North Star - The Complete Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “I’m here,” I told him in French. “I’m here with you. I’m always with you. Come back to me. Follow my voice. Follow it out, Kellen. I’m here. I’m here and I miss you.”

  I talked to him for over ten minutes, but it felt like hours. With every word I spoke he shivered less. His tears dried up in his eyes as they loosened, his tension lessening until finally he saw me. Finally he breathed in deeply on his own, the hold he had on me fell away, and his beautiful blue-black eyes blinked up at me with wet, tear soaked lashes.

  “Kellen?” I asked shakily.

  He swallowed hard, licking his lips. “Oui,” he replied roughly. “Je suis la, Nonpareil.”

  I half-laughed, half-cried, and collapsed completely against his chest in relief.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kellen

  Take a deep breath. Hold it for as long as you can. Longer. Longer. Longer. Go to the edge of your consciousness where the world turns fuzzy and strange. Sound is louder but also muffled. Colors distort. Your vision dances around the edges, fading out and blasting full force in the center. Your heartbeat is in your ears. In your eyes, vibrating. Pulsing. It’s slowing. You’re dying.

  Part of you is already dead.

  That’s what it feels like to go into the deep. To slip into the nothing where the world can’t reach me. That’s where I feel safe – one foot in the grave and the other out the door of the world. It can be comforting in its numbness. You just have to get over the dying bit. You have to be okay with the waking dream.

  What I felt with Jenna was a living nightmare.

  Her body rested against mine there on the floor and I breathed slow and even, trying to calm my racing heart as she cried against my chest and clung to my arms. Her long, lean body shook against me as my muscles ached from my own convulsions. I wanted to shut it all out. To slam the doors in my mind and let the animal loose, but it’s what I’d always done and it got me nowhere. It got me nothing. I was in it now. I was shaking scared and fucked six ways from Sunday, but this was me. This was what Jenna didn’t know and if she was going to stay or if she was going to run she needed to see this. She had to understand.

  I had to let it all out. I had to relive it all over again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenna whispered against my skin, her breath hot and wet, mingling with her tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I closed my eyes, rubbed my hand hard over my face to clear it. “Jenna, I have to tell you something.”

  She sat up on her knees, looking down at me. I had forgotten she was naked but for the first time the sight stirred nothing in me. I was more intent on her eyes. I had to hold onto her eyes, gray and open. Waiting. Always waiting for me.

  “What?”

  “I was sexually abused,” I told her stonily. I didn’t give myself time to think about it or react to it. This was different from telling Ben. With him I’d let the animal out, the anger, but I held it back for Jenna. I gave her the raw truth and it flayed me alive. “Her name was Sophia. She ra—she touched me. I was ten. It went on for a year, maybe more. I honestly don’t remember. It felt like forever. I felt like I was dying. I wanted to die. I never told anyone. I asked her to stop. She didn’t. She said it would f-feel good if I let it. I didn’t. It hurt. It was horrible. I c-cried every night.”

  “Kellen, you’re shaking again.”

  “Every night on the floor, the cold, hard floor under my back aching and aching and… always. She smelled too sweet. It stung the back of my throat. My eyes. I cried. I m-mmm-missed my mom. I missed my mom. I missed my mom.” I ran out of air. I had forgotten to breathe. I took a thick, shaking breath and draped my arm over my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. I had to tell her, had to tell her, but I couldn’t look. Couldn’t look in her eyes as I opened the doors. As I released the demons and the animal lay dormant. As they swirled around me, touching me – “Caressing me. She said it’d feel good. It never, never did. Never. It hurt. I was scared. I wanted to run away. She called me baby. She called me a baby. When I couldn’t be a man for her she called me a baby. She slapped my face. She left me alone in the dark and I cried. I cried like a baby.”

  I was crying then. I could feel the tears escaping my eyes. Pouring down the sides of my face. Pooling in my ears and muffling the world. It felt like being underwater and I breathed a little easier. A little softer.

  “I cried. I was scared and I cried and I missed everything from before. I missed everything. Everyone. Ma maman me manque.”

  I felt Jenna’s hand on mine, warm and soft. I laced my fingers with hers and held onto her tightly.

  “I know, Kel,” she whispered softly. “I know you miss her.”

  That was all she said. That was all she did. And it broke me down.

  I burst into sobs. Sobs that caught in my throat, in my gut. That ripped through me and curled me into a ball there on the floor with my face on the cold tile and her hand warm inside mine. I pulled it to my chest, I clung to her in the dark, and I cried. I cried so hard it hurt. I cried so hard my throat closed in on itself and I worried I’d suffocate. I felt like the floor had opened up and the dark was all around me, threatening me. That a door would open any moment and bathe me in yellow light. That a figure red and ready would stand in front of me. I worried I never got out. That I was still that boy on the floor crying and crying alone and scared.

  I clung to Jenna. I begged her to be real.

  And I cried. And I died.

  ***

  Three hours she sat on that floor with me. I fell asleep or I passed out, I’m not sure. I cried for too long for my body to handle. I hurt everywhere from laying on the floor, from the shakes, from the tears that tore through me and left me battered. I doubted Jenna felt much better.

  When I came to she was propped up against the refrigerator with my head in her lap. A blanket was thrown over both of our bodies. She’d turned off the oven and the stove. Everything was ruined but it didn’t matter. We were lucky the place hadn’t burned down around us.

  I got up slowly, afraid to look at her, but she didn’t ask me to. Instead she took my hand and led me through the apartment. She took me to the bathroom where she wordlessly wetted a towel, brought it to my tear streaked face, and gently washed it clean. I stared into her eyes but she didn’t look back. She let me watch as she worked but she didn’t react.

  When she was done she turned off the light, took up my hand, and pulled me to the bedroom.

  I followed her blindly.

  I obediently laid in bed when she pushed me down onto it. She laid down next to me without a word.

  She didn’t turn off the lights.

  I didn’t let go of her hand.

  ***

  In the morning she was still there. I don’t know what I expected this awful day to look like, but I never imagined it could look like Jenna. Like long dark hair, full pink lips, sleepy gray eyes. Like something so fucking beautiful it couldn’t be real.

  “Good morning,” I croaked. My throat was raw and desert dry, full of sand and grit. Full of the ashes of every secret I’d ever kept, burned away by the brightness of her eyes.

  She blinked several times, first quick like a bird’s wings, then slow like sleep. Like love.

  She smiled. “Morning.”

  “You stayed.”

  “Of course I stayed.”

  “You didn’t have to.” I cleared my throat, felt it tighten painfully. “You don’t have to.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll stay.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But I’d like to.”

  “You really don’t hav—have to… shit.” I growled in my chest and scrubbed roughly at my face.

  “Kellen, slow down.”

  “I’m fucking it up again.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I don’t know how to do any of this. I—what do I do now? Why am I trying to make you go?”

  “I don’t know,” sh
e answered gently. Patiently. “But I’m not going to do it so leave it alone.”

  “You can’t want to stay with me,” I told the ceiling, unable to look at her face. “Not after last night. Not after every-everything you saw.”

  “Ne te pas presse.”

  My brow pinched. “What?”

  “I’m telling you to slow down. You seem to take commands better in French.”

  “Ne te presse pas,” I corrected. “Your French is terrible.”

  “Well, I had a shitty teacher.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. The feel of it was so strange that it startled me. It pulled me out of myself. Out of the spiral that threatened to take me down again. It gave me the strength to look her in the eyes.

  “I couldn’t do it,” I confessed quietly. “I tried to stay out of the void and I couldn’t. I mean I did, I stayed out of it, but where I went instead— it was worse.”

  She nodded solemnly. “I saw.”

  “And heard.”

  “Yes. I heard you.”

  “And you want to stay?”

  “Leaving never crossed my mind.”

  “Maybe it should.”

  She glared at me. “Stop trying to make me go.”

  “Stop acting like you don’t see me differently,” I snapped.

  “I see you more clearly.”

  “Then you should—“

  “Do I tell you what you should and should not do?”

  I paused, gritting my teeth in annoyance. “No.”

  “Then do me a favor and stop telling me what to do. Give me a little credit. Do me the courtesy of assuming I know my own mind and leave me the hell alone about this. I’m not leaving. Back off.”

  My mouth crept up at the corner, a half grin sneaking onto my face. “So much piss.”

  She smiled. “It’s the bedrock of my charm. Pure piss.”

  “It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well lucky for you I never plan on changing.” She looked at me meaningfully, making sure I was listening. “Or leaving.”

  I let the grin grow to a smile, reaching out to run my fingers through her hair, so soft and heavy in my palm. “So what now? What do we do now?”

  She sighed and settled into the bed, snuggling in close to my side until I could wrap my arm around her. “I don’t know, Kellen. But whatever it is, we do it together.”

  “I’m a mess, Jen,” I told her starkly.

  She reached around and laced her fingers with mine again, caging herself inside my arm. Against my chest.

  “I know,” she whispered. “But you’re my mess. My beautiful big ass mess.”

  “Can I get that on a T-shirt?”

  “I’ll put it in my wedding vows.”

  I kissed the top of her head, breathing her scent inside my lungs. Inside my soul.

  “I’m gonna hold you to that,” I promised her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jenna – One Month Later

  Christmas was less than a month away.

  I had none of my shopping done. None.

  Luckily as the weather turned and people put their skin away inside layers of clothing business at the shop slowed down. I started closing on Monday and Tuesday, opening up the doors on those days only for the odd appointment.

  Benji quit and I didn’t bother hiring anyone else. I took care of all of the ink work I could, Sam took care of the front, and if I got too many requests or got too busy I gave them Bryce’s number to call. His personal number. Told them he had plenty of time on his hands. He loved that. My old mentor and friend was quick to send me a text cursing me out.

  I didn’t stop handing out his number.

  Kellen made sure I was never alone again as I closed. Between Sam, himself, and sometimes Callum, someone was always there with me. No one would let me pay them but I started inking Callum for free to relieve my guilt.

  When the time came to close whoever was with me would lock the door, crank the music, and spend the next hour helping me clean and finish up for the night. Some nights I was lucky and I got two of them, Callum coming in with Kellen straight from the gym or Kellen and Sam splitting the work.

  Then one very lucky night I got all three.

  “No, but he’s not a robot!” Sam cried out angrily. “He had a soul!”

  “Robot!” Callum roared. “He’s a friggin’ terminator.”

  “He was sentient! Like Johnny 5.”

  “Are you fucking with me? Kellen, is she fucking with me?”

  “Sam, are you fucking with him?” I heard Kellen ask evenly.

  I was in the office with the door open as I closed out the day’s register, Callum, Kellen, and Sam arguing heatedly as they cleaned up out front. I wore a perpetual smile on my lips as I listened.

  “No,” Sam answered shortly.

  “No,” Kellen told Callum. “She’s not fucking with you.”

  “Wow,” Callum groaned. “Alright, so let me get this straight. Your argument that the Terminator had a soul is based on the fact that you think Johnny goddamn 5 was actually alive?”

  “He was sentient.”

  “He was a machine. He had no heart, no lungs, no blood. No feet.”

  “That’s your defining characteristic for humanity? For having a soul? Feet? So a guy with prosthetic feet or a woman who has amputated legs, they’re not human?”

  “That’s not—you’re twisting my—you’re trying to confuse me.”

  “You’re not making it a challenge,” Kellen warned him.

  “Shut up. Okay, I take it back.”

  Sam laughed. “Which part?”

  “The feet thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I stand by it. Terminator protected that boy. He loved that boy. He had a soul.”

  “I agree with her!” I shouted from the office.

  “On what possible grounds?” Kellen demanded.

  “Blade Runner!”

  “Oh, dammit.”

  “Mic drop.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Sam complained. “Is it a movie?”

  Callum groaned again, sounding like a wounded bear. “You’re killing me, blue eyes.”

  “It was a movie but a book first,” Kellen explained. “It’s about the blurred line between robotics and humanity. There are robots in it so real they don’t even know they’re robots. They think they’re human.”

  “Harrison Ford hunts them. He has a bunch of tests he does to find out if they’re robots or not,” Callum added. “Because there’s always a way to tell. You know why? Because they’re. Not. Human.”

  “He falls in love with one,” I shouted. “And a lot of people wonder if—“

  “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”

  “He wasn’t a robot himself.”

  I heard a clatter, the sound of a mop handle hitting the ground, then Callum was in my doorway filling it with his stocky body.

  “Why do you love to hurt me?” he pleaded.

  I smiled up at him. “Because you’re so pretty when you cry.”

  “Get back to work!” Kellen yelled at him.

  “Hey,” Callum whispered, stepping closer. “Your girl still hung up on the douche?”

  “Carter? He wasn’t a douche and no, I don’t think so. Why?”

  He smiled broadly.

  I shook my head hard. “No.”

  “Jenna, come on. Be a bro.”

  “I’m not your bro. I’m her bro and you’re a ho so figure out the pecking order there and leave me alone.”

  “Dude, I need her,” he pleaded.

  “Yeah, for Bingo!” I hissed loudly. “I’m not serving her up to you so you can win some stupid game with your frat buddies.”

  “I can’t use her for Bingo. I already scored a black haired chick at my nail salon.”

  “Her hair isn’t—Wait, at your nail salon?”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal. “Sometimes I like to treat myself.”

  “To a manicure?”

  “Hygiene
is important to me!” he whispered vehemently. “And so is this. Seriously, you gotta hook me up.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll owe you so big.”

  “You have absolutely nothing I want.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  Callum paused, watching me pensively. “Please!”

  “No!”

  “Shit!”

  “What are you two yelling about?” Kellen asked, showing up in the doorway behind Callum.

  “Jenna’s freezing me out, man.”

  Kellen looked at me knowingly. “You won’t hook him up with Sam?”

  “How’d you know he asked?” I laughed.

  “He’s had a boner for her since we walked in here.”

  “Gross. And he just wants her for Bingo.”

  “I told you,” Callum moaned impatiently, “I don’t need black hair for Bingo. I already hit that. I want to go out with her because she’s cool as hell.”

  “I know, but no.”

  Callum turned to Kellen. “Talk to her for me, would you?”

  Kellen presented his knuckles to me. “Good call. Solid.”

  I bumped my knuckles against his as Callum growled and left the room, completely disgusted with us both.

  Kellen leaned against the doorframe. “You really won’t let him go out with her?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not up to me, it’s up to her. If he wants to ask her out he can be a man and do it.”

  “Guy’s got a better chance if he comes with an endorsement. Especially one from her closest friend.”

  “How would I endorse him? He’s good at karaoke and he can eat more hot wings than a wolf?”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “So why don’t you endorse him. Sam trusts you.”

  “And ruin my reputation?” Kellen asked with a smile. “You must be joking.”

  I picked up a stray towel and threw it at his face. “Get out of here!” I laughed.

  He caught it easily, his reflexes unnaturally strong, and tossed it back at me. I watched it land squarely on my desk behind me, and when I looked back at the doorway Kellen was gone.