by Abby Brooks
Kennedy glared, blue eyes flash-freezing as I watched. “I didn’t ask you to do any of those things.”
I held up a finger—not my favorite one. “Yeah, but you sure hinted extra heavy. When we first met, I pegged you as someone who used people to get what they wanted. I don’t know why I’m surprised to discover I was right.”
“I am so confused right now.” She ran a hand over her mouth. “I can tell you’re mad, and if you’ve been feeling taken advantage of, then you have a right to. But what I don’t get is why you’re being so mean about it. How did I hint that I wanted you to do those things for me?”
“All you did was complain about not having time to eat. I solved the problem. Then you complained about stress. So, again, I solved the problem.”
“Complaining isn’t hinting.” Her voice raised and she gestured as if expecting the palm trees to come to her defense. “That’s not the way it works.”
“No. You’re right. The way it works is that I go out of my way to meet your needs and you go behind my back to meet with my brother. You know, the one guy you’d quit your job for even though you made it very clear you weren’t interested in giving up your career for me.”
And there it was.
Out in the open.
She didn’t laugh at me for being silly. She didn’t tell me I was being foolish. She didn’t hit me with a sharp retort. She just stared for a long minute as an ice age froze her features.
One frost-coated eyebrow arched. “You think I’m cheating on you with Collin?”
“I’m pretty damn sure of it.” I reached into my back pocket and presented her with her phone. “I know you two have been talking behind my back. I also know that when I confronted you about it, you avoided the topic with your usual grace. The conversation I had with him wasn’t much different. And the text he sent you afterwards? Yeah...” I shook my head. “What else am I supposed to believe?”
She took her phone from me without so much as a glance at the screen. Her storm-thrashed eyes were trained on mine. “How about you start with the fact that I’m not the kind of person who cheats. And you have no right to be this mean to me when you don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
I gave her a pointed look, then unleashed the fury that had been locked in my head all day. “I call him to invite him to dinner tomorrow. You know, one more thing you said you wanted that I was going to make happen for you. And I find out the two of you have been talking. And apparently hanging out? That was news to me and I don’t feel like it should have been.”
Years of rejection reared its head. My biological mother surrendering me to the state. Perfect Mom giving me back after making me think I’d finally found a family who wanted me. Then life with Collin, doing everything I could to make things for him better, only for everyone to forget about me as I stood in his shadow.
Throughout it all, I told myself I always had him and that would be enough.
No matter how awful the rest of the world got, he was in my corner. I’d been a fucking idiot to think he wouldn’t betray me, too.
“This is the way it always goes.” I rubbed a hand across my mouth. “I let someone in, give them access to everything I have, and they move on to someone else because no matter what I do, I’m just not enough.”
Kennedy’s lips formed a grim line. “I can’t speak to what’s happened in the past, but that’s not what’s happening now. Not in any way.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what, pray tell, is happening now, other than you proving to be the bitch I thought you were when we first met?”
She closed her eyes and huffed a breath. Shook her head, then sucked in her lips. Tears glimmered but didn’t fall and she shifted her weight as she looked anywhere but at me.
The pain in her face was satisfying on such a deep level, I’d hate myself for it once I calmed down.
If I calmed down.
“You want to know what’s happening?” she almost whispered. “I’m leaving. That’s what’s happening.” Her voice cracked as she turned, her shoulders shaking as she ran her hands into that dirty penny hair and walked away.
“Good fucking riddance!” I shouted, then stalked into the guesthouse and slammed the door.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kennedy
Tears poured down my face as I beelined out of the backyard. My vision warbled and warped, and I swiped them away, banging my shin against the bumper of Joe’s truck in the process.
“Asshole!”
I slapped the hood of the monstrosity, stopping to hang my head. To breathe deep. To will away the tears and gain enough control to trust myself behind the wheel. After a few seconds, I climbed into my car, glancing toward the back of the house.
I counted to ten, waiting for Joe to come after me.
To stop me before I left.
To apologize and give me a chance to explain. And then grovel for forgiveness once he understood how wrong he had things. What a genuine asshole he’d been.
A minute passed. Another.
No Joe.
Swallowing around a giant lump, I put the car in gear. The Honda bumped out of the driveway and I was halfway to my apartment before I remembered I never replaced my furniture. Living at Nan’s had been so convenient, with Joe right there in the guesthouse. I didn’t have to squeeze him into my precious free time between jobs. He was just there. Close. And I liked it that way. I hadn’t been in a big rush to buy furniture, because I hadn’t been in a big rush to move out.
Sitting alone in an empty apartment sounded like the saddest way to end a bad day, which brought a fresh round of tears to my eyes. I pulled to the side of the road and leaned my head on the steering wheel as I contemplated my options.
Couldn’t go to Nan’s. Joe was there.
Couldn’t go home. No furniture.
Couldn’t go to work. I didn’t have a job anymore.
Couldn’t call a friend. I didn’t really have any.
I was in the process of redefining rock bottom. If you pulled up the Wikipedia entry, my tear-stained face would be right there waiting.
“This is what I get for planning a surprise party for a man with trust issues.”
I wanted the absurdity of the situation to make me laugh. To calm me down so I could think clearly and figure out what I wanted to do next.
Instead, my heart cracked wide open.
After reaching out to Collin about the party, I’d prepared myself to battle Joe’s suspicions. I was a terrible liar. The chances of me pulling off a surprise were slim. But calling me a bitch? Insinuating I was selfish and awful? Jumping to conclusions without hearing my side of the story? I wasn’t prepared for him to go that far.
Though, that did seem to be the name of the game for the day.
First Mira, then Joe.
Was I that untrustworthy? Or was I just doomed by the family curse of bad relationships? Grandma Rosey’s husband left her for another woman after she got pregnant. Mom quit her dream job so Dad could go back to his.
Now me. Falling for an emotionally unavailable man who went on the attack because I wanted to make him feel as special as he made me feel.
It was so absurd I didn’t know what to do with myself other than give in to the pain and cry.
A knock on the window nearly stopped my heart. I looked up to find a sweet-faced older man peering at me. His fuzzy eyebrows drew together as I rolled down the window.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said as a golden retriever wagged a shaggy tail beside him. “And I don’t mean to pry, but it looks like you could use some help. Is everything okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I replied, swiping at my eyes. “It’s just a bad day. Thank you for checking on me.”
“Sometimes bad days can be everything we need, stuffed into an uncomfortable package. Just remember that when you feel like things can’t get worse.” The man offered me a warm smile, then clicked his tongue at his dog. “Come on, Monty. Let’s give the sweet lady some space and get that blood f
lowing.”
Off they went, his flipflops flipping and flopping while the retriever’s nails clicked across the pavement. Outside my car, a gorgeous Florida day shimmered and shone and for some reason, that brought me enough peace to decide where I wanted to go—home.
Not home to an empty apartment or back to Nan’s.
To the one person who truly knew what to say to make bad days feel better.
Not Joe, whispered my breaking heart, reminding me I’d thought the same thing about him just an hour before. Not anymore.
The potted flowers on Mom’s porch bobbed their hello as I knocked on her door and a fresh set of tears choked their way up my throat. I was an absolute mess, and the look on her face as she appeared in the doorway only proved how bad it was.
“Good God, Kiki. What’s wrong?” She ushered me inside and I buried myself in her arms, letting tears, snot, and sorrow soak into her shirt.
“It’s finally happened,” I said, sniffling and hiccupping as I pulled away in search of a tissue.
Mom trailed after me, patting my back, my shoulder, my arm, the way she always did—as if she could tap the pain right out of me with the power of her love. “What’s finally happened?”
I sank onto the couch that had been the sight of countless Netflix marathons and Chinese takeout. “The family curse.” I dropped my head in my hands. “It struck me so hard I don’t know how I’ll recover.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” Mom perched beside me, eyeing me like I might be in the process of losing my mind. “What curse, Kennedy?”
I explained all the things Joe said. The anger in his eyes when he finally looked at me. The cruel words shot from his lips, striking my heart like poisoned arrows.
A person could grow old and die waiting for you to think about someone other than yourself.
When we first met, I pegged you as someone who used people to get what they wanted. I don’t know why I’m surprised to discover I was right.
Then what, pray tell, is happening now, other than you proving to be the bitch I thought you were when we first met?
The fury distorting his face. The heat in his voice.
“He was so mean, Mom. So mean.”
“I’m still not sure I understand.”
“What’s not to understand? I finally fell in love with someone and he turned into a giant dick.”
“I get that part.” Taking my hands, Mom did everything she could to meet my eyes. “But what in the world does any of this have to do with a family curse?”
With a loud sniffle, I yanked another tissue from the box and dabbed at my eyes. “I quit my job today. I literally pulled into the driveway and ran to Joe for comfort and he was just awful. It’s so much like you and Dad I don’t even know what to do with myself. He barreled into your life and ruined it. Leaving you with me while he got to keep his job like nothing had changed. You, on the other hand, had to live off his checks and some freelancing. To stop traveling. To just…be a mom.”
A lifetime of guilt threatened to drown me as I met her eyes. My arrival had signified the end of her dreams. Her goals. Of everything she’d worked for. I’d clipped her wings while Dad still soared. And her mom? Grandma Rosey? Almost the same thing happened to her.
“Are you pregnant, Kennedy?”
“What?” I recoiled. “No…That’s the one thing that’s different for me.”
Mom leaned close and cupped my cheek. “There is no family curse, Kiki. Your dad didn’t come barreling into my life and ruin it. He didn’t abandon us, either. He was terrible at being domestic. I, on the other hand, loved every minute of it. I told him to go back to work and then left my job willingly because raising you was the best thing I’d ever done.”
Her words circled me on this crazy day and landed like a gentle forehead kiss, soothing a small part of my aching heart.
“Dad didn’t abandon us?”
She shook her head.
“And I didn’t ruin your life?”
“Goodness, no! Do you really think that?”
“I have pretty much forever, yeah. You always talked about life before me with so much enthusiasm.”
“Of course I did. It was exhilarating, traveling the world, feeling like I was fighting for the good of the people. But it also paled in comparison to being your mom. Some women might look down on me for that. That’s okay because I’m not living for them. I’m living for us.”
My brain tripped over the information as my worldview shattered and crumbled. If there wasn’t a family curse, then it wasn’t to blame for Joe’s assholery.
He was.
The warm fuzzies from Mom’s admission crashed to the ground. Dad may not have left us in a huff, but Joe still proved he wasn’t the guy I thought he was.
Or rather, he proved my first impressions correct. He was an asshole. A villain. A loyal denizen of Hell sent to ruin me.
“I love you, Mom.” I shook my head as I remembered the rage ticking in Joe’s jaw. With each passing moment, anger replaced my sorrow. Who the hell did he think he was?
“I love you too, Kiki. I always will. Now, tell me everything that happened to make a wonderful man say such awful things.”
I explained Joe’s childhood and my idea for the surprise party. “I met up with his brother in secret to plan everything. Joe found out and thought I was cheating on him.”
“That seems extreme.”
“Right?” I bobbed my head in enthusiastic agreement. “He has trust issues. And it doesn’t help matters that his brother is Collin West.”
Mom’s eyebrows launched into orbit. “The Collin West? As in the Collin freaking West you swore would be the only man you’d marry?”
I grimaced. “That’s the one.”
“Does Joe know how you felt about Collin?”
“Yeah, but he should also know how I feel about him.” I sighed heavily. “I could have told him about the party and solved everything, but then he went ballistic and got mean. So instead of clearing things up, I walked away. He had no right to talk to me like that.”
Mom wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “I’m sorry he proved to be the asshole you always thought he was, but it’s really important you understand you’re not cursed. Just because this guy wasn’t the right one, doesn’t mean there isn’t a right one out there.”
“I thought Joe might be it. I guess it’s better I figured out I was wrong now rather than later.”
For as much as I wanted that statement to make me feel strong, it brought a new rush of tears rolling down my face instead.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Joe
Without projects to work on or Kennedy to distract me, time was excruciating. Three days went by, each one a reminder of how good life was just last week, and how quickly it all went to shit.
Everything in the guesthouse reminded me of her. The bed. The kitchen. The fucking pictures of Collin on my wall.
I took them down.
It didn’t help.
I stared at the spots they used to occupy, wondering about the man I called my brother when the rest of the world knew us as friends. How could he make a move on the one woman I thought I could love?
I dropped my head into my hands. I didn’t just think I could love her. I did love her. That was the messed-up part. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Her Royal Majesty, Kennedy Reagan Monroe. Without even realizing it happened, I started imagining us with a future together, creating everything I missed out on when I was a kid. The feeling of tribe. Of family.
Of belonging.
I thought I found it with Collin, yet, even he betrayed me the first chance he got.
My rage wanted to settle on that and burn him out of my heart, but the flame wouldn’t stay lit.
No matter how hard I tried to make sense of things, nothing added up.
Collin loved Harlow with everything he was.
And deep down, I knew he loved me, no matter how much I bitched and grumbled othe
rwise. A voice in my subconscious whispered that I’d made a terrible mistake. I brushed it away.
“What’s done is done,” I muttered, then loosed a humorless laugh.
With my heart finally as black as my boots, I wandered into Maxine’s kitchen, hoping to do penance by crunching on cookies. Unfortunately—or thankfully—there were none to be found. Memories, however, were everywhere. The pictures on the fridge reminded me of the day Kennedy told me about her dad. The table itself told the story of how I surprised her with a steak dinner, then took her out for drinks—the fateful night I’d let down my guard, then introduced her to Collin. I remembered laughing with her as she downed her first Painkiller, and the certainty that she wouldn’t use me to get closer to my brother, even as she stammered her way through an obvious lie.
What a fucking idiot I’d been.
Part of me whispered I was being an idiot in the here and now, though I couldn’t figure out why I’d feel that way. If Kennedy was willing to toss me away in favor of my brother…or anyone else for that matter…then she just wasn’t who I thought she was. It was time to let her go.
And good riddance.
The thought hit my heart with a hollow thud and I gripped the counter, head hanging. How was I going to stay in that house, when everything I saw reminded me of her? When thinking of her withered the blip of happiness that had poked its head out of the black soil of my soul?
I was better on my own. I always had been. And up until she barreled into my life with a right hook to the heart, I thought I always would be. The only hope for me was to go back to closing everyone out so I never felt this way again.
Considering how far I’d fallen, I should have re-fucking-joiced in the idea.
So why was I hurting so much?
Why was the only thought in my head trying to figure out how to get Kennedy back?
“Because you’re a weak man,” I muttered to myself. “You’ve never been enough for anyone and you just can’t learn that lesson.”