Rolling Thunder

Chapter 27

Watching her get into the Jimmy and pull away without a backward glance felt like a kick to his gut. He would gladly have traded being trampled by the man-eating horse if it meant she hadn’t just driven away angry. He’d turned his life literally upside down trying to protect her. Instead, he had the terrible realization that he might have just lost her forever.

He swung a leg over his bike and stared at Leanne’s door for a few minutes. The anger burned hot, and for a moment, he entertained the notion of kicking her door in and giving her an earful about what he thought of her. Why had she practically served Kayla to Trent as a young teenager and then stood by while he destroyed her? Why had she felt the need to drop the bomb about Canyon Bill in the middle of the worst week of Kayla’s life?

At last, he cranked the bike and roared out of the parking lot of the little shithole motel. He made up his mind. She’d be home tonight, he was sure. She wouldn’t leave the horses alone.

As he turned back onto the state road that led to Little Ranch Road, he saw another motorcycle approaching.

Without so much as a biker wave, Canyon Bill blew past Evan on the highway. His saddle bags were on his bike, and he had a heavy pack slung over his shoulders. It looked like he was leaving town, taking with him any chance Kayla might have of reconciliation or closure. It solidified Evan’s resolve. He’d had keys to her house since the whole Trent blowup. He would go and wait for her to come home. He’d sleep on her porch if he had to, but he wasn’t going to leave her now.

Evan wasin her kitchen when she got back. He stood up when she walked in. They stared at each other for a long moment. She came home fuming mad, but now, looking at him, the fire faded to hot coals in her belly. A horse snorted somewhere in the pasture near the house.

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me,” she said bitterly.

“You’re right.”

“Goddammit, you’re supposed to fight back and then storm out.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Got any other secrets you want to tell me about?”

“Not tonight.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and threw up her hands. “That’s just great.”

He stalked toward her. “I love you,” he said, pinning her in his gaze

“Fuck you.”

The merest hint of an evil grin quirked at the corner of his mouth. “If you didn’t kind of understand why I did it, you’d have already chased me out the front door.”

“You’re right. I should go talk to Bill, but I have no idea what to say.”

“You told him not to be here when you got back, remember? I saw him riding out when I was coming back.”

“Great, so he just bailed when things got tough like always.”

“Maybe he did, but I’m not.”

“No, you just keep secrets and decide what’s best for me.”

“You know who I am. I thought it would be cruel to drop that on you after everything else you’d just gone through.”

She glared at him.

“Fine. What else, Evan? Let me have it. No secrets.”

He shook his head.

“Fuck you. Get out.”

He sighed.

“That girl at the police station parking lot posted a picture of us, and it’s been blowing up on social media. All the little keyboard sleuths are theorizing that I’m in trouble with the law. The show wants to know what I was doing at the police station. They’re putting out a statement to calm things down.”

She looked like he’d struck her.

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he said, as she deflated and withered into a kitchen chair.

“Are you going to lose the show because of me?”

“No! Because we reported a crime? No way. It’s just drama.”

“What if Trent talks?”

“He won’t. He’s got a rap sheet a mile long for drugs. And…” Evan sighed. She was going to hate this as much as anything.

She made an impatient gesture with her hand for him to spit it out.

“Jake’s gonna take the fall if anyone has to be arrested. But the cop said she isn’t pursuing it. I really don’t think anybody is going to come after us.”

“This is like everything I didn’t want to happen. Because you had to go after him.”

“I know, but we also got him arrested for violating the protective order and assaulting you. That’s more charges he’ll face and more evidence of who and what he is.”

“Fine, but you didn’t fucking listen to me, Evan!”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t go fucking kill him the first time you told me what he did. And I didn’t kill him when we caught him out by the edge of the swamp and believe me when I tell you that Jake knows how to get rid of a body. We barely touched him compared to what we wanted to do and what he deserves. I hear you, baby. I get it. But this situation has been all kinds of fucked up, and we did the best we could. You can’t tell me you would have felt fine if I just politely asked him to wait for the cops to arrive after he’d hurt you again.”

He moved close enough to her that she could plant her palms on his chest, a threat of a shove, but she didn’t do it. He touched her face gently with his fingertip to remind her it was bruised and scraped. And in her heart, she knew he was right. She’d gone to him for protection, and he had protected her, avenged her. Everything she’d needed and wanted him to do.

His eyes met hers at close range, and it was as if a signal fire lit, triggering a thousand others in answer throughout her body. She suddenly remembered him fucking her in this very kitchen before everything went to hell. By the smoke in his gaze, he remembered it too. He backed her up onto the counter and crushed her with a kiss that stole her breath. She reached down for the hem of her tank top and ripped it off, going after his clothes next. The fleeting memory of Trent hounded her mind, but the pressure of his fingers on her thighs as he yanked off her jeans shocked her out of it.

He lifted her up and sat her on the counter, dropping between her legs with no warning and no time for her to prepare. His mouth seized her in white-hot pleasure, and his hands kneaded her legs farther apart. Her gasps and moans filled the room as he drove her mercilessly toward the cliff of a frenzied orgasm.

Again, he felt her fight against him, pulling away from him. She wrenched away from him, panting. Grabbed his hand, dragged him into the bedroom. As if it were all just a ploy to get to a more comfortable sex location. By now, he knew better. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed. Now, he’d seen two sides of her. The seductress, and the vulnerable girl who he was pretty sure was who she really was.

The same push and pull that always seemed to happen between them began. He’d take control of her, but before he could give her too much pleasure, she would find some way to distract him by driving him wild—take the focus off her. She grabbed his belt buckle, her eyes glancing up at him in that way she had as she unbuckled it, dropping his jeans. He doubted any man had ever tried to see past what she showed them. He stilled her hands on him by the wrists and pushed her back onto the bed.

“I wasn’t done with you,” he said. She opened her mouth with some saucy retort, he was sure, and he touched her lips, silencing her. Then he traced his fingers through her slick folds. She was so wet, so ready, that she jerked involuntarily as he stroked her. He lay alongside her and shifted her onto her side, lifting her top leg so he had access to her.

He ran his mouth along her shoulder as he lazily played with her clit until her hips jerked again, desperate for more. He pressed his straining dick at the slick entrance, but didn’t quite give it to her. Instead, he went back to slowly teasing her. The cries that came from her became ever more desperate.

“Please!” she hissed, trying to move toward him. She didn’t have the leverage. Grabbing her by the hips, he entered her with one sharp stroke that drew another cry of pleasure. She gripped him so desperately that he felt like he could blow his load right then. Instead, he held still and squeezed her with his fingers until she lost control, and he felt her body spasm completely around him. He took up a relentless rhythm in time with the contractions of her body squeezing out the last bit of her orgasm. He had wanted this to last longer, but her orgasm was so intense, it triggered his, and he let her body pull it from him.

Somehow,he managed to fuck her into submission and get control of her again. He was the only lover Kayla’d ever had who she couldn’t simply manipulate into doing exactly what she wanted, keeping herself in the safe zone. There was no safe zone with Evan. As soon as she lost control in one way, she lost control in every way. The emotions she bottled up and shoved aside were bearing down on her like a runaway train and she was strapped to the tracks. He rolled over and met her gaze, and the tears came. She was choking on it all.

Her heart quaked and shook in her chest as she reached out for him. He held her tight, somehow seeming to understand she’d gone from wild lust to not being able to cope, and he was just there for her.

“Talk to me, baby.”

“I don’t know how to have sex if I’m not drunk,”she said, her voice quivering.

“You don’t need to be drunk to be with me. Whatever happens, I got you.”

And there it was. That was everything in one sentence. She wanted a life, a man, that she didn’t have to be drunk for. “I used to just drink until I could relax. Now…I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“I know a thing or two about that. When I got out of prison, nothing seemed normal. I overreacted to everything. It seemed like I either felt too much or nothing, and I never knew which it would be.” The relief that flooded through her at his admission was a shock. He hadn’t judged her or run away, but calmly made her feel normal somehow. “Give it time. You learn to live a certain way, and it’s the only way you know how to be.”

“Horses run back into a burning barn because it’s where they know to feel safe.”

“Except right now, you’ve got a choice not to run back to it. Is this why you always try to run away or zone out after we have sex?”

His question was like having the light flipped on suddenly, catching her snooping in a dark room. Because the restlessness had just settled into her bones and she was trying to think of an excuse to bail.

“Yeah.”

“Stay,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She’d fallen asleep in his arms only once before, and that was the night she’d passed out drunk after confessing her and Trent’s terrible history. It was an effort to realize that not running was harder than running. But everything was just one excuse or another to avoid being present for her life, which had become totally intolerable in her mother’s dark life in Fort Myers. It was a little like waking up, realizing that the worst was over. Now she had a real chance. A good man loved her.

“I called one of those places that Officer Desmond told me about,” she confessed quietly. “I think I need help. Annie says I should talk to someone about it so I don’t drink over it.”

“No shame in that. You went through a lot.”

“I just… I want to be the kind of girl you thought I was. I just don’t know if I can be.”

He rolled her gently beneath him so he could meet her gaze. “You’re exactly the girl I thought you were. Already.”

The truth of that hit deep. His words filtered into her psyche like grains of sand in murky water, settling ever so slowly to touch the unseen bottom, where her secret self had been hidden forever. He already knew the worst she could tell him about herself. He loved her. It was as if she’d been floated in outer space untethered for an eternity and she’d just finally found some gravity to bring her feet to the earth. A calm she’d never known settled over her.

He kissed her softly, but she pulled him onto her. It was the first time she could truly relish the feeling as he pressed her into the bed, his mouth overtaking hers, meeting the need he felt there. His healing embrace was a balm, but it wasn’t enough. She needed him inside her again to claim every bit of space from the ghosts of her past and chase them away. For once, she didn’t fear her own memories or her own emotions, because she wasn’t alone with them anymore.

“Let me make love to you,” he murmured in her ear. She looked up at him and nodded. The tears were still fresh on her face, the pain was still fresh in her heart, but suddenly, the connection was there, and she could meet him in a different place. She could fuck. But the tenderness was almost more than she could bear. It was such a stark contrast to all the hurt.

In that moment, she felt his heart meet hers. He was offering her everything. All she had to do was accept it. His mouth was on her, and every inch of herself reached out to him. There was nowhere close enough. This was it, everything she’d ever wanted. She had only to surrender to it.

His fingertips traced down her skin. His fingers rolled her nipples, drawing a cry from her that he caught with his mouth as she arched into him. Her legs wrapped around him, waiting for him to take her. He entered her, and not only did pleasure rippled through her entire body, but a deeper sensation that tugged at her soul. He held her close, rode her gently, touching every inch of her. She felt the tears start again.

“What, baby, what?” he whispered, kissing them off her face.

She shook her head. “Don’t stop.”

“Okay.”

He caressed her face, pushing the tears away, kissing the trail they left down her temples. It only brought more; she couldn’t stop. She quivered beneath him. He looked searchingly into her eyes.

She could say only one thing. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

He ground down on her, and she clenched suddenly, grabbing him in a fierce orgasm that she cried all the way through as he came with her and then rolled to the side, pulling her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her hair.

They lay in the dark together, skin to skin, listening to each other’s breath and heart beats.

“I couldn’t have done any of this without you,” she murmured.

“Don’t sell yourself short. When it came down to it, you totally kicked Trent’s ass.”

She giggled. He squeezed her. The sensation was like sunshine breaking through the clouds. Finally, she was alive, on earth, and warm.

After Evan fell asleep,she lay awake listening for Bill’s motorcycle to come back. She convinced herself maybe she hadn’t heard it through the hot sex that the night had ended with. She got out of bed and slipped into her boots. Abbey appeared by her side, tail wagging and washing a cool breeze over Kayla’s legs. She ruffled her head and told her to stay in the house. Despite that, when she opened the door, the dog slipped out beside her with the practiced skill of disobedience and dashed off into the night.

Before Kayla could begin to truly worry, Abbey reappeared and sat with unusual calm at her side. She could see lights on in Bill’s trailer. She started across the pasture. Wiping unwelcome tears from her face, she raised her hand to knock on his door. This trailer wanted to rip her heart out now, just like it always had. It had been the last holdout before Bill had left and her mother had taken her to Fort Myers.

She knocked on the door, but there was no sound from inside. After a few minutes, she tried the handle. The door swung easily. The constant squeak it had always made was gone. She stepped inside and was assaulted by memories. She could smell Bill’s cigar smoke, could almost see the long-ago ghost of her mother. Always rail thin, with too much makeup, always drunk or high. Fighting with one man or another. Kayla had learned to crawl out of the window in the bathroom and escape to the barn. Just like the faint smell of Bill’s cigar smoke mingling with the ghost of her mother’s destruction, the trailer was both totally different and exactly the same. But one thing was immediately clear: he was really gone. Everything that would have indicated that the trailer was lived in had been hastily removed.

She walked slowly through the kitchen. She remembered Tupperware appearing on the counter from her Gram so Kayla always had something to eat. The counter was bare now. One cupboard was left open, and its shelves, too, were bare. The empty trailer was the very physical embodiment of everything she wanted, everything she needed, that she’d never had. She walked to the little bedroom. Why was she still hoping for a sign that he wasn’t really gone? Why did she even want him to stay?

“Goddammit, Bill,” she muttered under her breath.

The bedroom was equally sparse. There was one cardboard box sitting in the middle of the mattress and she went to it, flipping up one of the flaps. She was still hoping it was Bill’s things…a sign that he might come back. But it wasn’t. It was her mother’s belongings. Things left behind when they’d left the farm that her mother had never bothered to retrieve. She remembered Bill telling her he’d boxed up some things from the trailer when he’d started working on it.

The memories were like smoke in the air, thick and bitter and hard to breathe, making her lungs hurt. She sat on the bed for a moment. A glutton for punishment, she pulled out her phone and googled Cody Vegas. He hadn’t made it big in the Pbr. But there was a photo of a young, dark-haired cowboy grinning with a new belt buckle. Her breath caught. She could see her mother’s eyes in his face.

This was her real grandfather. And under the picture, an obituary. He’d died at the age of thirty-six. The reason wasn’t specified, but what was clear was that he was already long dead during most of the years that her mother had tortured them all with her anger. He was never coming back, had never been able to come back, because he’d been long gone. They’d all suffered for nothing, and Kayla was no closer to having a family.

She turned to go. The emptiness of the trailer mirrored the empty hole in her heart that she hadn’t quite realized Bill had been occupying.