North Star - The Complete Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “Kellen,” she warned ominously, “no.”

  “Jenna, yes.”

  “You plan on getting wasted at all of Laney’s engagements?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  I checked the entrance to the kitchen to make sure we were alone. I could hear voices in the other room, music playing and people laughing. The party was in full swing and out there somewhere was her sister, my ex, her new boyfriend, and about thirty stuffy friends of their parents’ who would look down on her and her tattoos and me for being me because they all knew. Everyone knew exactly what had happened between us and there was no way in hell that it wasn’t going to be one of the most awkward afternoons of both of our lives.

  “Do you really want to go out there and face that mess without a little help from Jose Cuervo?” I whispered.

  She wavered. I saw it in her eyes. In the shift of her eyes that told me where the bottle was but I waited. I let her commit to it because I knew she would. I knew neither of us wanted to be here because we were the black sheep. The ugly stepsisters at Cinderella’s ball and wouldn’t it all be so much sweeter, run so much smoother on the afterburn of a shot of the hard stuff.

  “Behind the bread maker,” Jenna finally relented, heading for the refrigerator. “Grab a knife while you’re over there. I’ll get a lime.”

  Less than a minute later and we were clinking shot glasses, licking salt off each other’s wrist, and kicking back the drink. It was bad. It wasn’t the good stuff after all. It was some off brand thing she probably grabbed in a hurry during one of her million errands she was running with Laney every day. I didn’t complain though. I handed her a slice of lime, took one of my own, and smiled at her as we sucked them dry.

  “Reminds me of Mexico,” she choked out.

  “Spring Break?”

  She nodded, her face still pinched from the bad booze and the tart of the lime. “That was my first tequila shot.”

  “You learned from the best.”

  “You’re a terrible influence. I was so hung over the next day I couldn’t even eat.”

  “That was Laney’s fault,” I reminded her. “I cut you off. Laney snuck you drinks behind my back for another hour.”

  She smiled faintly. “I forgot about that. Yeah. You yelled at her when you realized what she was doing. Then you carried me back to the hotel.”

  I snorted. “I had to. You couldn’t walk. Sam was carrying your shoes because you kept losing them.”

  “You were so angry at Laney.”

  “I knew you were going to hurt in the morning. I was pissed.”

  She smiled at me again, soft and affectionate. Not romantic or meaningful, just loving. Tender in a way that thanked me without words, which was good because it didn’t need to be said. Even back then I’d have done anything for her. She was my friend. She was my girl. Always.

  “I need to ask your advice,” I told her seriously.

  “What’s up?”

  I cleared my throat, again checking the door of the kitchen. We were in the clear. “I got offered a job.”

  Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Did you really? Where?”

  “Hermosa Beach.”

  “The ones who brought you in to check it out and then dropped off the face of the planet?”

  “Yeah. Apparently the guy they lost talked about coming back. He said he was good to go, that he missed the job, so they gave him another shot. Washed out again.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Couldn’t take the pressure I guess. They were sketchy on the details, but the guy I talked to—“

  “Baxter?”

  I smiled, amazed she remembered. “Yeah, Baxter. He said they wanted me if I was ready to go full time.”

  “And you told him hell yes, right?”

  “No. I told him I needed to talk to you first.”

  “Oh.” She closed her mouth sharply. “Really?”

  “Yeah. This is the rest of my life, Jen. This is the career I want, but not if you’re not okay with it. I know it scares you.”

  She nodded her head, her eyes falling to the floor. “It does.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I think you should do it,” she answered immediately. “It makes you happy. You love it, and I don’t want to stop you from that.”

  “But if you’re gonna be—“

  “I’d be more afraid of you going back to Zombie Kellen if you weren’t doing something you love,” she interrupted. “I like this Kellen. I love this Kellen.”

  I nodded slowly. “I do too.”

  She smiled. “You’re Ireland Kellen when you’re fighting fires. You’re content and calm. It’s good to see.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Then you need to do it. Whatever you need, I’ll be with you. I’m on your side.”

  “Even if I go crazy and agree to open a gym with Callum?”

  “Ha,” she laughed, stepping into my space. Into my arms. “You’d never go that crazy.”

  “He keeps asking.”

  “Because he’s relentless. It’s how he got Sam to go out with him.”

  “How is that still going on?”

  “She’s lonely and broken hearted and he’s funny. She needs a guy like him for now.” Jenna cocked her head at me. “What? What’s that look?”

  “What look?”

  “You look worried. It’s weird. You do angry and you do confused but you don’t really do worried.”

  I settled back against the counter, holding her to me. “I don’t know. I think he’s taking it more seriously than being fun for her.”

  “I hope not because that’s all he is. She still misses Carter.”

  “Hmm,” I hummed.

  “You gonna warn him about that?”

  “No. Are you going to warn her he’s getting serious?”

  “Not my business.”

  “Not mine either.” I looked beyond her to the party waiting for us. The crowd of people dying to hate us to our faces. “I think we’re the wrong people to go to for relationship advice.”

  “Amen,” she laughed. She stepped out of my embrace and nodded toward the tequila. “Hide that bottle, would you? We might need it later.”

  “No one’s going to steal that shit, Jen.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I was desperate, okay?”

  “So was I.” I tucked it back in its hiding spot, out of sight.

  She straightened her dress, the soft fabric hugging her body in ways that made me burn deeper than the tequila. “You ready for this?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  We left the kitchen together, side by side. A united front, like soldiers going to war.

  First step out of that kitchen and we triggered a land mine.

  Laney was there, her back to us and a suit at her side. They turned together to face us, all smiles and glasses of wine that must have been cider for Laney. Her face faltered when she saw me. Her brow lowered, her eyes darkened, and I worried for one brief moment that she’d throw her drink in my face.

  But this was her party, her engagement party, and there was no way she was going to ruin it with feelings.

  “Jenna, Kellen,” she said warmly, my name sounding brittle on her tongue. “You’re finally here. We worried you wouldn’t make it.”

  “I had a fight,” I explained.

  She grinned. “Don’t you always.”

  “You’re a boxer, aren’t you?” the guy asked.

  He was just an inch or two shorter than me, his hair a slightly darker brown. His eyes were almost the exact same color as his hair, big and puppy doggish. His smile was genuine, though, and his tone was friendly. Not fake or forced. Natural and real.

  “I am, yeah. Recreationally.”

  “Me too. Mortal Combat. I have thumbs of fury.”

  I smiled. “We’ll have to play
sometime.”

  “I’d like that, definitely.” He shook his head, his smile broadening. “Sorry, I’m being rude. My name is Max. It’s nice to meet you.”

  I slowly took the hand offered to me, a dull hum in my ears. “What did you say your name is?”

  “Why do you need to know his name?” Laney’s voice echoed in my ear. “It won’t change anything.”

  “Max.”

  “I know,” my own voice answered, almost drowned out by the swish of the wiper blades over the windshield. The splash of rainwater under the tires of the cab.

  “Then why?” Laney insisted.

  “Maxwell?” I clarified, feeling dizzy.

  He laughed. “Only to my mom.”

  “It’s an old family name. They came over on the Mayflower,” Laney supplied proudly. Her voice was confident but her eyes were tight and telling. Just the way they’d been that night in New York.

  “You’re right,” I told her, looking out the window into the rain. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s the way my grandma tells it, anyway,” Max countered with another smile. The guy was full of them. “She’s from New York originally and out there if you’re not a Kennedy or a Vanderbilt you better have someone in your family tree who contracted scurvy coming over on the Mayflower.”

  “Here you have to be a Kardashian,” Jenna told him.

  “I think I’d rather have scurvy.”

  They laughed, all three of them, and I wanted to join them but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I couldn’t escape the vibration in my veins or the voices in my head.

  “Then what?” she demanded. “What do you want from me?”

  Jenna nudged me gently. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s your last name?” I blurted out, surprising everyone.

  Max’s smile faltered. “Uh, Campbell.”

  “His name is Maxwell Campbell.”

  My sight went white, glaring and blind while my ears filled with the bang of metal against metal, tires torn over wet ground, and a woman’s scream in my ear, piercing and painful. It only lasted a second, just a heartbeat, but then I was back and breathing fire.

  I looked dead at Laney, right into her panicked blue eyes, and I suddenly remembered everything about that night.

  Our last night.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jenna

  Holy shit, he knows, I thought. My stomach tightened with dread as I watched him stare daggers into her eyes. To her credit, Laney didn’t flinch.

  “How do I know that name, Lane?” Kellen asked her calmly.

  Laney stared back, dead eyed. She didn’t bother answering him.

  “The firm,” I suggested. “You were both working for Dad’s firm at the same time.”

  “Laney,” Kellen repeated, still staring at her. Glaring.

  I took Kellen’s elbow gently in my hand. “Maybe we should go outside.”

  “You know, don’t you?” Max asked Kellen. It was the first time all day that I’d seen him without a smile and the transformation was staggering. He looked pale. Afraid but bold as he stepped closer to the man beside me. “You remember her telling you.”

  Kellen sized him up. “It was you?”

  “Yeah.” Max swallowed thickly. “Yeah, it was me. She cheated on you with me.”

  Kellen swiped his hand over his mouth roughly. “Son of a—“

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Laney told him scathingly. “Just drop it.”

  Max held up his hand to her, begging her to stop. “No, it does. It matters. Even if you don’t still matter to him, this matters to me.” He looked at Kellen nervously, but he held his ground only three feet away. “I’m not an asshole. I swear. I know you don’t think that’s true because right now all I am to you is the guy who seduced your fiancé, but that’s not like me. I mean, look at me and look at you. How the hell did I manage to get her, right?”

  Kellen glanced at Laney. “I can think of a way.”

  “Kellen,” I mumbled in warning.

  “She came in one afternoon to have lunch with Dan,” Max explained. “He was on the phone, I was in the office waiting for him too, so we sat down and started talking. We have nothing in common. Nothing. I’m a nerd. I like comic books and video games. I own a pair of ten sided dice. I had no business talking to someone like Laney, but we hit it off and it made no sense but I wasn’t dumb enough to fight it.”

  “You made me laugh,” Laney supplied quietly. “I hadn’t laughed in a really long time.”

  Max smiled at her briefly before turning back to Kellen. “I loved her and you didn’t. You had her and you didn’t want anything to do with her and that pissed me off. I saw you around the office and so many times I wanted to tell you how I felt about her and tell you to let her go, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of moral high ground to stand on so I kept my mouth shut. But I didn’t stop loving her and I didn’t stop sleeping with her and I’ve wanted to face you. To admit that I did a dick thing going after another guy’s girl and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

  Kellen looked at him for a long time, his face blank. Finally he shook his head. “Laney’s right. This shit doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It does, though.”

  “No. If I want her to forgive Jenna, and I do,” he said pointedly, turning his eyes briefly to Laney, “then I gotta let this go. Forget it, man. It’s done.”

  Max looked lost, almost sad. He turned his eyes to the ground, shaking his head. “I can’t forget it. It’s been eating away at me for months.”

  “I know the feeling,” I muttered under my breath.

  Kellen looked at me but I turned my face away, not willing to let him see the hurt that still hid there. The hurt I inflicted on myself every day because of what we’d done. Because of what I had done.

  The same hurt that Max wore now.

  He sighed heavily. “Look, don’t beat yourself up over it, Max. Laney and I weren’t anything worth getting mad over. If we’d been solid you wouldn’t have been able to turn her head. Not easily.”

  “Kellen never cared,” Laney added. “He didn’t even ask your name when I first told him about you. He stayed with me for weeks after I told him I’d cheated on him, and then he only asked who you were so he had a reason to leave me for Jenna.”

  “I didn’t need a reason, Laney. You were reason enough on your own.”

  She glared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re a pain in the ass.”

  “Oh good,” I whispered, glancing around the room. So far no one was paying attention.

  “Hey,” Max warned. “Easy.”

  “You are such a dick, Kellen,” Laney hissed. “You wanted to sleep with my sister the entire time we were together and you’re giving me shit?”

  “I loved her the entire time we were together. Being with you felt more like I was cheating on her than anything else. I hated every goddamn second of it.”

  Laney sneered at him. “That’s not what your orgasms said.”

  “Jesus, Laney,” I snapped.

  “What can I say?” Kellen asked her coldly. “You’re good at pushing buttons and you pushed all of the right ones. Like a pro.”

  Laney gasped. I sighed.

  Max punched Kellen in the face.

  The world screeched to a deafening halt. Laney held her hand over her mouth, her eyes round with shock. Max looked down at his fist as though he didn’t recognize it; didn’t understand his own body. I stared at Kellen, watching his hands, waiting for one to fly. It was instinct for him. It was the fighter inside, the kid from the streets. He didn’t take hits without dishing them out.

  And yet he stood perfectly still, a red welt forming on the side of his face.

  “I—I’m—“ Max stuttered.

  “Don’t,” Kellen commanded.

  I licked my lips nervously. “Kellen?”

  “It’s fine, Jenna. Everything is fine.”
<
br />   “Are you sure?”

  He looked at me, the animal in his eyes, barely contained.

  That look made me shiver.

  “Okay, I think we should get out of here,” I said quietly. “Congratulations, you two, we’re very happy for—“

  “Hit me back,” Max demanded.

  I shook my head emphatically. “You don’t want that.”

  “Max, no,” Laney pleaded, taking his arm.

  I was surprised when he shrugged her off. He stood in front of Kellen, the warmth in his eyes burning bright. “You have to hit me. I already feel guilty about everything else and now this. I can’t handle that. I need you to hit me back.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Kellen growled quietly.

  “Oh, it could.” I tugged on Kellen’s arm, bringing his eyes to mine. “You could seriously mess him up.”

  “It’s only one punch.”

  “You’ve KOed a guy with one hit.”

  “He’s done what?” Max asked.

  Kellen looked Max up and down again before turning back to me. “I’ll go easy on him.”

  “You don’t want to do this,” I protested, but I knew better. I knew he did. I knew the animal did, the kid from the street did, the boxer in the ring did. They all needed to do it because Kellen was not the type to let a hit go unanswered. He wasn’t wired that way.

  “We should go out back,” Max suggested. “People are starting to stare.”

  Kellen nodded, glancing around the room of elegantly dressed party guests and crystal wine glasses. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

  I watched them walk away, out the back door toward the yard and the ocean view. They strode together side by side, only a foot between them like friends. Friends who were going to punch each other’s faces in.

  I sighed, heading for the kitchen. Laney followed close on my heels.

  “You can’t let him hit him,” she insisted angrily.

  “Max hit him first.”

  “Jenna!”

  “Laney, I think you know as well as I do that I can’t make Kellen do or not do anything. No one can. Why don’t you convince Max to ask Kellen not to hit him?”

  “Because he won’t listen.”

  “Lot of that going around.” I yanked open the fridge and pulled out two tall brown bottles. I didn’t care what they tasted like. What mattered was that they were cold.