I have more fantasies I want to act out with her. Last night was just the beginning of all the things I want to show Kennedy.
I roll out of bed carefully so I don’t wake her. I’ll get to her and my fantasies when I deal with whatever bullshit is happening right now.
Snagging my shorts from the floor, I’m just pulling them on when a quiet knock sounds at my door.
When I open it, Landon is standing in the doorway, anger rolling off his large frame in palpable waves.
“What is it?” I ask, carefully shutting the door behind me when I step into the hallway.
His voice is more like a growl. “Charles.”
My eyes snap open. “What the fuck?”
“Downstairs. He’s here—somehow got past security at the front desk and is demanding to see you.”
My old man. Here. In Vegas.
I push Landon out of the way, ignoring his shout when he calls me an asshole, and at full tilt I rush down the stairs, my bare feet slipping on the carpeted surface. When I have six more steps to go, I brace one hand on the railing and hurtle myself over it, landing on two feet with an echoing thump on the hardwood floor.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask, hands flying to my hips. I’m panting, out of breath.
My old man’s jaw drops when his eyes take me in. All six feet two inches of me, ripped and standing in front of him.
It’s been six years since we’ve seen each other, or at least since I’ve seen him. But if he’s been following my fights, it’s the first time he’s seen me in person, at least that I’m aware of.
I quickly scan his body and recoil, my lip curling as I take him in.
His skin is sallow, dried out and wrinkled. His clothes hang off his frame, showing the weight he’s lost and his lack of desire to buy something that fits. It’d probably cut into his alcohol budget and is therefore unnecessary.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask again when he doesn’t answer, punctuating each word and taking a step toward him.
He drags his eyes to mine and I sneer at him.
This waste of space is the reason I have life, and I can’t find anything inside of me to be grateful for him at all. The covered scars on my back will always remind me of what this monster is capable of when given a twelve-pack and a belt. Just thinking about it now makes the scars itch and pull at my skin.
“Son—”
“I’m not your fucking son,” I growl, taking another leering step closer.
He steps back until his back is pressed to the door.
Blinking rapidly, he wipes his fingers across his mouth. I notice the tremors in them and the beads of sweat that break out on his forehead.
Fuck. He’s detoxing in front of me.
“I have something to show you.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”
He pushes off the wall and frowns. “Listen,” he starts, running a shaking hand through his greasy, gray-streaked hair. He’s about three months past the need for a decent haircut and his comb-over is out of control. “It will take a moment. I just…” He pauses, reaches into his back pocket, and comes out with a small piece of paper in his hand. “You need to see this.”
He thrusts it toward me, but I don’t move.
I stare at it like it’s a snake ready to attack. I can’t help it; I don’t trust the man. Nothing good has ever come from his lips or his hands—not when they’re directed at me.
“Go.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I shake my head. I don’t want what he’s offering.
“Please, Grayson. I know…I know I’m a fuckup of a father. I know I did you wrong, but…” another shake of his head, another fidgeting with his fingers through his hair, “I’m proud of you, son.”
The words hit me directly in the chest, like a well-timed punch from Landon. Those fuckers hurt, too, and this is no different as his words reverberate through my skull.
Proud of me—the only thing a son ever wants to hear from his father, and now I’m getting it.
“Get the fuck out.”
“I can’t. Just take it.” He shakes his hand, the paper slices through the air, and I glance at it. It’s not thin paper…more like photo paper, and my brows snap together. “I should have told you. Should have warned you, but you need to see this.”
Without looking, I snatch the paper out of his hand and crinkle it in my fist. “I have it. So go.”
His whole body shakes and more sweat lines his brow.
“Jesus fuck, old man. Are you fucking detoxing right now?”
He rolls his shoulders and nods. “Had to get here. When I saw you the other night…with Kennedy…I knew I had to see you. I caught the first flight out…”
His voice trails off. Or maybe he keeps speaking. I quit listening after he says Kennedy’s name. The photo in my hand begins to burn my skin, shooting warning flares to my chest and landing in my gut.
“What is this?” Landon asks, coming up next to me. I don’t know if he’s been listening the whole time, or if he stayed upstairs, giving me space to deal with Charles. Regardless, I don’t answer.
I walk around my dad to open the door. “You’ve done your good deed for the day, Charles, now get the fuck out.”
He nods rapidly. I swear I see a hint of remorse or guilt in his eyes when he blinks, but it’s gone. Or course it is.
My lips twitch into a sneer when he doesn’t move fast enough for me.
“The thing is, son…I sort of…” Fuck. Here it comes. “…need some money to get home.”
“Fucking hell,” Landon mutters, and I catch his disgusted gaze as he walks past me.
I fling the door open, bracing it with one hand, the other still being burned by the photograph. I don’t know what the hell it is, but if he came all the way from Braxton to Vegas just to hand it to me, it can’t be good. I don’t want him around when I see it. He’d probably take pleasure in whatever he knows is going to piss me off.
“Here,” Landon says, coming back and thrusting a roll of twenties into my dad’s chest.
His trembling hands fumble it before finally gripping it tightly.
I glare at him while he heads to the door, wobbling on shaking knees. “I am proud of you, son,” he says, looking at me over his shoulder. Then his eyes flare with the same evil leer he always showed me. “I make lots of money off you. Off your fights.”
“I don’t know what your fucking game is right now,” I tell him, leaning over him with my intimidating frame, “but if I ever fucking hear from you again, or if you ever show up on my doorstep, all that money I give you to drink your worthless life away will end. Immediately.”
I slam the door shut in his face, knowing it misses hitting him in the nose by centimeters.
“Some dad,” Landon says, trying to ease the tension.
“Shut up.”
I head toward the kitchen, my knuckles aching from their tight grip on the fucking flimsy piece of paper in my hand. My pulse thrums in my ears and in my veins as I debate what to do with whatever he’s given me.
“What he’d give you?” Landon asks, following me.
“Hell if I know.”
I toss the photo onto the counter and reach for a coffee mug. “It’s Charles. It could be anything.”
Weighted silence slams into my back. The tension immediately slices through the air, chilling it. Before I even turn back around, my coffee mug full and pressed to my lips, I squeeze my eyes closed and brace myself.
“What is it?”
Spinning on my heels, I tighten my hold on my coffee mug when I notice my fingers are shaking like my old man’s.
Landon’s staring at the countertop. At the photo. The blood has vanished from his face and I’ve never seen his eyes so big.
He lifts his eyes to mine, and his voice is more of a tortured whisper. “Kennedy.”
He slides the paper on the counter toward me, touching it with one finger like he, too, is terrified. Color has yet to reappear on his face, giving his typical tanned skin an ashen pallor.
I hesitate before finally looking down.
My coffee mug slips from my hands and crashes to the ground. Steaming hot coffee burns my feet and calves and I jump back. “Fuck!”
But I barely notice the burn, and the mess is forgotten as my gaze stays fixed on the photograph in front of me. Blood rushes from my head and I sway back and forth, lightheaded.
One of my hands slides to the back of my neck and rubs fiercely as I pick up the picture in my other hand.
It shakes and wiggles and I know it’s from the tremors in my hand.
“What the hell?” I gasp. A tingle starts burning inside my chest as I blink rapidly, hoping to erase the vision that’s staring me back in the face.
Kennedy. Her long brown hair pulled into a ponytail that drapes over one shoulder. Her eyes are wide, her cheeks fuller than usual. She looks almost the exact same as she did when I walked away from her six years ago, except one noticeable difference. She has her bottom lip sucked in between her bottom teeth, and her two hands rest on her stomach.
A large, round stomach.
A very pregnant stomach.
And she’s standing with her back to her car, in the front yard of my childhood home, staring toward my house.
“Holy shit.” I drop the photograph, still disbelieving the image I’m staring at, the picture my father traveled thousands of miles to hand deliver. My hands scrub my face viciously until my fingers burn from the stubble along my cheeks.