Rolling Thunder

Chapter 17

Evan stopped at the feed store to get a bag of dog food for Abbey. It was a tiny country store run by an old Southerner. While waiting in line, he overheard a girl lamenting to her mother that Miss Kayla had canceled her riding lesson because she was sick. The line moved too slowly, so he dropped the bag of food back on the shelf and jumped in his truck to hammer home. Kayla was never sick. Even if she was, she would keep going even if it meant she was puking in the bushes between lessons. Something was wrong.

Her gate was unlatched, and now, he was sure. He pulled in, closing it behind him because she’d said so many times how important it was for it to be closed in case a horse ever got loose. Seeing no sign of her down by the barn, he knocked on her door.

“Kayla?” he called. There was no sign of the dirtbag he’d caught threatening her, either. But it did basically nothing to ease the terrible feeling in his gut. Finally, he heard movement. The door opened a crack, and Kayla peered out.

“Are you all right?” he demanded. It was a stupid question. She obviously wasn’t.

“No. I’m sick. You should go, I don’t want you to?—”

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

She withdrew, but he stuck his boot in the door before she could close it. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. Was Trent in there with her? He pushed the door open, and she pulled backward, hugging herself, trying to look away from him. But he saw it.

“What the fuck?” He reached toward her face, and she flinched. “Stop,” he said, suddenly gentle. She froze. He turned her chin to the side and swept her hair back to expose the black eye and bruised cheek she tried to conceal from him. A deadly calm settled over him.

“Who did this?”

“I fell off a horse,” she said, but her voice was small and unconvincing.

“Bullshit. You’re a terrible liar,”

“You have to go, Evan. You can’t be around me.” Her lips quivered, her chin trembled, her eyes filled with tears.

“I’m not leaving you like this,” he said. He gently pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head. She sobbed slightly and grabbed on to him with desperation. The honesty was in her touch. She felt so right in his arms, and he longed to protect her from whatever was happening. He could feel the answered longing back from her.

“I can’t be with you. You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“I’ve done bad things. You’re just about to finally have your life back, and I’m going to take it all away from you.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Just believe me,” she said. Her voice cracked. Her eyes were red, but no tears fell. “Just believe me. You have to go.”

He looked at her long and hard. This was a mind-boggling role-reversal. He’d spent the last five years of his life trying in equal parts not to poison good people with his questionable past, and at the same time wishing to have his honor back. Now the hard-won presumed honor was driving away the one girl he was truly falling for. That just couldn’t be possible. He refused to accept it.

“No,” he said finally.

“You don’t even know who I am.”

His gaze on her never wavered. “I think I do.”

Her miserable eyes filled with tears. “You don’t, Evan. You don’t know me at all.”

“I’m listening,” he said, an edge coming to his voice. What the hell was going on? She stood before him with a black eye, looking like someone had sucked the very spirit out of her. She just shook her head and turned away from him.

“Tell me where to find that dirtbag, and I’ll fucking end him,” he fumed.

“No!”

“This is bullshit, Kayla. Why are you protecting him?” he demanded, stalking into her kitchen. He opened her freezer, looking for a bag of peas. There were several bottles of booze, and very little food. He found one small bag of frozen vegetables huddled in the back corner as if it had been there for a decade.

“I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting you.”

“I don’t need you to do that.” He lowered his voice by sheer will. He wanted to grab her and shake her.

He took her face in his hands, once again stroking her hair back without hurting her. He gently laid the bag of frozen vegetables against the bruise. He stroked her jaw with his thumb, wishing he could tame her like she did the horses. Make her see that he could protect her. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, and her lips trembled. She couldn’t look at him. She sat unmoving, staring at some point on the floor off to her side, as if she was locked inside the prison in her own mind.

“Kayla,” he said quietly. Her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes met his. “When you’re ready to talk, you know where to find me.” He took her hand and transferred it to hold the bag to her face. His hand scooped under her chin, raising her face. “I can handle it. I’ll keep you safe.”

She stared at him, and he saw the torment in her eyes. She parted her lips to speak.

“Please go,” she whispered.

Then he did one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. Against every instinct, he turned and left her there, crying alone.

KAYLA

The sound of the closing door was just enough to shatter the fragile pieces of her heart. The pain was sharp and blinding. All she’d ever wanted in her life was a good man who cared, and he was riding away. The father who never existed, the grandfather who never came back. Canyon Bill had held their odd little family together for a time, but then he left, and Leanne took her daughter down the darkest road. Kay was powerless to stop any of it.

She listened to Evan ride away while everything in her screamed to chase him and beg him to stop—beg him to help her. She had no doubt he could handle Trent. But at what cost? He’d fly into a rage, beat Trent, and then go to jail. He was a man on shaky ground to begin with, the media hounding him for his past prison sentence and jeopardizing the business he and Dan built. She knew just what her baggage was, and she wouldn’t subject Evan to it. The truth of it didn’t soften the blow. Her throat closed, and she felt enough pain in her chest to know, in some secret part of herself, she loved him.

EVAN

Driving away, he felt like there was an invisible elastic stretching between him and where he had left her. Why was she so stubborn? Why wouldn’t she just tell him what was going on? Why was she so determined to run him off? The frustration built like pressure from that invisible connection that snapped at last.

The headlines the next morning read, in bold:

“I’ll be damned if I let somebody who doesn’t know me take away something good I’ve done.”HOME IMPROVEMENT STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HIS TRAGIC PAST

Dan texted him. Your interview is going viral. The ratings for season one have gone through the roof, and they want us in contract negotiations for season two!

It was the vindication he’d waited and waited for. It was like waking up from the bad dream that had taken over his life that fateful night when he’d followed Jake. Practically overnight, it felt like the world could suddenly see him clearly. He could have wept with relief. Yet it was bittersweet. He’d worked so hard to start a new life. He’d changed his name, started a business with Dan, and given an impassioned interview to clear his name. At the end of the day, though, he was still sitting alone on his porch in the Florida swamp with only the dog and the dark night. The woman he wanted by his side was just a mile away, but it might as well have been another country. Worse, he knew she was in terrible trouble and needed him to protect her. But for reasons she wouldn’t explain, she wouldn’t let him do it. And of all the irony—it was his restored honor that seemed to drive her away.

He was torn between two worlds. In prison, things were simple. Black and white. He was bad, and so was everyone around him. Reputation was all that mattered. He fared better than most. He’d grown up tough. He was big, and he could protect himself. Ultimately, it was all a ritual of who was the toughest man locked in the cage.

When he got out, he expected vindication that never came. He couldn’t go back and fix the rift in his family. He couldn’t change his new way of approaching the world. He was inked and marked as an ex-con, and that was his lot in life. People either shied away from him or were drawn to him, and both for the wrong reasons.

The payout he got from the state for wrongful imprisonment had bought him some toys and a nice motorcycle. The combination of his persona and the bike attracted girls. He was lonely and wounded. He’d spent months trying to drown it in booze and girls until he got tangled up with Amber. Amber turned out to be a gold-digging fame whore, and he ought to have known it from the start. The hell of it was, the payout from his wrongful incarceration meant to right the wrong only served to make things worse. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, and he didn’t want to be known for his past.

The people at the Home Improvement Channel said that the buzz about him would die down quickly, but they wanted to use it to promote the show in the meantime. They wanted him to do more interviews, but he declined. He’d said what he needed to say. At least this time, he felt that the headlines were true to him as a person. Now, they were talking about what he himself actually said instead of gossip. He finally had his honor back, after years of struggling to reclaim it. And somehow, that honor had made him lose her.

Without Kayla by his side, everything felt hollow. Every time he passed her farm, he wondered. He knew she wasn’t okay. An idea struck him one afternoon when he saw Canyon Bill sitting on the front steps of the mobile home on the far side of Kayla’s property. He pulled over on a whim. Bill stood and met him at the gate.

“Is she all right?” he asked Bill without explanation.

Bill put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it thoughtfully. “It ain’t exactly my place to say.”

“I don’t know exactly how to say this except to just say it… She told me not to come around anymore, but it looked like somebody had tuned her up. She had a black eye. Wouldn’t tell me who did it.”

Bill looked off across the farm toward her little house.

“I saw the shiner. But she was mighty drunk the night before. She might have just fell down of her own accord,” he said noncommittally.

“I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. She dropped me like a hot potato overnight and nothing happened between us. I think it has to do with that lowlife Trent.”

Bill nodded a little but said nothing.

“I think she’s in trouble, but she won’t let me help her.”

“In AA, they have a saying. You can’t make nobody drink, and you can’t keep nobody sober.” Bill looked at him. “You know what I’m sayin’, boy? She’s got to ask for help, or else you can’t give it to her. You ain’t responsible for her choices, and you can’t make ’em for her.”

Evan nodded grimly. “I guess you’re right, but it doesn’t make me hate this any less.”

Bill nodded back. “I get it. I’ve been in some tough spots too. Sometimes there just ain’t nothin’ to be done about it but stand back and wait.” He paused, looking into Evan’s eyes. “I’ll keep an eye on her the best I can.”

Evan clapped Bill’s arm softy in thanks, took a long look at her house across the pasture, and swung back onto his bike.

Days passed in a blur of interview requests and phone calls from the network trying to finalize the second season of the show. Suddenly, he and Dan were in a position to negotiate. Overnight, he’d become some kind of internet sensation. Their producer sat down with them and said, “Everyone loves a good comeback story.”