by V. L. Brock
“That’s not entirely true,” my ears were caressed by a pleasant brogue yet left me internally burning with consuming guilt. For fuck sake…Walker already felt like a failure, that I knew, and now he had just heard how I truly felt. He set the mugs on the old, rickety table between the couch and the old chair, opposite.
His notifying me of my awaiting Irish coffee fell on deaf ears. “What do you mean, ‘not entirely true’?” I asked, my voice teeming with wariness while my gaze swept from an almost naked Walker, to a rather morally-torn Laurie. Walker’s level of security while standing in his apartment, sporting only a towel with his scars on full display in Laurie’s presence, was a fleeting contemplation as curiosity got the best of me.
“Kady,” springs in the sofa reverberated when Laurie shimmied to perched herself on the very edge of the cushion. “Do you remember who used to do the books for Ent-icing?”
In hope to grasp at another loose end of a finely woven memory, I strained my mind to catapult me back. “Umm…” wrinkles deepened and spanned across my brow as I scowled into oblivion with a faint shake of my head. “I–I can’t…it’s the little things I just can’t…I…”
“It was my Da.”
“Carriag?” I sighed, fighting yet losing battle against the hazy sections of my memory which refused to be recalled. “I don’t understand; what’s this got to do with anything?”
To my right, a loud intake of air sounded. When I turned to face her, she was hooking her lengthy red bangs behind her ear and swept her tongue over her glossy lips. It was obvious that she was warring with some part of herself, too, with her jaw continuously dropping, and freeing only silent words. “Each week when Carriag sorted the books, several hundred dollars would go unprecedented and would be put into a private account where no one knew anything of its existence.”
What the fuck was she talking about? Wait…wasn’t that a form of embezzlement? Jesus Christ, thing were going from confusing to unrealistic within seconds. “Laurie, no offense, but what the fuck are you saying?”
“She’s saying that if you’d decided to leave Liam, you wouldn’t be stranded because a safety net was created for you, darlin’. Using money that there’s no record of, so there’d be no ramifications.”
At that point, I was merely sitting on that couch surrounded by yet more questions and unsure whether to feel grateful or downright mortified. However, there was one thing I knew without a shadow of doubt: I felt totally naïve.
Laurie’s subsequent words were a supplicant gathering in the ringing of my ears. “Kady, please say something.”
“Say something? What do you want me to say?” an incredulous snort cloaked my words, sending her gaze tumbling to her lap. “I don’t know whether to feel beyond grateful that you considered this day could ever happen and created that net for me or whether to feel utterly mortified because you could see it happening before I could.”
“We did it for you, darlin’.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “What else have you two been doing for me, huh?” I chanced a glance at the man to my left, his arms folded over his torso and broadcasting the look of unreserved guilt across his face. “I already know that you knew about what Liam and Liv were getting up to, what about you, Laur? Did you know that my best friend was fucking my partner for over a year and keeping it from me?”
“She didn’t know anything,” Walker interjected.
“A–and what do you mean, ‘a different account’? What account?”
How a sniffle can be shrouded by so much culpability I have no idea, but redirecting my focus to the man at my left, with his head hanging down and rocking back and forth on his bare feet, I found I already knew the answer.
“You?” I breathed. Too apprehensive about learning more truths, it took numerous second before I could even find the will to carry on speaking. “The night of the accident, you said you had money and we could get away so he’d never find us. Is that the money you were suggesting that we used?”
“Kady––” Usually, the tone in which my name fell from his lips, sounding like ‘Katy’, would have had me calmed instantly and a conversant warmth radiating through my heart. Nevertheless, I felt utterly betrayed and what’s more, embarrassed that all these people around me could see how flawed my life was when I refused to believe it and see it for myself, because I was too damn scared to.
“Shut it, Walker!” I pointed a berating finger at him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anymore lies or truths for that matter. Understand? FUCK THIS!” I shouted, shunting myself from the edge of the sofa and making my way heavily down the hall, his insistent steps trailing behind me.
“Kady, please stop, let’s talk about thi––” his plea was terminated by the slamming of his bedroom door.
Chapter Four
Walker
“Kady….Kady, please––” My hand was closed into a tight fist, and I used the back of it to pummel the door with enough determination that she would know I wasn’t going to give up, but not enough to frighten her. “Darlin’, please just let me explain…”
Striking the door one last time, I let my silent worries fester in my gut, and my head dropped forward. I hoped that she would hear my frustrated sigh through the wood. If I knew it wouldn’t put the fear of God into her, I swear my fist would have been put through that barrier separating us in a heartbeat just to get to her, to hold her and explain.
“Walker?”
The surface of the door was hard and cold against my forehead as I rolled over it and looked down the hallway. Laurie was standing with her fingers wringing tightly against her stomach, an admission of guilt in her eyes. In all the years we had known each other, I had never been so fucking pissed off at her as I was right then. I mean for the love of God, I had only just gotten her back, Kady––my Kady––not the woman who would bow down, kiss the feet or stew in her own shit if that was what that bastard DeLaney fucking demanded. After all that time, finally, the ‘yes Mr. Liam, sir’ attitude was caving in––dissolving, and now she could be offered a life, a proper life, one without fear, without consequence and beatings. A life I had tried to make her see and understand that she deserved. Even now, the thought of her ribs black, red and purple twisted my stomach into knots and filled my head with so much anger, so much hatred that the actions I knew I was capable of, and wanted to act out, scared me.
“Walker, leave her for a moment, we need to talk. She’s not going anywhere.”
We needed to talk? No, Kady and I needed to talk, desperately.
I didn’t want to leave her. I should’ve been in that room with her comforting her and explaining why we did what we thought was best. Instead, one inch of stingy, pathetic wood stood in-between us. Sighing and torn, it was the pleading, hazel eyes staring at me with a familiar stubbornness that had me eventually pushing myself away. With my focus on my bare feet as I trudged up the hallway, I did something that I was beyond terrified of doing: I left Kady in my room, alone, with my safety box under the bed.
“I cannot believe that you fucking told her Laur, what were you thinking?” I took a seat on the arm of the sofa, my hands fisting and tugging into wet hair.
Her shoulders were hunched as she shook her head. “I have n––” pausing, her brow crumpled. That was an expression I was used to seeing, the same one that she wore for hours the night I met Kady at the DeLaney Constructs dinner. I had pounded on her apartment door so hard after dropping Kady home that night, that she answered it with a baseball bat at the ready…
“Kady, as in Kady Jenson, my friend and your boss’ girlfriend?” she scoffed, taking a draw from a bottle of Bud. “Walker, you gotta stay away, there’s going to be fucking trouble if you don’t. Trust me––”
“I can’t. She…she’s so much like Her. She puts on a façade, she wants the world to think she’s strong but I can see through it,” I’d told her in my defense. I knew that night that Kady Jenson was a soul that needed protecting, and more than anything in thi
s world, I wanted to be the one to protect it.
My moment of nostalgia was cut short by an accustomed hand on my shoulder, her forehead still marked by that deepening crease. “In my defense, you were the one who let the cat out of the bag.”
“How fucking mature, cousin, na…na…na…na, na, na is it? Back at fucking school am I?” I snapped.
“Eh, come on you idiot, you know that’s not what I meant.”
“’Aye,” I pushed my hands into my hair again and groaned. “I’m sorry. I’m just…” scared. I was scared, but one thing I’d never do is admit it. Admitting it gives a right for someone to twist it and play on it. Take it and use it to their own advantage and in most cases, it makes you fucking worse. I knew Laurie wasn’t like that, still, one habit bred from childhood stays with you, especially if you’re smart enough to learn the fucking lesson.
My body jerked as she raised her hands to hold my face, and I watched as the persistent vixen broke free. She was only a tiny thing, yet even when I refused to look at her, she would easily force me in the way only her tough-arse persona could. My family had tarnished that woman too fucking much in all those years.
Eventually, I gave up, and letting her win, I looked into her hazel almond-shaped eyes. “You have to remember that she has only just got her memory back. Do you know what that means? How scared and embarrassed she must feel?”
Now I felt like the prick in the room. I’d been so wrapped up in having her that I never thought about how scary this shit must have been for her.
“Walker, she has been hit head-on with over two years’ worth of abuse and violence. Both of which, at the time, she was able to justify in that head of hers. Now she can see it for what it is––what it was––and that’s embarrassing and painful. Especially when you’re the last person to see it.”
If it wasn’t the choking feeling lingering in my throat, then it was the worry of not knowing what Kady was doing down the hall, which was surely going to kill me. My left hand grasped at my throat, rubbing the flesh raw as I clamped down on my lower lip and breathed a brutal sigh. I was such a fucking dick. Fuck.
“You need to step into her shoes. I’m going to go and give you both some time. You know where I am.” In her hands, she twisted my head and planted a kiss on my cheek. “You’ll get there,” she smiled, rubbing the sticky shit she just planted on my cheek away with her thumb. “You both will. Remember, everything happens for a reason,” were her departing words of encouragement, already pulling the door closed behind her.
The living room was abandoned as I made my way heavily back up the hallway. I tried my luck and knocked on the door lightly. I forced myself to stop and listen as carefully as I could, attempting to detect movement from the opposite side. “Kady…Kady, open the door, darlin’.”
Nothing.
“Kady, for Christ sake, please, let me…” let you what, Walker? I didn’t fucking know what I wanted her to let me do: comfort her, keep her safe, or apologize?
Apologize? Fuck no––no way was I going to apologize. I had nothing to be sorry for; the only thing I was sorry for was not getting her to leave the fuck-up she spent years loving and being brainwashed by, sooner. With my head against the door, the back of my fist thumped against the wood. “Jesus Christ, Kady––” I was sure I was either going to thump the bastard thing off the fuckin’ hinges, or I was going to pull my fucking hair out with the rate my hand was now gripping through it.
How can one person cause your heart to constrict in both love and irritation?
“Okay, just…just listen to me. I…” a gargling sound was made through my teeth as I sucked in air through my lips. “I just wanted to help. I don’t care that you hate me at the moment, darlin’. Hate me as much as you like.”
Silence…
“If it makes you feel any better, Da was opposed to the idea in the first place. Said that ‘in doing what we were asking, we were insinuating that you couldn’t look after yourself’,” I deepened my voice and it came out hoarse, sounding just like Da.
More silence…
I gave up, letting gravity win. Turning around in only my towel, I slipped down the barrier, and with my back braced up against the crumbling surface of the wall to the left side of the door, crossed my legs at the ankles, and folded my arms across my chest.
“You must think I’m an idiot––an A-class dick right now.” I closed my eyes, whispering, “I wouldn’t fuckin’ blame ya,”
What the fuck are you doing, Walker? Well, this is just grand; opening my fuckin’ heart up in the bareness of the corridor, to a closed fucking door was by far one of the most humiliating things I’d ever done.
“You know, the night I met you, I knew, I–I just knew that you were someone worth…” saving was the word which came straight to mind, but I couldn’t say it. The lone word refused to leave my lips simply because I knew it was a lie. Kady reminded me so much of Her. And in the marrow of my bones I knew that I couldn’t save her…I couldn’t even save the person she reminded me of… “Protecting, I guess. You’re so stubborn, darlin’. I’m not stupid; stubbornness shouldn’t get confused with strength. I’m not saying you’re not strong, you are, just…”
In the privacy of the hallway, I faintly shook my head and started chewing on my lip again before taking a deep breath. I looked up at the door but it remained shut, and movement on the opposite side was lacking. “You want to know why I did it, darlin’?” I lightly tapped my knuckles against the wood, and was again answered with silence. “I suppose that question is the only question I’ve hit the Goddamn nail on the head with. I didn’t take your money and spend it, Kady. I didn’t steal from you regardless of what you’re thinking. I did it because it was the only way I could sleep at night…”
WHAT? What the fuck was I saying? Jesus, Mary mother of God.
“I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was, in setting up a safety net for you, I knew without doubt that when you left him, if you didn’t want anything to do with me, or if for some reason I wasn’t there to help protect you, that at least you wouldn’t be strapped.” I hung my head and the center of my upper lip was traced with my thumb. “At least I’d be able to sleep knowing that you were safe and not totally fucked,” I finished, my throaty voice laden with support and compassion.
The sound of the lock clicking startled me. My gaze traveled up a slender, bronzed leg, a white pair of boxers and an oversized white T-shirt, until I was finally met with her innocent face. Kady Jenson had that natural beauty about her, her narrow, straight nose and high set cheekbones, and a pair of piercing blue eyes which could strip the flesh from your bones. A fierce passion had the muscle in my chest either lurching or halting, and it did so every single time I looked at her, thought of her…touched her…
“You really did it for me?” she asked, looking uncertain with her lips pulling to the side.
I nodded my head. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had to.”
When she nodded thoughtfully and a trace of a smile caused her mouth to twitch, I freed my numb arse from the cold floorboards, and followed her into the bedroom, recalling everything that I had repeated during the last few weeks, both good and bad, to get to where we are now.
Would I redo it all again if I had to?
Would I risk hurting her to protect her?
Every day for the rest of my Goddamn life, was my silent answer.
Kady
My body sunk back into the mold of the bed, my back warmed by the presence of Walker as he spooned me. In the valley of my cleavage, I wrapped and held his arm in my embrace. The scent of him, the feel of him, his voice as he whispered that he was sorry for the way I found out, but would never be sorry for his actions, into my ear, had goose bumps over my arms, neck and spine spawning.
I had laid there listening to his heartfelt explanatory words travel through the doorway. His hesitations were one I knew I needed to decipher. So intently laden were they that I had to remind myself of why I was pissed o
ff at him in the first place, just so I wouldn’t run to him to offer comfort in the form of wrapped arms and a hasty forgiveness. It was almost as if his certain words and phrases were the metal prongs of a fork, and reality was a freshly set dental filling.
He held me for minutes, his chest pushing against my back with each even breath he took. But there was only so much stillness a person could take, so within those mute moments, I gathered the questions which I hoped would fit pieces of yet another puzzle together. Breaking the ear-splitting silence, I muttered, “I need answers, Walker.”
“What do you mean, darlin’?” he replied, pressing a kiss against my shoulder.
Moment of truth…
“So many things don’t make sense to me…”
“Such as?”
“Why didn’t you and Laurie tell me from the get go what had happened, and how you knew me?”
He snorted derisively as if knowing that that question was going to be the first to be broached. “Darlin’, if I had told you everything after you had woken up, you wouldn’t have believed me. I was a stranger to you; it would have pushed you closer to Him. I needed to earn your trust––pull you out of your shell. But in all fairness, it’s not like I didn’t try.” His hold on me tightened and the sensation of his leg hair tickled against me as he hooked his upper leg over mine.
“Tried?”
“You asked me what ‘Anali’ meant…” I held my breath. My alertness at his words was matched by scaling apprehension. “It’s not a word; it was how you overheard it. I couldn’t say what I wanted clearly because of that bastard, but what I actually said that night was, ‘Another lie…’”
Holy fuck…
“What about…” Air I so desperately didn’t want to catch in my throat at the mere contemplation of her, caught anyway. My eardrums buzzed with the increase of my body temperature and adrenaline. “What about, Liv…?”
