I’m pulling the truck over. “In the glove compartment. Let me see.”
Her head shakes in refusal, but I notice her fingers trembling as she reaches for the button. “It’ll stop in a minute.”
My heart turns over in my chest. “Your nose is bleeding again?”
“Don’t worry.” She yanks a few tissues from the box, pressing them to her nose and tipping her head forward. “I seem to be prone to them.”
“You’ve never had a nosebleed in your life. You nearly passed out when Max had one by the river.” I still remember the sickly sheen to her skin as she retched and Max tried to cover up the bleeding with his shirt so she didn’t have to see it.
“Maybe I’m allergic to assholes,” she mutters sharply. I flinch back. Her eyes close. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Sometimes it just… comes out.”
“After two years, I think I've worked that out. Pretty sure I deserved that one.” Setting my hands on the wheel, I wait.
She eyes me, a wad of paper pressed to her nose. “We can go.”
I breathe in, and my nose wrinkles. That twist in her scent is there again. My eyes narrow as I turn to her, my heart beginning to thump. “You’d tell us if something was wrong. If you were… sick?”
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Kenny.” I breathe her name, my name, into the air between us. Dread curls around my ribs, cutting off my air. “Pleasetell me.”
“You want me to tell you a lot of things,” she whispers.
My heart thuds. “Don’t worry about the rest. Not right now. Tell me the truth.”
She pinches her nose, wriggling it before wiping underneath. There’s a streak of dark blood beneath her nostril. Kennedy inhales when I reach for a tissue and wipe it away, my fingers brushing her face. “I need to get something from the trailer. But I was thinking… we could go for a drive.”
My fingers stop, still touching her skin. “Where d’you want to go?”
I already know what she’s going to say. Some sixth sense that churns my stomach into roiling waves before she even says the words. “I haven’t been back since that day. Have you? Been up there?”
Slowly, I nod. “More than once.”
Every day, for weeks. I combed every inch of that meadow, walked precariously close to that cliff edge, searching for anything that could soothe the rage in my heart, that could answer the questions that haunted me.
I never found anything. “I can get one of the others to take you. I’m not sure I’m the right person, Ken.”
I promised I wouldn’t hurt her, but I did. Shame sits in the bottom of my stomach like a pit, threatening to drag me under.
She’s watching me. “No. It has to be you.”
I swallow, before starting the engine again.
It’s all I’ve wanted for six long months. To know what happened. How they left, happy and healthy and alive, and the next moment, Brett was dead and Kennedy was responsible. Maybe not in the eyes of the law, but in my eyes. In the eyes of our pack.
Except that now it feels like a reality… I don’t know if I’m ready to hear it.
But if she wants to tell me, after I’ve pushed her and barked at her and insulted her, I’ll sit there and listen to every word. Even if I have a feeling that it’s not going to be what I want to hear. “Will you be alright, going there?”
One shoulder tips up. “I have to be.”
I pull up outside the trailer. “I’ll wait. Take your time.”
She vanishes inside, and I settle back, flicking through my phone to try and disrupt the thoughts racing through my head.
A message comes through from Oscar.
I heard from the hikers. We need to talk when you get back.
