Chapter 8
The desperation was like a hungry dog, constantly chasing Kayla and nipping at her heels. She knew logging in to her bank app again wasn’t going to change anything. She already texted Trent and told him she would come down tonight. She had no choice. Evan had gotten the power back on in her house, but the next damn mortgage payment still loomed. She’d spent her last dime on high-quality senior feed to put weight back on Joey, and now she couldn’t pay the bank. There was only one way. And that meant going back to the hellhole where her mother and Trent resided.
She scrubbed the dirt from under her fingernails. She dug through her closet. Way in back, past the barn clothes, which were simple and utilitarian, she had a collection of skimpy clothes that sparkled and drew attention. Her stomach clenched at even the sight of them, and she went and poured herself another glass of liquid courage. It was everything she was trying to get away from, yet she deliberately put herself right back into it. What choice did she have?
By the time she was dressed and made up, she’d come to a simple decision. She couldn’t stop thinking of Evan. He’d tantalized her by offering the possibility of protection, respect, and hot sex. When he touched her, she felt better. She felt alive for the first time. She wanted one night of a free life, with a real man, where she wasn’t branded by her past. That, she decided, she was going to take for herself. Before Evan, she’d slept with a few guys because it was the closest thing she could get to feeling like she mattered to anyone. She had only her worth as a sexy woman to bargain with for any physical contact. She usually went numb before it was over. She didn’t even do it for an orgasm. Just the fleeting feeling of being close to someone. Most of the time, she was so, so alone. She would have one night with Evan, and then never see him again. It was too complicated to live a double life, and it never worked to tell the truth.
EVAN
A hesitant knockat Evan’s door sent Abbey into a fit of barking. Not that she was particularly ferocious or convincing as a watchdog. He couldn’t imagine who was at his door. People didn’t just come to this little shack of a house on the edge of the swamp and thousands of acres of nothing but alligators and mosquitoes. It wasn’t a neighborhood that invited random visitors. He contemplated getting his gun, but he saw Kayla’s truck in his driveway.
“Shut up, Trouble,” he said to the dog, and opened the door. She looked different from usual. A lot more eyeliner. Dark, smoky. A slinky, silver tank top that accentuated her very fine feminine form and showed off her wiry, muscled arms. She wore skinny jeans that looked like they’d been painted on and high heels. The dog wagged her tail, then darted out and ran off into the night.
If he’d thought Kayla was sexy in her regular farm wear, she absolutely stole his breath like this. She was…sex, and she was standing on his porch, looking at him with wounded, desperate, longing eyes. He could feel the lust singing off her, as if he could smell the pheromones. He knew without a word what she was here for, and he hoped she didn’t change her mind, because the way she looked right now, he was ready to put her up against the doorjamb and fuck her senseless.
What was that look, though? Why did she seem so…lost? He couldn’t imagine, but he knew why she was here, and he thought there might be one way to chase the shadows out of her. He was just the man for the job. Reaching out, he took her by the wrist, not even so friendly as by the hand, and drew her inside, toeing the door shut and then putting her up against it. She went willingly, with the vapid feel of a woman ready for anything. He heard her suck in a sharp breath, and as her lips parted, he covered her completely, took her mouth, pressed into her until there wasn’t an inch untouched. Her throaty moan was like a shot of adrenaline straight to his heart, and his dick jumped up triumphantly.
He felt her hands deftly unbuckling his belt and unzipping his jeans, and then it was almost as if she melted out from under him. Before he could even react, the sucking wet swirl of her mouth was on his dick, and he nearly collapsed from the shocking pleasure. What the fuck was this girl doing to him? He looked down at her. Those long black lashes fluttered up at him as she sucked him unbelievably deep. He cursed, grinding his teeth to keep from coming right then like a teenager. This wasn’t like any other sexual encounter he could ever think of. He was pretty controlling, and this girl was just undoing him. As she worked him over with incredible skill, he caught her with a gasp and pulled her back. He didn’t say a thing. She looked at him and knew. He had to save some for the main course. He pulled her back up to her feet and held her at arm’s length for a moment, trying to decide what to do with her. He wanted her in every way imaginable, all at once, and for hours. Where had this sex kitten come from? Every time he’d kissed her before now, she’d seemed nervous and hesitant.
He couldn’t ever remember being so in lust with a girl that he was too dumbfounded to know where to start. The slinky silver top was enthralling, the way it outlined her breasts, but it had to go. He suspected, and found he was right, that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. Her breasts were small, but a lovely dash of femininity with her otherwise lean and muscular build. That had to be the farm and the horses. He knew she didn’t work out, and yet her abs were like a washboard below those perfect breasts.
He tossed the shirt to the couch. He almost ordered her to get out of her jeans, but then decided words now would spoil the otherwise primal exchange they had going on. Instead, he made swift work of the button and zipper and peeled them down her legs himself, exposing a lacy thong that hardly counted as its own garment. That could stay for the time being. He wasn’t ready to stop looking at her in it and imagining all the ways he could pull it this way and that to drive her crazy.
He spun her around and bent her over the arm of the couch, his hands on her ass, kneading it, then spreading it, then pulling her hips up higher so he could spread her farther, dragging the thin strap of lace across her. This earned him another moan from her that shot straight to his dick, which he already thought couldn’t get any harder. He reached around to work her clit. Her response was nearly a scream of pleasure, which became a keening cry when he slipped two fingers inside her. She was already soaking wet.
He felt the tension build in her and worked her harder. She gripped him harder, her back arching wildly. He knew she was seconds away from an orgasm, but something in her shifted and cooled. It was as if she’d deliberately derailed herself. Why would she do that?
Regardless, the bedroom was better suited for this. And that was where the condoms were.
Her legs didn’t seem to be working too well, a fact of which he was proud, so he lifted her into his arms and turned around, carrying her down the hall into his bedroom.
KAYLA
She’d expected the fucking.She’d come here for the fucking. He’d completely taken her out of herself, and that was what she wanted, needed. She hadn’t expected him to carry her down the hall. When he lifted her off her feet, he threw her so mentally off balance that she felt that exposure again. A timid, wounded little hidden part of her heart that wanted to curl against him and be held rather than fucked. The tenderness and the sensation it brought were more than she could bear, and she sought to release the animal in him again. That, she knew what to do with. For a second, she stood before him, unashamed of her nakedness.
While he ripped open a condom, she turned away, crawling onto his bed on all fours. With a flick of hair over her shoulder, she looked back at him, telling him what to do. She could make him act the way she wanted him to. This was the only semblance of control she’d ever had over herself or any man she had been with.
He grabbed her hips and drove into her with one long stroke that was still utterly shocking even though she’d invited it.
First, he held her by the hips and fucked her hard and fast. He dragged sounds from her that she’d never heard herself make. Then he wrapped his body around her from behind, overwhelming her. His hand went to her hair, pulling her face to the side so he could kiss her mouth while he ground into her deep and slow. No man had ever handled her with such dominant skill. She had no choice but to surrender to it completely. She was breathless, boneless, and when he reached around and rolled her clit in his fingers, she nearly exploded. The shock of it took her completely by surprise as she clenched around the length of him. The explosion of pleasure was closely followed by the blanket of darkness that was her only constant companion. She never orgasmed during sex. She kept this invisible secret from every lover she’d ever had. Most of them didn’t notice or care. It was just one of the ways she stayed detached from the act, from the man.
She craved the attention, the admiration, the momentary feeling of value that came with the pursuit by a man for her body. Now, she would sink into the liquid numbness that protected her and evaporate back into the shadows where she belonged. The rest didn’t matter. She might as well have been floating somewhere else, watching from the corner of the room. Vacantly, she thought of Rocket’s training schedule this week. Whether she should give her a day off tomorrow.
She totally underestimated him, however. She’d barely felt him turn her over, but he had. And he kissed her mouth softly, nudging her chin with his fingers to angle her gaze to meet his.
“Where’d you go? I lost you for a minute.” She stared at him. There was a sheen of sweat where their skin met. She had the strange sensation of her stomach rolling like it did when an elevator dropped, and she reentered her own body beneath him. He was still touching her face, watching her. He had just stopped mid-fuck because he actually noticed she’d mentally checked out. It was an old, well-practiced coping mechanism. And he’d caught her. Now, he was looking at her. Really seeing her, not the sexy show she put on for him. She shot him a coy smile and leaned up to kiss him. It wasn’t the truth. It was just the only response she knew how to give.
He kissed her back for a moment, and then eased himself down her body, pulled her knees up to expose her, and took her in his mouth. This was not what she had in mind. This was not what she wanted him to do. Once again, she’d lost control of the situation, of him. The loss of control sent her hurtling back toward the dark cliff where she would drop off and dissociate.
But pinpricks of light and sensation danced through her body and behind her eyelids, yanking her back into herself again. The floodgates opened. She gasped, arching involuntarily, so desperately filled with need that she couldn’t shut it down again.
The orgasm was an unstoppable tsunami that rushed through her. It clenched every muscle in her body and then shook in tremors as the pleasure rippled through her. Somehow, he managed to almost imperceptibly transfer the stroking of her clit from his mouth to his thumb as he rose up and entered her again. As he filled her and fucked her, she heard his guttural yell and felt the urgency in each thrust as new waves of her never-ending orgasm milked every last ounce of his.
Still as hard as a rock, he stroked her hair from her face as he drove deep into her, meeting her gasp with his kiss. He kissed her face, her neck, her breasts, without missing the rhythm he maintained inside her. But these kisses weren’t the same. No longer searching for gratification, his own or hers, he touched her like he cared. He kissed her like he cared.
At last, he rolled onto his side and pulled her against his chest, strong arms wrapped around her. He hadn’t used her and tossed her to the side. Once the wild fucking was over, he touched her with tenderness. Somehow, the push and pull of her trying to maintain her numb protection during sex had totally crumbled. She could fake a decent little orgasm that satisfied everyone else. Evan had seen right through it just like he seemed to do everything.
It was what she’d craved so deeply when he’d left her kitchen the other night. She’d wanted him to hold her just like this and never let her go. The void inside her that was cold could be made warm. All the secrets she’d been keeping her whole life were now prisoners clamoring at the bars of their cells, demanding to be let out and heard. In his arms, she feared them less. In his arms, she could almost believe that there could be real safety with a man.
He had cast a spell on her, and she had lain in his bed for almost five minutes when the sex was over.
Coming here had been a huge mistake.
Considering where she had to go tonight, she could only be dead inside. She couldn’t let him make her feel any more alive. She would never say it, she would never let him know, but right at that moment, he felt more like home than anything she’d ever known.
“I gotta go,” she said softly, then extricated herself from his embrace. Leaving it was actually painful, the longing to stay was so strong.
“No, you don’t,” he replied, but he didn’t physically stop her. She broke contact with him as the turmoil raged inside her. A craving for something other than him lit up inside her. She could drink this away.
“Sorry. I can’t leave the horses alone.” She briefly went into his bathroom to clean up, and then walked back out along the trail of discarded clothes, dressing as she went. Now she was a dog on a scent, and she wouldn’t be stopped. Now, he was an obstacle to the one thing she could depend on. He followed her to the door, but she didn’t pause for him to kiss her.
“I’ll walk you to your truck,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. See you around.” Slipping out the door, she closed it quickly behind her, taking comfort in the darkness of his driveway. Her hands were jerky as she pulled open the driver’s door of her truck and hopped onto the seat. She peeled out faster than she needed to, grateful it was only a short straight stretch of road back to her place. There was only one thing in her mind now—how many steps to the freezer.
She left the side door of her house standing open as she marched the last few steps and grabbed the bottle. The burn of liquid pain down her throat drowned the feelings she couldn’t stand. Her heart pounded and her mind cleared as the comfort of the booze relaxed the vise grip on her soul and relaxation followed. She lit a cigarette and closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t smoke all the time, but today, she needed all the chemicals she could get.
She hated to waste her precious money on a rideshare app, but she had to get to Fort Myers, and she didn’t dare drive under the circumstances. She pounded booze while she waited for the car to arrive and was able to drink herself partly senseless before she was dropped off at the Dancing Palm.
The thump of the club music seeped out onto the sidewalk. It wasn’t an upscale establishment. She went into a dirty alley to enter by the side door. It was locked to protect the dancers from creeps who would sneak into the dressing room. Unfortunately, it did nothing to protect them from the creeps already inside the club. She let herself in with a key.
“You’re late,” she heard Trent bark before she even saw him. He emerged as if he’d been waiting for her, grabbing her by the arm and propelling her into the dressing room. “Get ready. You’re up next.” Mercifully, she barely felt his grip on her arm. She went to the mirror to apply more makeup and shimmied into the skimpy costume she would wear on stage. The dressing room was just a small bare room with cinderblock walls still stained with tar from the thousands of cigarettes that had been smoked in here before indoor smoking was banned. It still happened, of course. Just like everything else that wasn’t supposed to.
Nearly nine years in this club, and she still wasn’t used to it. especially not when she’d come straight here from the farm. She’d give anything to be in the barn right now, breathing the sweet smell of fresh hay, touching Clyde’s velveteen nose and looking at his kind, liquid brown eyes. The memory of Evan’s arms around her was a longing she almost couldn’t bear. The contrast reminded her of when she’d first arrived in Fort Myers with her mother. Leanne had come here to buy drugs, and once Trent had gotten a look at Kayla, there’d been no going back.
Trent was circling back through now, stalking among the girls. She’d first met him when she was fourteen, fresh off the farm and desperate for the love of a father she’d never known. Trent had eyes only for her, it seemed. He told her she was more beautiful than any girl he’d ever seen. She’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. It hadn’t taken him long to get her into his bed. That experience had colored nearly everything afterward. The sex had been unpleasant in almost every way, and she had learned that sex was a thing to be tolerated in order to win the affection or protection of a man. Trent had even made a show of running a guy off her in the club one night when the stranger had tried to literally drag her out the door. The sad fact was, in those days, it was safer to be Trent’s girl than not. He wanted her to dance. Fourteen years old, embarrassed and shy, she’d refused. But he would feed her alcohol after hours and convince her to do it just for him. The saddest part of her longed for his praise and infatuation, and the most frightened part of her didn’t dare disobey for fear of what might happen the next time someone more dangerous came along. She was trapped then, and she was trapped now.
Their twisted little world became a runaway train in no time. She became increasingly more ashamed of what he’d convinced her to do and drank to drown it out. He swooped in like a predator for the kill and sent her out onstage during an amateur night. Nothing was the same after that. She could never take it back. She could never again be a normal girl. She couldn’t face her Gram knowing she’d dropped out of school and was working in a strip club.
With the perspective of years, she recognized now that Trent was basically a pimp, except that he worked the girls primarily as strippers and not all of them turned tricks in the VIP room. Kayla didn’t, but most of them did. Trent took a cut from everything. She was pretty sure Trent had harbored some fantasy of her being his highest-earning girl and his own personal whore. Instead, she’d plotted her escape, and inheriting the farm had been her big break.
She watched him slip something to another dancer. Some of the girls were his best customers. Kayla had heard of these mythical empowered women who danced because they wanted to, but this establishment didn’t attract that type of woman. Trent’s specialty was desperate, damaged girls who were easy to manipulate and get hooked on his drugs.
He veered back toward her, and she braced herself for his proximity. The smell of menthol cigarettes and cheap cologne assaulted her as he loomed over her. That smell brought back every bit of pain he’d inflicted on her. She didn’t move from the chair, slouched beneath his leering gaze. It was hard to imagine now that when he’d told her she was pretty she’d been so flattered. Trent encouraged her to do anything she wanted, and her mother had just shrugged and allowed it. It had been a teenage thrill for a minute, before she’d walked in on him with another girl, and woken up to the harsh reality of what Trent really wanted with her. The betrayal of that revelation had been overwhelming at fifteen. He didn’t really think that she was so special after all. Any girl who came through the door would do. Especially when she had disobeyed him in some way. Then he would openly lavish his affections on any other girl in order to hurt her more. And then she drank more to cope with the rejection. Later, he’d beaten her, belittled her, and made sure she knew she was unfit for anything other than whatever meager attention he deigned to offer her. He had systematically ruined her for any type of regular life.
“I don’t like this one,”Trent said, gesturing to her costume. “Wear the school girl one. Everyone loves that.” She nodded. “I’ll put Ashley on before you so you can change.” He went to tell the girls the order had been changed, and Kayla sagged against the plastic chair that looked as if it had come from some school basement. Ashley glanced at her as she applied the finishing touches to her face. Ashley was one of the more sensible girls here.
“He’s in a mood,” she commented. “Be careful, okay? I guess the cops got wind of the underaged girls dancing here, and they’re looking at him. He’s circling the wagons. Just be careful.” So that explained why he’d come all the way out to her place to strongarm her back to the club. He was afraid he was losing his control over her and she might talk.
“Yeah. Thanks,” Kayla replied as Ashley brushed past her, headed for the stage. Kayla looked at the door leading to the alley, wanting so badly to just run out of there and never come back. That was exactly what she’d tried to do when she’d found out the farm was hers. But after a time, even the worst of situations became comfortable in their familiarity. She felt like the object everyone treated her like. It was predictable.
The announcement of her stage name over the loudspeaker was a sharp jab bringing on the anesthesia. With every step she took toward the stage, she felt less and less. She knew exactly how to work it to make top tips. She was drunk, but she’d done this performance so many times, she could practically do it in her sleep.
She had another bottle stashed for when her set was over, and she drank it while she waited for the car service to pick her up. When the notification came that the car was waiting, she slipped out the side door, wrapped in a heavy sweatshirt despite the warm evening. She collapsed in the back seat and glanced up, seeing the eyes of her driver in the rearview mirror. She knew that look. Excitement. The dangerous kind.
“You work here?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb. She was drunk, stuck in the car with a creep. This was the response that a significant portion of the male population had when they realized she was a stripper. The other response was disgust. ”You do any work on the side?” the driver asked her. Those eyes still on her, not the road. That dangerous light still gleamed. She was in trouble.
“No,” she bit out, scanning the road. There was a red light approaching. A drugstore glowed to the side.
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to suck my dick,” he went on as he slowed to stop at the red light. Her hand was already on the door handle. The moment the car came to a standstill, she bolted. It wasn’t her first rodeo on any level, and she knew exactly where this was headed. If she continued to refuse, this pervert would either get angry and acquiesce, or he would presume it was his right to rape her as long as he paid her afterward.
“Hey!” she heard him yell behind her as she ran hard into the parking lot of the well-lit drugstore. She made it through the glass doors, gasping for air, and spun around to see what he was going to do. He briefly stood outside the driver’s door until a car behind him honked, and then he retreated and drove away. She let out a sigh of relief.
“You gonna buy something?” a woman’s scratchy voice interrupted her. It was the voice of twenty years of cigarettes and rough life. She turned to face the disapproving stare of a middle-aged woman at the cash register. Kayla realized she was still clutching the bottle of whiskey she’d smuggled into the back of the car. The cashier’s gaze traveled from Kayla’s huge false eyelashes to the bottle and then shook her head.
“You better move along, or I’m calling the cops,” the woman said, phone in hand. Who the hell was she to judge Kayla? Nonetheless, they could probably arrest her for drinking in public, and they would, once they figured out she’d just left the Palm.
“No— I’ll go—” Kayla stammered and went back out the door, face burning. This was a replay of so many scenes from her youth. There was a different category in society’s eyes for a girl who’d gone down this path. She was just another drunken whore who’d made her choices and now had to sleep in the figurative bed she’d made. It had shocked her at first. She hadn’t made these choices! But society didn’t care. There were a certain number of disposable girls required to be sacrificed to the gods of perverted men in power.
On the sidewalk, she pulled out her phone to call for another car. If a respectable-looking girl without false eyelashes, body glitter, and an open bottle of whiskey had run into the drugstore, they might have offered her help. But looking the way Kayla did, there was an automatic assumption that she’d brought whatever misfortune on herself and should take her trouble elsewhere. The injustice made girls bitter, and it made them stay in the life. At every turn, society told them they were branded. There was a line in the sand past which girls like her must not cross. When she had first gotten back to the farm, a young, handsome guy from the feed store had asked her out almost immediately. She’d dated him a few times, till she had mindlessly pulled out a matchbook from the Dancing Palm to light a cigarette. He was a church going good ole boy and the judgment in his eyes was immediate and irrevocable. Her only hope had been to go back to the farm and pretend this part of her life had never happened.
Like everything else that had happened between her and Trent, it would be her dirty little secret. She could so easily imagine Evan’s reaction to this part of her life. Neither God nor good men had any use for a woman like her. She would keep the memory of him safe and sound, and she would not see him again. She couldn’t stand the possibility of seeing either of the two inevitable reactions when he found out. Either the disdain and judgment like the cashier, or the sick excitement of her nasty driver. Surely, losing him now was simpler, and less painful.
The next morning,she had an early trail ride to lead. It was a struggle to keep a friendly smile on her face and she was relieved when they left. As she groomed the horses, she heard Evan’s bike. The roar of his motor was like a knife to her heart. She already had her back to the road and didn’t move to acknowledge him.
As soon as the sound of his motorcycle dwindled into the distance, she let her shoulders sag. The horse began to fidget and stomp, and she realized she’d been brushing the same spot for five minutes straight without moving. She wanted to run out into the road to try to yell for him to stop. But she couldn’t face him knowing what he would think of her if he knew…
She unclipped the horse and let him walk himself down into the back pasture. Her one-night stand with Evan had backfired magnificently.
She sat down on an overturned bucket, lost in another time long ago. Another motorcycle heading off down the road—another motorcycle that couldn’t be stopped. This one ridden by Canyon Bill. Like everything else in Kayla’s life, he couldn’t be depended on. And Kayla’s mother, Leanne, had never let a chance to rub it in her face go by, to angrily remind everyone that Canyon Bill wasn’t her father and she didn’t want him around.
Nonetheless, Canyon Bill remained the ever-present, colorful male figure in all their lives. He was a contradictory hybrid of hippie, cowboy, and biker, who had often sat outside at night under the full Florida moon smoking pot and strumming an acoustic guitar.
Canyon Bill was always riding in and out of their lives. He wasn’t a man who would commit, not a man who could say where he would be next year. He wasn’t usually gone for long. His leaving wasn’t usually angry. It was as if the wind blew him, and sometimes, he just had to go. There was hardly ever an argument between them that Kayla could remember. Just Bill, scanning the horizon, and Grandma Kay looking wistful and sad because she knew he might leave.
Sometimes he arrived in a conversion van packed to the roof with junk, towing a broke down motorcycle. Once he had arrived in an old RV. The last time, all he had had was the Victory motorcycle he’d spent six months rebuilding in Kay’s barn. And then, just like that, he rode away, taking with him the only semblance of male stability that she’d ever had. The last time was different, and they all seemed to know it, even though it was never said. Bill was drinking heavily, and it seemed to douse the endearing charm he had when sober. Bill had never been an angry man, but he’d grown quieter and drank more and more, until at last he’d packed up and left never to return…until now.
Kay, normally stoic and graceful, withdrew. Everyone could tell this time was different. The wind of wanderlust didn’t blow him down the road. Some darkness opened its gaping maw and swallowed him whole. Although he was a colorful enigma, Kayla didn’t depend on Canyon Bill. But Kay did, and when she became a shell of herself, compulsively soaping and oiling leather tack that already gleamed, muttering to herself and unable to notice that Kayla needed her as badly as ever because Leanne was always high or obsessed with some new dangerous man. Kayla’s world began to slowly fall apart.
It hadn’t meant that much to her at the time, watching Canyon Bill disappear in an old tie-dye shirt, but in hindsight, her throat closed despite her best effort to blink it away and swallow it down. He’d been the glue holding together their fragile little existence. Kay was herself; she would always notice when Leanne was on a bender and spirit Kayla away to the barn, telling her how much she needed her to groom the horses. There would be meals covered in saran wrap in the small fridge of the single-wide on the far side of Kay’s farm. A trailer she’d put there so she could keep an eye on Kayla, because Leanne wasn’t doing it, but nor would she just turn her over to her mother and leave.
Laundry would miraculously appear, washed and folded. Gram Kay would always make sure the burden on Kayla wasn’t too great. But when Canyon Bill left, it was as if he took the rain and the sun with him and things began to wither. Kay didn’t have an argument to stop Leanne when the roof on the trailer began to leak and she decided to move to an apartment in Fort Myers with Kayla. Kayla didn’t yet drive and was marooned in the city with her mother. There was no way to get back to the farm. There was no way out.
“And that’s why you can’t trust a man,” Leanne would say to Kayla, her unwilling but apt pupil.
Kayla looked across the farm where the old trailer still sat, mostly because she didn’t have the money to tear it down. She should just take a can of gas and a match to it. Maybe that would wipe the memories out of her mind: the back of Canyon Bill’s tie-dye and his blond braid whipping near his waist as he rode away down the road, Kay staring after him. Leanne, packing the car with their meager belongings, and Kayla staring out the back window as the farm receded from view. A domino effect of destruction.
A deep regret, a deeper loss opened like a cavern in her chest that seemed like nothing could fill. She stood up, dusting off her jeans. It was eleven a.m., and the sun felt like fire on her shoulders. It was too hot to do anything else with the horses in this blazing sun. That Evan was so different made it that much harder to shrug her shoulders and let him go.
She walked up to the house, standing in front of her freezer for five full minutes telling herself she wouldn’t drink before noon. But then she did.