Текст книги "The Song Remains the Same"

Автор книги: Kelli Jean

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” I groaned, my voice sounding like paper scratching on asphalt.

“Philip?”

It took a hell of a lot of effort, but I turned my head and saw Dad, looking older than I’d ever seen him. Surprisingly, the light in the room wasn’t so bright.

Then, I was shocked.

I’m in a fuckin’ hospital? Again?

“What the hell?” I had an IV drip in my arm and a fuckin’ mask over my face. Am I still in Saskatoon? “Where the hell am I?”

Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned my head to the right and saw Connor sitting in a chair.

“Hey,” I said to him, confused. “What’s goin’ on? Where’s Kenna?”

The look on Connor’s face…

Fuck.

That look was both furious and sad, and it made no sense.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Little Brother asked.

“Why do people keep askin’ me that?” I demanded, knowing I’d recently heard that question a shit-ton.

“Because, Philip, you keep losing your damn mind,” my father replied.

Shit, he’s pissed.

“Where’s Kenna?” I demanded again. “I swear, she was just here.”

“She was,” said Connor, standing up and walking toward me. “She was saying good-bye. She left about fifteen minutes ago.” He took a seat on the bed next to my knees. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Starin’ at the wall behind his head—

What color is that? Taupe?How benign. It helped my head though.

Catching flashes of memory against the lack of color, I replied, “Alys got a phone call. I think it was Pygmy. She left…Jason came in…and that’s all. Will you fuckin’ tell me what’s goin’ on now?” I asked.

“You have alcohol poisoning,” Dad told me. “You’re still sick from it. I can’t believe…after your mother and everything…”

Guilt flooded me. No wonder he was pissed. “Dad…”

He shook his head. “It’s going to be okay though. Right? This…this was just a one-time thing. You were hurting because of X, and Kenna—”

“Is she all right?” I couldn’t help the panic in my voice.

“Yes and no,” replied Connor. “We need to talk to you, Phil. It’s important that you listen and do what needs to be done, or…”

“Or what?”

“Or we won’t let Kenna come back.”

“What?” I gasped in disbelief.

“Son…you hurt her. You were so far gone in the drink that you tossed her into a wall and busted her head wide open.”

“What?”

Connor looked grim. “She’s going to be fine, man. She was nearly scalped, and she lost a lot of blood, but she’s cleaned up, and she’s going to make a full recovery. But that’s not the only thing. If you want to have a relationship with my sister, I need to know that this shit ain’t ever gonna happen again. The only way I’ll believe you is if you go to rehab and get the help you need. Ten weeks. When you’re well enough to be discharged from the hospital, the guys and I will go with you straight to the center. Your dad already has one in mind.”

“It’s an upscale place for rich shits who keep fucking up,” Dad said, almost cheerfully. “The best care money can possibly buy. It’s like a retreat.”

I stared at both of them like they’d lost their fuckin’ minds.

“It’s not up for negotiation, man. If you don’t do this, I’ll tell Da it was your fault that his little girl was getting her head stitched up, and he’ll move mountains to make sure you never see her again.”

My jaw dropped.

Dad was nodding his head. “And I’ll help him.”

“What the fuck?”

If I wasn’t so fucked up, weak, and just plain fuckin’ sick, I’d be losing my fuckin’ shit all over this taupe room.

“Kenna and Alys are leaving. We’re sending them out of the country until you’re done,” said Connor.

“No! I can’t even see her?” I cried. Her Tattoo throbbed angrily. She doesn’t want this either!

“We let her say good-bye before you woke up. That was all we were willing to do,” Connor—fuckin’ traitor!—said.

“Philip, you need to get your shit together,” Dad said. “You’ve hurt yourself, you’ve hurt your family, and you’ve hurt Kenna, both physically and mentally. Enough is enough. She tried so hard to help you—”

“She’s my fuckin’ fiancée! We’re supposed to get married—”

“Two weeks from today actually,” said Connor softly. “How were the wedding plans coming along?”

Two weeks? Where the fuck did the time go?

“I can’t…I can’t not see her,” I told him. “I’ll fuckin’ go apeshit.”

“You can, and you will because you love her more than anything, and this is the only way you’ll ever have her in your life again. She agrees. You need to do this, Phil.”

She agreed to this? I thought wildly.

Kenna had said she wouldn’t leave. I remembered that. She’d made me promise not to either.

When the fuck was that?

“There’s something else,” Connor said quietly, shooting a glance at my dad.

“What?” I breathed, not sure I could take much more shit right now.

“Kenna was pregnant.”

A shocked charge of air ripped from my throat. Joy, so raw and powerful, exploded inside me. If I had been standing, I would’ve dropped to my knees.

Wait…

“Was?”

Connor nodded, and I felt sick.

“Did I…when she hit her head…”

“No, man. Three days ago. Kenna found you and Alys asleep on the couch—”

“What?” my dad barked.

“It was an accident!” I snapped. I was close to having a fuckin’ heart attack.

“It was, and Jason was sleeping on the couch with them. But Kenna was pissed enough to storm out of there anyway,” Connor said.

Dad calmed down.

“But she knew, man…” Then, Connor continued to explain the whole deal to me, everything she had gone through on her own…

“She wouldn’t tell you because she couldn’t get your hopes up, only to have to lose it anyway. With losing X, she thought it might be too much,” he finished softly.

She was probably right because I was bawling my fuckin’ eyes out as Connor told me all of this.

We’d made a baby. We’d created a life. She’d had a part of me inside her, and I didn’t even know. If I had opened my eyes, if I had quit bein’ so fuckin’ selfish, I would’ve seen that. I had felt it, that there was somethin’ different about her. She’d been carryin’ a piece of me…

“She wanted it,” Connor told me, making me sob even harder. “She called it her Little Zephyr—”

“FUCK!” I screamed. This isn’t happening! This shit—this is some fuckin’ diabolical fuckin’ shit right here!

Dad wrapped his huge arms around me and hugged me tight.

“Oh my God!” I cried, pressing the heels of my hands hard into my eyes. Bursts of colors and prisms of light shot around behind my lids. “Oh, fuck! Baby Girl…fuck!”

Through her pain, her loss, dealing with my shit, all the people she’s buried…she loves me so fuckin’ much that she held on to our Little Zephyr. She fuckin’ bled for it, for us. She’d carried it around in her for ten weeks, unable to destroy a piece of me…

How can I not give ten weeks for her?

“She wants…no, she needs you to do this, Phil,” said Connor. “She wants you to get well. She knows you need help, and she’s not the one who can heal you this time.”

“Okay,” I gasped, snotting and snorting.

Dad handed me some tissue, and I wiped my face.

“I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” said the soulless ginger.

I’d ended up staying in the hospital for three days. After I was no longer fuckin’ toxic, I’d gone in for CT scans, and—thank fuck—I hadn’t done any more damage to my body. My bones were still fusing nicely, the cast had been replaced with a brace, and my blood work had shown that I hadn’t done permanent damage to my organs.

What hadn’t shown up on any of these tests was the damage that had been done to my soul. I was just defeated and wrecked on a level that I hadn’t known before. Without Kenna, my life made no sense.

When it was time to leave, Dad wheeled my ass out of the hospital to the black van where I met up with the guys and Sheri along with Siggie behind the wheel. The guys were all set to head to the airport where Dad’s friend with the private jet would fly us out straightaway.

Sheri was on the phone, and her eyes lit up when she saw me.

“Here he is,” she said to whoever was on the other end before shoving her phone in my face.

“Hello?” I asked, giving Sheri a raised eyebrow.

“Hey, babe,” came the most precious voice in the world through the phone, like a warm bit of magic.

“Baby Girl…” I breathed, my chest filling up with a healing hot tingle. “Oh God, Kenna, I miss you so fuckin’ much!” Fuck it. I was crying again.

Everyone had walked away, leaving me alone in the wheelchair.

“I miss you, too,” she replied, sounding like she was doing a bit of crying herself.

“Where are you? Can’t I see you before I head out? I need to see you, Baby Girl. I’m dying inside.”

“I’m at the airport—”

“We’re headin’ there now! I’ll come and—”

“My flight is boarding in about fifteen minutes. I wouldn’t be here when you arrived.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you,” she replied. “I promised Connor and our parents. I think it’s probably for the best. I have some shit I need to work through, too—”

“We should be doin’ it together, Kenna. This don’t feel natural! You shouldn’t be dealin’ with this on your own.”

“I’m not. Alys is with me, and Lili’s going to meet up with us later. We just need to be able to get through this. If we can get through this, we’ll get through anything.”

Connor started walking over, and I glared at him.

“Yeah, but you’re goin’ through somethin’ I should be a part of.”

Kenna sucked in her breath, and Connor froze about two feet away from me.

“What are you talking about?” Kenna asked.

“Little Zephyr,” I replied softly, feeling my throat close up.

“That rat bastard!” she shrieked just as Connor lunged at me for the phone.

Yanking the phone out of his reach, I smacked the shit out of his face. “Try it again, soulless, and I’ll slap the fuckin’ cracker right outta you!”

Cradling his stinging cheek with his hand, he hissed, “You weren’t supposed to know!”

“Fuck you, douche! If it weren’t for you, I’d be with her right now, doin’ what’s right, and bein’ by my woman’s side! So, fuckin’ take your ginger ass back over there, and let me talk to her in peace!”

“I can’t believe it! He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut!” Kenna wailed.

“I had a right to know,” I stubbornly told her. “But I understand why you didn’t tell me. When…when all this is done and over with, you and I can sit down and talk about it, and I can apologize to your face for bein’ a selfish fuckin’ prick.”

She sniffed. “Yeah, all right.”

“I’m…damn it.” Tears were just flowing. I couldn’t stop it. I had just spent the last few days crying until I was dry. I shouldn’t have been able to produce more.

“Will you do me a favor, babe?”

“Anythin’!” I gasped.

“Just…focus on yourself. Use this time to heal, and find out who you are now. Figure it all out. Because you won’t be able to be there for anyone else if you’re not there for yourself first. Okay?”

“Can’t I do this for us?”

“Without you, Phil…there is no us.”

Damn it.I’m gonna have a fuckin’ heart attack before I make it to thirty. “What are you sayin’?”

“I can’t go through that again, seeing you so destroyed, and by your own hand, too! I was dying inside! You were so sick that I honestly thought that was it for you. You could’ve died! Covered in your own puke and piss, you were unable to even—”

She swallowed hard, and I was filled with a shame that seemed endless.

“Baby Girl, I ain’t ever gonna do that to either of us again. When I woke up, I knew I had to do right by you—”

“You have to do right by you,” she snapped, getting all fired up. “Until you do, there’s nothing for us to stand on.”

“Don’t…” I sniveled. “Don’t say that! Please, Baby—”

“I have to go,” she said. “Our flight’s boarding. I’ll try to find a way to get in touch with you soon, okay?”

“Promise me, you ain’t givin’ up on us, Kenna!” I begged.

“I won’t if you won’t,” she replied. “I’ll always love you, Phil,” she told me, her own voice cracking.

She’d been trying hard to be strong, but I could hear it. She was breaking down.

“I love you, too.”

Then, she hung up.

I hadn’t heard from her since.

The Gentle Oak Rehabilitation Center was just what Dad had promised. It was a rehab center for spoiled rich shits who had pissed off their parents one too many times. A nice place, it was surrounded by forest and mountains, kept way under the radar so that celebrities could sneak in, do their time in a retreat setting, and then slip back into the limelight with no one even noticing.

“Shit, this is gonna be hell,” I mumbled.

The facility looked like a spa resort, tucked away from the public eye. People who checked in had their own fuckin’ home-away-from-home deal, including a personal chef, trainer, and life coach. The whole team of people could keep a spoiled brat cushy while getting clean.

“It looks nice,” said Jason.

Whatever.

The guys would be staying, too, in a separate part of the resort, so we could continue working together a few hours a day. It was part of the deal. Mostly, I’d be working on getting my head back on track, but Dad and Sheri had made arrangements with the center’s administration for Jason, Flipper, and Connor to be on hand, especially because Dad and Sheri thought it’d be a good idea for all of us to go through some group shrinking.

“You all lost X,” Sheri had told us. “There might be some issues that, as a band, you could work through.”

Whatever.

She just wanted Jason to stay away from booze, too. He’d ended up going to the hospital. He had been that sick after our bender. But he didn’t have to do the damn rehab shit like I did.

Douche.

With a really foul disposition, I checked myself into Gentle Oak. The guys all had to sign contracts, promising not to bring drugs or alcohol on the premises, blah, blah, blah.

“Mr. Deveraux, if you’ll come with me?” asked a perky little brunette with even perkier tits.

Grabbing my bag and tucking my crutches under my pits, I gave the guys a nod. “See y’all later.”

“Phil—” said Connor.

I flipped him the bird and didn’t look back.

“My name is Willow,” said Perky Tits. “I’ll be giving you a tour of The Gentle Oak Rehabilitation Center this evening…”

Damn, what an annoying little shit she is. She had one of those high-pitched voices that hurt the ears after about two minutes. Rambling on like I actually gave a shit, she pointed out different buildings as she led me to my designated home for the next ten weeks. It was like a glorified pool house without the pool.

Waiting outside my pool house were three people, looking like servants ready to greet the lord of the manor.

“This is Gustav,” said Perky Tits, waving her hand to a scruffy little dude. “He is your personal chef. Tatiana”—she gave a slight wave—“is your personal trainer and physio-therapist. And David here is your live-in counselor. They are here for you in any capacity you might need to help you through the program.”

Perky Tits smiled like she was posing for a photo shoot. Then, she turned on her heel and bounced back down the path.

Tatiana came forward. Her tits were as big as Sheri’s. “If I may?”

“What?”

“Your bag.”

Handing it over, she dropped it to the ground and pulled out a small flashlight from her back pocket. Quickly, she dug around in my shit, looking for contraband.

“Clean, as far as I can tell,” she stated with a smile. After zipping it back up, she hefted it over her shoulder.

“Yeah. I really don’t have an addiction. I was drinkin’ to try to forget. That’s all.”

“Well, we’re here to help you with that,” said David. “Come on in, and make yourself at home.”

There was no way. My only home was on a plane to God-knew-where, and there was a very real possibility that she would come back and tell me I wasn’t the man she had hoped I was.

Kenna

“Let’s have a beer,” Alys suggested.

“Yeah, I think I could use one.” I sighed heavily.

The flight had taken it out of both of us, and we still had one more to go before reaching Inverness. Stuck at Heathrow for the next few hours, Alys and I traipsed into the first-class lounge and plonked down on a couple of barstools.

“Well, if this just isn’t a bit of déjà vu.” A warm voice laughed from down the bar.

Both Alys and I glanced that way, surprised to see Devon sitting with his own pint. Scruffy and rumpled, he was even sexier than when he was scrubbed up and polished. Picking up his glass and bag, he made his way over to us and sat down next to me.

“Devon,” I said, still in a bit of shock.

“That I am,” he replied, smiling sweetly. “What brings you ladies my way? I like your hair, by the way. You look like a sexy pixie.”

Before leaving, I’d had Tricia, my hairdresser, fix the butcher job left by the doctors. Indeed, she had given me a hot pixie bob, long in the front and nearly nonexistent in the back. I liked it, too, but I was happy Phil hadn’t seen me before we’d left. He would’ve had a conniption at the loss of my too long hair.

“Where are your men?” he asked, looking around as if Phil and X would pop up any second.

Alys gasped, and the blood drained from my face.

“You haven’t heard?” I asked him.

Devon’s features turned highly concerned. “Heard what? I’ve been in Tibet since February.”

Alys and I just stared at him, unable to say a word.

He cocked an eyebrow at us. “What happened?”

“You didn’t hear about the bus accident in Canada…” I wasn’t asking.

Looking alarmed now, he asked, “What fucking bus accident?”

The bartender came over, and Alys sniffled, ordering us shots of Jäger. Devon declined. He didn’t drink hard liquor.

“Kenna,” he insisted in a warning tone.

We told him about Flipper’s broken arm and ribs and Jason’s mangled face, which had healed beautifully. He was still a knockout, maybe even more so now. Then, I told him about Phil’s busted body.

“X didn’t make it.” My voice shook.

Next to me, Alys whimpered softly, covering her face with her hands.

“What?” Devon breathed.

“There’s more,” I said.

I explained what Phil had done to himself afterward.

“Where is he?” Devon asked quietly.

“Gentle Oak Rehab Center in Colorado,” I whispered, not wanting anyone else in the lounge to hear.

Devon nodded.

“The guys are there with him. I’ve been banished. I wasn’t able to fix him, so we’re being punished with forced separation,” I complained bitterly.

“I’m guessing he didn’t take that well.”

“No. But…he really needs to do this, and I would have just been in the way.” I sighed. “I know it’s for the best.”

“It’s not forever,” he said in an attempt to console me.

“I hope not.”

Devon gave me a hug, and then he got up and pulled Alys into his arms. Unable to hold back any longer, she broke down into sobs, and he rocked her back and forth.

“It’s going to be all right, Alys,” he murmured to her.

The look in his eyes spoke of knowing such a thing firsthand. While he did have a powerful aura about him, a spiritual-awakening sort of glow, his eyes still lingered with the pain of losing someone he’d loved. Brigid had damaged him.

“Where are you ladies headed?” he asked me, not releasing Alys.

I couldn’t tell him. He was under no obligation to keep it from Phil. The only people who knew where we were going were our parents and Connor.

“Somewhere we can try to pull our lives out of this mess we’re in,” said Alys.

Devon nodded. “I know the feeling.”

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“I was going home to Ireland to see my parents.”

Warmth blossomed in my chest. I had the feeling his plans had changed, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

“We should head to our gate, Alys,” I said.

We finished our drinks, and then Alys and I hugged Devon good-bye and went our separate ways.

“He’s not going to Ireland now, is he?” Alys whispered.

“I think he’s booking a flight to Colorado,” I replied.

“After this last flight, I’m going to need ten weeks just to recover from flying,” groaned Alys.

Phil

After the first uneventful evening of hanging with my new paid friends, the real work began. Tatiana woke me up before the damn sunrise and had me doing floor stretches and shit like that, working out my range of motion. Doing it made me think of my Baby Girl, how I used to watch her, amazed by the shit her body could do.

Kenna had tried to get me to do yoga, wanting to add it to the routine she’d worked out to help me, but I’d been an ass and said it was for pussies. Thinking about that caused a tidal wave of shame to crash through me. A pussy was the last thing my Baby Girl was. She had to be the strongest, bravest person I knew.

While on my back with my legs in the air, I remembered that Connor did yoga every day, and that cat was fuckin’ buff. He had to be as strong as I’d been before the accident. He had amazing control, and his energy levels were off the charts.

It’s time I seriously start doin’ this shit. When I get my Baby Girl back, I’ll do it with her.

Tatiana decided it would be a good idea to stretch out my lower back, so she made me do this move where my waist got twisted to the side and my knee shoved across my body, pinching my junk between my thighs.

“Augh!” I cried out.

“Your pelvis?” she asked, cool as a cucumber.

“My nuts!”

Her lips twitched, and she eased back, so I could adjust myself. Then, she pulled the move again, practically spreading herself out over me. Her tits were on my ribs, her hand holding on to my shoulder. It was a bit of unnecessary contact.

“My fiancée is a doctor of therapeutic medicine,” I mentioned in an offhanded sort of way.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve gotten some awesome treatments from her. She does acupuncture, too. She had her own clinic before it got blown up. After that, she worked with drug addicts, detoxing and doing pain-relief treatments without using more drugs. Mostly heroin junkies who shouldn’t be on shit like morphine.”

Tatiana sat back and switched to the other side. This time, she kept her tits to herself. “It must upset her greatly to have you here for something she worked so hard with.”

“I ain’t an addict,” I snapped. “I went off on a bender after my best friend was killed. There’s a fuckin’ difference.”

“So, why isn’t she helping you now?”

“Because…I wouldn’t listen to her,” I admitted.

She loved me enough to let me go. Again. All I want is to be with her, and all she wants…is for me to be well. Healthy.

Fuck! I’m such a selfish douche bag!

“So, she just gave up on you?”

This woman was seriously starting to piss me right the fuck off.

And there she goes with the tits again!

Kenna had stretched the fuck outta me on several occasions, doing these exact moves, and she had always been professional even though I’d always had a raging hard-on whenever she touched me. Suddenly, my respect for my woman magnified a hundred-fold. She respected herself and her profession too much to taint her practice, even with the man she’d fuck like a freak after-hours.

When our session ended and Tatiana’s boobs were finally out of my face, I had a shrinking session with David. Gustav had made me a strawberry smoothie to take with me.

“How was the physio this morning?” David asked.

I sat down and set my crutches aside. “I want someone else—a dude who won’t take every opportunity to push his tits on me and ask mean questions about my fiancée,” I said, just throwing it out there.

Giving me a surprised look, he nodded. “All right. Were you sexually harassed by Tatiana?”

“I felt uncomfortable. I thought I was here to get help, not felt up.”

“Do you want to file a complaint?”

“No. I just want someone else, someone who will really help me learn yoga. My brother-in-law does it, and he’s in amazin’ shape. Connor—the giant fuckin’ ginger?”

David nodded again. “Would you want him to join you in your yoga sessions?”

“Dirty fuckin’ hippie would love that.”

“What about you? Would you want that?”

“Yeah, sure. I want someone who’s as good at it as he and my fiancée are.”

“What’s your fiancée’s name?”

“Kenna.”

“Would her presence here be helpful to you?”

I was the surprised one now. “You could get her here?”

“If it would help you stay focused on getting well, I could look into it.”

This was it. I could make a huge fuckin’ stink and get my Baby Girl. Connor would call her and tell her, and she’d be back from wherever the hell they’d shipped her off to, and…

“No,” I told him. “I want her here more than anythin’, but I would probably lose sight of why I’m here at all. She doesn’t want that. She needs time for herself now anyway.”

Wow. I’d fuckin’ done the unselfish thing, the thing Kenna would have done for me if she were in this position. I still ached for her, probably more now, but I felt a huge sense of accomplishment in that.

“How long have you been with Kenna?” David asked.

My whole fuckin’ life. “Almost two years.”

“Do you think you have a healthy relationship?”

“Probably not. At least on my end anyway.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she’s my obsession. My reason to exist.”

“Not your music? Your band?”

“They’re secondary.”

“Is that wise?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t really care.”

“What do they think?”

“About Kenna?”

“And your relationship with her.”

“They’re all for it. She makes me a better person, a better man. They respect that.”

“What about your friend who was killed? How did he feel about it?”

I took a deep breath, feeling the sting of X’s death. “He adored Kenna,” I said quietly. “He thought she was badass. He even married her best friend. And that woman is pretty badass, too.”

“You feel Kenna supports you then? Emotionally, professionally?”

“She’s our number one fan. My number one fan. We met before we hit it big…”

I told him the whole story of my Baby Girl and me. Hell, it was what I was paying him a small fortune for. I’d promised I would do whatever it took, and not working with the people here wouldn’t get me very far. But, hell yeah, I bragged about my woman to David. I had diarrhea of the mouth about her for at least a solid hour.

“The thing is,” I said, wrapping all this up, “she doesn’t want me here so that we can be together. She wants me here so that I can get through this shit for myself. It fuckin’ sucks because I am doin’ this so that we can be together again, and I don’t see why it can’t be both ways.”

“I think that you are doing this for both those reasons. She’s right though. You should be doing this for you, so when you leave here, you’re in a good place within yourself.”

“Then, how is that not selfish? That’s somethin’ that fucks with me. I know I’m selfish a lot of the time. I want to be more like her, thinkin’ beyond myself and what I want, you know?”

“By being in a good place inside yourself, Phil, you can bring that to other people. The people in your life will benefit from having you happy and sound of mind. Just like all the negative things that landed you here in the first place, the good things will bring joy to you and your loved ones.”

Yeah, that’s one way to look at it, I guess.

The daily schedule was pretty much mapped out. After Gustav’s rabbit-food lunch special, I had two hours to hang with the guys. They brought over a few guitars and a small drum kit.

And a bass.

Before I could say anything about that, Jason held up a small black case. “Talked to Granny this mornin’.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, man. She called me. Well, she called Sheri, who called the main office, who gave me my phone back to call Granny—you get the idea. Said her spirit guides told her to tell me to tell you that you have to shed the old, reveal what you’ve forgotten, and begin again.”

“And how’s the box gonna help me with that?”

Flipper did a decent impression of Brad Pitt’s Seven performance. “What’s in the bahx?”

Snappin’ the tabs, Jason busted out a buzzer and barber shears.

To shave.

My fuckin’ head.

“Hell no!” I said.

“Dude, it’s time,” said Jason. “Granny ain’t ever led us astray before.”

“Did she tell you I had to shave my fuckin’ head?”

“Yeah. She said the dreamcatchers need to be seen.”

“Do it!” said Flipper. “You’ve been lettin’ that shit grow for more than five years now.”

I looked at Connor, whose hair was pretty fuckin’ long, and Jason, who had his hair pulled back into a knot. I glared at his scarred face and good looks, wondering if he just wanted to have the prettiest hair in the band. But, in my opinion, Connor did. It was dreamy.

“You guys gonna shave your heads, too?”

“Fuck no,” said Jason. “Sheri would nut-chuck me.”

“And Kenna would nut-chuck me!”

Connor’s eyes dropped to the floor, but he said nothing.

“What do you think, Little Brother?” I asked.

“I think…I think it could be good for you. But it’s your hair.”

Eyeballing the buzzer, I then looked up at Jason again. “All right.”

“Yes!” he roared.

I yanked off my shirt as Flipper got a towel and threw it at me to drape over my shoulders. Copping a squat on a kitchen stool, I pulled down my hair. That shit hit my lower back now.

“Don’t ever tell the girls we went all girlie,” stated Flipper, looking stern. “Playin’ with each other’s hair an’ shit.”

Scowling, I pulled my hair into a loose ponytail, and Connor grabbed it, snipping the fucker off before I could even blink.

“Holy shit!” gasped Jason.

“What?”

“He just whacked your hair off! Just like that!” he said, snapping his fingers.

Flipper busted out laughing.

Connor handed my rope of hair to me. “Jason’s granny said you have to burn it.”

A few locks of hair fell forward, and I almost wanted to cry. Oddly enough though…I felt relieved. Many memories had been made while this shit was growing, both fucking awesome and horrific. Looking at it, it made sense.

I need to let shit go. I need to walk away from the bullshit and move forward.

That was a secret power that Kenna had. She was strong enough to walk away even if it killed her inside to do so. If my Baby Girl could let go of the past and move on, then so could I.

A few minutes later, Connor had buzzed my head, and damn it, he’d taken my sideburns, too.

“Well, fuck me runnin’,” said Jace, his eyes bugging at me.

He held up a hand mirror, and the face looking back at me looked just as shocked as Jason’s.

Turning my head to the side, I saw the webbed circlet just above my ear, up to where the side and top of my head met, the three feathers wrapping back around my skull. The same was on the other side. On the back of my head, the six feather tips touched.

Six feathers, one for each year my Baby Girl and I waited to be together.

Goose bumps erupted all over my body at that thought.

“Come on, let’s torch this,” said Jason, sweeping up the rest of the hair and heading out back.