All of them from Parker.
“I’m so fucked.”
7
Parker
When I got home the next morning, Nox crawled up into my bed with the remote in his hand and a smile on his face, erasing everything I’d gone through the night before. It didn’t matter that I was bone-tired or that I was ready to curl up and die. Nox always came first.
“I had a sleepover with Auntie Kenny.” He snuggled up to me, and I grimaced against the jarring motion, clenching my teeth so that I didn’t react. “She said that I should be nice to you today.” The impish smile on his face said that he’d been thinking about jumping on my bed, but he refrained. Thankfully.
“You scared me the other night, Nox.” I wrapped him in a hug. “You can’t go to the cemetery, or anywhere, like that again… Not on your own. You’re not old enough.”
Nox bristled. “I’m big enough. Besides, I had to go make sure that Boo and Daddy were okay.”
I swallowed down my instant regret at saying something and straightened my spine. Nox may be stubborn, but that wasn’t a trait he had inherited just from Danny.
“You can’t, Nox. We’re lucky that Officer Townsend was there to help you.”
“If he’s Auntie Kenny’s brother, why can’t I just call him Uncle Remy?”
Leave it to my kid to completely change the subject in the middle of me trying to discipline him.
“Aunt Kennedy is my best friend.” I had nothing else to say to that, and my chest clenched at the simple truth that Remy had been my best friend once upon a time too. He’d also been one of Danny’s best friends.
“You know what?” Nox sighed and shimmied until he was practically plastered up against my side. “I think I’m gonna call him Uncle Remy.”
“Okay.” I sighed, trying not to pull the stitches in the back of my head too badly as I moved. Getting cuddles with Nox was too special for me to let him know that he was hurting me. Especially when he wasn’t being rough in the slightest.
Completely oblivious to my plight, Nox told me all about his night with Kennedy. “Auntie Kenny said that some idiot made you hurt your head so I need to be soft. That means movie day, right?”
“Perfect.”
And that’s what we did, movie after movie. We even ordered food. Not once did we leave the house, and I couldn’t ask for a more perfect day. Later in the evening I heard a soft snore coming from Nox when he finally tuckered himself out before bed. I pressed a soft kiss to his head and covered him with one of my favorite blankets before moving to the living room.
I barely sat down on the couch before my front door opened and Kennedy herself marched in like she belonged there. Technically, I guess, she did. After all, I hadn’t been lying when I told Nox that she was my best friend. From the day I had found out I was pregnant, she stood by my side and helped. It didn’t matter that I was almost four years older than she was. Or that at twenty-one, I’d had a baby and she was only eighteen. She’d stepped up, just like I was her sister, and demanded that I let her into my life.
Which is probably why she had a massive bag of food with her when she closed the door. She always knew how to make everything alright.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come by earlier.” She kept her voice down as she set the food on the coffee table and plopped next to me on the couch. “We had some shit going down with the wedding.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting married,” I said, the disbelief in my voice evident. “Seriously. I thought you’d wait for Linc forever.”
A haunted expression, so stark and miserable, crossed over Kennedy’s face as she thought about Linc before she shook her head and it was gone. “I can’t wait forever. And he was never mine. Not really.”
I glanced at the dog tags hanging on my wall, knowing that Danny would want me to help his brother. Fuck, I didn’t even want Kennedy to marry the guy, either. Maybe I could talk some sense into her.
“But Royal, Kennedy? The guy’s a lawyer.” I didn’t really know anything about him but that, even though they’d been dating for a year. That, in and of itself, was a problem.
Kennedy lied to my face. “I’ve moved on, and I’m happy.”
How did I know she was lying? She swallowed right as she said that she was happy, and she closed her eyes. She wasn’t happy. And as I glanced at the dog tags hanging from the wall, I thought it was about time that I shared my biggest secret with her.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to me before you make a snap judgment or freak out or say anything remotely fucked up. I need you to just … be here for me.”
Kennedy, staring at me suspiciously, nodded. Although not before she grabbed one of the subs that she’d brought and lifted it into her lap, handing me one of the others.
“Okay.” I blew out a deep breath.
I’m sorry, Danny. But it’s time I told our secret…
“Danny and I … weren’t what everyone thinks. We weren’t together.”
Kennedy’s mouth hung open for so long that the bite of sandwich that she’d taken slipped out. It fell into her lap and she didn’t notice.
“Wha—?”
I nodded and then looked down at my sandwich, carefully opening it to make sure it didn’t spill out onto my lap. Then I took a bite, chewed slowly, and swallowed it while thinking about what I’d say next. Only after I’d done that did I go on.
“We didn’t love each other. At least … I didn’t love him, and that night… We were at a party together, all of us. Before they left for MOS school. After the party, Danny and I started drinking. He was trying to cheer me up. We shouldn’t have been drinking but we were… I was drunk.” Thinking about it brought back all of the painful memories from that night, and for a minute I thought about stopping. I couldn’t, though, not when I’d come this far.
With a cough to clear my throat, I put down my food and wiped my hands on my blanket, not caring about the crumbs for the moment.
“It was a mistake. I had too much to drink, and Danny … you know. Then he left for training school. We started talking about what happened while he was gone when he realized what he did, and everyone assumed we were dating. I let them because it was easier than trying to tell them what happened, or how I really felt about that night.”
“Oh my gods,” Kennedy whispered. “I remember when they came home, right before they deployed. I thought it was weird that you weren’t going to the party.”
I nodded. “We weren’t together. Then I found out I was pregnant. So together, we made a plan and got married, for Nox.”
“Then he went overseas and died.” She bit her lip when I nodded, confirming the story. “Oh, Parker.”
I didn’t look at her, though. Instead, I stared at the dog tags that I hung on the wall for Nox.
I’m sorry, Danny.
“I promised to keep the secret. To give him a chance. To see if it would work between the two of us because we were going to have a baby. And before we could even see what life would bring, he died.”