CHAPTER
ONE
ZIGGY
Wilde’s End is a lot of things to me.
It’s a place to lose myself.
It’s a new beginning.
It’s shelter and hopelessness and beauty and untamed wilderness.
It’s my home.
And it’s also where I met Kennedy Bellamy.
He’s got music playing through his phone, large body moving to the unfamiliar sounds, and whenever I’m around him, things feel loud. Ever since I first saw him singing and dancing along to “My, My, My,” one of the few songs I recognize, it created this connection between us that is completely one-sided but I can’t seem to let drop. Kennedy has a constant hum of life orbiting him, and I want to step into the pull and be swept up in the chaos.
I won’t though. Because that kind of life-altering jump isn’t for people like me.
Kennedy is a hurricane.
I’m a leaf starting its slow descent to the forest floor, far, far away.
He pulls off a step-slide thing, and damn, he looks hot doing it. Even wearing a full white jumpsuit with hood, face mask, and goggles for protection. The insulation he’s cutting and fitting in the wall cavity has caught on everything in tiny, fluffy clumps.
I’ve done all the electrical work I can for today, so I plant my ass on my toolbox and watch him, at war with myself. I have two distinct sides of my personality, and it’s anyone’s guess who’ll win on any given day. There’s the scared side that refuses to let go of everything that’s happened to me, and then there’s the spark of a person trapped. The side of me that wants to break out and be a normal goddamn person.
That side gets stronger with Kennedy around.
While I love living in this town, and I love that people mind their own business, we’re mostly loners out this way, and it works for me. Until now, maybe it doesn’t.
I didn’t know people like Kennedy could exist.
Always singing, whistling, talking,moving.
He’s just so … happy.
I wish I could tell him what a good quality that is, but I can never find my moment. Whenever the words get trapped in my throat, the stress of letting them out almost chokes me. It takes me a really long time to get my thoughts in order, and then I have to run the words through my mind over and over until I feel ready to open my mouth. Usually by the time I get there, the moment has moved on, and if I let out the words I’ve been building, conversation pulls to a jerky halt with a noise in my head like the obnoxious crunch of dying brakes.
Kennedy yanks me from my thoughts as his exhale huffs from him. He pushes back his hood, flicks up his face mask, and sets his goggles on top of his messy blond hair, sweat damp at his hairline.
“This job’s a pain in the ass,” he says. He crosses the half-demolished house with long strides and throws himself down on the floor beside me. “It’s always when it comes to the insulation that Hart and Hudson are nowhere to be found.”
Even though his brothers have abandoned him to this, his voice is full of affection for them. Personally, I don’t think either of them deserves someone as amazing as Kennedy, and if I could goddamn talk around people, I’d tell them that myself.
I try for a sympathetic smile.
“Ah, it’s okay.” He pats my knee with one of his large, gloved hands, and the spot burns long after he stops. “I like hard work. It makes me feel like I have purpose.”
I know exactly what he means. It’s taken us years to get the solar farm up and operational in Wilde’s End, then connected to all the properties spread out across the land, and I loved having a reason to get up in the morning. Now that the brothers are doing up the abandoned mining town that we’ve dubbed Old End, I have a new project.
Getting electricity to this town that will be able to support whatever the end goal is.
It’s a really big fucking job.
I’ve craved this kind of purpose again.
