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“Easy, Jesus,” Jack said, putting his hand up on the dash as I took a corner. “She’s not in imminent risk of death. We’ve got to tell her.”
“That’s what you want to do now?” Carter demanded. “Five years of staying away from her, and everything that cost us, and now that she’s hanging around the arena giving you guys those innocent, wide eyes… you want to just dump the truth on her?”
Jack and I had struggled to convince Carter to hide her in the first place. Now we couldn’t talk him into giving up.
We all wanted to protect her so badly.
“How are we going to protect her if she’s not with us?” I asked, sounded totally reasonable…as if I’d ever been reasonable when it came to Kennedy.
“Why do we have to tell her to have her with us?” Carter demanded. “We could just…win her over. Stop acting like assholes, but that doesn’t have to mean telling her the truth.”
“Maybe not the whole truth,” Jack admitted, “but we do need to tell her something.”
“She’s better off not remembering,” I said, feeling haunted by the memories of what Kennedy had experienced.
She’d been helping me wash the dishes after Jack’s mom had cooked for us. Jack had disappeared, as he did. She’d barely pushed her sweatshirt sleeves up, even though they’d gotten soaked with water.
“What’s going on?” I’d asked her.
“Mm?”
I’d pulled her sleeve up. She’d tried to pull away, but I’d caught her hand in mine and held her still.
“Kennedy,” I’d whispered. “Trust me.”
We’d stood there under the bright lights in Jack’s huge kitchen. The window had reflected back our faces. She’d looked so innocent that day, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her lips shiny with pink gloss. Our girl.
“I do,” she’d whispered back. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“The only one who can hurt me, baby girl, is you,” I’d promised her, right before I reached for her sleeve again, and this time she’d let me.
There had been bands of bruises around her wrists.
“We’ll be out of here soon,” she’d said with a smile, even though her eyes had suddenly been shiny with tears.
It hadn’t been the worst thing her stepfather did to her. But the thought that she would try to get those memories back bothered me.
She was better off without them. Better off laughing the way I heard her laugh now, as if she’d been born five years ago, new and bright and unbruised.
“Maybe we don’t get to decide that for her,” Jack said.
I turned to give him a disbelieving look, and Carter said urgently, “The road doesturn,Sebastian.”
I looked back at the road in time to make the turn, but told them, “We made that decision for her five years ago. We could have been there for her. It must’ve been hell for her, having no memories, no family—”
“She made a nice life for herself,” Jack interrupted. “Kennedy always finds a way.”
Jack had that rich boy optimism.
We drove past Jack’s old house.
“What are we doing when we get there?” Jack demanded. “We didn’t think this through.”
“You grew up across the street, you can go talk to her,” I said, even though I wanted so badly to be the one who wrapped her up in my arms.
What the hell had she learned out there?
My phone chimed again as I was pulling into the trailer park.
