Page 24 of Risk (Mayhem Makers: MMM #3)
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Risk
Insecurity isn’t something I usually experience. Unfuckingfortunately, I’m feeling it now. Needing an anchor to keep myself grounded, I reach out and grab McKenna’s hand with mine. She grasps onto me as fiercely in return, so I know I’m not the only one going through these tumultuous emotions.
“We’re going to be okay,” McKenna reassures. I’m not sure if she’s saying that more for easing herself or for me. Either way, it helps me recenter myself and I’m appreciative of her words.
“We are,” I substantiate, squeezing her hand with mine.
We pass through the main room and up the stairs to where my dorm-style room with an attached bathroom is.
When I unclip my keys from my belt loop, I reach up and unlock the door, swinging it open and ushering her inside before flipping the light switch on.
When she walks over to my nightstand, my breath hitches. There are lines of various liquor bottles in stacks laid on top of it. Some are toppled onto their sides, and some are standing upright. “Do we need to talk about this, Risk?”
“Maybe later,” I mumble underneath my breath, grabbing my trash can and walking over and chunking the glass into it. “Still have a hard time sleeping throughout the night. It’s gotten worse since I did what I did.”
“Hopefully, after this powwow of ours, some of that guilt you’re carrying around will vanish and you can get a good night’s sleep,” she says, her tone full of optimism.
“The only times that ever happened for me was when you were in the bed beside me,” I admit. If we’re going to do this, I want to be honest on every aspect, no matter how unpleasant it is—including my nighttime indulgences. “I know saying that’s not fair to you, but it’s the God’s honest truth.”
“I don’t want anything left unresolved between the two of us, so you may not see it as being fair to me, but it’s a repercussion from our fall out so it is something we do need to discuss,” she remarks.
“We’re going to hash everything out tonight, huh?” I ask her, not sure if there are enough hours between now and when the sun rises to broach all the topics we need to touch base on.
“We’re going to try our best to, yes,” she answers, walking around my bed and making it. I need to change my sheets and the comforter because night sweats are something I suffer from but I haven’t had a free moment to make that a priority. “These smell like a boy’s locker room, Risk.”
“I know,” I tell her. “I’ve been running myself ragged so I haven’t done anything other than face plant onto my bed when I come into my room.”
She clears her throat, mirth dancing in her eyes when she asks, “Do you have a new set in here anywhere so we can go ahead and switch them out while we talk?”
“Yeah, in the closet. Top shelf,” I say, my eyes locked onto hers.
She snickers at me before ordering, “Strip the bed, Risk. I’ll go grab the fresh ones and then when they’re changed out we can sit on the bed and talk, seeing as you only have one chair in here. What’s up with that?”
“Not in here much, Kenna,” I murmur, reaching down and yanking the top two layers of bedding off.
“This room is literally only used when I need to sleep, shower, or change clothes. I don’t sit in here and contemplate my life, that’s a dangerous activity.
I need to be surrounded by people, even if I’m only just sitting there by myself, listening to them bantering back and forth. ”
“You’ve always been a people watcher,” she concludes as she walks into my closet.
I complete the task given to me, but as always, I forget about the pillows.
When she comes back into the room, she clicks her tongue at me when she sees them tossed onto the floor, cases still on them.
“What is it about you and never changing your pillows out?”
“Don’t know, it just never seems important, I guess,” I ponder. Even though she previously said she wanted to talk while we remake the bed, neither of us says a word. Once it’s nice and neat, she plops down on the mattress and pats the spot beside her. “Why am I so nervous?”
“Because you’re fixing to get the answers to things you may have consciously wanted to know, but subconsciously don’t want to hear,” she surmises.
I snort and say, “You’ve always been smarter than the average bear.”
Tsking, she asks, “Is that supposed to be a compliment, Risk?”
“To me it is,” I state as I twist my body and sit sideways on the bed, facing her. “I have so much to say that I don’t know where to start.”
“Then let’s start at the beginning and work our way through the years,” she suggests.
“That’ll work,” I agree with her recommendation.
Licking her lips, she asks the one question that’s been the elephant between us. “What did I do wrong that had you sleeping with another woman?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I quickly correct her. “I think there’s something fucked up in my head that when things are good, I have to test the waters and the end result is me messing everything up.”
“Because of your dad?” she whispers out the question.
“You got it in one,” I affirm. “It’s in my nature, I suppose.”
“It’s a ramification of your upbringing,” she rectifies. “Hearing stories about your dad always reminded me of myself.”
“Kenna.” I sigh. “How so?”
“Because I don’t have the Midas touch, I have the exact opposite effect on people and things around me. Intellectually, I know the right thing to do but my destructive impulses steer me in the wrong direction. My brain is wired wrong.”
“Something we seem to have in common,” I rumble out. “We’re quite the pair.”
“It’s one of the many ways we bonded, Risk.”
“Fucked up minds, now there’s a brain twister.
” She reaches over and smacks me on the shoulder with the back of her hand causing us both to laugh.
“Alcohol played a role in me doing what I did, but I didn’t lie earlier when I said that I honest to fuck thought it was you with me in that bed.
Y’all’s hair was styled similar, same color, your body builds were dead on, and she called me MC.
” When I say that, McKenna gasps because it was her nickname for me back in those days but it was expanded—to be exact, she called me her MC man.
“How did she know to call you that? That was mine,” she states, balling up her fists.
“Don’t know,” I gratingly answer, shrugging my shoulders because I don’t know how else to respond.
Admittedly, it’s something I’ve often wondered about as well.
Seeing as I’ve never seen that woman again after Kenna walked into that room and witnessed me making the worst mistake of my life, I don’t think we’ll ever know.
“There’s something you don’t know, something I was too ashamed to admit to you before now. ”
“Since we’re being honest with one another, I think you should tell me what that is now,” she insists.
Hanging my head because I can’t bear to look her in the face when I say this, I tell her, “My memory of that night is fuzzy. I can’t remember much after finishing my first beer, a beer that she personally brought to me.”
“You accepted an opened drink from a stranger, Risk? You know better than that,” she scolds me.
“I do,” I acknowledge. “Fuck knows I’ve preached to you about not doing it more times than I can count.”
“But you didn’t think a woman would do that to a man,” she reasons.
“No, I didn’t. In my warped way of thinking, I believed that only a man would do that to a woman to make her vulnerable and an easy target for him to take advantage of. Never in my lifetime did I think I’d fall prey to a female looking to do that to me.”
“Ugh!” she cries out. “You weren’t acting like you were drugged, Risk! If I’d thought for one moment that you were, I would have gone on a rampage!”
“I didn’t realize it until after Conan sat me down after you left and forced me to talk about it.
When I explained the sensations I felt and how I couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing what she was leading me to do, he put two and two together.
I knew something was wrong the next morning, that I hadn’t been acting like myself the night before, but I was too busy hating myself to stop and think. ”
“Risk,” she whispers, tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks. Unable to resist comforting her, I reach out and drag her into my arms and begin rubbing my hand up and down her back.