Should’ve Known It’s You (Not You Again #7)

Chapter 61

CHAPTER 61

AUSTIN

B asking in the afterglow of the best, most intense sex we’d ever had, Kenny and I were both silent. We lay together on Benji and Winrey’s less than comfortable sofa bed, both of us drawing patterns on the other’s skin with our fingertips while we caught our breath.

I would’ve happily stayed exactly as we were for the rest of our time on earth, but one of us had to break the spell. Kennedy eventually propped her head up and rested her chin on my chest, her eyes on mine.

“So what happens now?” she asked softly, her gaze shimmering with vulnerability.

I smiled, stroking my fingers through her hair. “We ride off into the sunset together? I’ll be a fugitive from the law but we can make it work.”

“Don’t be silly.” She giggled, her head shaking a little. “What did your lawyer say?”

“Seriously?” I motioned at our naked bodies, her leg draped over my thigh and her chest resting against mine. “You want to talk about that right now?”

“I do,” she said quietly, still smiling but definite worry starting to cloud her beautiful blue eyes. “What are the ripple effects going to be? How much trouble are you in? Are you really going to have to fight these charges? What are Danny’s options? Does your lawyer anticipate having to go to court?”

“Slow down, baby.” I chuckled and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You keep saying that, but how do you know?” She pouted. “I love you. I’m worried about you, and being squirrelly with this information really isn’t helping settle my nerves.”

I sighed. “Look, I really don’t want to worry you about this. My lawyer seems pretty confident that I’m not going to face prison time?—”

“Prison?” she squealed, sitting up and smacking my chest. “How is everything going to be okay if your lawyer is only pretty confident that you won’t be going to prison? That’s not okay, Austin. That’s the opposite of okay.”

I shook my head. “It’s not. Obviously, she can’t guarantee that there won’t be prison time. What I did amounts to assault, and assault can put people away, but she seems pretty sure we’re going to be able to settle this out of court. Apparently, the merits are in my favor.”

“What does that mean?”

“That as long as the truth holds, I’ll win,” I murmured. “The truth is on my side, Kenny. No one can change that. Danny is a fly that needed to be swatted.”

She frowned. “I agree, but you shouldn’t have to go to prison for swatting him.”

“I won’t. If I give him what he wants, he’ll go away. He doesn’t have the balls to face me in court or the stomach to listen to what will be said about him if he does.”

“What does he want?” she asked, sitting up even straighter as she stared down at me. “If it’s me, I could always go out with him one time and?—”

“Are you out of your mind? Hell no.” I gave my head a firm shake. “A scavenger like Danny will take my money and run, and all of this will be behind us.”

“Your money?” She went quiet as she contemplated the suggestion, but I could see the gears turning in her head.

For a few long minutes, I waited for her to tell me what she was thinking, but she lay back down again, her head on my chest and her hand on my stomach, still not saying anything at all. When I finally couldn’t take the suspense anymore, I rolled to face her, moving her head to my bicep in the process.

“Be honest with me,” I said gently. “Share your thoughts. I really want to know your opinion about this and we both need to work on being more open with each other, so please don’t keep me at arm’s length. I want to be there with you through all of this and I can’t do that if you’re keeping things from me.”

“Or if you’re keeping things from me ,” she said, her voice a hushed murmur as her eyes settled on mine. “Should we just agree to be completely honest with each other from now on?”

I smiled. “Please.”

The corners of her lips twitched up, but not enough for it to be considered an actual smile. She inhaled deeply, her eyes looking into mine as if she was trying to see into my soul. “It scares me.”

I frowned. “What scares you?”

“The money,” she admitted quietly. “When all is said and done, you want to put over a million dollars into my business, and now you’re going to pay off Danny too? It’s too much, Austin. I don’t even know how much he’d be willing to take, but it’s still too much.”

“Can we agree to disagree?” I asked. “It’s just money, Kenny. As far as I’m concerned, you’re worth everything I have. You don’t have financial value to me. I’d give it all away to have a life with you.”

Moisture glistened in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to, though. You’ve worked so hard for so long, and you’ve been so smart with your money, and then you meet me and you lose it all? That really doesn’t seem right.”

I shrugged. “I’m far from losing it all, but even if I do, I can always make more.”

“That’s…” She trailed off, shaking her head as she exhaled a deep breath. “It’s admirable, but it’s not that easy. Plus, money makes people crazy. Whether you’ve got too much or too little, it’s the one thing that, universally, makes people act in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. My parents turned into grade-A jerks.”

“I’ve had too little and, at the risk of sounding completely immodest, I now have too much,” I said, trying to get my thoughts in some kind of logical order before I went on. “I know your parents changed, but I never have. At least, I don’t think I have. I’ve grown and I’ve matured, sort of, but I’d like to think I would’ve done that anyway.”

She managed a small smile. “You’re amazing. I’m sure you would have, but still.”

“There is no but still. Money is a resource to me, Kenny, but that’s it. I don’t worship it and I don’t chase it. I give a lot of it to charity and I was saving up to give my parents as much as I might’ve been able to convince them to take, but they don’t need it anymore.”

“Danny certainly doesn’t deserve any of it from you,” she muttered.

I chuckled. “You won’t get any argument from me there, but taking that swing at him was worth every penny I might have to cough up. Besides, there’s always more money to be made.”

“It’s not always that easy to make it, though.”

“No, not always, but truth be told, I will continue to make more. I’m not even that deep into my career yet and I’ll only be going up from here. Plus, the oil profits will keep coming. My conscience is clear, baby. Yours should be too.”

She looked deep into my eyes again, searching and searching until finally she just asked. “How do you know you’re not going to wind up resenting me for this? Right now, you might feel like you have enough. Too much, even, but lifestyles get more expensive as people start to earn more. Eventually, one day, you might realize how much better off you could’ve been if you hadn’t lost out because of me.”

“Never gonna happen,” I said vehemently, needing her to understand how completely certain I was of this. “Growing up on the farm, my parents instilled family values in us. To me, those are more important than anything else. I grew up watching them and how they love each other, and it taught me how to put some one first over some thing .”

I brought my hand to her throat and rested it on the side of her jaw. “I just never knew how to put that into action until you, because I’ve never been in love like this before.”

As she opened her mouth, I smiled. “I just need to say one last thing, and then maybe, you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from and you’ll stop worrying about money once and for all.”

“Okay,” she whispered, leaning into my touch.

I drew in a breath, really fucking surprised that taking Tate’s advice about opening up and laying it all on the table was working so damn well. Who knew ?

“The farm also taught me not to settle,” I said. “I wasn’t happy there. Deep in my soul, I knew I needed more and that I’d never truly belong there. I found what I was looking for here in the city, and I still have that drive. That urgency.”

“I know.”

“It’s just a part of who I am.” I swallowed hard, my heart suddenly pounding as I realized that this might actually be make or break. “If we’re going to do life together, I will hustle for us both, and for our family, and if problems like this ever come up again, I want you to trust that we can handle them together.”

I waited with bated breath, feeling like I’d just sliced open my soul and bled it all over her. Being vulnerable didn’t always come easy to me, and being vulnerable about money and core values was even harder. All I could do now was hope that she accepted me for these deeper corners of who I was because I wasn’t sure I could change any of it—even for her.

Kenny stared into my eyes, slowly leaning forward and pressing her lips to mine. “Just don’t punch anyone again, okay? It’s too stressful for me when you get driven away by the police.”

I kissed her back, smirking as I combed my fingers into her hair. “I can’t promise that, but I can promise to try. If you promise to carry pepper spray.”

“Deal.” She giggled, sliding her leg further across my thighs and lifting herself onto me. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she flashed me a naughty grin and sank her teeth into her lower lip. “Do you think we still have time?”

I used my hand in her hair to pull her down, bringing my free hand to the small of her back to keep her in place as I kissed her hard. “I don’t really care. If they do come back, it won’t take them long after opening the door to realize we haven’t had quite enough privacy just yet.”

She squealed when I rolled us over, grabbing the blankets to cover us again. I moved my lips from her mouth to her chest, sucking a nipple into my mouth and groaning around it. Evidently, Kennedy Sweet was happy to take me exactly as I was, and I couldn’t quite describe what knowing that did to me.

Kenny was all I’d ever wanted and so much more, and now that I had told her everything important there was to know about me, I felt like we could be better together than we had ever been before. Plus, this time, there was no worrying about being only business partners or only anything else.

I really was going to marry this girl and now she knew it too.