Page 38 of Storm

“Go! Now!”

“Storm?” I yell.

“Please, Kenzee.”

“I…I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. Now hide!” More bullets burst through the walls as I run up the stairs. My heart is going to explode out of my chest at any moment, but I push until I get into my room and slam the door closed. With shaking hands, I dial Patch on Storm's phone and open the chest at the end of the bed. I stare down at the pillow inside. The memories of what happened to my dad all come slamming into me.

“Storm? Storm?”

“Patch, they’re shooting at us.”

“Fuck, where are you?”

“My house.”

“Hide, Kenzee. Do not come out until you know it’s us,” he tells me. “Kill the phone. We’re comin’.” The line goes dead as I stare at the pillow. The same pillow I'd laid on all those years ago. The same pillow that haunts me from inside that damn chest, and the same pillow I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of.

More noises snap me out of whatever hell I was lost in, and I power the phone off. I climb into the chest and lie down, lowering the lid and locking it just like I did before. Tears fall down my cheeks as I hear boots hitting the steps and moving across the floor.

I lie here, my fist shoved into my own mouth so that I don’t make a sound. Storm was right. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill someone even though I wanted to. I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I could handle it.

“I don’t see her,” I hear a man say as the footsteps leave the room. I almost let out a small cry, but I swallow it down instead.

There’s a lot of noise downstairs as I clench my eyes shut and try not to imagine what they did to Storm. He was lying there, just like Dad was. He was hurt. He was shot and bleeding just like Dad, and I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t save him either.

The thought isn’t lost on me that I’m too weak to save the men I love. What kind of person does that make me? I thought I could do it. I thought I could end them, and here I am being a fucking coward.

Tears spill down my cheeks as the noises continue downstairs. I want to climb out of this chest and go to him, but I know that would be the end of me, too. What if he isn’t dead? If I go, then Patch and the club will never know who has him, right? I have to tell them exactly what I did and why this is happening.

Then it all hits me. It’s my fault. What’s happened to Storm is my fault. And then my mind reels. Back to when dad died. Was that my fault, too? Had I done something to someone that I just don’t remember?

More tears slip down my cheeks. I’m lost in the past once again. Could it have all been my fault? Was everything that happened because of me? My brain retraces what little I can remember from being that young, and nothing seems to stick out to me, but I keep trying. Think, Kenzee. What did you do?

My heart aches. My chest clenches, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I’ve caused this. How will the club look at me the same? How can they even allow me around now that I’ve done this?

“Kenzee?” I hear my uncle’s voice. “Kenzee, honey. Open the chest,” he says softly, and a sob rips free from my throat. My hands are still shaking when I reach up and unlock it, shoving the lid open slightly. My uncle rips it open the rest of the way and stares down at me.

“You’re okay?” More tears. More sobs. I nod my head, and he reaches in, pulling me up. I step out as a few of the others come into the room. My eyes move to theirs, but I don’t see anything on their faces. If he’s dead, they aren’t letting on.

“Let’s get you home,” my uncle says as he leads me toward the door.

“It’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It is. That fight, Storm told you about? It was them.”

“I know it was. But this wasn’t your fault, Kenz. We’re gonna handle those motherfuckers.” His growl rips through me. I have no doubts about what they’ll do to them.

He leads me out of my room and down the stairs but I don’t see Storm where he was. They must have moved him. His body. There’s no way that he survived, right? My eyes land on the bloody spot on the floor, and I refuse to move.

“He’s missin’. He wasn’t here when we got here,” my uncle tells me. I jerk my head to look at him, confused.

“He was shot.”

“Well, he wasn’t dead or they wouldn’t have taken him.”