The Song Remains the Same (7 page)

Koko gasped from her hunkered position on the floor. Turning around, I saw her looking at Kenna in surprise. Kenna’s face still had bruises, and her right eye hadn’t fully healed, but it looked so much better. She only looked a little banged up and so, so beautiful.

“Hey, Baby,” I said, looking into her eyes.

I wanted to put my arms around her…so I did. She rested her face above her tattoo and sighed, calming my heart.

“I’m sorry,” said Koko, shaking, while she tried to stand. “Kenna, I’m so—”

Filthy little shit!
Pointing at Koko, I shouted, “You
dare
! You fuckin’
dare
say her name when you were willin’ to—”

“Phil,” Kenna said softly.

“She can’t hear you, Koko,” Connor told her. “She lost her hearing in the explosion.”

“I didn’t know—”

“Can you please get her the fuck out of here?” I asked Connor, my patience at an end.

Why she wouldn’t leave, I couldn’t fuckin’ guess.

“Come on, Koko,” said Connor.

The woman turned and jogged out of my sight, Connor sighing and following.

All I could feel right then was my woman pouring her cool, calm waters over my flames. My arms tightened around her, and I rested my chin on top of her head, breathing her in.

“It’s okay,” she told me.

“It ain’t,” I grumped.

“Connor said we could come, so I could feel you playing the drums. Will you play for me?”

I wanted to go home and boil myself, scour my fucking mouth clean. Then, I wanted to kiss every inch of Kenna, tell her I loved her a million different ways. I was through with keeping my distance. I didn’t know what I had been thinking. It had been wrong to leave her like that. It had been selfish on my part. Just because I couldn’t touch her like I wanted to, I’d decided for the both of us that neither of us could have the comfort of the other.

How fuckin’ stupid can I be?
No wonder people were talking shit! I fuckin’ treated her like shit! What’s the worst that could’ve happened? I’d have whacked off more?

Kenna had needed me, and I had let her down. Because I was scared to touch her, I had deprived her of everything I had to offer. She needed my support and strength, and I’d abandoned her because she made my dick too hard.

I’m a fuckin’ lowlife loser.

Kenna wrapped her arms around my waist, hugging me tight. “It’s okay, babe,” she told me. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

She could’ve been talking about the fuckin’ Koko episode, but I knew she wasn’t. She knew I had just realized what an absolute douche I was.

“Let’s go home, okay? You can play for me some other time.”

Connor had decided to stay and work on the new music while I took my Baby Girl home to my place. She hadn’t been here since before her clinic blew up, and that was depressing. I hadn’t slept here myself, but I’d been showering here on a daily basis. Kenna could have probably benefited from the tub to soak her sore muscles.

God, I was an utter douche bag. Scum.
How could I have had the fuckin’ nerve to leave her alone, to let her wallow in her depression, to fuckin’ contribute to it?
Fuck, I hate myself so much right now. I don’t deserve to scrape the dirt from her flip-flops, let alone call myself her man.

Needing to feel clean, I brought her into the bathroom with me. Kenna just stood there and stared off into the distance. When I started stripping off my clothes, she turned to leave.

But I wouldn’t let her.

Pulling her back into the bathroom, I slowly stripped her, too. Although surprised at first, Kenna was happy to let me tug off her T-shirt and jeans. I was fuckin’ hard as marble, but that didn’t mean I had to think with my dick. She was beautiful.

Why wouldn’t I be hard?

Naked.
Naked, naked, naked.

My Baby Girl was the epitome of all that was beautiful in my life. She was a little shy since she hadn’t been naked with me in nearly three weeks. Because of the scabs, the patches of pale skin from where it’d fallen off, the faded bruising, she didn’t feel beautiful anymore. I had made her feel that way.

“I should have told you every damn day how beautiful you were,” I told her, taking her face in my hands. Looking deep into those emerald windows to her soul, I hoped she understood me even if she couldn’t hear me. “I never should have left your side. I promised I would never leave you behind, and I broke that. I abandoned you when you needed me most. I tell you that you mean the world to me, but the second shit got hairy, I failed. I was so wrong, Kenna. I’m so, so sorry.”

Smiling, her cheeks smooshed between my palms. She nodded, letting me know she understood. “No worries,” she said.

No worries.
Kenna was fuckin’ heaven-sent.

Fierce pride for this woman rose in me like a swelling tsunami, strong and absolute. She deserved so much better, but all she wanted was
me
. There was no way I could stop myself from kissing her right then.

Lifting her in my arms, I carried her into the shower. I scrubbed her up, touching and kissing her, telling her without words how amazing she was. I couldn’t get carried away. I wouldn’t let myself.

It wasn’t about
that
.

It was about
her
. It would
always
be about her.

I kissed between her eyebrows and then on her nearly healed up Sith Lord eye and the other one, too, before moving on to her nose, cheeks, sweet mouth, chin.

“I love you…” she sighed, just
feeling.

“I love
you
,” I replied before kissing down her neck and along her shoulder.

I stopped there. I wanted to do this with her on the bed, not standing in the shower. Kissing her one last time on her lips, I reluctantly let her go and reached for the soap.

“Can I do that?” she asked.

She looked so hopeful that there was no way I could say no.

She soaped me up, avoiding my groin area.

Bless her.

As she squatted down to wash my legs, she was in serious danger of being stabbed in the eye with my dick. I was so hard that it felt like it would pop if she so much as looked at it. By the time she stood back up, I was panting.

“I want you, too,” she said, smiling softly. “I’ve missed you so much, babe.”

Groaning, I pulled her into my arms, kissing her harder than I’d meant to, crushing her to me. My poor dick was sandwiched between us, pressing hard into her belly.

Fuck, I ain’t gonna make it.

The
hell
I wouldn’t.

Somehow, I was able to get us out of the shower, dried off, and back into our room. Watching as she stretched out on our bed, I noticed Kenna was glowing, just fuckin’ radiant, like I hadn’t seen in a long-ass time.

“Wanna smoke?” she asked, smiling brightly.

I wanna make you come. I wanna watch your face as I push my dick in you. I wanna hear you scream my name and feel your teeth bitin’ the fuck outta me. I wanna feel your pussy gripping me and tripping with that tiny heartbeat.

“Yeah,” I replied on an exhale.

I nodded, and she gave me a thumbs-up, like
I
was the deaf one.

Joint. Ashtray. Lighter.

I lay down beside her and sparked up the spliff—
damn it, again!

Then, I handed it over to her.

On her belly, Kenna propped herself up on her elbows, her sexy rear on display. Her skin was so soft as I skimmed my fingertips down her ass, over the fading bruise that had taken over that sweet cheek. Big, firm, and bouncy—my Baby Girl had the most awesome ass. I fuckin’ loved walking behind her, watching it wink with each step.

“So, my appointment’s at eleven o’clock tomorrow,” she said.

My gaze went from her ass to her eyes.

“Connor’s going to take me—”

“I’m takin’ you,” I told her.

Her eyebrows rose. “What?”

Jumping out of bed, I got a pen and a ragged-looking notebook with clean paper in the back. I stretched out on my stomach next to her, and she handed me the joint. I took a few hits before writing what I’d said down.

“Well, I thought you might be busy,” she said.

My heart sank a little. I hadn’t given her much reason to count on me these days.

I have time, only for you.

“Connor says you’ve been working really hard on some new stuff. If you’d rather—”

Turning her face to mine, I shut her up with my mouth. “No, Baby.”

“Okay.”

Rolling onto my side, I started touching her again—her hair, her shoulder, down her spine. Just soft, light touches that made goose bumps shiver over her skin.

“My beautiful Baby Girl…how could I have hurt you like that?”

Kenna was flat on the bed, her face turned toward me, her eyes closed. When she felt my voice, she smiled.

“I miss that the most,” she confessed. “Your voice. I can hear you when I meditate, and it makes all of this easier to deal with. When I really need to hear you, I just sink into myself and listen.”

My eyes prickled at her words.
How is it possible she loves me so much?

I deserved her anger. I deserved to be yelled at, hit around, busted up as bad as she had been. But here she was, showing me just how much I meant to her, that she could hear me deep inside herself.

“It’s not the same because I don’t feel it and hear it at the same time, but you’re always there for me.”

My fingers traced over her cheekbone, and she opened her eyes.

“What do you see in me?” she asked.

“Everythin’,” I replied, even though she couldn’t hear me. Lying down so that we were face-to-face, I said, “I see strength and love…so much love, Baby Girl. A steady stream of it, flowin’ out of you and cleansin’ the ones who are lucky enough to step foot in it. I see hurt and struggle, acceptance…forgiveness. Oh
, Baby
…” Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to hers, drowning in her scent, her taste. “I see my future,
our
future,” I said, my lips moving over hers. “And it’s so fuckin’ huge, so amazin’. It’s all love and love and more love.”

She closed her eyes again and sighed. “You won’t leave before I wake up?”

“No.”

She smiled, knowing what I’d said.

All night, I held her close, her face pressed to my neck, not a single bit of space between our bodies. Legs twined, arms wrapped around each other, I felt every beat of her heart.

When I thought back to that day, feeling the world shake and seeing the black mushroom cloud of death rising up into the sky, all I had begged for was that she make it. She had made it, and I’d ended up putting a world of distance between us anyway. It had felt unnatural, but I had still done it, and my excuses were fuckin’ lame, even to myself.

When she stirred in my arms, I tightened my grip on her.

“You’re still here,” she muttered, smiling a sleepy smile at me.

That stung. I knew she hadn’t meant for it to, but damn…I deserved that.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Never had I felt so elated yet so depressed. It defied fuckin’ logic, even
my
warped sense of logic. We were together. I was fuckin’ ecstatic to be waking up to her smile and the fuckin’ amazing feeling of her fine-ass self pressed all over me, yet there was no way I should even be allowed to hold her like this.

“What time is it?” she mumbled.

I held up four fingers and then five.

“Nine?”

I nodded.

Her hand skimmed down my rib cage, over my hip, and then up over a cheek.

Fuck me, how did I deny myself just this simple pleasure? The feel of her fingertips on me is enough to drive me apeshit.

And the feel of
her
beneath my hands, beneath all of me…

“You’ve lost weight,” she said softly.

I shrugged. I’d hardly noticed. Well, my pants had gotten baggier, but that was what belts were for. Being as big as I was, I had to eat all the time to keep weight on, and I hadn’t had much of an appetite.

“Should leave in about an hour or so…” she murmured, averting her gaze.