N9ne: The Tale of Kevin Clearwater (King, #9)(65)

His lips crush over mine, and my defenses break.

I’m so incredibly lost in the moment, in him.

Or maybe, I’ve finally been found.





Chapter Twenty-Two





NINE





“So, what it is you wanted to show me?” Lenny asks, “You said there was one more thing you wanted to show me tonight.” She’s looking up at me with a smile that could power any rocket. I instantly regret suggesting we get dressed.

“You’ll see. Any second now,” I tell her. “Come here. The view will be even better than from the festival.”

“The view of what?” she asks.

“You will see. Patience, little bird.”

I sit and pat the space on the sand beside me. She plops down next to me, and I pull my flask from my pocket, handing it to her. She takes a gulp and grimaces before handing it back to me.

We’re silent for a few moments. The only sound comes from the music and the occasional burst of loud laughter from the festival in the distance, the rustling of the breeze in the mangroves, and the quiet lapping of the small waves on the shore.

“Have you ever been surrounded by people, or in the middle of a crowd somewhere, and still feel completely and utterly alone?” she asks, staring off across the water at the lights from the festival. I don’t know if it’s a rhetorical question or if she’s asking the universe, but I answer anyway.

“Yeah, I have, actually.”

“You have?” She sounds surprised.

I laugh. “Only for I’d say…all of my childhood.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. No point on dwelling on the past. It’s not something that can be fixed. Besides, it brought me here. To my brother. My friends. You. I can’t say certain shit don’t make me angry when I think about it, but a life worth living doesn’t come without trials. It’s what makes us who we are.”

She presses into me and rests her head on my shoulder. “I like the way you see things. I wish I could look at the past and just let it go. Instead, I’m playing back every minute of the last few years, wishing I could go back and change just about everything,” she admits.

I feel a sudden pang of jealousy. “Why, do you want to go back and change things? So, Jared won’t leave?”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, god no! I wasn’t talking about him. If I had to change anything when it comes to him, it would be to avoid the night we met all together. That relationship was a disaster, but I was too inside my own head to see everything that was going on right in front of me. I think I was just so lonely that I was grasping at anyone and anything, and I just let things progress without thinking about how miserable I was.” Her eyes meet mine. “Never again, though. My eyes are wide open now.”

I don’t even realize I’ve been clenching my fists until my muscles relax and my palms sting with the pressure of my nails biting into my skin. “Then, what would you change?” I ask.

Her eyes gloss over. “My parents. I’d fix things so that they never got on that plane.”

Suddenly, I feel like a dick for being jealous about dead Jared when she was only thinking about her parents.

She continues, “So they wouldn’t die and leave me all alone. They were really great. They would have really liked you.”

“I doubt that,” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “My parents were really open minded, and they weren’t the kind of people who said that they just wanted their kid to be happy but didn’t really mean it. My parents meant it. They would’ve done anything for me or because of me. When they died, I was alone for the first time in my life. No other family and only one real friend who was off at nursing school at the time. Even when I was with Jared, I was still alone. I never let anyone in after they passed. Not Jared. Not Yuli. No one. It’s like I couldn’t replace them so why try.” Her eyes shift from her hands and lock onto mine. She sniffles and looks to the stars.

I see a flash in the distance. “Keep looking in that direction,” I tell her, pointing toward the horizon.

“I don’t see anything,” she says, looking at nothing but the vast open water.

“Any second now,” I say into her hair.

“What exactly am I looking for?” Her answer comes in the form of a bright blast of light on the horizon, rising quickly into the sky. “Wait, why is that star…is that the space shuttle launch?” Her eyes go wide with her excitement.

“It is.”

We watch it take off into the night. White clouds painting a trail behind the shuttle as it rises further and further into the sky before disappearing from sight.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. The text I read instantly shatters what little peace I feel.

PREPPY: Tico Ricci put a price on Lenny’s head. 200K alive.

Three bubbles appear as he types out the next text. The second I read it, I want to crush my phone in my hand.

PREPPY: 100K dead.



* * *



LENNY

Nine checks something on his phone, then angrily shoves it back into his pocket. The mood changes. His body stiffens.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, as he stands, his belt undone and his jeans open at the front. He walks toward the water, tugging on his hair and pacing from side to side.