Chapter 18
Kayla had sat astride plenty of horses that were ticking timebombs. She had an instinct for it. She could swing into the saddle and immediately feel a steady horse, or one that was just pretending to be. There might be a few easy steps or even a few easy days, but the tension was always in there, waiting for the moment to explode. Then, without warning her world would turn upside down, literally. She’d be sent tumbling through the air when the horse finally blew.
She didn’t have to swing into the saddle this time. Her whole life was already a ticking time bomb. She felt frozen and powerless to stop it. She carried some tiny spark of hope that Trent would tire of the game and leave her alone. He had to drive almost an hour out into the middle of nowhere to fuck with her. Surely he had plenty of other girls who were closer and easier. He was counting on her to just cave. She’d resolved not to go crawling back no matter what. If he came for her, she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Maybe he would tire of her and she could make things right with Evan.
As the days dragged on and his texts became increasingly furious, she lost hope that he would ever let it go. He was twice as motivated since he evidently felt that she could sink him if the police asked about their history. She knew in her gut the timebomb was about to detonate.
Around dusk one beautiful Saturday evening, she headed back to the house after finishing her night chores. She planned to get a beer and admire the view from her porch as night quietly fell over her revitalized farm. As soon as she entered the doorway of the farmhouse, she knew. She stood there frozen, mouth dry, eyes wide, looking around. It wasn’t the first time he’d broken in. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and a slow-motion calm came over her.
Trent stepped out of the shadows, holding a can of beer he’d obviously pilfered from her refrigerator. He crushed it in his fist, and the sound startled her. He threw the empty can on the floor and stalked toward her like a wild animal.
“What’s it gonna be, Kiki?” he demanded. For an agonizingly long moment, she was just a deer in the headlights. She couldn’t act. She couldn’t speak. The bomb she dreaded went off.
Trent’s nonexistent patience ran out, and he launched toward her, grabbed her by the arm, and violently hauled her through the back door and yanked her effortlessly down her porch steps. “Let’s go see the old man.”
The thought of Canyon Bill getting hurt jolted her into action. She fought back, digging her heels into the crushed shell. “No!”
“No?” Trent mocked, dragging her down the driveway. All her power had been taken from her just that easily. Enough was enough. She wasn’t going to let this happen again.
“I’ll go with you,” she blurted.
He paused, still gripping her arm so hard, she was sure there would be more bruises.
She waited. The old survival instincts were there. Appease him too much and he wouldn’t believe it. She had to wait and see what he would do. His eyes narrowed.
“I just need to pack a few things,” she added, carefully.
His grip on her loosened slightly, and her arm throbbed. She focused on the pain, breathing carefully, measuring his response. She had to play things just right in this moment, or everything would go terribly wrong.
“I knew you’d come to your senses,” he muttered, turning back toward her house. He gave her a shove toward the porch and released her simultaneously, so she was thrown off-balance and sent stumbling forward. It was an effort not to fall on her face in the shell, which was exactly what he intended as he walked along behind her, watching her with merciless eyes. She got her balance and began walking jerkily back to her house. Anything could happen now. Whatever happened, it had to happen to her and not Bill.
He followed her back up the porch and into the house, slamming the door hard enough to make her jump, and then he laughed at her.
Anger boiled up inside her, and her senses sharpened. Her thinking was finally calm and clear. Her hands didn’t shake. She knew she couldn’t take him on under these circumstances. She had to outsmart him—pretend to cooperate. No matter what he did to her now, no matter how long she had to play along, she was going to end this once and for all. There was no way she was going to let this monster take over her life again.
The last man in her house had been Evan. The contrast was so very stark now in the presence of Trent. Having been with a man like Evan, having tasted brief sobriety with Bill’s help, she simply couldn’t let this evil take her back. It took being in Trent’s presence again to drive it home. She could never go back to that life.
Trent got another beer and followed Kayla into her bedroom. He reclined on her bed, his stringy, dirty hair on her pillow. His eyes were mean, his skin sallow. He swung his legs up, clad in dirty, worn jeans, and rested his boots on her blanket. She imagined the detritus in the alley behind his club: used condoms, needles, cigarette butts, other garbage. Now the boots that had walked through that were on her bed. Horse shit would have been way less offensive.
She hated his fucking guts. How had she ever been flattered by his interest in her? She dug a duffel bag out of her closet and began rummaging through her things, imitating the obnoxious way she’d seen her mother pack a hundred times. Tedious, messy, accomplishing nothing.
Ten minutes later, he had finished another beer, smoked a cigarette, and was no longer patient.
“Christ, Kayla, you’re worse than your mother,” he said, referring to her packing strategy. She took out all her stage clothes and held them up one by one, as if to try to choose. It was deliberate. She was stalling, biding her time. It was working.
He paced up and down the hallway between her living room and bedroom like a caged lion for ten more minutes. By the time he finished her last beer, his patience completely ran out. He stalked back down the hall to her bedroom and glared at her.
Now was the time Kayla had planned for. He would either drag her out of the house with nothing, or he would leave her to her tiresome task. She hoped she guessed right.
She did.
“I’ll give you till tomorrow morning,” he spat, exasperated. “If you ain’t there, you know what’ll happen.”
“I’ll be there,” she said calmly, meeting his gaze. He stared her down for a few long moments.
Then he turned and left.
Before she could dare be relieved, a new terror gripped her. What if he’d already hurt Canyon Bill? He didn’t say he hadn’t. She waited, poised, listening to Trent’s hidden car pull away. Then she bolted down the steps and ran across the pasture toward Bill’s trailer. There was a lamp on in the window. She ran, praying as she went, lungs burning with panic and exertion. What would she do if Trent had already hurt him? She hadn’t obeyed him and come back to Fort Myers the first time he’d threatened her. And that was more than enough to trigger him to violence.
Winded, she arrived on the steps of the trailer, frantically knocking on his door.
“Bill?” she called. “Bill!?” Her chest squeezed. Was she too late? The door opened, and Bill stood, looking groggy and confused. She’d obviously just woken him. He focused on her face and began to look alarmed.
“Are you all right?” she demanded.
“I’m fine. What’s going on?”
She looked him over, and saw only kindness and concern. Most importantly, he wasn’t hurt. She took a deep breath. It was all threatening to catch up with her now. The anger that had fueled her bravery was evaporating. There was nothing to it but to do it. Her choices were stark. Go back to hell with Trent, or tell the truth and find a way to protect herself and the people she loved.
“You’re not safe here,” she blurted. “The guy who came here with my mother, Trent? He’s gonna hurt you if I don’t do what he wants.”
Bill didn’t seem terribly shocked.
“I think maybe you should leave here for a while,” she finished.
“I think I’ll clean my guns instead,” Bill said, and there was an old familiar edge to his voice that she didn’t often hear anymore.
“He’s really bad news, Bill.”
“I know he is. Whatever it is he wants from you, don’t do it.”
Bill turned and went into the kitchen. Instead of starting the coffee pot, he deftly began laying out guns, oil, and rags on the table, true to his word. She followed him inside, instinctively closing and locking the door behind her.
“You have a lot of guns,” she said, dumbfounded.
“I used to do more exciting things than fixing fences,” he said with a half smirk. He didn’t look at her or demand information. He seemed unexpectedly prepared for the idea of a threat to his personal safety.
“If I’m not in Fort Myers tomorrow morning, he’s gonna come for me,” she said. Her plan had seemed great until now.
Now the truth was on the table along with the guns and oil. The fight was sure to come to her home if she didn’t comply. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish by telling Bill this. Except that he seemed to feel equally as calm and sure as she felt panicked and alone.
“Sounds like you need to get ahead of it, then,” Bill said. “Does Evan know?”
Their eyes met.
“No.”
He nodded slightly. “Reckon you best go tell him,” he said, turning back to his guns.
This was a straightforward problem to Bill. His kind had a code for how threats were dealt with. A threat to one’s woman was met with guns blazing, figuratively or not. To her, it was the opposite of simple. But now she’d told Bill. Now he was digging in for a fight, and he would either face Trent alone and likely be hurt in the process, or Kayla had to bring in Evan. In order to get away from Trent, she had to endanger everyone she loved.
“Bill, please,” she said softly.
How many times had he just ridden away? Why wouldn’t he just leave now, the one time she wanted him to?
He looked at her long and hard. He didn’t say another word, but he didn’t need to.
Her options ran through her mind, and she remembered her conviction in the face of Trent’s cruelty. She couldn’t go back. There was only one other option. She stood to go.
“Tomorrow, I’ll start teaching you to shoot.” Bill said. She glanced back at him and nodded.
She should have turned left to drive to Evan’s. Instead, she turned right and drove three miles to the corner store on State Road 31. It sold liquor, and she was out. Armed with a bottle of whiskey, she drove back to Evan’s place.
She didn’t get any farther than the top of Evan’s porch stairs. Embarrassed to have arrived with a bottle in a paper sack, she stashed it on the porch railing. Without her knocking, the front door opened. He was the very picture of everything she needed. He was tougher than Trent, but he wasn’t meaner. And that frightened her more than being here.
“I’m in so much trouble,” she blurted. She felt cold, wrapping her arms around herself as if she might simply blow apart if she didn’t hang on to the pieces.
“I can see that,” he said, steady. Her heart hammered in her chest. She’d never come this close to telling anyone the secrets she’d intended to carry to the grave. She made the desperate decision to come here and do this, but now that she stood before him, she just couldn’t bust open the padlocked steel cage in her chest and let the words out.
His gaze remained steady on her. That was both a comfort and a curse. She wiped her clammy palms on her jeans.
She retrieved the bottle she had brought with her and took a swig that made her choke.
“Canyon Bill thinks I have a drinking problem,” she said.
“Okay,”Evan said. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Look, let me be the last person to say keep drinking, even if you think it’s a problem…maybe we should worry about that tomorrow if there are bigger fish to fry today.”
She nodded slightly, grimly, tried to light a cigarette, and couldn’t, the way her hands shook. He lit it for her, then he waited. She swallowed more whiskey.
“Maybe I am an alcoholic. I mean, Bill is. My mother is a junkie. I learned from the best.” She gestured with the bottle. “Who else drinks out of a bottle in a sack?”
He touched her hand gently, interrupting her. “What’s going on, Kayla?”
His words were like a rock dropping inside her. The impact in her stomach made it cave. She stood up and commenced pacing on his porch.
“You remember Trent,”she started.
“That lowlife threatening you in your driveway?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “He owns a club in Fort Myers. A strip club. I work there. I’m a stripper.” The words hung in midair. That was the least horrible thing she had to say to him tonight. And if he was disgusted by that, she was off the hook for the rest. He’d toss her off his porch and say he couldn’t believe his girlfriend was a stripper.
“You’re also a horse trainer,” he said.
“Yes, but before that, I was a stripper. My grandmother raised me in the horse business. She tried to look out for me, but by mother took me to Fort Myers when I was fourteen. That’s when we met Trent. When my grandmother died, she left me the farm, and I thought that was my ticket out. I ran away from them and I came up here. I thought I could get away from the life my mother lives. It would have worked, except my mother came up here guilting me because my Grandma left her nothing.
“Eventually, I mortgaged the farm and paid in full to put my mom in a top-notch rehab program for three months. After only a couple of weeks, she checked herself out early and went right back on the shit. The farm income wasn’t nearly enough to pay the mortgage, so I had to go back to the club. I’ve been doing one night a week for the past six months or so. Last month was the first time I had enough money from the horses so I wouldn’t go when Trent wanted me to.”
“The night we went to the Sleepy Tiki,” he filled in quietly.
She nodded, then paused, waiting for any of the possible responses. Condemnation. Worse, excitement. The absolute worst were the men who were turned on by it.
“Is that a deal breaker for you?” she demanded finally.
“I get the feeling you’re trying to run me off so you don’t have to tell me the rest.”
And that was the God’s honest truth. She took a long drag on her cigarette and suddenly was unable to speak again.
“Do you want to be a stripper?”
“No. I fucking hate it.”
“It’s not a deal breaker. What’s a deal breaker is you shutting me out when I should be protecting you.”
“God, why can’t you just get mad at me?” she demanded.
“Why, so you don’t have to tell me what’s really going on?”
“Yes!” she cried desperately, her throat feeling thick.
He stood up and stepped in front of her on her track of pacing.
She stopped.
“You came here because you need my help. I’m here, baby. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Nothing you say is going to change my mind.”
He gently put his hands on her face and held her still while he kissed her mouth. It was a tender kiss, reassuring.
Fortified, she struggled on. He went back to his chair, and she raised her whiskey bottle once more, surprised at how light it had become.
“The cops are after Trent, I guess. He’s afraid I’m going to talk. So he’s threatening me. He’s threatening to tell you everything unless I keep quiet and go back to work for him. I’d basically rather die. He threatened to hurt Canyon Bill.”
Her voice broke a little, and it was the first she knew of the emotion welling up inside her as she tried to get this out. She stood perfectly still, taking thin breaths and trying to swallow down the desperation threatening to erupt from her.
He walked slowly back to her. “But if you tell me everything, he’s got nothing on you anymore. And you know I won’t let him hurt you,” he filled in, quiet and steady.
She gulped the whiskey. Her throat warmed and her stomach rolled. This was her last chance to bail, and he had so far not given her an excuse to run. Only her conscience stood in the way now.
“If I tell you, you’re involved. It’s the kind of shit you’ve just spent the last five years of your life trying to get away from.”
He took the bottle out of her shaking hand and set it down on the railing. When she swayed a little, he took her hand. His hand felt so warm and strong, and she felt cold despite the unusually balmy night. He led her back to the swing and sat her down. After pulling a chair up in front of her, he sat, still holding her hand. “Then I guess you’re just going to have to trust me. I want you to tell me.”
She held his hand and thought, to let it go would be impossible now. “My mother waited tables in his bar. Bought drugs from him. But he had his eye on me. We never had enough money. My mother put it all in her arm. My grandma wouldn’t give her money after we left the farm. Not even for me, because it never made it to me, and she knew it. So, my mother got me a fake ID so he could cover his ass, and I started dancing.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen when I met him. First, we were sort of…dating. I was fifteen when he convinced me to dance. I had a set. He called it Sweet Sixteen. It was very popular. The club did well. My mother had lots of drug money, but there were some fans who weren’t content with just the show. They wanted to fuck me. And Trent was always talking about how good the money was. I wouldn’t do it. I already had to get so drunk just to get on stage, there wasn’t enough booze in the world to get me to where I could let them touch me.”
She pulled out another cigarette, and he lit it for her without waiting for her to try. His steady gaze was no longer a comfort. Now it was a searchlight exposing the worst thing she’d ever done. She got up and paced away from him again.
“Sometimes we’d stay after the club closed and party. Now, I hear the girls whispering about how you can’t take a drink from Trent after hours, but I didn’t know that, then. And I drank with him after the club closed one night. I woke up with five hundred dollars on a table in the back room. He had a video. He still has it. He’s kept it all these years.”
She stood still, leaning on the four-by-four supporting the porch roof, smoking in the dark. “He’s going to show you the video so you’ll know I’m a whore, if I don’t do what he wants.”
“Let him. I’ll break his neck.” The anger in his voice surprised and scared her. “He let some man rape you and then kept the evidence of his crime? Either I kill him, or I take you to the cops.”
“But that’s the thing, Evan! You can’t do anything that’ll get you in trouble. Do you understand me? You can’t. You can’t go to jail because of me, not after everything,”
“You’ve got to trust me, Kayla. I’m not going to jail, but he’s not getting anywhere near you either.”
“And…it wasn’t rape.” Kayla said defensively.
“Really?”
She couldn’t respond to that.
“He drugged an underage girl and let some man have sex with you while you were passed out. Do I have some part of that wrong? I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of rape.”
“Well. I can’t prove he drugged me.”
“Best-case scenario, he gave you enough booze to get you blackout drunk when you were fourteen and dancing illegally in his club. It’s still rape. Not to mention he was dating you. How the fuck old was he?”
“He was thirty-two when we met.” she said softly. How had she never considered that? “I thought we were dating.”
“That’s not dating. He was grooming you, baby.” He stood up and she turned to face him as he walked to her. “How did you get to the place in your head where you think this is your fault?”
His question broke the dam inside her. Her throat closed and her eyes burned. She shook her head and shrugged a little, wiping at her face, trying to get herself under control.
“None of this is your fault, Kayla.”
Trent said it was. Her mother said it was. She’d run home to her mother the morning after, sick and horrified. Her mother half-listened to her while smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table. Kayla had cried and begged to go back to the farm. Her mother had given her drugs, instead.
“Take this, it’ll calm you down. What did you think was gonna happen if you’re drunk after hours in a strip club, Kayla?” her mother admonished.
“All the girls do it. The money’s good. We need the money.”
What did Kayla think was going to happen? She had no fucking idea, fresh off the farm, and dragged out from under her grandmother’s wing. She was woefully unprepared for life in the trenches of the sex-and-drug trade of downtown Fort Myers.
Kayla felt the shame and devastation as clearly as if it were yesterday. The only support she’d gotten from her mother was a trip to the drugstore for emergency contraceptives in case they hadn’t used condoms. Because Kayla didn’t fucking know if they had or not. Later, she’d gotten herself tested for STDs at a free clinic.
“I knew what I was doing when I went to work for him.” At least, that’s what her mother had said.
“Did you really? At fourteen? Did you agree to have sex with someone for money?”
“No. I don’t even remember it. I told Trent I wouldn’t do it. I know I told him that. I don’t even know who they were.”
“They?”he repeated softly. She glanced at his face for the first time, and the emotion there was almost more than she could bear. He looked hurt. And angry.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped this on you. I—” She didn’t know what she was trying to say. All she knew was that now there was only one thing to do, and that was to run. She didn’t get far before he caught her arm. His touch was gentle enough not to be a threat, but firm enough to let her know she needed to hear him out.
“You’re not leaving yet,” he said firmly. “If you really want to go home, I’ll drive you, but you’re definitely not driving yourself the way you’ve been pounding the Jack.”
He had a good point. She wasn’t stupid enough to try to drive even an arrow-straight country mile in her current condition. He wasn’t letting go of her arm, either. And…she didn’t want him to.
“And you’re going to listen to me for a minute before you go. If you have to go.”
She stood still, saying nothing. She didn’t know what to say. Now that she’d unloaded the worst, she had no idea what to do next. It was like cutting loose an anchor that had kept her moored in a single spot since that night. Now that it was gone, she was drifting on a dark sea with no compass.
“This is what I need you to know. You don’t need to worry about Trent anymore. One way or another, he’s never going to hurt you again.”
The way he said it, she knew it was true. And she wanted to sag with relief.
“And… I love you.”
She turned around, shocked. “What?”
“You heard me.” He chuckled a little. “But I don’t know if you’ll remember this in the morning.”
“My tolerance is pretty good.”
“Because you’re still standing basically unassisted, I totally believe you.”
Nervous laughter erupted from her.
“How much did I drink?”
“A lot.”
“Oh.”
“How about sleep? Tomorrow, you can decide if you want to go to the cops or let me handle him myself.”
“Will you cut him up and feed him to the gators?” She giggled a little. Sure enough, she was that drunk.
“That’s actually a great idea.”
A little humor had allowed her adrenaline to wane, and when she tried to take a step, it didn’t work out like she planned. If not for his strong arms, she would have been in a heap on the ground.
“Want to sleep here?”
She glanced up at him and knew he knew what she was thinking. She was pretty drunk, had just confessed to being taken advantage of in this same state. And now he was asking her to stay over.
“Sleeping only,” he added softly.
The next morning,Kayla’s eyes snapped open, and it all came rushing in at her. She wasn’t in her own bed. Her head was pounding. A heavily muscled, tattooed arm was draped across her. She stretched and felt the uncomfortable bite of her belt buckle digging into her skin where she’d slept on it. A peek under the banket revealed she was still wearing her jeans and belt. She had a sudden and strong suspicion he purposely left the belt on her so she wouldn’t have any doubt what had or hadn’t gone on last night. Then she looked over her shoulder and saw that he was still dressed, and lying on top of the blanket that was tucked around her. Little shattered pieces inside her clicked back into place, and light gleamed through. She knew.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
“I heard that,” he mumbled.
“Fuck!” she squeaked.
“Thought I was still sleeping?”
“Yes!”
“Sorry. I’m glad you feel the same way. Although I am a little surprised you remembered that.”
“Were you hoping I didn’t?”
“No. Stay here, I’ll put on some coffee and get you some Advil.”