Knockout (17 page)

“No, I know that,” he admitted, his tone softening. “I wouldn’t be marrying her if she were that girl. I get that this is a dream for her. It’s something she’s thought about her whole life and she wants it to be perfect. I just don’t understand a little girl sitting in her room dreaming of doves.” He reached out to take the bottle from me. His fingers didn’t just brush mine. They covered them, sliding down them slowly as he pulled the now warm bottle from my grasp. “What about you? What’s your aviary fantasy?”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Weddings and doves and puffy white dresses? I don’t know. That’s never been me.”

“What is you, then?”

I looked away from him, hurting a little inside. “You’ve known me for years. You don’t know?”

“You,” he said thoughtfully, pausing for a long time. “You are an old dance hall.”

I laughed. “An old dance hall?”

He grinned crookedly. “Yeah. Or a recovered warehouse. Maybe a waterfall or the redwoods. I’m not sure, but I know what you’re not. You’re not the Waldorf-Astoria or a ballroom or the top of the Eiffel Tower. You’re a backyard BBQ by the pool with a beer in your hand and a dress that weighs less than you do.”

I pursed my lips and nod in agreement. “I could be into that.”

“No orchestra or place settings.”

“No ten tier cakes.”

“No ice sculptures.”

“No tuxedos.”

Kellen grimaced. “No, stop. You’re killing me.”

“Not a tux fan?”

“Who is? It’s too confining. I always feel like I’m going to rip the seams in the shoulders.”

“Then I say don’t wear one. It’s your wedding too, you know?”

He chuckled. “You wouldn’t make me wear one, huh?”

“Nope.” I cocked my head sideways, looking him over. He smiled at my scrutiny. “I’m thinking… the jeans that you’re wearing right now cause they’re your favorite and you’re comfortable in them—“

“What? These old things?” he asked drolly.

I smiled. “Well and your ass looks great in them.”

His eyebrows shot straight up. “Really?”

“Pft!” I scoffed. “As if you didn’t know. As if that’s not why they’re your favorite.”

“Guilty. What else. These jeans and…”

“A suit jacket. Unbuttoned, of course. And that T-shirt. It suits your eyes.”

“So you’re saying if I put on a suit jacket right now, you’d count me ready to be married?” he asked skeptically.

I shrugged, looking away out over the park and the couples strolling in the sunshine. “What you’re wearing doesn’t make you ready to be married. If a guy is happy and sure that waiting for me at the end of that aisle is where he wants to be, I don’t care what clothes he has on cause his eyes are all I’m going to see.”

Day Drunk Jenna is apparently very transparent and a little whimsical. I was surprised by my own words. Maybe even a little embarrassed.

“I’m marrying the wrong sister,” Kellen said, his voice surprisingly deep.

My eyes snapped to his. He was looking at me. Staring, really and it was strange. Different. He was breathing calm and even but there was something to that look that made my heart pound in my chest. It created an urgency in the air around us that was making it hard to breathe. It was vaguely familiar. A thickening to the atmosphere. A storm building. The taste of peanut butter and sugar.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” I whispered.

He nodded, his dark eyes never leaving mine. Never letting me go. “I know.”

“Take it back.”

“No.”

I blinked, shocked and scared of where this was going.

“Why?” I breathed.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“What do you mean? You’re marrying my sister, that’s what you’re doing.”

“Am I?” he demanded, his voice growing tense.

“Are you?” I challenged, my heart racing.

He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. There’s so much momentum.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re buying a house? Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Yeah. We’re buying a house and we’ve been buying all this new furniture for it. Filling it with stuff to start this life and I’m working my way up in your dad’s firm and I’m on this track, this bullet train to this place but I don’t know where it’s going and I don’t know—“

He stopped himself. Cut himself off abruptly as though he had suddenly heard himself and he was horrified by what he had been saying. But I don’t think that made it any less true.

“Kellen.”

He stood up quickly, stumbling slightly to the right. “We should get back. Laney will wonder where we are.”

He reached down to help me stand up but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. When he tried to pull his hand back once I was standing, I refused to let go.

“Hey,” I told him, tugging on his hand. He looked at me but the shutters were drawn. He was in control again and the air around us was free and breezy, pulling the world away with it.

“Don’t tell anyone what I said, alright? It’s the alcohol and stress of the wedding. Nothing else. Okay?

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He forced a grin as he squeezed my hand.

Then I let him go.

“You’re in New York, you have to come see me.”

I grinned against my phone. “Oh do I? Am I legally required to see you?”

“I’ll write you a summons. I’m penning it now.”

“Well, when the judge signs it, I’ll consider it.”

“Are you really not coming?”

I chewed nervously on the edge of my fingernail, staring up at the ceiling of my hotel room. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Alexander. I actually really did. The problem was that we had ended things between us last year when he’d moved to New York to join a law firm, giving up the fun and sun of southern California for a very different lifestyle. I wasn’t sure he’d be the guy I remembered and if he wasn’t, then I wasn’t interested. He’d been borderline vanilla to begin with. If I went out to meet him only to find he was all suit and tie making Alex a dull boy, I’d regret wasting the perfume.

Then again, what did I have holding me here? Kellen and Laney were out at some fancy-bought-my-wedding-dress celebratory dinner together. Kellen had been forced into a suit that made him look his usual miserable suit wearing self, a look I was beginning to notice more and more. When they came back from their dinner and he was able to toss those clothes aside, he’d be ready to cut lose and I knew what that meant for me and the walls and the sleeping. There’d be none. Not for anyone. I wasn’t really down with that.

“Text me your address,” I told Alexander.

“I’ll send a car for you.”

“No, I’ll take a cab. Send the address.”

“Jenna, let me take—“

I froze, pausing halfway out of the bed and wondering if I was leaving after all.

“Are we doing this again right off the bat?” I asked edgily.

I heard him sigh. “No. Forget I said anything. Especially anything so awful as let me take care of you.”

“So we are doing this right now,” I said in a huff, falling back against the sheets.

“We’re not. I’m not. I’m done.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can I say one thing about it?”

“You’ve already said a couple things.”

“One more won’t kill you to hear. I don’t understand it. I never intended to steal your independence or make you less of who you are. I didn’t expect designer dresses and high heels. I would have been happy every day with your Converse and your tank tops.”

“Alex, we gave it a shot. I didn’t fit.”

“That was never my opinion.”

“It was mine. I didn’t feel right. Besides, you took off to New York and I had my job in the shop in Cali.”

“And there are no tattoo parlors in New York.”

I closed my eyes. “I’m staying home.”

“You’re not home. You’re in a hotel.” His voice softened, turning to that coaxing rumble that I fell for so many times before. “If you’d come to live with me like I asked, you could be home in ten minutes.”

“Is there a Jacuzzi tub in this home?”

“No, but I’ll draw you a bath and use a straw to blow bubbles in the water.”

I chuckled. “That sounds like heaven.”

“Come see me, Jen,” he said softly. “Forget everything else. Just come see me to see me. We both know you have a plane ticket out of here tomorrow. It’ll be one night, no expectations. No pressure.”

“That’d be nice.”

“I’m sending you the address.”

I stood. “I’m putting on my shoes.”

“I’m filling the bathtub.”

“Do I need to bring straws?”

“What’s a man without a box of bendy straws? Just get here.”

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up the phone and fought the urge to stare at it. To debate my decision for the next ten minutes, change my mind, send him a coward’s text and go to bed with the pillow over my ears again. But it wasn’t what I really wanted. What I really wanted never had been and never would be so I had better start finding a place in the world with something I at least liked. And I liked Alexander.

The cab ride was short but the sex was long. Alexander was great that way. Slow, patient. Meticulous. I fell asleep in his arms wrapped in the Egyptian Cotton sheets on his bed with an alarm set and my mind sufficiently blank. I felt good right then. Secure and happy. Alexander always made me feel that way and it irked my mom to no end that that wasn’t enough for me. It bothered me to, but what was I supposed to do? I didn’t love him. I cared about him a lot and I loved being with him, but I wasn’t
in love
with him and I knew I never would be. I never could be.

Because I was ruined.

My phone beeped, signaling a text message that I blissfully ignored. Alexander grumbled in his sleep as he pulled me closer.

I dozed off again but it wasn’t long before it beeped again. Then the bastard started ringing.

I opened one eye to glare at the clock on the nightstand. 3:45am. What the fuck? My phone continued to blink, lighting up the dark room with a pulse like a living, breathing, nagging person. I clapped my hand over it to make it stop but my fingers slipped over the answer button. Suddenly I heard faint noises coming from it. Chaos and crying. Screaming.

“Jenna!”

I bolted up, shaking off Alexander and pulling my phone to my ear.

“Laney?” I asked, my heart racing in my throat. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, Jenna, thank God!” she wept. “I’ve been trying to call you. You have to get here. You have to help me. I can’t do this alone!”

I heard people in the background, an intercom sounding. Was she at the airport?

“Laney, where are you? Where’s Kellen? Can’t he help you?”

She whimpered pitifully. I could hear her breathing come ragged and strained.

“He’s dead,” she whispered.

“What?!”

Alexander sat up beside me. He pressed his hand to my back. “Jenna, what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel my heart beat. I wasn’t alive.

“Laney, what did you say? What happened to Kellen?”

“It was a drunk driver. He crossed the lanes. Hit on Kellen’s side. His heart stopped in the ambulance.”

I stood up abruptly, looking for my shoes. “Laney, what hospital? Where did the ambulance take him?”

“Mt. Sinai,” she breathed. “They took him inside but… but he’s dead. There was so much blood. He has to be dead.”

“Hang tight. I’m coming. Do you hear me, Laney? I’m coming and he’s not dead.”

“His heart—“

“They’ll restart it. He won’t die, do you understand? He can’t.”

“But—“

“No. He can’t,” I said, hanging up the phone as I spotted my shoes.

“What’s happened?” Alexander asked, also getting dressed.

I shook my head, my hair flying in a mess around my face. “Kellen and Laney were in a car accident. She’s at the hospital. Kellen is… he’s gonna make it.”

“Is that what Laney said?”

“No. Laney said he’s dead.”

Alexander froze, staring at me. “Jenna,”

“Don’t.” I spun around to point my finger at him, my eyes burning with rage. “Don’t you fucking say it. Everyone needs to stop saying it because it’s not true. He’s not dead. His heart stopped in the ambulance but they can restart it.” I bent down to pick up my shirt. I yanked it hard over my head. “He won’t die. He’ll never quit.”

“Jenna, you can’t know that,” Alexander said sadly.

“Yes, I can,” I said, choking back the tears that threatened to drown me. “I can because he promised me.”

Alexander went with me to the hospital. I was too focused and insane to fight with him. Besides, he knew Kellen too. They’d both started out at my dad’s law firm together. Maybe they hadn’t gotten along, especially not after Alexander and I started dating, but they had been close enough.