I never knew I needed someone like him until he came along.
His chaos had shaken up my false sense of peace, my life, and made the pieces fall around me differently. The pieces had never landed so perfectly before.
My eyes lifted for a second, catching Kelly through the mirror. After all of my family had gone to find their seats, he stood with his back against the wall, watching me.
“Your hands are shakin’, darlin’,” he said.
They were, but it wasn’t from stage fright. It was from him. My body was highly aware of him at all times. My hands only trembled when he was around. At first, it was from the force, the anxiety, from hate. They trembled from pent-up love now. I hated the thing he did, but I couldn’t hate him even if I tried anymore, which frustrated me sometimes.
I gave him a narrowed-eye stare before I turned back to the makeup in front of me, ignoring him like usual.
He spun my seat around, both of his arms locking me in place, and tilted the chair back. My eyes rose to meet his in defiance, even though my heart raced and my stomach plummeted.
“You’ve lost weight,” he said, not looking at my body, but at my eyes.
“You look exhausted,” I snapped.
“Someone hasn’t been eating dinner.”
“Someone hasn’t been sleeping.”
He searched my eyes before he leaned down to kiss me. I turned my face, giving him my cheek. He growled low in his throat, and it was the first time I’d ever seen him show any outwardly sign of emotion.
Kelly was fucking pissed.
His arms flexed as he held the chair in place. “Do this tonight. Or don’t. That little girl will be all too happy to take your place. But from this moment forward, you do whatever the fuck makes your eyes light up. It’s time to stop living for a ghost.”
He let my chair go and I bounced before I settled. I hopped up from my chair before he left me alone.
“Kelly!” I said.
He stopped, his hand on the door.
“You first.”
The arrow hit its mark. His shoulders tensed and his back stiffened. The cords in his neck were coiled tight. He never brought up what Scott had told him that day in the interrogation room, but I’d caught him staring at the picture of his father more than once. I knew he was wondering why the man would lie to him, if it was the truth.
Why hide him from his mother?
If the question lingered for me, it had to be playing nonstop for him. But I wasn’t going to allow him to call me out on my shit when he refused to deal with his own. We both had ghosts to expel, and sooner or later, Cash Kelly would have to take a deep breath in and then face his.
22
Cash
She’d called me out on my bullshit.
It was true. I hadn’t dealt with my issues. Mainly, did my old man lie to me, and if so, where was the woman I had once called mother?
If. If. If. Fuckingif. It was triggering my insomnia.
Between my old man coming to me in his old ways and my wife coming to me in new ones, I averaged minutes of sleep every night. If that. It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced in my life because I couldn’t control it. It fucked with me beyond what I felt comfortable admitting to anyone.
I had admitted it to her, though, in my own way. Apart from Tito Sala, I had never told anyone that insomnia crept on me like a silent advisory, night and day. It was the only thing I’d never been able to bend to my will.
Until she came along.
She gave me something no one ever had before: A power that went beyond this world.
