“When did you start giving her the money?” I asked, my stomach churning.

  “The money, yeah. I left the day you were born and I was pissed but I gave it a couple days. Once she was out of the hospital and back in the apartment I came around, hoping she’d listen to reason. She was pissed but she agreed to hear me out. She wouldn’t let me in but she listened at least. I told her I had set up an account in both your names and I was going to make deposits to it every month. I explained I wanted to help, that I wanted to be in your life, but she told me no. She hadn’t changed her mind. She took the account information and said she’d never touch it but that she’d tell you about it when you were grown. That you could make your own decisions about it and me. Then she slammed the door in my face and I never saw her again. The only time I ever saw you was that first day in the hospital.” He grinned shakily, unsure. “And now. Today.”

  “Dan said she told you she was leaving Nevada.”

  “She did.”

  “Why didn’t you keep track of us? If you wanted to know me so bad why didn’t you show up when she died?”

  “Because she told me she was moving, gave me a fake address in Chicago, and I lost track of you. My name was never added to your birth certificate so when she died and I didn’t know about it there was no way for anyone to find me. You didn’t know my name because she never told you. I wasn’t on any records. She cut ties with everyone she knew in Vegas when she left. The only connection I had to you was that bank account and I watched it like a hawk. I kept waiting for one of you to draw on it and tell me where you were but it never happened.

  “I got worried when years went by and I hadn’t heard about either of you. I started looking for you. I hired a private investigator but he didn’t find anything. No one knew where your mom disappeared to and later I found out that she used a different name on the hospital forms. She used Coulter, her dad’s name. When I knew her she was using the last name Bardes, her mom’s name. That’s why I never found you either. I was looking for a Kellen Bardes. Then when you were seventeen my guy finally found you when you popped up in California on a police report for a fight on the beach. He saw the first name, saw your mugshot, and he said I looked just like you. Maddie was always talking about the ocean in Ireland and when I saw your mug shot it was like looking in a mirror. I knew it was you. I knew where you’d gone and how to find you, finally. I got in touch with your lawyer and asked him to tell you about me. I’ve been waiting for you to be ready to see me ever since.”

  “That’s almost ten years,” Jenna whispered, her voice jagged.

  He grimaced slightly. “I’m a patient guy.”

  “Kellen,” she said gently, looking at me with concern. “Are you okay?”

  I stared at the floor, memorizing the pattern that swirled and twisted in hideous colors the shade of dirt and stains because that’s what they were there for. To hide the dirt. They absorbed the ugly inside the ugly and hid it from view so you had no idea how disgusting your world really was.

  “You’re telling me,” I began quietly, “that the reason I ended up in foster care, the reason I took beating after beating again and again—“

  Barkley sat up straight in his seat. “You did what?”

  “—is all because my mom was mad at you for not marrying her? A grudge she held onto for eight fucking years and took with her to the grave.”

  “What beatings?” Barkley demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  I stood slowly, running my hand over the back of my neck. “I have to go. Thank you for the answers.”

  “Kellen,” Jenna began, standing to come after me.

  I held up my hand, warding her off. “Please don’t, Jen. I’m not—I’m not running. I promise. I need to get some air. I need to think. I need to do it alone.” I looked to Barkley. “Will you make sure she gets back to the hotel okay? Maybe she’ll take you up on dinner. She’s nicer than I am.”

  “I’ll get her home safely,” he promised, his eyes tight with worry and anger and something else softer that I didn’t understand. Something that reminded me of Dan.

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “Be careful,” Jenna pleaded.

  I stopped, taking in the worried crease between her eyes. “When I asked you to marry me, what’d I promise you?”

  “That you’d always come home.”

  “And I meant it.”

  “And I mean it,” she countered sternly. “Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  I left the room. I left the casino and The Strip. I walked farther into the actual city, to the back roads where the alleys were darker. Where the buildings had lost their shine. I went where they had bars on windows and the smell of desperation permeated the air the way the smell of sex and money rolled through the casinos on The Strip. I found the place where the people lived, the cogs in the machine that kept this gilded city glowing. I found it because I knew it. I remembered it and I’d lived it. I went back not knowing what I was looking for. I didn’t want any more answers. I’d gotten all I could handle. I went searching for something else. Something impossible and unattainable. I breathed the desperation and I filled my lungs with it, burned my eyes, and when I came to stand in front of the cracked and faded door I’d passed through a thousand times as a child, I stared at the old, rusted number with a new sense of understanding. A feeling of foreboding that belonged to the past. That had already come and gone, just like her.

  The number on the door in this town of odds and luck and superstition more deeply engrained in the ground than you’ll find in the voodoo centers of Louisiana, read #13.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jenna

  Kellen came home late that night. Long after I’d eaten a cordial dinner with his dad. Long after I’d showered and read and watched TV – anything to pass the time. It was hours after I gave up and turned the lights down. It was only hours to daylight when he walked in quiet as Death himself and stripped down in the dark. I heard him but I didn’t move. I let him have what he needed and if distance was it, than it was what he’d get because he hadn’t lied to me. He ran but he came home. He was here. He was safe.

  He was pulling on my shoulder. He was turning me over. He was spreading my legs with his, pulling my shirt over my head, my shorts down my legs, threading his fingers through my hair. He was kissing my neck. Lowering his hips. Pressing, pushing, sliding slowly inside as my back bowed on the bed and I struggled to breathe.

  He was so meticulous the way he loved me. So painfully slow, like we had all the time in the world. Like dawn would never come and this night was all we knew, all we’d ever know, and my body, my arms, my skin, were the only home he had.

  Like I was the only truth he trusted.

  I don’t know if he stayed with me the entire time. We didn’t speak. We barely made a sound as we moved together, writhing and gripping, kissing and licking, building slowly a burn that engulfed the night and burst brighter than the sun.

  What I do know is that he held me afterward. That he stayed in my arms, resting his head against my breast as my heartbeat slowed, and he fell asleep with his hand in my hair and his body draped over mine.

  I know I’ve never felt so safe in my entire life.

  I know he felt the same.

  ***

  The next morning was rough. Kellen was rough, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep, dark circles shadowing his eyes. He moved slowly, his body reluctant. He asked for caffeine before I reminded him he didn’t like to drink it before a bout. It made him jittery. It made the animal that much more anxious.

  Barkley texted me when we were on our way to the gym for the fight. He said he was running late but he’d be there by the time the fight started. He asked how Kellen was doing and I carefully avoided the question because the honest answer was I didn’t know. Mentally or physically. No matter how you looked at him he didn’t seem ready for this fight.

  When we got to the gym Kellen killed the engine and went to open his door but I stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

  “Be real with me,” I told him. “Are you good?”

  He sighed, leaning back against the seat. He gripped his keys hard in his right hand, the metal no doubt pushing into his skin. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer.”

  “It’s all I’ve got right now.”

  “Is it because of your mom?”

  He pursed his lips, shaking his head. “Nah. It’s not even that.”

  “Then what is it? What’s got you messed up in the head?”

  “My dad. Barkley friggin’ Thorpe, that’s what.”

  “What about him?”

  “His name.”

  I rolled my eyes in annoyance. “Be serious.”

  “I am,” he replied heartily. “That’s a super villain name if I’ve ever heard one and I had this idea of him built up in my head. This colossal asshole with no redeemable qualities but an exceptional mustache that he twirled as he stole candy from babies and looked up women’s skirts. I pictured him here in Vegas with a cheesy Hawaiian shirt on, greasy hair, and paying for whores off The Strip. And not the expensive kind. Not the escorts. The hookers.” He punched lightly at the steering column, keys still fisted in his hand. “Women like my grandma.”

  I turned in my seat to face him, bringing my knee up and laying my leg on the seat. He looked over at me and immediately unclenched his hand to put his palm to my leg. His skin to mine.

  “It’s a letdown,” he explained before I could say a word. “I came to see Lex Luthor and I found a tax attorney.”

  I grinned. “I don’t know if he’s as mundane as that. I’m fairly certain I saw Rihanna give him her number. That’s pretty baller.”

  “I’m worried my mom was a Laney.”

  I blinked, stunned by the shift in topic and tone. “You think what?”

  He glanced at me, probably to see if I was pissed, but I was pure confusion. “My mom. The decisions she made, they were emotional and petty. She gambled my life on a grudge. She kept me from my dad, a man who wanted to see me and to help me, all because she was pissed she didn’t get what she wanted.”

  “I think that’s oversimplifying things a little.”

  “I know,” he admitted tightly. “I know that, but there’s a lot of truth in there too. That’s the gist of it. My mom who I worshiped and adored doomed me over a broken heart. She wasn’t keeping me safe from some drug addict father who would risk my life every day. She kept me from a decent guy with good intentions and I hate that I can’t hate him anymore, because he was always the problem in my mind. He was the one who fucked up my life. Now I meet him and I don’t love him but I can’t hate him and what does that mean for my mom?”

  I laid my hand on his gently. “You love her, Kellen. You love her because she did the best she could for you and yeah, she screwed up, but she had no idea that the horrible things you went through were going to happen. She wasn’t malicious. She wasn’t careless. She was young and hurt and dying, probably scared out of her mind. She probably didn’t want to admit to herself that she was leaving you.”

  He took his hand back and rubbed his palms roughly over his face. “I don’t know anymore. I came here for answers and all I have is more questions and no one can answer them. I don’t know where I go from here.”

  “I think you should call Ben. You haven’t been to see him in weeks. You need to check in with him. He’ll be thrilled you talked to your dad but you guys need to sit down together and unpack all this. I don’t know how, but he does and he wants to help, so let him.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

  “Are you gonna be okay in this fight?”

  “Ha,” he laughed shortly. “I don’t know. I’m tired. Maybe we should just keep driving. Go home. Take a nap.”

  “If that’s what you want to do.”

  “It’s not.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  He grinned at me sideways. “I want to win this fight, my last fight, and take you out to dinner.”

  “Denny’s?” I smirked.

  “It’s our place.”

  I leaned over the seat and kissed him. “Sounds perfect.”

  He grabbed the back of my head when I went to pull away and pressed his forehead to mine. “You’re perfect,” he breathed. “And don’t tell me I’m wrong or brush it off because I mean it. To me you’re perfect and I love you.”

  I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. To keep myself from falling apart in the face of one of the rarities that was Kellen. He didn’t do emotional or tender, not very often, and lately I’d gotten a lot of it. So much that my heart was overworked, no longer beating frantically with excitement when he got this way but slowing to a steady rhythm that I could feel in the air around us. In sync, in harmony and accord.

  Easy in a way we’d never known before.

  An hour later we were inside the still new smelling gym, unchristened by the perpetual stink of feet and sweat that Tim’s Gym back in L.A. was so proud of. It made it feel sterile and I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach as Kellen approached the event coordinator. He disappeared into the back with his bag to change and get ready and I milled around aimlessly trying to unfurl the anxiety building in my stomach.

  It didn’t help.

  “Am I late?” Barkley asked, appearing out of nowhere.

  I smiled gratefully when I saw him. It was nice not to be alone. “No, not even a little. He’s in the back getting ready.”

  “Have you seen the competition?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “He’s a mountain.”

  “You saw him?” I asked nervously.

  Barkley nodded. “I came in behind him. Heard him talking to his coach. Is Kellen’s coach here?”

  “No. Tim wasn’t feeling well. He doesn’t travel much. He’s an old guy.”

  “Should I be nervous?”

  I forced a smile, shaking my head. “No. He’ll be great.”

  It was a lie I felt deep down into my toes.

  The truth was Kellen’s head wasn’t right, not even close. Compounding the problem was the fact that he was tired. He had next to no sleep last night and he didn’t spend any time in this building. He wasn’t familiar with the noise level, the lighting, the feel of the ring. He liked to get to know a place before he fought there to get himself comfortable and he hadn’t done any of that here. Not to mention he had added the pressure of declaring this his last competition. If he lost, if he failed, and this was it for his entire career… I didn’t look forward to the next hour and if it didn’t go well I definitely wasn’t looking forward to the long drive home.

  We probably wouldn’t be stopping for Denny’s.

  “There he is.” Barkley nudged me excitedly as Kellen and the other guy – not nearly as imposing a figure as I’d been picturing – stepped into the main area.

  They were introduced, announced with overly aggressive backstories that were total lies as far as I could tell, and directed up into the ring.

  Barkley took pictures with his phone, a proud grin on his face that made me smile faintly. It almost made me forget the gurgling in my stomach.

  Almost.

  They did the usual rundown – go over rules of conduct and sportsmanship, the ref got a chance to pontificate about the proud tradition of boxing and what a noble sport it was – before finally they guys bumped gloves in the center of the ring and moved to their corners. Barkley and I were waiting there in Kellen’s, sorry substitutes for Tim but we did what we could.

  “Does he care if we talk to him?” Barkley whispered to me.

  “Tell him to give him hell,” I muttered back.

  “Give him hell, Kellen!”

  He didn’t react but I assured Barkley he’d heard him. I didn’t say a word. I stood there with my hands on my hips the way Tim taught me, watching his opponent shrewdly. Looking for a weakness. Kellen would find it and exploit it before I’d ever see it but I looked just the same.

  The bell dinged and both men jumped into action.

  Barkley raised his cell phone next to me to record the match like a proud dad at a music recital. Part of me was glad he was doing it because even if he didn’t know it, this was the end of something significant. This was the curtain call, the lights being dimmed. This was a death in a dance in a ring.

  Right out the gates Kellen faltered. Sometimes he did it draw his opponents out but if it was intentional, it backfired. He took a hit to the chin. Another to the ribs.

  Boom! Boom! Just like that he was behind.

  “Keep close to him!” Barkley cried. “Don’t get outside! Go back in!”

  I glanced at him, surprised.

  He felt my gaze, looking to me and back to the ring, doing a quick double take. “I live in Vegas, sweetheart. This is not my first boxing match.”

  I grinned. “And here you were worried about him not having a coach.”

  Kellen landed a monster hit to the guy’s right side, bringing in his left hook and taking advantage. He backed him against the ropes, made him cower down inside his arms to defend himself, and he pummeled at him hard with his left. He moved to take advantage, to bring in his right hand, and I jumped to the edge of the ring.

  “Not yet! Save it! You got him! You fuckin’ got him, Kellen!”

  He pulled the punch, feinting to the side and hitting with his left again and again. The guy finally danced out of his hold and tried to spin around him but Kellen was too fast. He was too sure footed, and he spun on his heel to meet the guy head on before he could get at him.