Page 47 of No Second Chances

“Kennedy, baby, just get it all out.” He thought I was getting sicker, but it was him. It was his touch. His smell. Everything about Royal made me sick, and him touching me made it even worse.

By the time I’d thrown up everything in my stomach, there was nothing left but bile. And even that didn’t take long to dry up.

I was left heaving into the toilet, wanting to climb inside and die. Because there was no running from what came next.

He rubbed my back once and then again before he grabbed my neck almost painfully.

“You’re done now, aren’t you?”

There wasn’t time to answer before he was ripping me away from the toilet and dragging me into the bedroom.

“Where’s your ring, Kennedy?” His fist connected with my lower back, but he was still holding my hair so I couldn’t drop to the ground when the pain was too much for me to stand. “Where the fuck is the ring I gave you? It’s not on your hand.” Another punch, but this time a little higher.

I cried out, unable to stop it, even though I knew he got off on my tears. On the pain.

“One more chance, Kennedy. And then I’ll make you pay.”

“It’s in the kitchen,” I gasped, barely managing to breathe, let alone speak.

“Where in the kitchen, Kennedy? Use your words.” Royal lifted me by the hair until I was standing and not slumped.

“Freezer.” I tried to keep the tears back. To keep him from seeing me at my weakest.

Royal let go of my hair and grabbed me by the neck, purposefully digging into my skin with the chain that always hung there, with Linc’s dog tag. “I’m going to check. If it’s not there, I’m going to come back and I’m going to kill you. Your father. Your brother. Not even your precious Linc will be able to stop me. And when you die, I’m going to move on to your only little sister. I’ll tear Casper away from her husband, and I’ll kill her too.”

When he came back upstairs, he used that ring to cut his name into the skin on my wrist, right next to the scar from when I tried to kill myself as a teenager. My last thought before fading into oblivion was that I should have tried harder.

“Kennedy.” Parker is crouched down next to me, her arms wrapped around my body as I rock back and forth.

“What’s wrong with her?” Royal stands over us, and his voice makes me sick.

I almost throw up on his feet, but I manage to keep it in. Barely.

“Get the fuck away from her.”

Linc.

21

LINC

When the man standing over Kennedy doesn’t budge, I almost lose my shit. “I said to get the fuck away from her, Royal.”

He looks up, completely oblivious to the fact that not only is he going to get his ass beat, but that every single person currently standing in Lucy’s will stand by and watch it happen. When our eyes lock, the man has the audacity to smile at me like we are friends and he is waiting for me. He genuinely thinks I’ll keep from making a scene, and I almost laugh at his audacity.

We’re standing in a bar that is owned by a first responder, serves first responders, and half the staff are related to first responders or were first responders. There are a lot of fuckin’ cops in the bar and restaurant. There are even a few paramedics that I can see out of the corner of my eye. And while I like my odds of surviving an encounter with the asshole across the room, I don’t like the idea of anyone around me suffering because of him.

“He’s going to die.” Remy’s voice takes on a lethal tone when he sees the smile Royal still wears, but he doesn’t move in that direction. Not yet. “I don’t think he realizes that he’s about to die in a room full of cops.” For everything he says, Remy seems to be keeping his calm for the most part.

Meanwhile, my heart races and my eyes narrow until the only thing I can concentrate on is Kennedy on the floor. I keep flashing back to the blood on Mallory’s face and the bruises that started to form almost immediately. I stand there and all I can think of is the fact that Kennedy was hurt by him once before, and now I’m not stopping it from happening again.

One quiet whimper escapes her lips, and it shoots straight through my heart. She destroys me, without even trying. When she looks up, her eyes locking on mine, the noise around us vanishes.

Everyone vanishes.

I don’t see Remy. Or Parker. Or anyone else in the building. I see Kennedy, on her fucking knees, at the feet of the man responsible for her pain. The one who beat the hell out of Mallory, even if I can’t prove it. The man responsible for the tears I could see from all the way across the restaurant.

Everything explodes. Everything. Every bit of anger and rage and everything I want to say and do just come rushing out all at once. I’m there, next to Remy, watching it happen in one moment, and in the next, I have Royal by the collar of his shirt and shove him away from Kennedy. I don’t even know how I got there or if I pushed Kennedy out of the way. I’m not even thinking when I practically lift him off his feet. Dragging him along with me isn’t difficult at all. In fact, he doesn’t weigh more than a feather as far as I’m concerned. His complaints and outrage don’t faze me in the slightest.

---