North Star - The Complete Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  Mom appeared in the archway to the kitchen, carrying a wine glass exactly like Laney’s.

  Funny story – I didn’t own wineglasses nor did I set out wine for the party. Where they were getting it I had no friggin’ idea.

  “The boys sent me in to tell you that the grill is ready when you are,” Mom informed me.

  “Perfect timing.” I quickly washed my hands in the sink and grabbed the tray of kebabs. “Will you check the corn while I run this outside?”

  “Of course.”

  Dad saw me coming through the sliding glass door and opened it for me, letting me onto the smoothed patio with the fresh white fence around the back to keep Ronin from chasing seagulls down the beach at all hours. As I stepped outside he circled my feet, sniffing at the air around me.

  “Not a chance, dude,” I scolded him, holding the tray up high.

  Kellen reached for it. “I’ll take ‘em.”

  “You can’t feed the dog one.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will. You’re a sucker and he knows it.” I held the tray out to him with narrowed eyes. “I counted these as I made them. I will count them again when they’re finished. Will the numbers match?”

  He grinned, leaning in to kiss me lightly on the cheek. It was a ploy to distract me. When he pulled away he deftly pulled the tray from my hands as well. “Probably not,” he answered remorselessly.

  Ronin went to sit by his feet, leaning heavily against Kellen’s leg.

  “You’re so weak,” I scolded with a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “Those won’t take long, will they?”

  “No, not long. Why?”

  “I was just thinking Callum is cutting it close. He normally never misses food. He should be there sitting on your other side fighting Ronin for scraps.”

  Kellen frowned at me. “He’s not coming.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Sam’s coming.”

  “No, she’s not. I told you that. She’s not coming because he’s coming.”

  He shook his head, placing the first kebab on the hot grill, sending up a smoky sizzle. “No. You said she might not be coming. That was reason enough for Callum to ditch.”

  “Why did we ever let them in the meet?” I groaned.

  “They’re not getting along well?” Dad asked.

  I shrugged. “Who knows? They won’t look at each other. Definitely won’t talk to each other.”

  “We can’t even get them in the same room,” Kellen added.

  “Did they break up?” Max asked, tipping his beer to his lips.

  He stood on the other side of Kellen near the fence, and the fact that they hung out so easily blew my mind. They weren’t exactly friends but they were cool, spending time together at family events like this as though nothing had ever happened between them. As though they had not punched each other in the face.

  I nodded at Max with wide eyes. “Oh yeah. It was ugly. Sam went back to her ex and Callum showed up on our doorstep with tears and beers. He dragged us out to a country bar with him, got blotto, and sang sad bastard songs all night. It was horrifying and yet hauntingly beautiful.”

  “He has a great voice,” Kellen agreed.

  “I just wish he would use his powers for good instead of evil.”

  “I’m still a little redneck from that night.”

  Max smiled. “I’m sure there’s a pill for that.”

  “Dude, don’t you think I looked? There’s nothing.”

  “He already owns a truck,” Dad reminded Max. “He was susceptible.”

  I wrapped my arms around Kellen from behind, resting my cheek on his back. “I still love you, even if you like Luke Bryant.”

  “Bryan,” he corrected absently. His shoulders slumped. “Dammit.”

  Dad and Max laughed openly. I had the decency to bury my face in the soft cotton of his shirt and shake with silent laughter.

  “I defy any of you to listen to Drink This Beer without getting emotional!” he cried, pointing an accusing spatula at all of us.

  “Open mic night is on Tuesday at the Saddle Sore,” I giggled. “Callum will be there and he takes requests.”

  “I’d love to but I’ll never get Laney into a country bar. She won’t even ride in an American made car,” Max reminded me.

  It was Kellen’s turn to laugh. Probably with relief.

  Not his circus, not his monkeys.

  We ate on the patio under white Christmas lights strung overhead the way they’d done in Ireland. We brought out a long folding table, every chair in the house, and ate and drank well into the night. Until the stars were out overhead and the air chilled with the breeze. Until Mom got sleepy and Dad drove her home. Until Laney ran out of wine and Max bumped fists with Kellen, gave me a quick hug, and led her to his German made car. Until it was just me and Kellen and Ronin, full and happy, back gate open so we could see the ocean curling dark and mysterious in the distance. There was music somewhere in one of the condos on the left drifting down on our heads, full of bass and words we couldn’t understand.

  Kellen absently bounced his foot to the beat, his head resting on the back of the Adirondack chair that matched my own, his hand loosely wrapped around a beer. Ronin lay ever at his feet, never far from his side, and I smiled as I watched Kellen reach down and rub the shining black head.

  He hadn’t planned on keeping the dog. We took him to the hospital, had him checked out, and then we were taking him to the humane society in the morning. But the vet did a scan and couldn’t find a microchip in him and when we went online and looked up people seeking their lost dogs, no one was looking for Ronin. Then Kellen looked up what happened to dogs in shelters and found out the kill rate in California.

  It was high. About half the animals taken into shelters were killed, and pit bulls were not high on the adoption list. When I pointed out that black dogs and cats like Ronin went un-adopted he’d turned off his computer and gone to bed without a word. In the morning he submitted a picture of Ronin to our local humane society, gave them his phone number, and said we’d take care of the dog until the owners showed up looking for him. And if they never did? So much the better. Kellen wanted to take a swing at them anyway.

  Kellen caught me watching him. “What are you smiling about?”

  “You and that dog.”

  He grinned, looking down at his best friend. “He’s a good boy.”

  “You only say that because he doesn’t eat your bras.”

  “If I had them he could.”

  “When I’m running around bra-less you can blame him.”

  Kellen looked at me sideways, his grin turning salacious. “Maybe that’s our master plan.”

  “That’s funny, ‘cause you’re the master. Dog and master. Master plan. It’s clever.”

  “Is it?” he chuckled.

  “Shut up.”

  “Explain it to me again. I didn’t get it.”

  “You’re an ass.”

  “You’re a riot.”

  “I’m funny in some circles!” I shouted in outrage.

  He laughed, letting go of Ronin to lean over the arm of his chair and hover his face close to mine. His smile melted me from the inside out the way it always did. The way I knew it always would.

  “You’re funny in any circle.” His fingers danced over the ring on my left hand. “Especially in this one.”

  “It’s a small circle.”

  He kissed me softly, just a brush of his lips against mine. “It’s the only one that matters.”

  I took hold of his face and brought it in close again, pressing his warm lips against mine and humming happily. He grinned, kissing me slowly and skipping his fingers across my cheek and into my hair. Our mouths opened, exchanging breath and tongues until the distance between us was too much. Until he tugged at me, pulling me and guiding me toward him so I was sitting in his lap straddling his hips and he was soft against my mouth and hard everywhere else.

  His hands on my bac
k, hot and huge, his body against mine, hard and strong, the smell of him in my nose, soap and a subtle cologne – it all came together in this potent mixture that slithered through my veins and made my entire tired body feel suddenly sinuous. Alive and liquid. His fingers found the edge of my shirt and traced lightly over my lower back, tickling me until I broke away and buried my face in his shoulder. I breathed heavily, my blood racing and his heart pounding against my palm. It was comforting, like thunder outside your window. It was exciting, like the growl of a lion twice your size.

  “Marry me,” he said suddenly.

  I sat back, smiling down at him. “I am marrying you. I’m marrying you right now.”

  “Marry me in front of a minister.”

  My smile faded, washed away by the seriousness of his tone. By the dark burn of his eyes. “Just say when.”

  “Next week.”

  “Yes.”

  He searched my eyes. “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes,” I answered again, no hesitation. “Do you?”

  “Yes. I want to marry you right here. Right there on that beach by the water with our feet bare. Just me in jeans and you in a dress—“

  “That weighs less than I do,” I finished for him, smiling at the memory of a stolen afternoon spent in the sun and his eyes, both of us taking a dangerous walk into a world that was never supposed to be ours.

  “Will you do it?” he asked, cupping my face in both of his hands.

  I nodded, my eyes bursting with tears that I didn’t see coming but I didn’t try to hide.

  He pulled my face to his and he kissed the tears that poured down my cheeks. I laughed shakily, clinging to him, and then he was standing and carrying me effortlessly into the house. Into the bedroom where he laid me down beneath him and undressed me with reverence and patience. With love.

  We went slow but steady, exploring each other, our limits. The room. I straddled him on the rug, he bent me over the dresser, we watched ourselves in the mirror on the door as I rode him with my back to his chest and his huge hands on my clit. On my breasts. Over my heart.

  “Do you see it?” he whispered in my ear. “Do you feel it?”

  I shuddered and moaned, my sight blurring as his fingers fondled my sweat slicked body. My soaking center. “I feel everything, Kellen.”

  “In the mirror. This.” He took my hand and brought it from his thigh to my pussy. To where he slid in and out of me slowly. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  He drove in deep, seating himself inside me. “Do you feel it?”

  “God, yes.”

  “This is me.” He kissed my neck, pulling out and driving back inside. “This is me marrying you.”

  I turned my face to his, giving him my mouth. My center. My heart and my soul.

  He spoke to me the entire time, his words coming in sporadic bursts between kisses, sounding like a song that I couldn’t understand. It was French on fast forward, meaning blurring by me before my brain could comprehend, but it was beautiful, the words soft and lovely like snow dusting down on my skin, giving me shivers down to my spine.

  We were black and white as we came together. Drained of pretense and frivolity. Devoid of expectations. No shades of gray. No peacock colors covering secrets or lies. We were truth. We were love. East and west, coming together in a blinding, earthshattering moment of molten heat at the core of the world, at the center of the universe that exploded in brilliance brighter than the sun.

  We were everything we had been denied.

  We were everything we were always meant to be.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jenna

  My dress weighed nine pounds.

  I weighed it.

  “It’s beautiful, Jenna,” Mom whispered, her eyes filling again with tears.

  Laney rolled her own eyes at her. “Seriously, if you ruin your makeup for a third time I’m not fixing it again. You can be in pictures with raccoon eyes and I’ll tell Dad not to pay to have it Photoshopped out.”

  Mom scowled at Laney and went the mirror, checking to make sure she hadn’t done any damage yet. She was mad but she wasn’t crying.

  Thank you, I mouthed inaudibly to Laney.

  You’re welcome, she mimed with a wink.

  I took a breath and turned back to the mirror that hung inside my closet. Kellen’s clothes hung inside next to mine, our worlds already meshed together, but this was different. Today was something else entirely. It was a dream and an illusion, a ceremony and piece of paper that would prove to the world what I already knew in my heart – we were eternal. And still I wanted it. Still I was nervous.

  I smoothed my hands over the rough lace of my dress, my fingertips bumping over the flowers and vines stitched in white down to my feet – my bare feet. The skirt hung long and straight down my body, nothing underneath but a thin layer of satin and my skin. Nothing covering my tattoos but the air.

  The dress’s design was vintage and flowing but the cut was anything but modest. It flaunted my ink, the colors bursting against the cream color of the material, decorating me like diamonds, exposed by my hair piled high and loose on my head, tendrils escaping in dark waves down my back to flirt with the designs there.

  “You really do look beautiful,” Laney said softly from behind me.

  Our eyes met in the mirror and I smiled at her, relieved when she smiled back. “Thank you, Lane.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I wanted to ask her how she was doing. If she was okay. If she was going to shout out an objection during the ceremony, but I held my tongue. We had all agreed that we’d have to wait and see on this one. We’d wait and we’d pray she was exactly what she said she was – over it.

  I was in the camp that believed she really and truly was. Something had changed in her after the miscarriage. She was the same person but with different priorities, and reminding Kellen and I of the injustice of our love was not her biggest concern anymore. She’d experience real loss, and the dream of Kellen paled in comparison. He was a ghost to her. The mere memory of something burned to ash in the scorched earth of her heart.

  There was a knock at the bedroom door. Mom hurried to answer it, only opening it a crack.

  “No,” she said immediately. “It’s bad luck.”

  “Mom, let him in,” I laughed.

  She didn’t budge. “Kellen, no. Do not jinx this.”

  “We’re already dancing with the devil with your ex-girlfriend here, don’t you think?” Laney called to him. “Why push your luck?”

  I heard Kellen sigh. “Jenna?”

  I smiled. “Yeah?”

  “I’m not allowed to see you, apparently.”

  “It’s tradition. Can’t fight tradition.”

  “I could try.”

  “You’d lose.”

  “Can I give you something?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my contingent.”

  “Karen,” Kellen said in that deep and very persuasive manner that he had, “can I please give something to Jenna?”

  “Give it to me and I’ll give it to her,” she told him, holding out her hand.

  “No.”

  “Then no, you may not.”

  “Jenna?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Laney grumbled. She took my hand, shoved our mom away from the door, and pushed me up against it. The hand she was holding she produced to the crack, opening it for Kellen to see, but that was all he could see of me. “There. Make it quick. We all have lives to lead here.”

  “This is fun,” Kellen mumbled sarcastically.

  I shrugged. “I’m smiling. Aren’t you smiling, Kellen?”

  “No. But I will be.” His hand appeared, large and sun browned, holding a stark white square envelope that he pressed against my palm. “I need you to read this. I need you to understand why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I failed you and why I’m sorry.”

  My heart leapt in my throat. “Kellen, what are y
ou—“

  “Just read it. Please. Read it. It’s everything I don’t know how to say but I want you to understand. I need you to understand, Jenna. I owe you that and so much more. So many things I can’t manage.”

  I bit my lips hard, the blood draining beneath my dark red lipstick. I felt like I was falling. Like the world was tilting and spinning out. I felt like I’d be sick.

  “I’ll read it,” I whispered.

  He sighed with relief. “Good. That’s good. Thank you.”

  His hand disappeared, the door pulling closed behind him. His footsteps retreated down the hall. I waited for the sound of the door closing behind him. For the roar of his truck starting and fading into the distance.

  It never came.

  I tore open the envelope with shaking fingers and found two small sheets of paper folded neatly together. Kellen’s precise handwriting sprawled across the pages, covering them almost entirely.

  Nonpareil,

  I’m not good at feelings. At having them, understanding them, and especially at voicing them. Today as we get ready to say our vows to each other in front of friends and family I realize I’m not equipped for this. Not out loud. Not in public. Not like I’m expected to be.

  I considered writing my own vows. I wanted to do something for you, something that was beyond my bounds. I wanted to show you I was ready and that you didn’t need to worry. Ten minutes ago I realized I couldn’t do it. I tried and I wanted it, but I don’t have it in me and for that I’m sorry. I know you’re shaking your head right now and telling me in your mind that I have nothing to be sorry for, but I am, I’m sorry, and I’m telling you how I feel. That’s a victory. Please take it as one.