped my head around to look at her.
This time she couldn’t meet my gaze. “I crossed the just-a-friend point somewhere too. I think it was before you asked Laney out. That bothered me.”
“Jesus, Kenny, if I’d known I wouldn’t have—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I think we would’ve both kept denying it.” Her hands kept twisting. “Here’s the thing though. I feel like crap. Like it was wrong. Like I’m a bad person. But once those initial feelings died down… I wanted to do it again. And that’s fucked up.”
“No. It’s not.” What was fucked up was hearing that she wanted to do it again, when she’d just told me how shitty she felt. She shouldn’t have to be in that position.
“It is. And after spending hours lurking in Sexy, Young, and Widowed, I realized it’s my world. This is my new normal. I’m going to want to be close to someone again, and it’s going to feel shitty, and it’s going to make me think things very few people can understand.” When she met my gaze, her eyes were watery. “But I know that if you want to do it again, so do I. I really like you, Liam. I really like you.”
Hearing that from another woman might mean a blush or a coy glance. I’d be thrilled or nervous. Kenny was near tears. The confession had taken a lot for her, yet she’d said it. For me. To keep from making this harder for her and adding more pressure, I simplified my feelings. “I really like you too.”
We sounded like two school kids confessing their crushes, but the subject underlying our words was anything but elementary. It was heavy. It was hard. It was ugly. But if I were going to stick with Kenny through this—and I wanted to—it was us.
Her hand twitched like she was going to reach over and squeeze mine. I almost made the move for her. The urge to touch her somehow, some way, was strong, but we were in public, and the boys had switched to the rocking toys closest to us. Eli was on a rhino and Owen’s was a lion.
“So now what?” I asked. The ball was in her court, where it would always be. I just hoped to be in the same game with her.
“I’d like to keep doing what we’re doing. I’ll take Eli to his appointments. Bring Owen along and give Grandma Gin a break.”
I nodded. It wasn’t exactly dating or walking hand in hand, but I wouldn’t lose her in my life. “Thank you.” I hated having to be gone again for so long. The need for money paled when my presence at home would help in times like these.
“And…whatever we do, I’d like to keep it between us.”
“I understand.” I wasn’t lying. A girl like Kenny would make me want to puff out my chest and s
how her off. This classy lady wanted me. Yet, I knew the shit she took for being my friend. If the people closest to her learned of my more-than-a-friend role in her life, she’d take the heat when she was still healing.
“I mean Grandma Gin. My mom and sister. Everyone,” she tacked on softly.
“I won’t tell anyone.” It’d be hard not to tell Grandma Gin. She’d be the only one I’d care to talk to, but this was new. A new level of emotion. New territory for me and Kenny. So, yeah. I’d keep my mouth shut. I brushed the backs of my fingers along her shoulder. Quick and discreet. “And, Kenny, we’ll take it as slow as you need.”
Her smile was small, but I counted it as a win. Her gaze darkened and swept over me, from my cap down my face, my torso, to the tips of my boots. “You’re really sexy.”
I think I blushed for the first time in my life.
I wasn’t the only one. Pink dusted her cheeks. “I’ve always thought you were good-looking, but I can’t help but notice it a lot lately. I thought I’d start by seeing if I was brave enough to tell you that.”
She worried the corner of her lip. Anxiety or mortification? The Kenny I knew in high school wouldn’t have been so bold. Derek had made all the moves. He’d told me things, but not everything. Enough to know that Kenny had been shy and inexperienced. She’d made him wait until she was close to her own high school graduation. And he’d gladly done it.
I hadn’t lied to her. I felt like shit for what had happened between us, but once she’d admitted she had wanted it, my attitude immeasurably improved. This thing with Kenny wasn’t superficial. I wasn’t playing around when it came to her.
“I’ve been noticing you a lot more lately too.” I leaned to the side. “Especially your ass.”
“Liam.” She peered at me. “Seriously?”
“Why would I be joking?”
“It’s not like I’ve been working out. Though I’m going for a walk after this.” She flipped her ponytail. “I might even run.”
Make Me Whole: Oil Barrons, Book 1 Page 10