“You know,” she said while dropping the act, “Royal isn’t gonna let Kennedy go. There’s a reason he keeps manipulating her. She’s nothing but a game to him.”
That had me stopping in my tracks to turn around and look at her, and from the look on her face, she knew exactly what she’d done by saying what she did.
Her arms crossed over her chest, pushing up her already impressive cleavage, but my eyes didn’t stray from her face.
“Didn’t you know?” Mallory didn’t even bother to pretend that I knew what she was talking about. “All the trouble with your brother’s widow? All of that was Kennedy’s fault.” The spiteful woman walked away, leaving me standing there with my mouth hanging open in shock. “Why don’t you go ask her about it?”
I always thought the filter of red that people in a fit of rage described as descending over their eyes wasn’t a thing, but as I stood there watching her retreating back, I saw red. Dark and pulsing, it obstructed my entire field of vision until there was nothing but the hatred. And then the red shifted, changing even as I stood unblinking in the parking lot. Instead of rage, I saw Danny’s blood on my hands.
Danny!
My mind called out for him, even though I knew I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t be in the desert. The smell was wrong. Everything was wrong. But my body wouldn’t listen to logic. And just like that, I was there again.
Screams echoed in the open air. Gunfire not long behind. Shots fired all around me, but I couldn’t do anything except stare at Danny’s body. Not until I felt the hot metal of my rifle burning into the skin on my body. Through the pain of losing my brother. Constant and comforting, I knew I had to do something.
One last look at Danny, and I was off the ground. Rifle in hand. Running into war.
Body after body fell, friend and enemy alike, until I couldn’t breathe without feeling blood coating my mouth, mixed with the bitter taste of bile and regret.
Danny’s smile, grotesque and bloody, stayed in my mind’s eye, until it started to shift. Blond hair turned red, and blue eyes turned brown, until I wasn’t looking at my brother anymore. No. I was looking at Kennedy’s lifeless body, and every remaining part of my soul died.
Gasping for air, I caught my hand in the chain around my neck. The dog tag and the ring. The one from Kennedy. The only thing that brought me peace.
Breathe, Linc.
Like she stood right next to me, whispering in my ear, bringing me back to myself, Kennedy’s voice was everywhere.
Over and over again, I took a breath like Kennedy’s phantom ordered.
In. Out. Breathe, Linc. Come back to me.
The pleading in her voice caught me off guard. Kennedy didn’t do that. Kennedy never did that. Still, I concentrated on breathing. On pulling air into my lungs and holding it until keeping it in burned. Until I finally came back to myself. Back to Maine. Back to the parking lot where I’d been standing for who knew how long.
And with the return to my senses came a migraine the likes of which I hadn’t had in months. Excruciating pain hit the side of my head, blood pounding in my temple like a bugle during reveille, and there was no escaping it. Not until a pair of cold hands cradled either side of my head and my eyes snapped open.
“There you are,” Kennedy said quietly with eyes the size of dinner plates. “You were gone for a second there.”
“Are you real?”
Slam. Slam. Slam.
The pounding in my head kept a rapid pace, and my chest throbbed with the force of my heart pumping blood through my body, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the woman in front of me. My own guardian angel.
She tilted her head to the side, like she always did in my dreams, and any second she would break out into a smile. Right before I woke up alone and miserable.
Instead, her eyebrows furrowed while she stared up at me with concern, and a slight breeze picked up, blowing hair across her face.
“Linc… Are you okay?”
Her voice rolled over me, hitting every single nerve I had. I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t hallucinating.
Kennedy saw me in the middle of an attack.
Panic coursed through my veins, mixing with the adrenaline and made everything worse. My lungs decided it was a great time to join my heart in acting up, because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t do anything except stare at the woman I loved, unable to say a thing. My mouth went dry, like it was covered in glue and I couldn’t move my tongue to form words.
She stared at me, understanding dawning in the eyes I only ever saw in my dreams. Her mouth puckered and she pursed her lips while I could see the wheels turning in her head.
“Ken—”
She held a hand up, her eyes flashing with unspoken danger. “No. Don’t say a fucking word, Lincoln Hayes.”
The sudden change in her tone and posture had me on edge, but I didn’t move. Didn’t try and say anything else. I owed her that much.
“If you’re going to tell me that you stayed away from me for the past six years because of what I just saw, I’m going to gut you myself and feed you to the bear that lives behind my house in the summer.”
When I didn’t say anything, didn’t give her an answer to her question, her upper lip lifted in a silent snarl. But she must have thought better of whatever she was going to say, because she closed her mouth and bit her lip.
“Kennedy.” My throat burned as I forced the words out. “You don’t understand. I can’t be with you like this. Not and give you any type of happiness.”
Pouring my heart out in the middle of the parking lot like that wasn’t my first choice, but it’s not like I could stop once I started.
“Fuck that.” Her words broke. “Fuck that, Linc.”
“Kennedy.”
I reached for her, needing to touch her. Needing to reassure myself that the image of her dead in my arms was wrong. Thankfully, she let me. Whether it was a slip in judgment on her part or just the fact that she needed me as much as I needed her, I didn’t care. Her choked sob hit me harder than any bullet, and I curled my arms around her, pulling her as close to me as I could manage.
“Why?” she cried, and every wall I’d built up shattered. Every bridge I’d tried to burn with her was there, waiting and begging to be crossed. Every line I’d drawn in the sand, wiped away. “Why did you do this to me? To us?”
“I don’t want to bring children into this life, Kennedy.” The words broke me to admit, but I couldn’t hold that back from her. I had to give her the truth. All of it. “Not when I can’t even get through the day without knowing for sure this won’t happen. I remember that night.” The only night I had her in my arms. The night we talked about forever. “You want a family. You want kids. I see it in the way you look at Nox. In the way you were with those little ones in his class. And I can’t give you that.”
“You’re an idiot, Lincoln Hayes.” Her words cut, but they didn’t hold the venom I expected. “All I ever wanted was you.”
She was going to say more, I could feel the way she tensed in my arms, and I knew she was about to give me a piece of her mind.
“Get your hands off my fiancée.”
Kennedy flinched in my arms at the sound of Royal’s voice and I wanted to drive my fist through his face for interrupting.