No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) (60 page)

“Kenna,” I replied. “I woke up this mornin’, and…I just have this fuckin’ hole in my chest. I feel like I might be sick, like somethin’ bad is goin’ on.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t fuckin’ have a clue…” I chucked the pen I was holding across the room in my frustration and dropped my head into my hands.

Jason parked his ass on my desk, the douche. “Go get her then, man. Bring her here.”

“I fuckin’ begged her to stay with me today,” I whispered. “I can’t
force
her—”

“Sure you can. Haven’t you noticed that you’re a beast of epic proportions? Go throw her over your shoulder, and drag her ass out.”

“She’d never forgive me if I did that. I can’t fuck with her at work. She wouldn’t be okay with it. Not for feelin’ like this.”

“Yeah, I get it. Is it—do you think it’s another guy or somethin’?”

I fired a real disgusted look at him. “Do you
really
think she’d do somethin’ like that to me?”

He let out a slow breath. “No. She’s just as apeshit about you as you are over her.”

Hearing that felt good, but it didn’t stop the panic, the fear that was consuming me more and more as the minutes ticked by.

“Is it her safety you’re worried about?”

I stared at my favorite picture of her, one I had laminated and taped to my desk. Connor had given it to me a while back. It was from the summer right before we’d met. After she had graduated, she and Connor had gone to Scotland to visit their Gran and Gramps for a month. I loved this one because she looked exactly how she had the night we met, her hair all long and wavy—hippie hair—and she was standing in front of the ruins of the castle at Inverness. The day was overcast, but her smile and hair were brighter than any sunlight. She wore a tight black sweater and holey jeans, buttercups and bluebells filled her arms.

My Baby Girl—sweet, wild, untamed, untouched by the sorrow about to fill her life.

She fuckin’ unmans me. She strips me down to my fundamental core and shows me exactly what it means to be…human.

“Yes,” I finally answered Jason. “That’s what I’m fuckin’ afraid of.” My heart jammed its way into my throat, feeling like it was shaking rather than beating. “Fuck. I feel like I’m a hair away from a fuckin’ heart attack.”

“Let’s go get her then,” he said, dropping a hand on my shoulder. “If she gets mad, she gets mad. Just tell her how you’re feelin’. She’ll get it. She’s cool like that.”

My heart was spazzing something fierce, feeling almost numb at the same time. I rubbed the heel of my hand over The Tattoo. Fuck, it wasn’t helping.

“Jace—” I tried to suck in a breath. I could
feel
my fuckin’ pupils dilate with fear and adrenaline. “Oh,
fuck
, man—”

And then we
both
felt it.

Beneath our feet, the ground shivered. The walls and glass in the studio rattled. The coffee mug filled with my pens and pencils trembled.

Connor and Flipper rushed into my office, X right on their heels.

“What the fuck was that?” asked X, stunned.

I looked up at Jace, and he stared back at me. This whole fuckin’ place was soundproof. If something could make this place shake and rattle like
that—

We all jumped to our feet and raced to the front of house when another one hit.

“
Fuck
!” I screamed, feeling it, feeling my Baby Girl.

She was fuckin’ terrified! I could fuckin’ taste it, too, hot and metallic.

Oh, my Baby Girl! Oh, fuck! What’s happenin’ to you?

We busted open the studio door. Outside, the fuckin’ air felt thick, like it was vibrating. All around us, car alarms were going berserk.

I gotta get to her! Oh, fuck! Is that smoke?

Just a few blocks away, where The Center was—

“FUCK!” I screamed.
Baby Girl, I feel you, I’m comin’—

BOOM!

A blast knocked all of us on our asses, and a massive black mushroom cloud blossomed into the sky.

“
NNNOOO
!”

I was fuckin’ losing my shit, my head. I was going apeshit, inside and out. There was no way I could control my body. I was shaking, trying to run on legs that wouldn’t work. I was frozen, but my head was everywhere all at once. One thing I knew for sure, I had to get to my Baby Girl.

“KENNA!”

Jason and X jumped me, pulling me back.

She’s…she’s…

I don’t feel her
.

My other half, my whole life, my heart…felt dead.

There was nothing.

I don’t feel her no more.

Connor grabbed me, too, and I collapsed back to the ground under them, under the heavy weight of not feeling her in the world. I couldn’t fuckin’ think straight. I could only watch in horror as the black cloud stretched higher up into the sky.

Where are you, Baby Girl? Oh God. Oh, God, please don’t take her. Not my Baby Girl, not my precious angel. Oh, fuck no! Take everythin’ else, anythin’ else, just not her. Not my reason for existing…not my colors…

The world turned to ash, soot, and fog. I could see the sun was shining, but it didn’t mean shit.

I can’t feel her. I can’t feel her.

In the distance, sirens sounded.

“Phil—” That was X.

“Kenna.” I choked. “I can’t feel her no more.”

“We don’t know what’s goin’ on,” said Flipper. He was sitting on my chest.

“I can’t feel her!” I screamed. My hands flew to my head, tearing at my hair. “Oh my fuckin’ God!
Kenna
!”

Jace and X each grabbed an arm, and Connor got in my face. I could see it in him, too—the loss of her—and I spiraled into a fresh wave of panicked despair.

“Just fuckin’ chill,” Connor said, his voice thick and nearly as deep as my own.

“I have to get to her!” I sobbed.

“There are fire trucks, ambulances, and gods know what else already on the way over there. Just chill for a minute, man. We’ll find out soon enough.”

How that motherfucker was so calm when his own sister might be—

NO!

“We don’t know for sure if it’s The Center,” said Jason. “We need to wait. I’ll call Sheri. She’ll know what to do.”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. I couldn’t feel her. I might as well be dead.

I
was
dead, a dead motherfucker in a giant meat suit.

My heart…
she was gone
.

I hadn’t spoken a fuckin’ word since the guys let me up. We all sat our asses in the parking lot. I watched as the black cloud of death shifted, slowly drifting, snatched by the zephyr…

Alys’s SUV came peeling into the lot, and we all jumped up and raced to her car. Connor wrenched open her door, revealing her swollen wet face. Seeing her like that, my chest caved in. If I still had a heart, its face would be Alys’s.

Fuck, Alys…you love her nearly as much as I do.

“Th-they’ve been taken to G-General,” she stuttered. “My m-mom called the ho-hospital and found out.”

Jason grabbed my shoulder. “Is she…”

“I-I don’t know!” Alys wailed, breaking up the dust where my heart used to be. “They wo-wouldn’t tell her anything!”

Connor crushed her in his arms before handing her off to her man. He looked at me, his eyes bleak and showing his own breaking heart.

“Jason, you go with Phil. Take Alys’s car. I’ll ride with Flipper. X, take Alys in the Jeep. We’ll all meet at General, yeah?” Connor said.

How does he do that?

He’s Kenna’s brother. That’s how.

They both had that in them, the quiet calm that let them think clearly, even when the world was burning around them. In a war, they’d be the seasoned soldiers that would always make it out alive.

Jason opened the passenger door and shoved my ass in.

The route to the hospital took us down past The Center. Traffic was at a crawl, and the area had been taped off. The Center…there
was
no Center. It was a fuckin’ charred shell of a mess—just like the crispy cavity where my heart used to be.

Guts churning, I wasn’t gonna make it. Opening the door, I stumbled out.

“Fuck, man!” Jason screamed at me, slamming on the brakes.

On all fours on the ground like a fuckin’ kicked, beaten down, and broken dog, I puked my fuckin’ guts out. I wretched until I was dry-heaving. Jason was there, pulling me back, before I could face-plant in the pool of my own sickness.

That was when it hit me.

On the curb, next to a puddle of vomit, a hollow pain so fuckin’ intense I could hardly breathe seized me. Jace’s arms wrapped around me while I let loose a howl, squeezing me tight, trying to hold my ass together.

My other half, my
better
half—she’s gone. I can’t feel her no more.

The pain of it was beyond anything I had ever experienced. I’d never felt anything as debilitating as this.

Oh, fuck no! Oh, fuck, God, PLEASE! Not my Baby Girl! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!

Her eyes, her smile, her
laugh.

“What do you see in me?”
she had asked me once.

My fuckin’ everything! My whole life, everything I’d ever dreamed of, my entire fuckin’ future!

“Fuck!” I couldn’t take this, the pain. It was unreal.

This ain’t fuckin’ happenin’! I can’t lose you, Baby Girl! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I’m nothin’ without you! Don’t fuckin’ leave me like this!

“Kenna!”

“Come on, man.” Jace tried to pull me up, but I was shaking and rocking like a head case. “Come on!” He slapped my face. “We don’t know nothin’ yet! And she fuckin’ needs you to get your shit together. I don’t care what you’re feelin’, man. She ain’t fuckin’ gone! No fuckin’ way.” He tugged me to my feet and shoved me into the SUV.

Before he slammed the door on me, he pointed a finger in my face. “Don’t fuckin’ do anythin’ stupid, motherfucker. You sit your ass right there till we get to the fuckin’ hospital. You hear me?”

I nodded.

Jason walked around the front of the car and jumped in. We pulled forward, and although I saw the people picking through the rubble, saw the EMTs looking, saw the cadaver dogs sniffing, saw officers denying people entry past the tape…none of it mattered. I couldn’t feel for anyone else.

I can’t feel her no more.

It didn’t matter. Wherever she had gone, I was going after her.

Kenna

Nowhere. I was
Nowhere.

I had always believed The End would be walking through a kind of door, that I’d end up in that place I sometimes got to visit with Mom and Grandma.

This was nothing like that. There was literally
nothing
.

Suspended consciousness, I was without emotion, without purpose. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t unpleasant either. It just…was.

In the distance, I saw a flicker. It looked white, a speck upon a horizon that did not exist.

At first, I thought it was growing bigger, but then I realized I was willing myself toward it. The closer I got, the more I
felt
. There was something extremely important over there. I had to get to it, or the door would show itself, and I would be drawn to it rather than this speck.

Engulfed in a dense gray fog, I had to fight to stay in it because Nowhere was trying to suck me back in. Through the swirling thick mass, I gripped and clawed with everything I had in me.

“Don’t go anywhere.”

I knew that voice. It spoke to me always. It was what I was desperately scratching and digging and bleeding to get back to. It was warmth, love, and safety. It was
mine
. It filled me, surrounded me, and would never let me go.