“She’s not your fiancée, Royal.” I didn’t bother trying to hide the venom in my voice. “She hasn’t been since you did something to hurt her. I told you to stay the hell away from her. I meant it. That includes sending Mallory to torment her or her family.”
The look in his beady little eyes told me that he never expected to get caught, and I was only too happy to tell him how I found out.
“Mallory, your precious little toy, told me what you did to Parker. Because you wanted to punish Kennedy, no doubt.” I held her tighter when the woman in question tried to pull away. “It’s not going to work. You’re not going to get her. She’s not yours.”
“I fixed what you broke,” Royal snarled, completely ignoring the fact that we were still standing in the middle of the parking lot. “She’ll come back to me.”
“No. You didn’t. You tried to twist and manipulate me and make me into something I wasn’t.” Kennedy’s words were slightly muffled by my chest, but she pushed away, and I let her go, supporting her silently while she handled her shit.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Royal tried to grab her by the arm but stopped when he saw the look on my face.
“No.” Kennedy shook her head. “We won’t.”
The sound of car doors slamming caught my attention, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Remy and Dom both standing next to their cruisers. They weren’t alone, either. There were at least four other cops and two deputies standing there with their attention focused solely on us.
Royal, pissed and ready for a fight, looked like he was about to get physical, when Kennedy turned around to face me.
Before I could second-guess myself, I pulled her into my arms. Right before I pressed my lips to hers, she smiled.
“Finally.”
9
Kennedy
Sitting in the dark in my living room while I stared out the window might make anyone in the world think I was crazy. Hell, even I thought I was crazy. But I had to make sure Linc wasn’t out there.
After the kiss, he’d practically run in the opposite direction, leaving me panting and wanting more.
More.
First, though, I had to beat some sense into him. So I was waiting. In the dark. Until I was sure that he’d gone home. After all, the best ambushes happen on friendly territory. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the only way to get Linc to open up about whatever the fuck had happened, and to give us a chance, was to knock him on his ass and make him listen.
Briefly, I thought about grabbing the pair of bright-pink furry handcuffs that Parker got me for my birthday out of the side drawer next to my bed, but quickly threw that thought out the window.
I knew about post-traumatic stress. Between a family full of former military men, losing one of my sisters, and the chaos and stress of working as a dispatcher, it was almost a part of my everyday life.
While I sat in the dark, with the dim light in my window the only constant, I thought about that night. The night I took back myself, my body, my sexuality. The night I took Linc for my own.
After the sex, after he helped me claim a piece of my soul that was stolen, he let me sleep. He didn’t leave, even though we were in my parents’ house. Instead, he held me in his arms and talked about our future together.
Everything we’d have when he got out of the Marine Corps. A life. Our family. Having children together. The life we should have had.
And in the early light of the morning, I snuck out to breathe. And to get coffee. But they’d been recalled. Deploying for the first time. Only after I made Linc swear to bring my brother home did I go back into my room to see the dog tag.
Linc, leaving a piece of himself for me, gave me everything I ever needed or wanted. I wrote him, giving him the only thing I could, but it had to be right. Letter after letter, I wrote my feelings down until I got it perfect. Some were long enough to be books, and I threw them away. Others were too short, or not the one. And then one day when I least expected it, the words came, and I finally had everything I wanted to say, exactly the way it needed to be said. I sent him the ring my grandmother gave me before she died, and I made him a promise I’d keep for the rest of my life.
Dear Linc,
I’ll wait for you. That’s my promise. When you come home and you’re ready, we’ll build that life. The one you talked about when you thought I was sleeping.
It’ll only ever be you.
Kennedy
I wore his dog tag around my neck every day, clenching it in my hand until I knew every rise and indent in the metal that spelled out every detail of Linc’s life. I knew the stamp of metal spelling his name, his birthdate, even his blood type. Every flaw and scratch in the surface, and every groove from where it had been polished down. I clutched it while I prayed every single day for his safety, and I cried while holding it against my heart after the explosion that killed Danny. The one that ultimately tore Linc out of my life.
Linc’s dog tag never left my neck. I wore it the day I sat in the back pew during Danny’s funeral, waiting for him to come to me. I wore it when I knocked on his parents’ door and got told he wouldn’t see me. I kept it on even after Linc refused to talk to me for years. What started as a way to stay close to him became something more.
The piece of metal that always hung around my neck became the lifeline that reminded me of everything I’d struggled for in my life. The silent promise of a future that I never got to have. The future I’d give anything to get back. And even as I tried to move on, eventually dating Royal, and agreeing to marry him, I never took Linc’s dog tag off my neck.
Until the day Royal ripped it from my body and beat me with the metal chain I’d been so proud of. He hit me over and over again, until he destroyed every piece of my confidence. I’d never forget the chain cutting into my skin like I was his property, and not the woman he claimed to love.
He used it like a whip, not caring that it sliced into my skin, flinging blood onto the walls. Then, while he was gasping for air and the hits became erratic, the dog tag dropped from the chain in the silence, plopping into a pool of my blood. Shining, like a silver medallion in the sea of my torment, it became the only thing I could see. The only reason I kept pulling gasps of broken air deep into my lungs, struggling to breathe at all.
Linc’s smile, the way he held me in his arms after I told him he didn’t have to stay. The memory of the man I loved more than anything before or after him, kept me alive on the worst night of my life.
Like a bomb going off, Royal dropped the chain and fell to his knees, begging and pleading for me to be okay. But I was gone. Too far gone to answer him. To give him anything anymore. Through the pain, my eyes never left that dog tag. The promise of a future, the hope that we’d have a family together, it’s the only thing that kept me alive.
And when I could move, I ran. I should have gone to my parents, or my brother, but I didn’t. Instead, I went to the hospital in another county, to be seen by doctors who didn’t grow up with my family, and reported my incident as a mugging by someone I never saw. Then Parker picked me up from the hospital, insisting I stay with her after what happened with Nox, and I never went back to Royal.