Page 98 of The Lost and the Found

Kenny, who looked different than the last time I saw him.

His hair was still a greasy mess, his cheeks hallowed from weight loss, and his black jeans were still ripped and stained. But his eyes were different. Clearer, somehow.

“Hey,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice.

“Hey, Hayden. How are you?”

“Good.” I couldn’t stop the suspicion from taking over my voice. Kenny sounded way too polite to be Kenny.

He flashed me a lazy grin, dimples and all. I almost smiled back at him, because underneath all that grease, drugs and alcohol, Kenny was a good-looking man. Not male model good-looking, but a more boyish kind that could have driven all the girls wild had he not let his life go.

“Do you have any sugar for me, sugar?”

“Sugar?” Now I was confused. Wasn’t sugar slang for crack or something? Or was that salt?

Great. A few years on the street and I couldn’t even list drug lingo as one of my accomplishments.

“Yeah, sugar, you know? Kelly and I are making homemade cookies.”

“Homemade cookies?”

His brows lowered in a small frown. “Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“Are you sober enough to even work the oven?” I didn’t want to have to evacuate my apartment in the middle of the night because the fire alarm went off.

On second thought, I didn’t want to wake up to smoke and fire. Lord knows this apartment complex wasn’t up to date, and there was no way in hell those fire alarms out in the building would actually work.

He shot me an annoyed look then. “I’m not baking them. Kelly is. And she’s clear. She’s breastfeeding so no drugs or alcohol for a while. And besides, I’m trying cut down on some of the hard stuff.”

“I didn’t know Kelly had given birth already.” It was kind of sad, considering those two could barely look after themselves, never mind a baby.

He smiled, and at least he looked happy about the birth of his son. Kelly had been his on again/off again girlfriend of five years, and I had only seen her a handful of times since I moved here.

“She did. Last week. I almost peed my pants when she said it was time.”

“Congratulation. I hope everything is going well.” And I meant it. There was a lot of things Kenny needed to work on, but I hoped a baby would help sort him out.

“Oh, it’s going well, baby girl.”

I could see not much had change since the last time I’d seen him, considering there was still that crude gleam in his eyes. Obviously, his talk with Logan didn’t work. “I’ll be right back,” I muttered and walked away.

Kenny stepped inside my apartment and made himself at home by sitting on my couch and taking a sip from the water bottle I had set out on the coffee table. It was half-full, aannnddddd I wasn’t going to drink it, not anymore.

I poured some sugar into a small container, briefly saying goodbye to the container, because I knew I wasn’t going to get it back.

“Here, this should be enough.”

“Thanks, Hayden. You’re the best. I’ll bring some cookies over tomorrow as a thank you.”

“You don’t have to do that. Just don’t burn the whole building down, and that’ll be thanks enough.”

He winked. “Deal.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I wondered what had happened to the obviously charming boy underneath all the drugs. Was life just too hard?

“How about a kiss for the road?”

I rolled my eyes. Some things never change. “You live, like, three doors down from me. You’ll make it.”

He looked almost crestfallen from my rejection. I smiled and waited for him to leave before closing and locking the door. Then I leaned against it and hated how badly I wished he had been Logan instead.

But what I hated more than anything was my willingness to apologize to him when I hadn’t done anything wrong.

It made me wonder how far I was willing to let Logan go. It made me wonder if there was anything in this world he could do that I wouldn’t forgive.

What a terrifying thought that was.

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