The Song Remains the Same (57 page)

Connor wrapped his arms around my chest, tightly hugging me at an awkward angle, his forehead pressed to the spot above my ear. “You’re gonna be okay,” he told me.

“I know,” I replied through the pain.

“We should find Alys,” said Lili.

“No. She doesn’t need to know.”

“You didn’t even tell
Alys
?” asked Lili.

“I didn’t tell
anyone
!” I snapped.

“Damn it, Kenna!” Lili cried. “Why do you insist on going through this sort of shit all alone? What’s the point of having us in your life if you won’t let us be there for you? Alys is going to want to help, and she won’t tell Phil!”

I laughed bitterly.

“What?” huffed Lili. “She wouldn’t.”

With hurt, fury, and jealousy, I told them how I’d found Alys and Phil this morning. Feeling petty and sorry for myself and perhaps a bit spiteful, I needed Lili to be outraged with Alys and Phil to feel justified in my reaction.

“You know neither of them meant for that to happen,” said Connor, being my voice of reason.

“I KNOW!” I roared, seized with the hardest cramp yet. My uterus tightened beyond belief, and something huge worked its way down.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” whispered Lili.

“Then, get out!” shouted Connor. “You think she needs to deal with you being a fuckin’ pussy right now?”

Lili smacked him upside the head. “Fuck you!” she snapped before storming out.

“Squeamish little fucker,” he said under his breath. “How the hell did you think you were going to deal with this on your own, Kenna?”

“Phil can’t know, okay? If I told a single person, then the danger of it would get out, and Phil would have been destroyed. More than anything, he wants to have children, has been asking me practically from day one. When I found out that it wasn’t going to make it, I just left it at that. He’d just lost his best friend. To lose X and then have this taken from him, too…” I couldn’t finish, taking a few minutes to breathe through the next round of contractions.

“Why didn’t you just get rid of it when you found out?” he asked gently.

“I couldn’t,” I sobbed. “We made Little Zephyr together. I couldn’t willingly destroy a part of him like that.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “I get it.”

“Don’t tell him, Connor. He’ll never forgive me.”

“There’s nothing for him to forgive.”

Another cramp blazed through me, making me cry out and grunt with it, and Connor tightened his hold on me, trying to absorb some of the pain.

After a few more minutes, I was ready to get up and lie down. More was to come, and I would need the hot water when it did. When Connor shut off the water, Lili marched back in and ordered him to get out.

Armed with an ancient pair of granny panties and black sweatpants, Lili got me dried off and dressed for bed.

“What the hell?” she asked when I told her to grab an after-birth pad from under the sink. “What sort of size is this?”

Somehow, I found that hilarious. “Gigantore.”

“You don’t say…”

The three of us piled into my bed. Lili had already prepared several blunts to pass the time and pain.

Exhausted, hurting in body and soul, I got seriously ripped off the first blunt and fell asleep.

Phil

“Kenna called you to take over for a few days?” I asked, looking down on Gavin’s shiny bald head.

“Yeah, she said she was feeling sick. You…you didn’t know?”

I wasn’t going to answer that.

Enduring two hours of physical-therapy torture with Gavin had me sweating, shaking, and reeking like the inside of a bottle. He finished up with a thirty-minute massage and acupuncture in my ass and groin.

“You know, if you quit drinking—” he started saying.

I waved him down. “It ain’t like it’s permanent, man. Right now, I just need somethin’ to shut my head up.”

“Weed won’t fuck up your healing process,” he told me.

“Yeah,” I replied, not committing to anything.

After he finished with my treatment, Gavin left, and a light knock came from the panel door.

“Yeah?” I called out.

Alys came in. “Phil?”

“What’s up?” I asked before chugging back a bottle of water.

Shit, she looked ready to cry. I didn’t think I could handle much more.

“D-do you remember what happened last night?”

“Um…we watched TV and drank a few bottles of whiskey?”

She nodded. “Do you remember passing out?”

“No. That’s why they call it
passin’ out
, Muffin.”

She really looked bad, going all pale. “Nothing happened, but I fell asleep on you. You were holding me. Kenna found us like that this morning, and—”

“And what?” I asked weakly. Panic and terror pounded through me.
“And what?”

“She’s gone, Phil.” Her voice trembled, and her face quivered. “I tried to stop her. She looked…” She sucked in a deep breath, wringing her hands like she could squeeze the answers from thin air.

“You need to fuckin’ tell me what fuckin’ happened, Alys, or so help me God—”

“She was furious and told me that, last night, you showed me more compassion than you had given her in months…” The woman laid it all out there in great detail. “She said that maybe it would be for the best for her to walk away now instead of letting both of your misery drown her.”

My head was having a hell of a time processing this shit. “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. She ran out—”

“You didn’t follow her?” I shouted, struggling to get off the stupid fuckin’ bed. “Fuck, Alys! She
had
to know that nothin’ happened!”

“Phil, what would you have done if you’d found Kenna sleeping in X’s arms? Even if it was an innocent accident…” She looked about ready to lose it.

Fuck,
I
was about to flat-out fuckin’ lose it. “I would’ve kicked his ass. I would’ve lost my fuckin’ shit.”

“Kenna doesn’t kick asses though. She simply removes herself from the situation. She pulls up her big-girl panties and walks away. She said she needed a break. Honestly, Phil…there’s nothing on this earth she loves more than you. I think…I think we’ve all been taking her for granted. We always lean on her. Always use her strength to help us pull through. She’s never
not
been there for any of us. Ever.”

My Baby Girl…

“She loved X, too.” Alys sniffled. “And not once have any of us asked her how she’s handling it.” Her face crumpled, and she sobbed into her hands. “She’s never let me down! And how do I repay her? I fucking get wasted and pass out on top of her fiancé!”

“Alys—” I whispered, my heart ceasing to beat.

“She looked so lost and so mad and so…there’s something
wrong
with her! Can’t you feel it?”

Yeah.
Yeah, I could.

Now that I was sober and thinking again, I could feel that shit wasn’t right with my Baby Girl. She was hurting beyond any of us.

“We have to tell her we never meant to—”

“She knows!” Alys wailed. “She knows that nothing happened, Phil! It was just the last straw for her!”

Fuck, my heart stopped again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…Kenna
left.
She packed her shit, and she
left
. From the way we’ve been treating her, I wouldn’t blame her if she never came back.”

Alys was right. Kenna gave and gave and gave of herself. I’d fought her every step of the way, making her life a living hell, not giving a shit about anyone else but myself and my own hurt. Not once had I stopped to consider the fact that she had lost someone else she loved.

I hadn’t stopped and considered her at all.

The silence between Alys and me thickened. The sound of her phone ringing pierced through it, painful to my ears.

She answered it, and I watched her face drain of all color. I heard the distinct viciousness that only Pygmy’s voice could contain but not the words.

“Okay,” whispered Alys. “I’ll be right there.”

As she hung up the phone, I asked her, “Is it Kenna? Did she go to her place?”

Alys shook her head. Even if Kenna had, Alys wouldn’t tell me.

“Alys—”

“I have to go,” she said, cutting me off.

“Just tell me if you see her. Tell her I love her and that I’m sorry—”

“You’ll be able to tell her yourself, Phil. If not today, then soon enough. She’s not able to stay away from you, any more than you’re able to stay away from her. If you need me for anything, just call.”

“All right.”

She left without a backward glance.

My heart felt like lead. Without the life force of Kenna, it could hardly stand to beat. Empty, hollowed out, I was left to sit and think about all that had happened. I wanted this shit to end. I
needed
it to end. But this black hole of misery just kept getting wider and deeper, sucking me farther down into it.

Jason showed up with a bottle of Blue Label. I was gonna refuse, but somehow, I ended up drinking again. The warmth hit my chest, made me mellow, blotted out the darkness, and took away my thoughts. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I was so sick of feeling.

“She’ll be back, you know,” Jason said.

“I pushed her away,” I stated. “After everythin’,
I
pushed her away, man.”

“You just gotta pull her back in then.”

Kenna, my Baby Girl, my other half, my whole reason for existing…she had lost her faith in me, in us, and I only had myself to blame.

It was true. I hadn’t held Kenna in a long time. Once again, I’d been thinking with my dick, and I hadn’t wanted to be tortured with having to abstain. I’d never stopped to consider that she needed my comfort because I had been more concerned with my own.

Shit, when am I gonna learn, man?

I’d made the same mistake when Kenna was caught in the explosion. I’d avoided intimacy with her because I was a brat. I’d told her there was more between us than fuckin’ sex, but I sure hadn’t acted like it. It was as though, if I couldn’t have it on my terms, I took it away from her, too. She’d needed the strength and comfort she had selflessly given me returned to her. Instead, I’d taken hers and left her with nothing.

Another drink.

I could drown this for now.

My guilt, my pain, my loss…selfish, selfish, selfish.

“I’ve never deserved her,” I said.

“None of us deserve our women,” said Jason.

“I’ve never earned her trust, her love. She just gave it to me. I demanded it, and she blindin’ly handed it over. She gave me somethin’ more precious, more pure than I ever, ever deserved…”

“Yeah, but you handed her your trust and love, too.”

“Did you know that she actually waited for my ass? For nearly six years,” I confessed. “While I went around fuckin’ anythin’ and everythin’ that dangled itself in front of me, Kenna waited, lettin’ no man touch her.”

Pain squeezed around my heart, and Her Tattoo itched and prickled.

Oh God, Kenna Baby, what’s happenin’ to you? I can feel you. You’re hurtin’ somethin’ awful…

“Seriously?” asked Jason, refilling my glass.

Nodding, I replied, “Yeah, man. It wasn’t until she was finished with school and gave up all hope that I even remembered her that she finally got laid. That Brian guy—”

“The dreamy paramedic?”

My face twisted into a scowl. “Yeah.”

“She dumped
him
for your ugly ass?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. Well, it must be love because he’s prettier than most chicks.”

“I know.”

“I bet X would’ve banged his ass.”

“Yeah, probably.”

What would Kenna’s life be like if I hadn’t come back into it? Would she have been happy and in a relationship with a way too good-looking dude, a guy who is just as smart and driven to help others as she is? Would Brian have given her what she needs, where I’ve failed her so miserably?

Another drink.

And another.

And another.

Gavin came in and woke me up, but I was too far gone for that sort of shit. I saw the pity in his eyes, and I rolled over and dismissed his ass.

What does he know about what I’m going through?