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“Hello?”
“Kelly?” It wasn’t just my father on the line. It wasn’t just my mother. It was both of them. And I hated it. I hated that I could hear the pain I’d put them through as they both uttered that single word.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”
At the sound of my voice, Mom let out a sob.
“Are you okay? Are you safe?”
I looked up as Lee rounded the foot of the bed and sat facing the wall. “I’m fin—” He plopped onto his back, his long arms spread wide across the bed, coming too close to my feet. I tucked my legs up under me. “I’m fine. I’m safe.”
“We thought— We missed you, Kelly. When you didn’t call, we were worried.”
“I’m sorry.” Sorry I ever came here. Sorry I allowed myself to get caught, get forced into talking to them. Forced into hearing what I’d done.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” my dad whispered as my mom cried in the background.
My throat tightened to the point of pain. After a long moment, I forced out, “Happy birthday to you, too.”
It wasn’t immediate. It took a hot minute for those words to sink in. Lee’s eyes snapped open, and his gaze shot to me. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
Instead, I looked down the length of him. Down his broad chest covered only by a smattering of copper-colored hair and enough freckles to cover all of Chicago.
“When can we see you?” Mom asked, and the broken sound of her had tears prickling in my eyes.
“Soon?” I hedged.
“We can grab dinner sometime,” Dad rushed out, as if he could sense my desire to end this call.
I grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the table beside me, shoved one in my mouth and lit the end. I coughed out the breath I inhaled, damn near choking on my spit.
“Yeah, sure.” I swallowed, wishing I had a glass of water. Or whiskey. Or maybe Absolute. “Dinner would be great. Maybe breakfast for dinner? Pancakes and bacon and eggs. We haven’t done that in a while.”
Shoving the cigarette back in my mouth to shut up my rambling, I tried to take another breath in. This one wasn’t any better than the first, and it took everything in me not to puke.
Suddenly, my cigarette disappeared, and I looked up to find Lee hovering over me.
“That would be nice,” my dad said. “Let us know when. Hopefully soon. I mean, if that’s okay with you. We miss you, sweetie.”
Lee put my cigarette to his lips, and his chest seemed to grow as the tip flared red. The cigarette was almost gone by the time he stopped, and the smokey breath he blew out left my body trembling, my skin tingling, and my heart thumping out a heavy beat in my chest.
“That would be… nice.” I wasn’t sure what I was saying, and for once, with Lee staring me down, I wasn’t sure what I felt. I needed to run, to get the hell out of here, to go somewhere where no one could find me and I’d be safe.
Not safe, like I’d always felt in his presence. Since the moment he scooped me off that filthy bed and held me against his chest, I hadn’t felt safe anywhere but next to him.
Now, safe and Lee didn’t belong in the same room.
In the same fucking country.
Safe with Lee didn’t exist.
Just like me.
“So we’ll see you soon?”
“Yeah, sure.” I couldn’t make it more than a whisper, but my parents were desperate enough not to care.
“We love you, honey.”
