by Addison Jane
As we got closer, I pointed to a purple candle. “I’ve never seen colored ones before.”
The lady smiled. “There are some people in the community who come to light a candle once a week for their loved ones. I have a couple who comes in every Friday to light one for their son who is deployed at the moment. They wanted something a little more personal to him and meaningful for them,” she explained as she reached over and pointed to a camouflaged candle that stood proudly. “This helps them. It reminds them why he’s not here and how important his job is, and lets them say their prayers with meaning.”
My hand instantly reached for my heart. It was squeezing tightly in my chest.
Brooklyn squeezed my other hand a little tighter and pulled herself into my side. “We lost our mom about six or so years ago. And our dad not long after,” I managed to whisper as I felt the life and the heat of the candles that were lit in front of me. The intention had been to come in here and light something for Mom, given that it was always her that this meant the most to. But I think it was time we considered that maybe Dad needed a prayer or two as well. He may have dropped the ball when we lost Mom, but I was getting to the point in my life where I could almost begin to understand why.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” the lady told us sincerely. “Please take your time, light your candle, listen to your heart and say what you have to say. It will help your soul to recover from the pain, and it will also help their souls find peace, too.”
I could already feel the lump building in my throat as she turned and walked away allowing us to have our time and peace with our emotions.
“You light Dad’s, I’ll light Mom’s?” Brooklyn asked, handing me a box of matches that were in a little basket to the side before taking one for herself.
We both pulled out a match and took a deep breath. “One, two, three.” We struck them, the spark blazing for a second before we leaned forward and lit two white candles next to each other.
“She said listen to your heart,” I noted, grabbing Brook’s hand again and squeezing it tightly before shutting my eyes.
I didn’t have much to say. But there was one thing that I needed to make known.
Dad, I’m sorry for not looking deeper when I was told you’d run out on us. If I had, maybe they’d have connected the dots sooner. I forgive you for the way you clocked out when Mom died, forcing me to grow up faster than I intended. I guess I kind of thank you because it gave me the strength I needed to make it through the past few years.
I hope you find peace up there.
And I hope you and Mom are together again.
“You ready to go?” Brook asked, looking at me with tears welling in her eyes. “I’m ready to get the hell out of here.”
I laughed and pulled her closer as we walked toward the exit. “You can’t say hell in church.”
“Well fuck, sorry.”
“Jesus Christ, we’re going to hell.”
REPO
“I’m gonna take Brooklyn up and set her up in a bedroom,” Kennedy explained as she walked over. I was gathering everything out of my saddle bags, but I didn’t turn around. “Any room, in particular, I should put her in?”
“Shotgun said she could have Dakota’s room,” I snapped. “Ask Meyah which one it is.”
I grabbed my stuff and turned, stomping toward the clubhouse.
“What the fuck is his problem?” I heard Brooklyn ask behind me, but I ignored it, instead, dumping my stuff inside and heading straight for the nearest car that needed work.
“I dunno,” Kennedy answered. I could hear the confusion and hurt in her voice at the way I’d dismissed her, but it was necessary because right now, after being outside the church and waiting for her and Brooklyn to do whatever the fuck they were doing, my entire body felt like it was on fucking fire.
When I get like this, it’s just better if I keep away from people and keep to myself so I can calm down and let my anxiety levels return to normal. I knew it was something we would need to talk about.
It wasn’t just the fact, in general, that I had to be that close to that place. It was the fact that Kennedy and Brooklyn obviously have some connection to the church for them to want to go into the place and do whatever it was that they were doing.
It made things complicated.
I’d told my brothers last night that she was mine.
I was about to step into a club meeting today and tell the rest of my brothers that as well.
But there was obviously something we needed to discuss first.
I spent a good few hours avoiding everyone. It was just better that way. By the time I went searching for Kennedy, it was well after dinner, and she was slumped and dozing at one of the tables in the main room, while Meyah and Keela played pool.
I crouched beside her and grabbed her arm, shaking her softly.
Her eyes peeked open for a second before drifting closed again. “What?” she murmured, barely audible.
“I get it, you’re in a mood with me,” I responded. “Don’t make me fucking carry you upstairs, Kennedy, ‘cause you know I will if I have to, but—”
She stood up, pushing the chair back, so it scraped loudly across the floor before she turned and headed for the stairs. I’d calmed down since we got back a few hours ago, but it turned out I probably should have sorted this shit out sooner because now I just had a pissed off old lady who was going to remind me I was a fucking asshole.
I looked over at Meyah who was grinning and shaking her head at me. I fought the urge to flip her off and turned away following Kennedy as she stomped up the stairs and down the hall to our room. Following her inside, I shut the door behind me and locked it as she stripped off her clothes, leaving her in just a pair of pink panties before she walked over to my dresser.
She snatched a clean shirt off the pile of folded clothes on the top and put it over her head before climbing into the bed and sitting up against the headboard. “You don’t get to just be a dick and not let me know what the hell is going on,” she announced finally. “If I’ve done something, it wasn’t on purpose, but it would be nice to know what it was, so that I can either apologize or tell you to get the fuck over it.”
I smirked. I was starting to enjoy the way Kennedy was really coming into herself around my brothers and me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she saw Meyah and Dakota so confident and playful with the boys, so it allowed her to relax and have a little fun, or maybe this was just the her that had been smothered. Either way, I liked seeing this independent side.
“Sorry,” I apologized, making my way around the bed and sitting at the opposite end facing her. “You’re right. I should’ve let you know what was going on and why I just needed a little bit of time and space.”
I wasn’t above admitting when I was wrong. Kennedy deserved to know that she wasn’t in the wrong, and I was just a fucking moody bastard with mental problems.
“You aren’t a fan of the church,” she stated, throwing it out there.
The corner of my mouth pulled up, and I shook my head. “Not a fan might be a slight understatement.” I took a deep breath. “I told you how I have parts of my memory missing… that something happened to me when I was a kid that my brain is trying to protect me from.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and dragged my shirt down over them before wrapping her arms around them and drawing them close. “Yeah…”
I cleared my throat, trying to fight past the way my brain tried to get me to stop thinking about or discussing my past. My skin started to burn, my head feeling foggy and full of clouds while my heart began to race—the anxiety setting in. “When we were kids, my little brother and I were put into foster care. I’m not really sure why to be honest, and I’ve never been curious to go back and ask. The family we were put with were extremely religious. We were placed in a private school, we went to church twice a week, and our parents volunteered us to help out with other programs they ran.”
I watched her brows pu
ll together. She wasn’t sure where this was going.
“I was about eight or nine. It’s during this time, the time I was spending with the pastor helping him, that things started to change.” I got up off the bed, my temperature was rising and the emotions swirling within me were getting to a level I didn’t like. I moved back and forth across the room, pacing, trying to walk it out. Kennedy was smart, she stayed where she was, she didn’t try and get up to comfort me. “It’s during those couple of years that the memories are missing. Not all of them. It’s not like two years of my life are completely missing. There are still memories throughout. Good memories, normal kid memories, I guess.”
“It was him,” Kennedy whispered, and I looked over to see tears settling on her bottom lashes, one hand pressed over her heart like it was aching.
I rolled my shoulders trying to stop the anxiety and stress from working its way into my bones. “Obviously, I was too young to really know what he was doing. But I guess a part of me knew it wasn’t right because I blocked it out and turned into this weird kid who hated to be touched and who kept himself isolated,” I explained, wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans before sweeping my hair back from my face. “Then when I was seventeen, I walked in on the same pastor… hurting… my little brother. And for a moment, I knew. I knew he was the reason I was the way I was, and I knew I had to protect my family and every other fucking child he’d hurt.”
And there it was.
The reason I became the person I was today.
I may not have the memories that tell me why I am the way I am. But I fucking know. I just know right down in my soul that it was because of him. And I fucking knew that I wasn’t the only one. And so did the court.
My skin felt like it was alive, like it was bubbling at the surface, wanting to melt off. I felt the need to scratch at it, but I knew it wouldn’t help. It was all in my head. It was all in my screwed-up head, and I merely needed to focus on something else.
“You killed him,” Kennedy said softly, but there wasn’t a shred of judgment in her tone. “He’s the reason you went to jail.”
I nodded, staring directly into her beautiful sparkling eyes. They were so deep and so expressive. “I blacked out after I saw what he was doing to Josiah. But when I came to, yeah, I’d killed him.” My eyes drifted to my hands remembering what it was like to open them that day and find them covered in blood splatters. “Because of the sheer volume of boys who came forward after that and stood with me, admitting that he’d done the same to them, the court took pity on me and only gave me five years.”
“Wow!” she whispered, her mouth hanging open in shock.
I nodded. “I found out later that one of the kids who came forward was the judge’s grandson. So, I guess that was maybe his way of saying a weird thank you.”
I knew the whole situation was fucked up.
“That’s the reason you didn’t want to be near the church today.”
Inhaling deeply, I felt my body calm a little, so I moved back to the bed. I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand and shook her head. “No, you don’t have to explain that, I understand. I’m sorry I put you in that position.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I told her honestly. “This isn’t a you problem, this is a me problem.”
She shook her head and unhooked the t-shirt from over her knees before climbing to her knees and crawling across the bed. She knelt next to me, sitting back on her heels. “Me or you problem, I don’t give a shit. I’m sorry.”
Inhaling deeply, I found the balls to ask her the question which had been playing on my mind all day, wondering if the answer was suddenly going to change things. “Is the church important to you?”
Her eyes widened a little before a smile grew on her face and she laughed softly. “No, not really.” The pressure in my chest started to release a little. “It was important to my mom. We used to go a lot when I was little purely because she loved it. I loved that she was so passionate about it, and when I hear the organ play or I see those beautiful big churches like the one today, it reminds me of her. She was the most amazing person.”
I reached over and brushed a piece of hair away from her face. “I’m glad you have those positive memories of it. My brother is still very much involved in the church, and he’s one of those people who work to do amazing things for people with its help.”
She looked at me silently, a soft and gentle smile present on her face. “You’re an amazing soul, you know that?”
I frowned, not understanding.
She huffed out a light breath. “You go through all this pain, you have these ongoing side effects, and this place, it’s like hell for you, but you’re still able to see the good that it does.”
Taking a deep breath, I inhaled her words. There was a large part of me that was bitter and angry at the entire concept. Yes, being around the church made me feel like I was going to be sick, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t understand that it was one man who went out of his way to destroy me. One man who wanted to think he was fucking God.
“I can’t say that I’ll ever be able to step foot inside one, but if that makes you feel closer to your mom, I’m glad.”
We sat in comfortable silence for a few moments before Kennedy reached out. My body tensed, but I stayed still. I was finally getting used to her touch. I didn’t want this to set us back, and right now, it would be fucking good to prove one big ‘fuck you’ to that asshole who tried to ruin me. I might not ever be fucking normal, but it was the small things—feeling comfortable with her touch, developing our own language—that showed how we felt, and maybe even going to the church with her when she wants to feel close with her mom. Maybe, one day.
With Kennedy, I wanted to explore things, see how far I could push myself.
Her hand grazed my cheek, and I didn’t jump. She giggled softly. “It’s all scratchy.”
I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and it didn’t take much for my hair to grow in. I smirked and rubbed my face harder against her palm. Her eyes lit up, and she shuffled forward on her knees, coming even closer, reaching out with her other hand. She was like a little kid who had just been offered a bag of candy. She wanted more, but she was also very cautious. I didn’t move, my hands gripping the blankets underneath me.
She barely brushed against me as she pressed her lips to mine. The kiss started out soft, but the more confident she got, the more intense the kiss became. I fought her tongue, pressing mine inside her mouth.
My body tingled a little but not necessarily in a bad way, even though she kept a reasonable distance between us.
She pulled back, a slight smirk on her lips. “I like not having to wait for you to kiss me.”
Never thought I’d say it, but me too.
Me fucking too.
REPO
I stepped outside, my nose crinkled at the smell of cigarette smoke.
“Yo, Crush!” I called over my shoulder back into the workshop. He looked up from the hood of the car he was under. “Is Ripley around somewhere?”
Crush shook his head. “Nah, man, he and Dakota were moving their shit into the clubhouse in Vegas yesterday. Doubt they’ll emerge for anything but food for the next week or so.”
He wasn’t kidding, if those two weren’t pushing each other’s buttons, they were fucking. There was no in-between for them. That meant, though, that there was someone else smoking, and I knew for a fact only a handful of my brothers smoked, and when they did, they were drinking too.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
I stepped out of the workshop and looked down the few bays to the clubhouse. It was opened up wide, but it was all quiet apart from one of the girls cleaning up some bottles from last night. So, I turned the other way and started walking around the side of the building where there was a really narrow area that no one ever used.
I leaned against the building waiting for Brooklyn to look up at me. “Your sister know you smoke?”
She wasn’t star
tled, she just shook her head. “No, she doesn’t. Smoking costs money, we don’t have money.”
“Then where’d you get the smokes from?”
“Under the bar.”
I shook my head. I’d believe it. Ripley tended to have packets just laying around everywhere for pure convenience. It usually didn’t bother any of us, probably because we never had impressionable fucking teenagers in the clubhouse.
“And what did your mom die of, Brooklyn?”
Cancer. Lung to be specific.
She flicked the part of a half-smoked cigarette at the wall before looking up at me. “Fuck you!” she cursed as she placed her hands underneath her and pushed herself up off the ground. She was still only five-foot-six at best, but the girl had balls, I had to give her that much.
I raised my brow and tilted my head. “Go ahead, tell me how you really feel.”
“I really feel like I wish you would leave me the hell alone. Let’s get one thing straight, just because you’re fucking my sister, doesn’t suddenly make you like my dad because if that was the criteria, I’d have my fair share of father figures to choose from.”
Wow! The kid had something to say.
I chuckled, crossing my arms across my chest as I leaned against the brick of the building. “You got balls, kid, I’ll give you that,” I told her seriously as she snatched another smoke from the packet and shoved the rest into her jeans pocket. She started to light it, inhaling deeply in search of that nicotine fix she needed to calm the nerves that were swirling around inside her. “See the problem with that, though, is the fact that I know this game pretty well.”
She tugged the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands, leaving just the flaming little tube sticking out. Her free arm curled around her waist as she leaned back into the wire fencing that circled the property.