“Am I fired?” she asked in a dead tone.
“No . . . uh, he didn’t say that. He was worried I’d done something to upset you. What’s wrong?”
“Kennedy’s in her room. I think,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away from me.
I stared at her retreating figure until she was in her room and the door was shut, unable to figure out what had just happened. I cautiously walked inside and made my way to Kennedy’s room. With a deep breath in, I opened her door and looked inside. Kennedy was lying on her bed staring up at the ceiling.
Her head rolled to the side to face me, and her lips curved up for a split second. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I responded hesitantly, and took a few steps in before leaning back against a wall. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on since Kira didn’t?”
After a few seconds passed, she blew out a heavy breath and looked back up at the ceiling. “Zane broke up with Kira. He was cheating on her for . . . I don’t know how long. Probably since we left.”
Of all the things I’d been thinking, that hadn’t been one of them. The girls were moving back to Florida—possible. Kennedy was going to suddenly go back to pushing me away for another unknown reason—too likely for my peace of mind. Someone in their family had died—once again, possible. All of those scenarios plus a few others had been running through my mind for the last five hours, but definitely not Kira losing her boyfriend. For a moment, my body sagged in relief until I realized I still didn’t know why Kennedy had been ignoring me all day.
Pushing away from the wall, I closed the distance to her bed, but didn’t get on it. Once her eyes were back on me, I asked softly, “And you?”
Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion, and she shook her head. “And me, what?”
“I haven’t heard from you all day. You haven’t answered my calls or returned my texts. I’m sorry for Kira, but right now I’m a little more worried about whatever is going on in that mind of yours.”
Kennedy’s face smoothed out, and she didn’t move or speak as she watched me for countless seconds. “I didn’t know what to say to you. Kira . . . she said some things to me this morning that left me wanting to run as far away from you as I could.”
“Kennedy, I’m not Zane. I’m not going to—”
“No,” she said, cutting me off. “No, I know you’re not him. I don’t think you’re going to be like him either. I guess Kira just reminded me of who I am. That’s the only way I can figure out how to put it.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I raised one eyebrow and studied her. “And who you are made you want to run from me . . . again? I think I proved you can’t do anything to make me want to give up on you.”
A bright smile briefly flashed across her face. “I know, Liam. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t talked to you today.” She pulled herself up into a sitting position and immediately began speaking again, this time without looking at me. “After Kira reminded me of my past this morning, I was so mad, but I knew she was right. And I knew that my initial reaction of wanting to run from you would just make what she said true. So I’ve spent practically the entire day thinking about it. I knew what I thought I had to do was just a knee-jerk reaction, and wasn’t what I actually wanted. But I knew if I talked to you, then I would go through with it—whatever it would end up being. But it wasn’t as simple as just needing time until I knew I wouldn’t push you away again. I told you that Kira reminded me of who I am; and I am—or I was—that way because of my past. And that past is such a huge part of me that it made me rethink everything I’m doing here . . . with you.”
“That past . . . it’s the one we talked about in the ice cream shop?” When Kennedy nodded, I asked, “And you’re still not going to tell me about it?”
“It’s complicated,” she said softly, and I knew from her tone that she once again wouldn’t be going into detail about it.
“Okay,” I said, and studied her closely. “So what are you thinking now?”
Her dark blue eyes met me again, and she shrugged slowly. “I’m thinking that it was my past, and it’s always going to stay there, so I need to move on from it.”
I walked around the bed until I was directly in front of her, and leaned down so my face was within an inch of hers. “What does that mean for us?”
“It means I’m not going to run. You’re safe.” Her lips spread into a wide smile and she closed the distance between us until our lips were barely touching. “For now.”
11
July 17
Kennedy
“WHAT ABOUT THIS one?” My fingers trailed over what looked like a combination of two letters on Liam’s right forearm, close to the inside of his elbow.
He’d been lying on my bed for the past couple hours with his shirt off as he told me stories about all the times he’d gotten his ass handed to him by his dad in the ring, and I’d studied the art covering the left side of his upper body.
When he didn’t respond, I traced the letters again and asked, “Is this a T?” I glanced over to his arctic-blue eyes, and he simply nodded. “Does that mean this is a G it’s connected to?”
Liam nodded again, and I pursed my lips, contemplating asking him more about it since he wasn’t offering anything. Unfortunately for him, I was one of those people who didn’t know how to stop talking even when I knew I should.
“Obviously you don’t want to tell me about it, but can I ask one more question before I drop it?”
“Sure.” The word was soft and deep, and rumbled up from his chest in a way that had me biting down on my lip.
“Um, is it—is it a girl’s initials?”
His eyebrows pinched together and he laughed once. “What?”
“Well, this is the first time you’ve kind of shut down while we were talking. Not that I can say much about that since shutting down is my favorite thing to do—but I’ve never seen you respond this way. And I can’t think of any other reason why you would have two letters tattooed on you.”
He sent me an amused smile. “Do you have a guy’s name tattooed on you somewhere?”
“No.”
“And there isn’t a girl’s name, or anything to do with a girl who has been in my life, on my body.”
“Got it.”
I stopped tracing the tattoo when he looked away from me, and tried to figure out why he was acting like this suddenly. There was an anxious energy rolling off him as he continued to stare up at the ceiling, and the minutes continued to pass without him saying anything. Just when it started to become too much, I began climbing off the bed and he grabbed my arm to stop me. When I looked back at him, he pulled me closer and sighed heavily.
“Don’t leave. I’ve just never had anyone ask about that tattoo, and it caught me off guard. I’ve never told anyone about it. There’s a certain group of people who know the whole”—he paused as he tried to find the right word, and finally just blurted out—“weird and confusing-as-shit story, and not one of those people is someone I’ve told. They all knew long before I did—or before I understood, I guess. The reason behind actually getting the tattoo . . . well, it was kind of for my mom because I’d been a dick to her and my family. It was an apology of sorts.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I whispered. “I get it, it’s personal. What you’ve already said explains enough, so it’s okay.”
He stared at me for a while before admitting, “But I want to tell you. I don’t know why, I just do. You have this normal family and I have the exact opposi—”
“My family is far from normal,” I scoffed.
Liam raised an eyebrow at me. “Really,” he said, his tone full of disbelief.
“I’m sure there are people who have families far different from mine and Kira’s. I’ve already told you that my dad and uncle Mason are detectives in the gang unit, and you met Mason, so I’m sure you can somewhat understand, and having them hovering over us and just being the way they are as we grew up was an experience in itse
lf. But the older we got, the more stories we heard . . . and I don’t know how to wrap my head around the kind of men that they had to be. So it’s not like I had this insane life growing up, or crazy family who had weird rituals in the backyard on full moons or anything. We just weren’t a cookie-cutter family. I grew up learning how to escape being kidnapped, how to defend myself, how to shoot, and basically having two bodyguards instead of a dad and uncle,” I finished on a laugh.
Liam watched me for a few seconds with a soft smile on his face. “Okay, well, my family wasn’t like that. Things were . . . normal—for the most part, I guess. Mornings were spent surfing with my dad, sometimes my friends and his. Grew up in his gym, as you already know. My family is really close. I’ve already told you I have a different relationship with my dad than most sons have. I’ve always seen him more as a best friend. I see him almost every day at the gym even though we spend the mornings at the beach, and I see Mom a couple times a week. Even if my sister didn’t live with them, I know she’d be the same way.”
I felt my brow pinch together. “That doesn’t seem like an abnormal family.”
He laughed hesitantly. “It’s not my family that’s abnormal. It’s the circumstances behind my family that are. I have three sets of grandparents. And I’m extremely close with all of them. I have an uncle and aunt on my dad’s side, and the same on my mom’s side. But the part where it gets confusing . . . is it’s not really my mom’s side. My mom has her real dad and his wife, and they’re great. We all love them. But then she has this other family she considers hers, who we all consider her side of the family, who is my real dad’s family. And that’s where my aunt and uncle come from on that side; and that uncle is Konrad . . . you know him from working at the gym.”
“Wait. What?”
“Exactly.” He sighed.
“So your parents were related before they got married?”
His wide blue eyes met mine before he burst into laughter. “No. Not even close. I meant that my mom’s family is technically not her family but my biological father’s family. His real sister is my aunt Bree, and her husband is Konrad.”
My confusion quickly disappeared, but then I was left feeling surprised. “Brandon isn’t your real dad? I never would have known.”
“No. I mean, he is. He’s my dad, but he’s not my biological father. And this is where it goes from confusing to fucked up. Apparently my dad and mom were together, and my mom cheated on him with his best friend—my biological father. Nine months later, and here I am.”
“Holy shit,” I said before I could stop myself. “And did your dad know?”
“Yeah, he knew. My mom and biological father, Chase, were together for a short time while she was pregnant. According to everyone, she loved him and my dad both. She knew she’d made a mistake, but was trying to make it right by being with Chase. And then halfway through the pregnancy, my biological father died in a car accident.”
My eyes widened and my jaw dropped, but no sound came out.
“Few months later she and my dad got back together, and he’s raised me as his own, but they raised me to know who Chase was. And before Mom and Chase ever got together, Chase’s family had pretty much already adopted her because she was best friends with my aunt Bree and wasn’t talking to her dad or something, I guess. So we have this weird family that consists of my dad’s family, my mom’s dad, and then Chase’s family—who my mom considers her family. It’s confusing as shit, and we’re all close.”
“That is confusing,” I mumbled. “And just . . . just oh my God.”
“Yeah.” He took in a heavy breath, then released it and stared up at the ceiling again. “But you need to know all that to understand the tattoo.”
When he didn’t say anything for a while again, I squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to tell me, Liam.”
“I told you I grew up knowing about Chase,” he began, his eyes still glued to the ceiling. “There wasn’t one morning of surfing with Dad and Uncle Konrad that there weren’t stories of him. Then, of course, whenever we were with my grandparents—Chase’s parents—stories were told. No one wants his memory to fade even after all this time, and I get it to an extent. Kristi and I don’t understand completely because we didn’t know him, but we know how important it is for them. But as I got older, I stopped looking like my mom, and started looking more and more like Chase. Because of that, there were times where my grandparents, Aunt Bree, or Mom would just start crying when they were looking at me. Even my dad sometimes, I’ll catch him staring at me with a distant look, and I know he’s back in college with his best friend.
“The stories—shit, I could tell you stories about Chase like I had been there. But I have no real emotional connection to them, and to have my family randomly crying or accidentally calling me Chase when they saw me started getting on me. On my nineteenth birthday, my mom was trying to get me to do a bunch of things—I don’t even remember. But everyone was there, and she was busy, so she rambled off a list of things really quick that she needed me to do, and I said something to her. Two words. Just two fucking words, and my entire family went dead silent and then all the women started sobbing.”
“What did you say?” I asked when he didn’t offer anything else.
Liam finally looked over at me and shrugged. “I said, ‘Okay, Princess.’ I was just being a dick because she was giving me a list of things to do on my birthday. Out of all the stories they’d told me about Chase, no one had ever mentioned that he called my mom ‘Princess.’ Ever. So my dad finally told me why everyone was crying, and that, mixed with how I looked just like him . . . it was too close to home, and I kinda lost it. I went off on all of them. Told them to get over what happened, that it’d happened long enough ago that they shouldn’t be upset anymore. My dad was yelling at me to shut up, and I just kept going. I was pissed and said I wasn’t Chase and it wasn’t fair that they all kept putting his life on me, like they wanted me to be him for them or something. I said it wasn’t my goddamn fault I grew up to look like him . . . and then I looked at my mom and said, ‘If you would’ve kept your fucking legs closed, I wouldn’t have to deal with everyone’s bullshit now,’ and then I left.”
“Liam . . .” I said on a breath, shock apparent in the one word.
“I know. I went back to my dorm and didn’t talk to any of them for a week, and not one of them tried to contact me. I didn’t blame them. I said the worst thing I could to them. They don’t want me to be him, I knew that even then. I knew all they wanted was for me to know who he was. Like I said, I was being a dick. It had just started feeling like the Chase thing was forced on me all the time. My middle name is Chase, and a friend of the family only ever calls me LC—for my first and middle name—or Little Chachi. He and his wife always called Chase ‘Chachi,’ so once I started looking like him, the nickname transferred over to me. But I didn’t really start looking like him until I got into high school, and then that’s all anyone could talk about. So for the few years before that birthday, I just felt like I couldn’t get away from his ghost . . . if that even makes sense. And then I let it get to me when I shouldn’t have.
“So when I’d cooled off and realized what I’d done and how I’d hurt my family, I went to get this tattoo. Brian—the guy who came up with the Chachi nickname—is a tattoo artist who worked with Chase and is still close with my parents; he does all of our work. I went to see him, and of course he’d already heard about what I’d done on my birthday. When I told him what I wanted, he just smiled and sat me down. Once it was done, he told me something I still remember like it was yesterday—probably because it was the first time he’d ever been serious around me. He said, ‘What you did was fucked up, LC, but we’ve put a lot on you that no kid should have to deal with. When Chase died we all had to cling together to keep going—this family of strays loved that guy, and I think we were all terrified of forgetting him. So we made sure we wouldn’t. Your mom and dad’s intentions were from the heart. Chase meant a lot to both
of them, and they wanted you to know the dad you would never get to meet. Did we put too much pressure on you? Maybe. Even though having you here and seeing Chase through you has been the biggest blessing of my fucked-up life, I don’t want you to be him, and I know they feel the same. Is it crazy looking at you and seeing him? Yeah, dude, it’s a fucking trip. But it’s the best goddamn trip I’ve ever been on.’ ”
My lips tilted up in a small smile at the remembered words. “And then you went to apologize?” When Liam nodded absentmindedly, I asked again, “So what do the letters stand for?”
“My last name is Taylor. Chase’s last name was Grayson—that side of my family’s last name is Grayson. They want to remember him, and they wanted me to know him for a reason. So this is my way of accepting and embracing that part of my life.”
I watched him for a couple minutes before whispering, “I think that’s beautiful.”
His light blue eyes flickered to me, and he huffed softly.
“You’ve never told anyone that story?”
“No, none of my friends even know about Chase,” he admitted.
Moving over so I was sitting in his lap, I rested my head in the crook of his neck and my body melted against his when he tightened his arms around me, holding me close. “Thank you for telling me.”
He pressed his lips to the top of my head, and kept them there as he murmured, “Thanks for listening, Moon.”
July 23
Liam
AFTER I PULLED up in the driveway, I looked over at Kennedy and my body relaxed when I noticed her carefree expression. I’d been dreading this night, afraid of what it would mean for us, and what it might cause her to do—like run. But when I told Kennedy that my parents wanted her and Kira to come over for dinner, she’d surprised me by immediately agreeing like it was nothing . . . like she was agreeing on what movie to watch.
“Nice house!” Kira said from the backseat before stepping out of my car.
“You ready for this?” I asked cautiously.