Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
KYRA
I have no idea what the hell he has planned, but my jaw remains tight as I walk toward the church yard, thoughts still swirling faster than water down a drain at the fucking audacity to tell me to leave my mask off.
What the hell does he mean? I didn’t have the fucking thing on.
The sunlight grows warmer as it dulls, slipping behind the cozy cottages lined up along Parish Road.
I could probably ransack the records at work and confirm my suspicion, but I’ve always thought the church must have bought the whole damn street and cherry-picked who got to live here, given how perfect it’s always looked.
As though the congregation couldn’t bear to look out their door on a Sunday and see evidence of the very hardships they’re supposed to be charitable about.
Because Heaven forbid they actually had to prove their piousness, not just orate it.
Jinx waits like a total oxymoron, legs crossed at the ankle before him as he leans against the seat of his bike, scrolling his phone. He’s a tower of muscle and braun, yet there’s a deep vulnerability I tweaked when I pulled away from our kiss.
I could have melted into him in that moment. Given myself over and willingly floated away to a carnal place of sheer bliss. Lord knows I need the stress relief.
But my better instincts kicked in, and I pulled back before I let my heart get carried away with the making of the plans.
And he figured I hesitated because of my father.
I hesitated because of his. Because of what that man made him.
If he wants us to give this a try, I’m not jumping in feet first until I know how deep his black pool is.
He lifts his head as I approach, a slow appreciative take of my new attire. Not that it’s anything special. I literally ransacked my wardrobe for anything I thought would be good enough for a motorbike ride and came up with a barely suitable pair of jeans and a faux-leather jacket.
I feel like a right poser.
Especially next to him.
“I hope you’re not taking me anywhere near your club.”
“Why?” He fights a slight grin.
“Because I’ll feel like a right idiot when they see what I’m wearing.”
“You care what they think that much?” He lifts an eyebrow.
Fuck him. “I care what they think of you that much.”
“Darlin’,” he says with a slight chuckle before raising his hands in apology. “You should see how little some of the women who come back for a night wear.”
“Ew.” Definitely don’t need to know about that. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”
Asshole leaves me guessing, then turns to his bike and retrieves a plain helmet instead. “Here. We’re not going anywhere until you put this on.”
“Good.” I take it from him and tug it over my hair that I pulled into a low ponytail. I have no doubt it’ll be a knotted mess by the time we arrive wherever we’re going, but if he wanted me to look pretty, he should have brought a car. “Thanks.”
Jinx watches as I adjust and clip the strap, then grabs his own. “If you want me to stop, just pat my arm twice, okay?”
“Likewise.”
He smirks, then obscures his face behind a tinted visor.
The old boys used to ride around town with open-face helmets, long beards flowing in the wind, and barely anything covering their skulls.
Either the younger generation is smarter, or they’ve seen enough mangled faces from road accidents to decide otherwise, because more often than not, the club members wear full-face getups like Jinx has on now.
I startle when his voice cuts into my thoughts. “Do you want to take the direct route or the scenic ride?” I totally wasn’t expecting an intercom.
“How long is the direct ride?”
“Ten minutes or so.”
“Let’s go scenic, then.”
“If you’re sure.” He straddles the bike and then punches it to life. The vibrations of the exhaust notes rattle through my chest, and I take a small breath to steady myself. Like so much else in this town, the sound brings back many memories. “When you’re ready.”
I take note of where the foot pegs are for me, and then wrestle myself into position behind him.
There’s no sissy bar for me to lean on, barely a seat.
A part of me hopes this means he doesn’t often have passengers.
Another part of me wishes I didn’t feel as though I’m about to slip right off the back when he takes off.
“Holding on?” He asks, knowing damn well the only thing touching him is the inside of my thighs.
“Sure.” I find purchase on the braided sides of his cut and get a firm grip.
He pulls out into the road, and it’s instant relief. There’s no expectation for me other than to sit my ass on the damn thing and hold on. It’s a kind of escape. A freedom I didn’t expect.
The scenery slides by, and neither of us speaks as we leave Temperance township and head into the rural areas.
I tilt my head back and watch the tree branches as they zoom overhead, the low-light dappled through their darkening boughs.
The early-evening air chills my exposed skin, but I kind of like it.
It’s refreshing. Invigorating.
“You doing okay back there?” Jinx tears me back to the present.
I realize my hands have slipped to the front of his ribs, pressing hard as I cling to him. “I’m good.”
He doesn’t ask anything more, lifting his left hand from the bars as we hit an open stretch of straight road. Jinx sets his hand to his thigh, straightening in the seat a little, and the movement straps my hand to his side beneath his forearm.
I stiffen.
He shifts his hand to mine. “Relax.”
“How?” I chuckle. “I feel like everything I do might get taken the wrong way.”
“Or is it the right way?” He releases his hold, putting his hand back to the bar. “You need to stop overthinking everything you do.”
“Easier said than done.” I’ve tried. And failed. For years.
“Did you overanalyze everything this much with your channel?”
I chuckle. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Oh, I believe,” he rumbles, doing strange things to me.
We turn onto a road I’m more familiar with, the direction starting to make sense. “I thought you weren’t taking me near your club?”
“I never said that.”
Damn it. He didn’t, either.
“I’m taking you past the club,” he reassures me. “You don’t have to stress about how you look because if I’ve planned this right, nobody should see you.”
“Right…” Believe that when it happens.
We continue until the paved road becomes dirt, dust kicking up in a rooster tail behind us. The trees along the roadside break away, and the cottage on our right boasts a beautiful garden out front filled with all manner of plants in different textures and colors.
“Oh, wow.” I turn my head to admire the work as we go by. “Last time I saw that place, it was so run down.”
“Vanessa lives there now.” Jinx slows the bike. “She fixed it up before we got here.”
There’s no need to ask where the club is based now. Little people-shaped specks are visible in the yard and on the porch of the old farmhouse, and a few bikes are dotted across the yard. A huge, modern barn comes into view behind the homestead.
“The infamous development,” I tease.
“I’m sure you heard about it.”
“I heard you ruffled a few feathers by asking the Amish to build it and not the Sandersons.”
“Like they would have taken on the job anyway,” he grumbles. “Home, sweet home,” he muses as we glide by.
Jinx continues until we reach the end of the road, the dirt spreading out into a small turnaround area before the overgrown grass verge takes over.
“Interesting choice of location.” From what I remember, there’s nothing down here but the river.
“Fit for purpose.” He puts the bike on its stand, then dismounts to tug his helmet off.
I do the same, accepting his hand to balance me when I dismount, too.
“Just leave it on the seat,” he says, gesturing to the helmet before hanging his own on the bars. “It’ll be fine.”
“Okey dokey.”
Jinx hesitates, eyes lighting up with a slight smile, before he turns and scours the roadside. “This way.”
We head for a small walking track, crushed into the overgrown grass, that appears to lead down to the riverbank. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we pop out onto a stony crescent moon-shaped clearing on the bank of the Fox River, trees arching overhead.
Jinx stares across to the opposite bank, arms folded over his chest.
He doesn’t speak. Just stares off into nothing as I stand beside him and wonder what I’m supposed to do now.
“Hear that?” he finally asks.
“What?”
“Exactly.”
The gentle rush of water over stones accompanies the swish of foliage and the occasional chorus from newly active crickets. It’s tranquil.
“I’m surprised I can’t hear your club.”
Jinx turns his head to look down at me. “Did you expect burnouts and hollering twenty-four seven?”
I shrug. “Wouldn’t have batted an eye if there was.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” He bends to retrieve a stone and then tosses it into the river with a plunk.
“So, ah, what are we here for?”
“To get rid of your mask once and for all.”
Poof. My good mood dissipates. Fuck’s sake. “What makes you think I have one on?”
He turns to meet my frustrated stare. “Tell your dad where you were headed just now?”
My nostrils flare, jaw aching from the pressure of my clenched teeth.
“There,” he states, eyes narrowing. “That’s why.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Because, instead of letting your reaction—your emotions—out, you suppress them.”
God damn it. I really do. “That’s not a mask.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s a coping mechanism.”
“And what is a mask then?”
I fight the urge to pick up a solid stone and biff it at him. “What do you want me to do then? Yell at you?”
“If you want.” He reaches over his head and tugs a small branch down.
I look away from the sliver of skin it reveals at his waist.
“Or you could scream it out. Talk it out. Just lie on your back and groan while you stare at the sky.” He releases the branch with a loud swish of leaves. “I don’t care. All I want is for you to let out the shit that’ll eventually rot you if you keep it welled up inside.”
“How’s your liver doing, then?” I sass with a lifted eyebrow.
He gives a lop-sided grin. “Toxic. But I’d rather you weren’t around when I let off my valve.”
“Why? Don’t want me to see you cry?”
“Don’t want to hurt you in the crossfire.” He’s serious.
Oh. I pick up an interesting-shaped rock and turn it in my hands. It’s flared, like a tulip, with little indents on one side like the tips of the petals. “To answer your question, no, I didn’t tell him where I was going, and you damn well know why.”
“Uh-huh.” He pings another offshoot, avoiding looking at me. Probably in case it makes me shut down.
I kind of feel like it would.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of him, Jinx.
It just means I choose my peace over justification.
I don’t feel the need to expend my energy trying to make him understand why I think his opinion is wrong.
” I run my thumbnail along the indented side of the stone.
“He’s entitled to think what he thinks. It’s not my responsibility to change that. ”
I realize he’s stopped fidgeting with nature, standing still while he watches me talk.
I turn away so I can’t see him.
“Lord knows Mom’s tried loosening him up over the years, and all she achieved is him white knuckling his beliefs like they’re the last things holding humanity together.
I don’t have to be the same as him just because I’m his daughter.
That’s something I learned in my time away; that we’re allowed to be completely different people. ”
The thing that took longer to come to terms with was that it meant we’d never be close again. The more I stepped into myself as a person, the more distant he got. It was a sacrifice I had to be willing to make to save myself.
“It doesn’t make me wrong, thinking differently from him,” I say. “It doesn’t make him better or me worse. I’m enough as I am, and I suppose he is too, because despite what an ass he can be, he’s done a lot of good for this town. He has good intentions. They’re just… born from a narrow mind.”
I focus so hard on the stone turning in my hands that I have no idea Jinx has moved closer until he slowly puts his hands to the top of my arms, offering comfort. Support.
A different kind of stone lodges in my throat.
I’ve carried the weight of my father’s disappointment in me for so many damn years with nobody to talk to about it.
Not even my brother, Devon. And I’ve justified that it was okay to keep these feelings inside because I didn’t need affirmation of how I felt.
I don’t want to be a victim. Have no desire to farm people’s sympathy in exchange for a few heartfelt words.
But the truth of the matter is, it does rot me inside. It’s a little black corner of my heart that shrivels the longer the feelings and memories stay trapped in there, depleting the rest of me of much-needed support.
My chin quivers, hands quickening on the stone. Jinx slides his hands down my arms until they reach mine, stilling my incessant fidgeting.
“It’s all valid, Kyra. None of it is your fault.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I have no idea how badly I needed to hear someone say that until I feel the first tear crest my cheek. It’s one thing to tell yourself that over and over, but it hits different when said from another’s mouth.
“I know,” I strain. “But it feels as though it is. Like I could have done something different. I grieve not being enough for him.”
“He’s not enough for you.” His words whisper against my ear as he draws me against his chest. “And you know how I know that?”
“How?” I whisper.
“Because you’ve always been more than enough for me, and I think deep down you know that you’re enough for yourself, too.”
My shoulders shake. Damn Jinx for opening this long-sealed well.
I thought I’d healed the heartache of home by leaving, but it turns out I just learned how to confine it—out of sight and out of mind.
The ultimate mask is my channel. Because if my subscribers wanted more of me, it validated that I was worth wanting, didn’t it?
Shit.
The tears come faster, and my chest tightens with the horrific realization that if I keep this up, I’ll be snotting all over him in no time. “I didn’t bring any tissues, damn it.” I laugh through the tears at the absurdity of it. “Didn’t think you’d be taking me out to make me cry.”
His chest bounces against me, a deep chuckle caught in his throat. “Sorry. It’s been a while since I tried to impress a girl.”
I smack his forearm. “Try harder.” My tears turn my laugh into a kind of choking noise, which sets me off worse.
Jinx crushes me against him, gently rocking us side to side while I stare ahead at the placid river, my snorts calming to a series of stuttered exhales. The water knows no different—just continues to babble along as though nothing is amiss. I wish I were more like that: consistent and steady.
But then again, if I were, I’d be just like him.
The reason for my tears.
My father.