Knockout (23 page)

“No, it’s fine.”

“If I don’t pay for it does it come out of your pocket?”

“No,” I lied.

“Yes!” Bryce called from up front.

Kellen shot me a quick grin before making a dash for the front of the store. I chased after him but I was too late. He was fast for a supposed cripple.

“Tattoo this size, how much would you charge?” Kellen asked Bryce.

He examined it slowly, his eyes widening in appreciation. “How long did that take?”

“Not long,” I said vaguely.

Kellen glanced at the clock. “Almost two hours.”

“$300,” Bryce told him.

“Really?” Kellen asked as he fished out his wallet. He handed Bryce a card which he happily swiped. “Damn, Nonpareil. $150 an hour? You’re charging lawyer rates right there.”

I smiled. “I’m worth every penny.”

“Yes you are. And you’ve got a client for life. No one else is tattooing me but you.”

“You’re going to get more?”

Kellen laughed as he signed his receipt. “This was only the beginning. I’ll be back for sure.” He handed the pen back to Bryce then held out his hand. “Bryce, nice to meet you, man. You’ve got an amazing shop here.”

“It’s built by the talent.”

“You’ve got that in spades.” Kellen turned to me, still smiling. His eyes were bright and brilliantly happy and I tried to remember the last time I’d seen him look that way. Too long, that was for sure. “Jenna, thank you. This was exactly what I needed.”

He came to stand in front of me, pressing his left hand to the side of my face and smiling affectionately at me. “Vous etes toujours ce don’t j’ai besoin.”

He kissed me briefly on the cheek before leaving. When he was gone, I glanced at Bryce to find him smirking at me.

I immediately shook my head. “No.”

“I like him. He makes you blush and be all girly.”

“Shut up.”

“See, now he’s gone and you’re you again.”

“I’m always me.”

“You’re a different you when he’s around.”

“And that doesn’t seem like a bad thing to you?”

“Meh. Who knows? Maybe you’re a better you when you’re with him. I’m a better me when I’m with my wife.”

“He’s trouble that way. Friends I can do with him, it’s what we’ve always been. Anything else and there’s a whole lot of nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing just now. What did he say to you? What language was that?”

“French,” I said, feeling suddenly tired.

“And what did your boy say to you in French while looking deep into your eyes?”

“He said, ‘You’re always what I need.’”

Bryce looked at me with lifted eyebrows.

“Shut up,” I snapped again.

I didn’t hear from Kellen for over a week after that. I texted him once to see how he was feeling, how his tattoo was doing, but I didn’t get an answer. I heard from my dad a few times and once from Laney. Kellen was eager to get out of the house and get back to his apartment but they were fighting him tooth and nail on it. Laney asked me for help convincing him to stay but I told her I couldn’t change his mind any more than she could. Besides, I wasn’t sure he shouldn’t go back to his apartment. It was when I came down for dinner with the family at the end of that week that I saw what the problem really was.

“I don’t know why, but I hate it.”

Kellen’s voice drifted out to me in the foyer the second I entered my parent’s house. I sighed inside, debating heading right back out the door. His annoyed tone was a far cry from the happy contentment I’d last heard from him over his tattoo. I wondered briefly how that had gone over. I was surprised I hadn’t heard from Laney about it. At the very least mom should have lost her shit at me for marking him with ‘graffiti’.

“You liked it well enough in the show room,” Laney complained.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Isn’t that convenient?”

“For me? Not really,” Kellen replied hotly. “I don’t remember everything, Lane. That’s pretty annoying.”

“Well, I’ll help you remember. This couch? You loved it.”

“I doubt it seeing as I hate it now.”

“You have to be kidding me! It’s already delivered!”

“We can take it back. Besides, why was it delivered here? We don’t have a house yet?”

There was silence. I could picture Laney’s face as it drug out. Kellen wasn’t going to like what she said next.

“I figured we’d put the house thing on old while you recovered. We don’t know what your work situation will be like or how much house we can afford. Mom and dad agreed that we could live here in the meantime.”

Kellen was on his feet. I watched him launch himself off the couch through the slice of living room I could see from the entryway. His face was blocked but his shoulders were high and tense. His hands clenched.

“Seriously? No, Laney. Absolutely not, no.”

“Then where are we supposed to live?” she demanded, getting angry. “I gave up my apartment. I’m out at the end of the month because I thought we were getting a place. What am I supposed to do? Move in with you in your tiny apartment?”

“No.”

“No? Just no? Okay, I was joking because that place is a shit hole and I will not live there, but you’re serious aren’t you? You won’t let me, your homeless fiancé, move in with you?”

“You’re hardly homeless, princess. You live in a palace.”

“Oh don’t get like this again. Yes, we have money. I’m sooooo sorry, Kellen. How dare we be well off?!”

“Your dad is well off. You don’t have a job. Your income is nothing.”

“I’ve been going to school!”

“To do what? Become your mother?”

“You should be so lucky.”

“Really? ‘Cause being married to your mom is kind of my worst fucking nightmare.”

“Kellen!” she exclaimed, appalled.

“Take the couch back.”

“No.”

“Then pay for it yourself.”

“What is with you lately? Ever since you got back here you’ve been nothing but angry and mean.”

“I’m not mean, Laney, I’m just not letting you have your way on everything anymore. If that’s a problem for you, then we should take care of that.”

There was another silence and I worried I would be caught in my blatant eavesdropping. But then I saw Laney cross the room to stand in front of him, pushing in close. He backed up a step but she claimed it. They were both framed in the section of living room visible from where I stood and as she ran her hands over his stomach, I worried what was about to happen was nothing I wanted to see.

“Take care of it?” Laney purred. Her hands pushed up on his shirt, gathering it over his stomach. “Do you want me to take care of it, Kellen? It hasn’t been taken care of since you woke up. Maybe that’s why you’re so grouchy.”

When Laney dipped her hand down over his pants, I quickly looked away and made for the kitchen. I could hear my parents in there but I wasn’t ready to face them. I needed to take a breath and forget what I’d just seen and heard so I darted into the hall bathroom and shut the door. I left the light off as I leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes and breathing evenly. It would never stop stinging to see him with her. Just as I knew a part of him she could never get her claws into, he let her have a piece of him I had been denied. I had the best of him, the
real
him, and I knew it but it still stung. I was greedy. I wanted all of him. And I wanted him to have all of me.

Seconds after I’d closed it, the bathroom door yanked open and slammed shut. When the light snapped on I stared at Kellen standing there just a foot away. His chest was heaving, his eyes were wild and he looked surprised to see me, just as surprised as I was. It looked like I wasn’t the only one looking for a hiding place.

I opened my mouth to tell him I’d go, that I’d give him the space, when he stepped toward me.

His mouth fell on mine, warm and hard. My mouth sighed open and his tongue slid inside as his hands bunched in my hair. I gripped his hips to pull him to me as he crushed me against the wall with his body. It hurt. My hair where he pulled it, my hips where our bones met and ground against each other. My heart where it leapt up and died in my chest, burning out in a pyre of want, love, longing and fear.

He lowered his hand from my hair to my neck, running his thumb down the front until it found my collar bone. He traced it roughly, following the bones to my shoulder then around my back. He traced my spine with his fingers, feeling over every notch that led down to my hips. He pressed his thumb into my hip bone as he followed it forward, making my breath hitch sharply in my chest. I worried he’d move lower and I’d be lost and this thing that shouldn’t be happening would go too far and I’d have to stop it. But I couldn’t. Not again. Not now.

But his hand moved over mine where it clung to his body. His fingers traced the bones of my fingers, feeling the bumps of my knuckles lightly, delicately. I shivered against him, grabbing onto him harder. He moved his hand up under my shirt, passing quickly over my stomach to my ribs. It tickled something fierce but I fought the urge to laugh, feeling like if I did it’d turn to crying. I was too many emotions wound too tight for too long. Something had to give and when it finally did, I had no idea what it would feel like.

As with most things between Kellen and I, I was fairly certain it would hurt.

He drug his fingers over the ridges of my ribcage slowly. He didn’t touch my breasts, he didn’t even nudge my bra. He only followed my bones as he learned their every point and bow. He ignored the soft tissues and warm curves on the surface as he memorized my frame underneath. It was something no man had ever done before. The sharp edges of my body, my too large build, had always been a sore spot for me. I preferred men to focus on the feminine parts, no matter how minor they were. But now as Kellen looked beneath the surface and searched out this part of me, the inner workings of how I moved through the world, I didn’t mind. I was humming through to the marrow with his every touch.

There was a knock on the door, making both of us jolt.

“Kellen?” mom called gently.

He froze, his mouth still on mine, our breathing uneven and sounding suddenly so loud.

“Kellen, are you alright?”

I tried to pull back to let him speak but he had me pinned against the wall from top to bottom. He kissed me once again slowly, unapologetically, before answering her.

“I’m fine,” he called, his voice rough.

“Alright. Well, dinner is ready when you are. Looks like Jenna is a no show so we’ll start without her.”

“I’ll be right out.”

We listened to her footsteps fade down the hall. I took my hands from his waist and let them fall beside me, but still he stayed pressed against me. He watched me as I moved, his eyes giving nothing away.

“You better go,” I whispered.

“This wasn’t a mistake,” he told me quietly.

“It wasn’t good.”

“Bad timing doesn’t make it wrong.”

“If it’s not a mistake, it’s not good and it’s not wrong, then what is it?”

His eyes turned sad as he stared at my face, as he watched it become tight with anger and guilt.

"It's too soon, is what
it is," he whispered.

"Why? You wanted to wait until after you were married to fuck your wife's sister?" I asked bitterly.

The magnitude of what we'd just done was hitting me hard. When we'd kissed before it'd been different. They'd been broken up. I was sure they weren't getting back together again. But now they were engaged. Sure, things were rocky but they were still engaged. He was still cheating on her. And he was doing it with me. I was the other woman. An impulse buy. Disposable. Forgettable. Like a Twix.

The realization made me want to knee him in his Almond Joys.

Kellen surprised me when he grabbed my face hard, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were intense, still sad but also angry.

"I didn't mean for this to happen now. Not yet. Do you know how many years I've wanted this? How many times I've thought about you?"

"No," I whispered.

"Hundreds. Thousands. It's nearly a daily battle for me to keep my hands off you so I'm sorry I slipped up, I really am, but I don't regret it. I could never regret you. Not one inch, not one second. Not one breath."

I tried to shove him away, to shake him off. He held me firmly.

"You're engaged to Laney," I said viciously, tears of anger and hurt stinging my eyes. "We've been through this. You don't want this with me."

He let his forehead fall against mine even as I fought him.

"I want everything with you."

"Shut up," I whispered harshly, falling still. "Stop saying things like that, it doesn't mean anything. It's what you say to all of them. To Laney, to the girls at school, the girls at the firm. Don't talk to me like that. Like I'm just another one of them."