by Tracey Ward
But there were others. Battles he was fighting alone and I would help him if I could. If he’d let me. So I stayed silent and I stayed alive because you have to keep moving, keep fighting, because as a wise man with bloodied knuckles and a brilliant smile once told me, it’s not always about winning. It’s about not giving up. You have to see things through to the end to find out who you really are, what you’re truly made of. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose, but when you know you’ve given it everything you’ve got, at least you have no regrets.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Can I ask a question about what you said tonight?” I asked, digging into my ice cream and staring out at the ocean.
The sun was close to setting, its wan yellow rays glistening off the water and winking like diamonds. I was happy. I was content and it was partly because I had my favorite ice cream, partly because my toes were sunk deep into the cool beneath the top layer of sun-warmed sand, but mostly it was because of Kellen. Because he was eating his own ice cream which he had correctly ordered and was loving it. He was happy and he was there beside me and life was lovely.
“You can ask,” he allowed.
I smirked at him. “But it doesn’t mean you’ll answer. I know. It’s an easy one. I think.”
I wasn’t stupid enough to ask about the real things he said in therapy. About the things he’d warned me he would never speak of again. I knew better. I knew those things were buried deep just as they’d always been and maybe he’d let them go someday or maybe they’d always be there, but for now he was lighter than I’d ever seen him. He was buoyant. Free. It was beautiful.
“Hit me.”
“My dad didn’t give me the money for my tattoo parlor, did he?”
Kellen froze, his spoon halfway to his mouth. He pinched his lips together for a second then opened them to slide the spoon inside. He shook his head faintly.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I pressed. “You did it with the money your dad gave your mom.”
“We never touched it,” he said reluctantly. “It sat in a bank account for my entire life building every time he gave us more, which was every month. He was some high roller that came through the casino she worked at. He didn’t have a family and he didn’t want one but he told her he’d always take care of her. The year I was born she added my name to the account and never looked at it again. I didn’t know about it until I was eighteen. Your dad helped me manage it. I’ve invested some and it’s been building. I give to charities a lot. I paid for college with it. I offered to pay for school for you and Laney but your dad wouldn’t let me.”
“Thank God!”
Kellen chuckled. “Your dad is doing just fine. He didn’t need my help. But I wanted to give back to you guys somehow for everything you’d given me. And money was all I had.”
“It’s not all you had,” I protested, bumping his shoulder with mine. “You were my tutor, remember? You had knowledge.”
“I guess that’s true,” he said grinning.
“Thank you,” I told him, turning serious.
“You’re welcome. You didn’t need my help that much. You’re smart, Jenna. You just needed focus.”
“No, not for the tutoring. For the shop. I’m going to pay you back.”
“Like hell,” he laughed.
“I mean it.”
“Me too.”
“Kellen.”
“Jenna.”
I sighed, knowing it was a losing battle but one I’d never stop fighting.
“Can I ask another question?”
“Go for it.”
“Why’d you ask Laney to marry you?” I asked, feeling mutinous to my sister but I had to know.
“Going for a tough one, huh?”
“I’m striking while the iron is hot.”
“Hmm.” He sighed, putting down his ice cream and sitting back on his hands.
I watched him stretch his long legs out in front of him, wiggling his toes until the sand dusted off them. I did the same, stretching my legs beside his. My feet almost reached as far, the long length of them looking to me like they went on for miles. Kellen nudged my bare foot with his.
“I love your body,” he mumbled, staring at our feet side by side.
I laughed, disbelieving. “There’s a lot to love.”
“You’re so hung up on your height.”
“It’s hard to miss it.”
“I know. It’s one of the things I love about the way you’re built. You’re tall. You’re strong. But you’re so fucking graceful too. Like a whisper.”
I had no words. Kellen shifted closer until his hip was against mine. Until our legs were pressed together and our feet were touching ever so slightly. I looked back over my shoulder at where he was leaning back and I found him watching me.
“I love the way you’re built too.”
He grinned crookedly. “Because I’m so big and tough.”
“I wasn’t talking about your body. It’s beautiful, but it’s not even the best part of you.”
“What is?”
“Your mind.”
He reached up and tapped the spot under his hair where the scar from his accident was hidden. “It’s not what it used to be.”
“You know what’s really sexy to me about you in the ring?” I asked, ignoring him. “It’s how fast you are. And yeah, that’s your body and your muscles and hours and hours of training. But what it really comes down to is your mind. It’s how fast you can react, plan, implement. You’re playing an elaborate game of chess out there and you’re doing it on fast forward. It’s amazing to watch.”
Kellen didn’t respond so I let it lie. I looked out over the water and watched the sun dip closer to its rolling surface. When Kellen spoke again, I’d forgotten I’d asked him a question.
“I asked Laney because I was copying a pattern. I didn’t know it then, but I was following after your dad. I’d idolized him. That’s why I wanted to be a lawyer. It’s why I wanted to marry Laney, even if we obviously didn’t work. But then that kiss with you, how I felt about you… I don’t know. If you’d been eighteen, I think things would have turned out differently. I wouldn’t have stopped it. But I also don’t know if we would have survived it. I probably would have run in the end. I wasn’t ready to see what I was doing to my life. To see that it wasn’t mine. But then the wedding started closing in and I gave up boxing and I couldn’t ignore it. I hated my own life. I wasn’t enjoying my job, I wasn’t in love with Laney and what finally opened my eyes to all of it was the accident and the couch.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “The brown couch? The one you decided you couldn’t stand?”
“Yeah. Laney swore up and down that before the accident I said I loved it. Maybe I did. I still can’t remember buying it. But when I saw it I couldn’t imagine ever liking it. That was the last straw for some reason. The second I saw it I knew I was breaking things off with her. That’s why when I saw you in the bathroom I couldn’t stop myself. I was so fed up and just fucking done. I wanted you, I’d known that for years, and when I saw you there… I lost it. But what really got me was when I woke up from the coma. You were the first face I saw. You were exactly who I needed. It should have been Laney, but it was you. That moment clarified a lot of things for me. That’s when I owned up to exactly how I felt about you.”
I sighed shakily, glancing back at him. “Wow.”
He grinned. “What?”
“You just told me a lot. Like a lot a lot.”
“It’s not as much of a win as it seems like. I just talked about all of this with Ben in our last session. You should have seen him trying to help me sort through it all.”
“Sounds like therapy is working then.”
“It is,” he agreed, nodding but not looking at me.
“What is it?”
“What is what?”
“What’s bothering you about therapy?”
He sat up straight beside me, his shoulder brushing against mine. “I’ve got a long w
ay to go. I wanted to have my life back before I started anything with you. I wanted a job lined up and to give you and Laney a chance to be okay again.”
“I can wait. I told you I would.”
“You already have been for years.”
I grinned sadly. “I’m very patient.”
Kellen looked up at me, his eyes dark in the bright sun. “I’m not. I’m done. You already know about the job,” his eyes clouded over, “among other things. I don’t want to wait anymore, Jen.”
“Are you asking me to be your girl, Kellen?”
“I’m asking you to let me try to be your man.”
My stomach flipped. “I think I can do that.”
“It won’t be pretty,” he warned me.
“I don’t like pretty. I like real. I’ve never asked you for roses and sonnets or chocolates. I know who you are and all I’ve ever wanted is you.”
He leaned in and kissed me slowly. It was brief, just his lips brushing across mine for a moment, but it was bliss.
When he pulled back his eyes were still dark and doubtful. He was worried. I understood why. I was worried too because he was right, it was going to be ugly at times. Being with Kellen was never going to be easy, I’d always known that. But I wasn’t blind and I wasn’t weak. I was full of piss and fight and no bout was ever won by never stepping into the ring.
“What does Dr. Phillips think of this?” I asked. “Does he think you’re ready?”
“He’s been telling me that if I could make it through a session like today with you there then he would consider me ready so that’s what I’ve been shooting for. I would never have let Laney in that room so I guess he’s right.” He grimaced slightly. “He wants me to contact my dad to get some closure. I’m not ready for that yet. Not by a long shot. He also asked me to try to find some of my family on my mom’s side. Get that sense that I’m not alone in the world, I guess.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it? I think it’s stupid. I’m not alone. I know that.”
“But family is different. They’re your blood. You should know them if you can. Do you know where any of them are?”
“Ireland.”
“You found them already?”
He looked away, toward his truck. Toward an escape. “Yeah. I found some cousins. I have an aunt. Two uncles.”
“I thought your mom was an only child.”
“From that marriage, yeah. But my grandpa was married once before. My grandma was his mistress who he left his family for. Then she left him and he left Ireland.”
“When are you going to go?”
“To Ireland?” he asked incredulously. “Never.”
“Seriously? You have family out there and you won’t contact them?”
“I already did. They want me to come meet everyone. I’m just not going.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I don’t know those people.”
“Do you know how you get to know people? You meet them. In person.”
He didn’t answer me and that didn’t surprise me. He stared out over the ocean, his face blank. Detached. He was gone.
I went for the knockout punch.
“Wouldn’t you like to watch the sunset over your mother’s ocean?”
I listened to him breathe beside me, his shoulder shifting slightly with the rising and falling of his chest. It felt in sync with the waves. Like the tide was breathing into him, pulling out of him. Calling to him.
“Will you go with me?” he finally asked faintly, his eyes fixed on the water.
I nodded. “I’ll book our tickets tonight.”
***
We argued about it for hours but we decided not to leave for another six months. Kellen was insistent that I couldn’t leave with a business to launch and I insisted that I had to have a whole new roof installed soon so the place couldn’t open for at least a month anyway. In the end he won when he said he simply wasn’t ready. He wanted more time, more sessions with Ben. He also wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to run from me. I was amazed and afraid when he admitted that.
We made love that night in his apartment with the windows open so the cool evening air could blow through the room. It chilled our exposed skin, making everything more sensitive. Hot felt hotter, cold gave me shivers and with the open window we struggled to remain as silent as possible. It was a battle but it somehow made it so much more than it could have been. It was all inside of us, all on the surface begging to burst out and when I looked in his eyes I could see it there in the hidden depths of him. We fell asleep afterward, a small gap of cold air between us on the bed but it was under the same blanket. The same roof. The same sky.
In the morning he asked me to stay so I did. I stuck around the entire day. It wasn’t perfect. There were times when he got that far away look on his face, when he shut down and wouldn’t look at me. But as the day progressed and we simply hung out as we always had, he came back to me. His eyes grew warmer, his laugh was fuller and by the time we went out to get dinner that evening, Kellen was himself again. He was him with me, his hand holding mine as we walked, and even though it was a little thing, it felt like everything.
Over the next few months we didn’t spend every night together. I was busy getting the store ready to open. He found a job with a local fire department and started his training. Both of our hours were insane and it would have been easy to lose track of each other but we never did. On the nights we did see each other, we stayed together as long as life would allow. Eventually Kellen’s eyes would become distant less, though it never stopped entirely. He had trouble talking to me about simple things sometimes, but when he got mad or frustrated he didn’t run. He stayed and he fought. He fought for me, for us.
We didn’t always win, but we never gave up.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
“What souvenir are you going to bring me? I want a shamrock. Or a four leaf clover. Are those different?”
I tuned out Sam’s constant questioning to try and focus on the spreadsheet I was looking at. I was tweaking the schedule for the two weeks that I’d be gone with Kellen in Ireland. I had thought it was all worked out but at the last minute one of my artists had up and quit. No notice. Just decided they wanted to move on to somewhere bigger and better which left me and the entire shop in a lurch. The joys of being the boss.
“We might have to close a couple of days,” I muttered to myself, trying to figure out how I was going to keep the shop open and running with one licensed tattoo artist.
“I don’t know why you don’t close the shop entirely while you’re gone,” Sam argued. “Everyone coming in is asking for you. Only the walk-ins are willing to work with Kristopher or Angie.”
“Fucking Angie,” I grumbled.
“I told you not to hire her.”
“I know.”
“You should have listened to me.”
“I know.”
“Just like you should listen to me now.”
“Oh my God, fine!” I shouted, pushing away from the desk. “You take care of it. I have a flight to catch.”
“Good! Catch your flight then. Get me that shamrock.”
I grinned at her, grabbing my bag. “I thought you wanted a four leaf clover.”
“Are they different?” she asked again, getting impatient.
I shrugged as I pushed out the door. I shouted over my shoulder, “Close Tuesday through Wednesday!”
“Shamrock!”
As I burst outside, Kellen took my bag from me and lifted it easily into the back of his truck.
“What was that about?”
“I don’t know. That bitch is crazy.”
I climbed inside the truck. Kellen jumped in beside me and pulled us out onto the street just as my phone rang.
“Hey,” I answered with a grin.
“What’s up, bitch?” Laney asked happily.
I didn’t flinch at the phrasing. Since that afternoon in my apartment when Kel
len and I had broken the news about our mistake, Laney had taken to calling me ‘bitch.’ At first it had been out of anger. Then it started to sound more grudging. Eventually it simply became habit. It was a scar from a wound I’d inflicted on myself and I bore it happily. She’d eventually come to forgive me for what had happened, though she still hated Kellen with all her heart. I hoped someday that would fade, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
“Not much. On our way to the airport,” I told her.
“Kellen’s with you now?”
“Yep.”
“Tell him to eat shit for me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Silence. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”
“No.”
“Fine. Are you excited for the trip?”
“Of course, yeah. I can’t imagine how beautiful it will be.”
“Is Dickbag nervous?”
I glanced at Kellen sideways. He looked utterly calm but I knew that didn’t mean anything.
“I think so. And watch it.”
“You watch it. I gotta go. I called to say goodbye and have fun. Be safe!”
“I will. Thanks, Lane.”
“No prob. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I slipped my phone into my purse, staring out the window at the city as it swept by.
“Dickbag, huh?” Kellen asked.
I laughed. “It’s better than what she used to call you. It’s progress.”
“I guess. And the answer is yes.”
“Yes to what?”
He licked his lips. “I’m nervous.”
“I can understand that,” I said quietly.
“It helps. The fact that you’re here. It helps. A lot.”
“Well then I’m glad you’re letting me come with you.”
“There’s no one I’d rather be with.”
