Kennedy's Redemption (The Protectors 3)

Prologue

BOOM! She was thrown from the driver’s hand right into a dumpster and pain immediately assaulted her body. Shaking off the buzzing in her head and the aches in her body, Kennedy got up in search of Emily and Eric. “Em!” she cried out and started a coughing fit from the smoke and debris of what could only be their vehicle.

Crawling towards where she last thought she had seen the others, she nearly collided with a body. “Kenny?” she heard Emily call out, her body sagging in relief. She grabbed her friend at the same time she felt a pinch on her neck… and then blackness.

·?•? ?•?·

Waking up to a hand running gently across her bare flesh, Kennedy’s skin broke out in goosebumps and a shiver of foreboding ran up her spine. She just knew she was in a world of trouble when she opened her eyes.

“C’mon, Red. I know you’re awake,” a silky voice whispered in her ear right before stabbing pain met her thigh making her scream out in agony.

Opening her eyes, she did a quick look around while gritting her teeth, noting she was chained to a wall with one window on the other side of the room and a closed door adjacent to that. Looking at her captor, she was shocked to see it was a woman.

Grabbing Kennedy’s face, she kissed her square on the lips whispering, “We’re gonna have so much fun together.”

·?•? ?•?·

“Noooo! Don’t touch me!” she screamed stuck in her nightmare— the pain, the endless harsh laughter with every scream she let out

every time she begged for relief. The hands on her arms felt like pricks of ice dropping on her and slicing her skin open.

“Kenny? Kenny, kid, it’s Nate. You’re safe, but you have to stop fighting. I can’t untie you if you keep fighting.” She could hear Nate’s voice in her head like a cruel reminder of what she’ll never have again. The love of her family, the freedom of youth. She was going to die and never get to tell her family and friends she loved them again.

“Kennedy!” She heard a harsh yet soothing voice snap right before something was put over her nude body. “No, please, take it off. Oh God, it hurts,” she half whined half yelled out.

“Kennedy, enough,” another voice demanded, smoother, like fine whiskey sliding down your throat it had a burn but then it warmed you from the belly up. Finally, her struggles ceased and the yelling stopped. “Alright, sunshine, we’re gonna untie you.” The whiskey voice soothed her fears. It was like a whisper of air across her skin. Feeling hands on her again she tensed, ready to scream from the ice pricking her skin, only it didn’t hurt. It was almost soothing. Their hands whispered across her flesh. She struggled from the uncomfortableness of it, but the pain was gone.

“You’re gonna be ok, doll. We’ll take care of you,” the first voice whispered in her ear again, lulling her into a sense of security where she could finally relax and give in to the darkness again. Hearing “Sunshine,” just before her mind and body gave up the fight to stay awake.

·?•? ?•?·

“Mrs. Maxwell, I’m sorry, but we just can’t treat your daughter without sedating her, and even then, she keeps ripping out her stitches. She won’t let any nurses or doctors touch her. I think a medically induced coma is her best option for healing right now,” someone explained to her mom. She couldn’t summon the energy to open her eyes or to scream no, that when she was asleep the nightmares followed her.

“She’s always moaning and crying when she’s asleep, though. Won’t those nightmares follow her?” her mom asked sounding resigned to what was going to happen to her.

“That’s something we’ll never really know. It’s a fifty, fifty chance. But her body won’t heal if she’s constantly fighting us,” he tried to implore while she was trying scream that yes, they followed her into sleep.

“Please don’t trap me!” she screamed in her mind.

“Don’t do it!” That whiskey voice was back and he sounded pissed. Please listen to him, she begged in her mind because her voice was still trapped.

“Son, that’s really not up to you,” her dad Andrew told him. No, daddy, please, please listen, she tried to plead.

“Doesn’t matter,” he snarled. “You shouldn’t do it. If she’s trapped in her mind when she sleeps and you knock her out for however long it takes her to heal, you’ll ruin her,” he explained menacingly to whoever else was in the room. She continued to struggle with her body to wake up, to scream, wave her arms, something, but her body refused to cooperate.

“That may be so, but what’s the alternative? She rips her body apart like she did yesterday?” Her other dad, Jackson, said wobbly.

I’m sorry, Daddy, she wanted to plead with him that she wouldn’t do it again, but she knew it wouldn’t be true. She was weak and the nightmares held her monsters. She just couldn’t go on like that anymore. She wanted to escape, but she didn’t want to be locked in her mind while her body healed either.

“Ya can’t fucking do this!” whiskey voice screamed at them.

“Linc!” That other voice, the dark one, hollered at him. “Calm the fuck down; it ain’t our choice.”

“Fuck that Creed, they’re gonna ruin her; she won’t walk away from this,” whiskey voice, now known as Linc, growled out.

“Linc, Creed, let’s go outside,” she heard Dane’s voice interject. No, Dane, please don’t. She didn’t understand the connection she had with these men, Linc and Creed, but she knew with them around she felt safe. She might not be able to open her eyes but she felt them leave, like all the warmth left the room, like there was no more sunshine in her life. She was left cold in a world of gray filled with the worst kind of monsters imaginable.

She heard her parents talking, her mom crying, and her brothers trying to console her, but she didn’t comprehend anything until her mom kissed her forehead and whispered in her ear, “Rest now, baby. This will heal your body. I love you, Kennedy.” Her dads and brothers followed suit.

As soon as they were done, she heard the doctor order the nurse to do something. When she felt them playing with her IV, she started to freak out before she felt a burning rush through her veins, her muscles going completely lax, and her brain getting more and more sluggish by the moment.

Her final thought was… I wish I were dead.

One

Four weeks, three days, and five hours was how long it took for Lincoln Black to decide that when Kennedy woke up she was theirs, his and his twin brother Creed’s; she just didn’t know it yet. Her brothers suspected, their friends Dane, Coop, and Emily knew, but her parents were clueless.

Every night he and Creed would sit in her hospital room and watch her sleep. Not a normal sleep, but a medically induced coma because their woman had gone through hell and didn’t see a way out of her head. So her parents, against his strong objection, allowed the doctors to do this to her. He was mad as hell at them. So much so that he was hardly able to be in the same room as them.

What they didn’t listen to him about was how she would have nightmares. Her brain was active, and he could see her eyes moving behind her closed lids from the minute he walked in the room at night till the minute she would start thrashing around in the bed trying to escape her mind.

He and Creed would sit there until it happened and when it did, they would hold her hands, whisper things to her, tell her about themselves and how when she was awake they were going to help her heal. Mind, body, and soul.

She was a fighter. From the minute they’d rescued her and Emily from hell, she’d fought and she fought hard. It was one of the most humbling yet terrifying things he’d ever seen. Because while she was fighting, she was also hurting herself and he couldn’t handle that.

Every day their friends Dane Johnston and Cooper Sheppard would bring little Emily in and she would sit there for hours just watching Kenny. Sometimes her tears would slip free and sometimes she would silently watch her. Mostly she wrote her letters, and each day, she would put them in the drawer beside her bed and make him and Creed promise not to let anyone read them. She said she needed Kenny to know how sorry she was that she was like this and that she hoped one day, she’d forgive her.

It didn’t matter how many times everyone told Emily this wasn’t her fault, she kept telling them she would reserve judgment for when Kenny woke up and she could apologize properly. So they let her write until her fingers grew tired or her tears would dry up. It seemed to help her heal inside a little bit too, so she was left alone.

The nurses assured him and Creed that they would be slowly bringing her out of the coma in the next few days, and that once she was off the medicine, it would be up to her on how long it would take to actually wake up. They were both terrified she wouldn’t.

·?•? ?•?·

Watching the two most important people in his life, Creedence Black waited for his brother to fall asleep with his head resting softly on Kennedy’s leg while she was forced to sleep by the medicine and thought about how they were going to help her when she awoke. It was something he’d been thinking about for weeks. She didn’t even know their names let alone who they were, yet they both felt this magnetic pull to be with her, to take care of her.

When the decision was made to put her in this coma, Linc had gone off the handle on her parents and he and Dane had no choice but to forcibly remove him from the room. He’d never seen his brother so emotional since their mom finally decided to up and leave them. Being older than Linc by mere minutes — they were fraternal twins— he always felt responsible for his brother. And seeing the pain etched on his face when they decided to put Kenny in her coma was worse than when they finally realized their mom wasn’t coming back. She hadn’t been the best mom, but she’d been all they had until they were twelve and she ditched them at a fire hall. Now, twenty years later and seeing that look from his brother gutted him.

Every night they’d been back to watch and wait. Knowing that Linc had been right about the nightmares made her parents feel horrible, but neither of them felt very forgiving towards them yet. He knew they would eventually have to cross that bridge when the time came to really claim her as theirs, but until then, they had nothing to say to them.

Her brothers Nate and Ty were at a crossroads as well because they weren’t consulted when the decision was made to put her under. So while they were angry at their parents for doing it, they understood that they just wanted her to heal, but Creed didn’t think that this was the way to do it. She had such a hard road ahead of her. After watching her cry and thrash around nearly every night, he was scared to death that when she woke it was only going to be worse. Her body may be healed, but her mind would be so broken.

Closing his eyes before the sun would rise again, he kept his hold on her hand, not able to let that small bit of contact go. When her fingers started to twitch, he stood up and shaked Linc as he went, knowing somehow this was different. They hadn’t brought her out of the coma yet, and even though she thrashed while having nightmares before, she’d never really had any centrally located movements.

“Yo, Linc, up man,” he sternly whispered. “Something’s up.” When her entire body locked up and her back bowed off the bed, they knew she was in trouble. As Linc tried to sooth her by running his hands up and down her arms, he ran into the hall yelling for a doctor.