Angel of Redemption (71 page)

Dean

I kiss Kayla softly a few
more times, sucking on her bottom lip before finally pulling away.

“Ahhhh,” I groan. “I gotta go.”

“I know,” she sighs, looking up at the clock on
the wall. “Me, too.”

Shoving the key into my pocket, I’m amazed it
doesn’t feel heavier. I
’m being stupid—it’s a key, it’s not like they
weigh a lot—but the implications of Kayla giving it to me are massive. I
told her I wanted more, and I do. This is more. This is good. My heart’s
beating a little faster, a little harder, but not in that painful sort of way
it does when I get the urge to run. I don’t want to run.

We walk toward the exit, where Logan has his body
wrapped around Claire protectively, her face buried in his chest. To anyone
else, they look like the average teenage couple. To me, they look like kids who
haven’t quite realized that their lives are about to become ten times more
difficult.

“You ready?” I ask.

They both look up at me, unhappy expressions on
their faces. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Claire says in a soft voice. Logan
reluctantly lets go of her.

“I’ll go with you,” Kayla tells her. After they
make their way down the hallway, Logan turns to me.

“I want to stay with Claire.”

“Yeah, that’s not an option.”

“Oh, come on, man. I’m gonna be eighteen in, like,
two-and-a-half days. She needs me.”

“You may be almost eighteen, but, last time I
checked, Claire is barely seventeen. What she needs is to go home with her
sister. Right now, Kayla is the only person who can really understand what she’s
going through with her parents. Besides, you have school tomorrow.”

“Fuck school!” he snaps. “I got more important
things to think about.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “You are less
than two weeks away from graduation, Logan. You’re going. You want to prove to
Kayla that you can take care of her little sister? Stop being a mouthy punk,
and start making smarter decisions.”

Logan doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s
agitated. He shifts and fidgets. He knows I’m right and he hates it. The girls
return, both looking exhausted, and the four of us head outside.

“Are you sure you want me to come tonight?” I ask
quietly, pressing my mouth against the side of Kayla’s head.

“If it were up to me, you’d come every night.”
She snickers, looking up at me. Her tired eyes have a slight spark in them.

“Always my dirty girl.” I smirk. She smiles, but
it fades faster than it normally would. “I’ll be there,” I promise. “Just let
me get things settled and make sure my brother’s okay for tonight.”

“What happened to Simon? I thought he was
supposed to be on most nights.” I feel my lips curl up into a snarl, even
though I don’t make any sound.

“He is. He’s been really fucking flaky lately.” I
continue to grumble until Kayla puts her hand over my mouth.

“Stop. I shouldn’t have brought him up. I’m
sorry. Go do what you need to do. I’ll see you later.” She kisses me quickly
and tries to walk away, but I pull her back and kiss her again. And again. And
again.

“Okay,” she giggles. I kiss her one last time on
the neck as she dodges out of my grasp. It may not be the best time or place to
be messing around like we are, but with all the crap that’s gone down in the
last couple of days, we need moments like this. At least I do.

“Come on now, break it up,” Kayla says to Claire
and Logan, who are standing next to the car doing the same thing we were just
doing. They separate slightly and I watch Logan brush his knuckles over Claire’s
stomach before opening the car door for her and helping her in. Once she’s in,
he backs up toward where I’m standing and we watch them drive away. I parked on
the other side of the lot, so we make our way across in silence.

“Here,” I say, tossing Logan his keys.

“You’re gonna let me drive?” he asks, surprised.

“It’s your car.”

“Oh, yeah. Duh,” he laughs, unlocking the door
and climbing in.

The drive out of the city is dead. There are only
a few other cars here and there. Logan drives slowly. At first I’m not sure if
he’s being extra careful because I’m in the car or if he’s pre-occupied, but
the dazed expression on his face tells me it’s the latter.

“Are you okay?”

Logan startles, takes a deep breath and nods.

“Really? Tonight was pretty intense.” He shrugs. I
frown. “Come on, Logan. Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“About what’s going on in your head.”

“I don’t know what’s going on! I can’t think
straight. One minute I’m thinking everything might be okay, and the next I’m
trying to figure out what the fuck happened. I’m eighteen years old. Now all
the sudden I got a kid on the way and a girl I obviously can’t take care of.”

“What do you mean you can’t take care of her?” I
ask, confused.

“I let that motherfucker hit her. I promised her
I wouldn’t ever let him touch her again and then
…” He breaks off.

“How long have you known about this?”

“I don’t know. A couple months. We were at the
library. She showed up with bruises on her arms, said he grabbed her too hard
on accident. I didn’t buy it, but what the fuck was I gonna do about it?”

I groan. “You two
…”

“Don’t fucking lecture me, Dean. Please? I get
that we fucked up, okay? I know we were wrong to hide it, blah blah blah. How
many times do I have to fucking say I’m sorry?”

“Have you actually said you’re sorry?”

“Yeah. Like four million times,” he scoffs.

I shake my head. “Are you?” I’m irritated, and it’s
showing.

“Yeah.” He shrugs.

“Huh. What are you sorry for, Logan? Sorry you
went behind Kayla’s back and messed around with her little sister when she
asked you not to? Sorry you lied for months to someone who’s stuck her neck out
for you over and over again? To someone who’s done everything she can to keep
you safe? Sorry you almost cost Kayla her job? Sorry you put her in the
position that you did tonight? What the hell are you sorry about?” His fingers
grip the steering wheel tightly. I can see his eyes are watery, but he’s fighting
it. “I haven’t once heard a genuine apology out of you. You have the balls to
act like it’s Kayla who’s done something wrong. Like she’s the one who betrayed
you when she’s done nothing but love you and your brother since the moment she
laid eyes on you. You don’t know what to do? Fine, I get that. But we’re trying
to help you and all you do is cop an attitude. Maybe you should stop and try to
think about all the other people involved in this situation. It’s not just
about you.”

We stop at a light, and he turns his head toward
the window briefly, sniffing and wiping his face with the back of his hand. He
doesn’t respond to me, and I don’t push him. I want him to think about what I’ve
said.

When we get to the house, Logan turns off the
car. I open my door, but when I realize he isn’t moving, I sit back.

“You coming?”

He stares at the steering wheel. “Yeah.”

This time I wait for him. After locking his car,
he makes his way to me and I put my hand on his sagging shoulder.

“You’re going to get through this. Stop pushing
Kayla away. She’s your biggest ally. You’re going to need her.”

“Do you think she hates me?” he asks dejectedly.

“I think you need to lay low, do what she says,
and stop trying to pick fights. She’s angry, but she doesn’t hate you.”

“I
…I didn’t know all that stuff. What she
said about Claire’s dad. I didn’t know he was such a prick to her. Claire didn’t
tell me.”

“I’m not sure Claire knew all that. She was a
little girl when it happened.”

“But you knew?” He looks at me like he’s trying
to figure something out.

“Yeah. Most of it,” I answer. Logan puts his head
back down and starts walking again. When we get inside, he heads straight up
the stairs.
“Try to get some sleep.”

“I will,” he mumbles before disappearing.

Having no idea if Aiden’s still awake or in bed,
I poke my head into the den and see him sprawled out on the couch. The TV is on
some paid programming shit, and his eyes are closed.

“Aiden!” I call loudly enough to wake him.

“Huh?” he grunts, sitting up quickly. He rubs his
eyes and blinks a few times. “What time is it?”

“Just after one.”

“Are you shittin’ me? What happened?”

I sit down in the recliner and drop my head into
my hands. What a fucking day. I relay to Aiden what went down at the Graeme’s
penthouse, and then what I know from the hospital.

“He hit his pregnant, teenage daughter?” he
growls when I’ve finished.

“Yeah. Hard, too. If I hadn’t been standing
between him and Logan when he did it, Logan would have taken him out. I almost
couldn’t hold him.”

“You weren’t even tempted to let him slip?”

I think back to what that fucker said about Kayla
and grit my teeth. Not only was I tempted, I wanted to join in. That bastard
deserves to get the shit beat out of him, but where would that have landed us?
Richard was right about one thing: if we had laid a finger on him, his word
would have carried much more weight than ours.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” my brother says,
reading the expression on my face. “Is she okay?”

I shrug. “She’s upset, but Kayla said there’s no
real damage, and the baby’s okay.
”

“What about Kayla?”

“She’s holding herself together, I guess. I’m
gonna head back to her place tonight.”

“You’re worried about her.”

I nod. “Yeah. She’s getting slammed. One thing
after another. I don’t know how much more she can take before she breaks.”

An image of Steph appears in the back of my mind.
I shake it off. I know that Kayla is going to be mad when she finds out. The
longer I take to tell her Steph is living in my apartment, the worse it
’s
going to be. But it’s not that I haven’t tried to tell her. Something always
seems to get in the way. And now, with everything going on, I’m afraid that
something like this might be too much. I’m afraid it might break us.

But maybe it doesn
’t matter if I don’t
tell her. I haven’t talked to or seen Steph at all since she left the night I
told her she could have the apartment. I don’t even know if she’s actually
living there. Maybe she was just giving me a sob story to see what she could
get out of me. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s lied. Maybe she just gave up
and fucked off.

I think about it and frown. As much as I want to
believe it doesn
’t matter what happens to Stephanie, I can’t help but
think about Abigail and Zachary. They are innocent in all of this. I’ve seen
too many kids come through Wyatt House who, regardless of everything their
parents have put them through, would love to go home. It kills me that these
kids have more love for their parents than their parents have for them. That
should never, ever be the case. And at the end of the day, I want to believe
that Stephanie is capable of caring about someone other than herself.

I need to figure out when and how to tell Kayla.
Secrets only ever do more harm than good. And I don
’t want to lose her
simply because I didn’t have the balls to be honest.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Aiden asks,
narrowing his eyes. I rake my fingers across my jaw. I really need to shave.

“I’ve got some shit on my mind. Let me try and
sort through it on my own.”

“All right, bro. You know I’m here for you.”

I nod. “Yeah. Thanks, A.”

“Hey, did you happen to go into my office at all
the last couple of days?” Aiden asks.

“No, why?”

He scratches his stomach and looks confused. “I’m
missing some shit. Don’t worry about it.”

“What shit?”

“There’s about two hundred missing from my petty
cash and the watch Emily gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Did you ask the boys?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “I did, but they conveniently
don’t know.”

I hate this shit. I hate suspecting our kids. I
hate suspecting Brayden, but he’s the resident klepto, and I can’t help it.

“I’ll talk to Bray. I’m gonna head out. You have
everything covered?”

“Yep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

I startle awake in the
morning to Kayla struggling under my arm. Opening my eyes, I see the sun is
just barely starting to peek through the shades. Kayla’s on her back, eyes
closed, face pained, her hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. I don’t have
time to figure out what’s happening before she bolts up, throwing me off of
her.

“Stop!” she screeches, looking around in a panic.

I hold my arms up. “Whoa, sweetheart. Relax. It’s
just me.” Her chest is heaving. “You okay?” She groans loudly and collapses
back into me. “What was that?”