Kennedy (The Phoenix Club Girl Diaries #1)

by Addison Jane

That had become glaringly obvious.

  And as far as I knew or could assume, Crow knew that too, and that was why he was hanging around. I didn’t want to use it against her, I didn’t want her to feel like I was manipulating her to try and get the information we needed. But fuck! We still had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t like not having a fucking plan.

  We needed information. We needed to know exactly what it was we were up against.

  Kennedy licked her lips and nodded. “Can we go upstairs? I just… I feel more comfortable with just you.”

  I tossed the ratchet into the toolkit. “Come on.”

  KENNEDY

  Repo pushed the door closed behind him, and I made my way over to the bed. I needed to rip off the Band-aid. Just get it over with and finally put it in someone else's hands.

  This was the first time in a long time that I felt free. There’s nothing hanging over me. Nothing trying to break me down. No one relying on me. For once, I had someone else offering to keep me safe. To keep my sister safe. Something I hadn’t had since I was a little girl.

  “My mom died when I was sixteen,” I finally said, pulling my knees to my chest.

  I should have told them this stuff days ago. But all I gave them were the basics. I think because I knew that what I was going to tell them was going to make me look like a fool. I knew they would ask why I didn’t run, why I didn’t ask for help.

  I was being a fucking idiot.

  I knew I fucking was because I was scared.

  I was absolutely downright petrified.

  The thing was, though, Repo was right. So far, he’d done nothing but have my back, help me out, protect me from a man who had spent the last three years beating me into submission. He let me find comfort in him, even when I knew it made him feel uncomfortable—like sleeping next to me every damn night.

  He barely got any sleep.

  I knew that for a fact.

  Having me that close, it made him itch, but he did it because he knew it made me feel better.

  Do you know what it feels like to be used for so long as just a warm body? What it’s like to have men constantly want to put their hands on you, to touch you, to use you, and to hurt you. Your skin doesn’t feel like your own anymore because it’s been abused by so many hands.

  Then you meet the one guy who doesn’t need that physical touch.

  Who prefers to keep his distance.

  Which should make me feel unwanted and like a pariah.

  But in actual fact, it warms my body. It soothes me to know that for him, it isn't about my body anymore. It reminds me I don’t have to be that fucking girl anymore. And he isn't going to treat me like that girl.

  And you know fucking what?

  It made me feel special.

  And the moments we do have, where he reaches out for me, they feel real. And they feel important. And they feel different, and I can’t help but just want more of him.

  The magnetism that we’d had since the first time we’d met in the bar was still there. I still found myself pulled toward him in a crowded room. Repo made me feel different.

  I’d spent a lot of time over the past few years being scared. And even when I faced situations with my head held high and my shoulders back, it was only because I’d learned really early on how to fake it. If I faked it, it made me feel like I could survive it.

  When I was with Repo, I didn’t need to fake it. I didn’t need to try and convince myself that I was safe. Because a part of me just knew that I was.

  “When my mom died, my dad basically fell apart,” I explained, my voice barely above a whisper. I didn’t look up, but I felt Repo move closer until the bed dipped with his heavy body. That gave me the strength to continue, to keep telling this story that over the years I’d tried to forget. “He was like one those people… what do they call them?” She paused as she thought about the words. “Functioning alcoholics. He drank all night, but still got up, plastered on his fake face, and went to work.”

  I screwed up my nose at the memory.

  It was hard to describe.

  At night, he was the broken shell. He would sit on the sofa and cry and sob and drink himself into a stupor. I’d often get up in the middle of the night to find him covered in his own vomit, beer spilled across the carpet, and so many other scenarios that no fucking teenager should ever have to see their parents in. Then the next morning, by the time I got Brook up for school, he’d be showered, shaved, with a new suit and tie on, looking fresh and new.

  Fooling everyone into thinking he was this perfect parent. But he wasn’t. I was the fucking parent.

  I gritted my teeth, biting back the tears. “I looked after Brooklyn. I made sure we had groceries. I made sure she got to school every morning, then I cleaned the house, I made dinner, I cleaned up my dad’s mess. And you know what? I didn’t resent him for a single moment because I knew with each day that went by the pain would be a little less.”

  “You hoped it would be,” Repo corrected as if he’d already heard the story. “But your father wasn’t like you, he wasn’t resilient, he didn’t bounce back, and he sure as fucking hell didn’t look after you and your sister or think, ‘man I need to fucking sort my life out.’”

  Tears dripped onto my cheeks.

  He knew.

  “No,” I rasped. “He didn’t.”

  It still hurt just as much as it did back then.

  I’d been through some of the most intense physical pain. I’d had my ribs broken. I’d had my jaw dislocated. I’d had my nose broken more times than I can remember. But the most pain I’d ever experienced was the day I realized that I hadn’t just lost one parent. It was the day I realized my dad had died right alongside my mom, and he was never coming back.

  Repo’s thumb brushed the tears from my cheek which forced me to take a shaky breath and unconsciously, I leaned toward him. His body stilled, frozen, when my head came to rest on his shoulder.

  I thought maybe this was too much. I needed this comfort but maybe he wasn’t ready to give it. Turns out, the man could still surprise me.

  “Tell me where Crow came into the picture,” he asked, his voice quiet, but rigid.

  I pressed my lips together, contemplating where to start.

  “It’d been over a week since I’d seen my dad,” I murmured, sinking further into the bed. “Crow showed up banging on the door in the middle of the night, demanding to speak to my dad. I told him I hadn’t seen my dad for over a week. He left, then came back a few days later letting me know what had happened.”

  “Tell me,” Repo urged.

  “He’d been helping Red Riot hide their money, and he’d been doing a pretty good job of it, too. I wasn’t sure how long they’d been working together, but it seemed like they’d become buddies.” I screwed up my nose at the thought of anyone thinking Crow was any kind of fucking buddy. “Turned out, the reason my dad had disappeared was because he’d taken the money that Red Riot was stashing, and he’d run off with it.”

  “Say fucking what now?” Repo snapped, leaping off the bed and onto his feet, his eyes blazing in anger. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  I laid back on the bed and laughed, though the sound was completely lacking any kind of actual humor. “That’s where I come in,” I continued, knowing that things were only about to get worse. “Crow told me that I had two options.”

  “Fucking Christ,” Repo cursed, lifting his hands and running his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his face.

  “He said either I had to pay back the money that my dad had stolen, or they would take Brooklyn and sell her to pay it back.” Even saying those words out loud forced me to swallow back the bile that instantly forced its way up my throat. The tears came next, the burn you feel as they fight to get past your defenses. “She was fucking thirteen.”

  Crunch.

  I jumped and scurried off the side of the bed, pressing myself against the wall on the opposite side. I swallowed the lump in my throat, my eyes widening
at the sight of the hole now in the plasterboard. Repo was still staring at it as he pulled his fist back. His knuckles were red and one of them looking like it could have actually split open with blood pooling at the top.

  “Motherfucker,” he cursed, shaking his head.

  The door to the bedroom slammed open causing me to jump out of my skin again, and Myth rushed inside, his eyes focused and looking around, assessing the room until he was satisfied there wasn’t any danger. His shoulders relaxed. “What the fuck is going on?”

  His eyes moved across the room to where I was still frozen, unable to force my body to move.

  “Kennedy? You okay?” Myth asked, his tone soft. It was what I needed.

  My body began to relax, and I took a breath before nodding my head. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Repo turned around, his eyes moving from the brand-new hole in the wall to his fist where blood was now dripping onto the hardwood floor. I moved then, rushing into the bathroom and grabbing some tissue paper.

  I could hear Myth talking to Repo. “You’re freaking her out, man,” Myth warned, realizing that something had gone down. “You need to calm your ass down.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him as I rounded the bed to where Repo was now leaning back against the damaged wall with his nose screwed up. I looked over my shoulder at Myth. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”

  Myth looked past me, his eyes narrowing on his brother for a brief second before he finally deemed the situation okay. He backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Another couple of deep voices filled the hallway, but they began to disappear as they moved away, Myth obviously placating them.

  I turned my attention back to Repo who was watching me silently. “Sorry if I scared you,” he apologized, his voice gritty and thick. “If there’s one thing you need to know about me, it’s that I don’t do so great with the idea of children being abused.”

  I wanted to ask why. I sensed maybe if I did, he might just share it with me too, and maybe that would give me a little more insight into the kind of man I was dealing with. But right at the moment, I honestly didn’t care because just those few words told me everything I needed to know.

  He had a good heart.

  He wasn’t perfect.

  And I knew that to get that enforcer patch that he wore so proudly, he’d had to do… things. But I didn’t care. I’d had to do things too. Things that might not exactly make me the kind of woman who should be worthy of a man so protective and proud, but it didn’t change the fact that not fucking once, had he made me feel like I was any less worthy of respect.

  “Pass me your hand.”

  Repo raised an eyebrow, looking at me like maybe I’d suddenly forgotten one major flaw of his. I hadn’t, though. I was just about to push his boundaries further than I’m sure they’d been pushed in a long fucking time. “I’ll do—”

  “Pass me your hand,” I said again, this time a little sterner.

  “Kennedy,” he growled, gritting his teeth.

  “Micah,” I threw back, completely throwing him off by using his real name.

  “How did y—” he stopped himself, then continued, “Meyah,” he growled in disdain.

  Ignoring him, I reached out and grabbed his hand pulling it toward me. His body jerked, and he shoved off the wall, standing straight, his body growing like if I had have been any other person, he would have laid me out on my ass by now.

  Gently, I held his hand in mine while I dabbed at the top with the tissue paper blotting at the blood. I had to fight a smile, but the corners of my mouth kept pulling up the longer I held him there.

  Holy shit.

  He was letting me touch him.

  The palm of his hand was rough like a real man’s working hands, and I was suddenly very aware of how large they were compared to mine. Repo stayed completely silent as I cleaned away the blood. The split was only small, so it didn’t take much. I reached over and placed the bloody tissue on the top of his dresser keeping my eyes focused on his hand. I couldn’t help myself. I was pushing it, but I didn’t care. I wanted to touch him. Everything about this man made me feel more. I felt happier, I felt safer, I felt like I deserved more.

  “It’s stopped now,” I murmured, wanting to push further but deciding that maybe it was enough for the day. “Do you need me to get you a Band-aid?” I took a deep breath before forcing my eyes to look up at him beneath my heavy lashes. His eyes, they caught me off guard every damn time, the intensity that he held in them, the ability for them to both seem hard like ice and soft like a clear sky at the same time.

  “You’re opening something I’m not sure you’re ready for,” he warned, his voice gruff and tense, obviously affected. “This is your only warning.”

  My cheeks flushed, and I pulled my lip in between my teeth.

  I had confidence—well, let’s just say I could fake confidence, but Repo, the man was straight up, no fucking around, said what he needed to say and was completely fucking honest about everything. And I was finding that to be something that was really freaking attractive.

  “Goddammit,” he cursed. “Come on, we need to go fill Shotgun in on this shit, and let Myth know that he doesn’t have to punch me for scaring you.”

  “Oka—”

  “And before I decide to do something fucking else,” he added under his breath which only made me smile, knowing that it wasn’t just me feeling this swirling tornado around us.

  He grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the door. My heart skipped. He held it all the way down the hallway and down the stairs like it was the most natural thing in the world. And I knew then that things had just changed.

  And suddenly, my shitty past and its story had finally given me something good.

  I hoped.

  REPO

  Myth and I pulled into the clubhouse cruising slowly, our bikes just rumbling beneath us. We’d been gone since yesterday having headed over to Los Angeles with Shake. His little sister lives over there, and she’d been having some trouble with a little street gang whose leader seemed to have a hard-on for making her life a living hell.

  Stupid fucking kids.

  It was nine o’clock on Saturday night, so basically, everyone would be at Empire working by now, but there were still a few lights on inside the car bays and the clubhouse itself.

  We parked and walked in through the open roller doors, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when a grinder started up suddenly.

  “Fucking Christ!” Myth yelled in annoyance, stomping toward what I thought was just a car that had been left there overnight for work tomorrow, but that I could now see two legs sticking out from underneath.

  Myth grabbed the legs and the grinder stopped instantly before he yanked Crush out from beneath the old American Muscle Mustang. Myth and Crush had a love-hate relationship at the best of times, so I just stood back and grinned.

  “The fuck are you doing?” Myth demanded shaking his head.

  Crush pulled off his safety goggles and sat up. “Man, I have to get this car done. The guy brought it in about an hour ago, said if we could have her fixed by the morning, he’d pay twice what the repairs were worth.”

  There was one thing about Crush, the guy acted like a fucking dumb blond a lot of the time, but he was full of heart, loyal to the bone, and he knew cars like the back of his hand. If he couldn’t fix it, it couldn’t be fixed.

  “Actually…” Crush drawled. “I could really use another pair of hands. I dunno if I can get it done on my own.”

  Myth looked over at me, and I held up my hands walking backward with a grin. “I’m going to find Kennedy. This has your name all over it.”

  Myth cursed, but he started to remove his club cut. “You piss me off, I’m dropping this car on your fucking head. Got it?”

  I was already out the door. I just knew that when I got back from Empire, those two were going to be at each other’s throats or dead maybe. Myth doesn’t often make promises he won’t keep. At that stage, I didn’t really give
a fuck, I just wanted to find Kennedy.

  Since things got intense the other night, I couldn’t stop fucking touching her. And not even in a sexual way. Since she’d spilled her heart out to me and pushed my boundaries way past their limits, it was like things had instantly changed. And to be quite honest, I really wasn’t quite sure how. It was new.

  She’d taken my hand in hers, and for a few seconds, I had to fight the urge to punch a second hole in the wall, but then, it’d been better. Not like I was suddenly fucking cured, but like the sensation was bearable, and one I wanted to put up with if it meant being that little bit closer to her.

  Fuck! I sounded like a pansy, but I didn’t give a flying fuck.

  Noticing that the bar and main room were entirely fucking empty, I spotted Shotgun’s light on and headed to his office.

  “You seen Kennedy?” I asked as I stepped right inside, not expecting to find him doing up his pants and Angel still naked and searching for hers. I just rolled my eyes and smirked, leaning against the doorframe.

  “You ever heard of knocking?” Shotgun asked casually, really not that concerned about it. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d caught him fucking one of the girls. The boys tried to keep it confined to bedrooms but sometimes, shit just didn’t happen that way.

  “You ever heard of shutting your door while you’re fucking?” I threw back.

  Angel giggled softly as she jumped around, pulling her skin-tight jeans on before throwing her tank top over her head. “Kennedy went to Empire with Meyah. They had some girls call in sick tonight. Which FYI, I would consider looking into given that they were three friends who I heard talking about a frat party which just happens to be tonight. Kennedy offered to help tend the bar until Meyah could figure out something else.”

  Shotgun instantly looked ten times more annoyed. “Angel, can you get me some kind of proof they were at the frat party? We don’t need fucking staff like that screwing with the club.”

  Angel shrugged, and I stepped out of the way as she walked toward me. “Sure. No doubt someone will Facebook or Instagram pictures. I’m sure I’ll find something.”