Chapter Sixteen
Kinsley
At the knock on my door, I glance at the clock. It’s stained glass with a cross in the center. It’s religious as shit, but I like the colors and the design, the one thing I never took down that reminds me I’m living in a church. It's late, too late to be Colton.
I’m not surprised to find Rebel leaning a forearm against the wall when I pull the door back. The look on his face makes me stop what I was about to say. It’s not sex hunger, or a look that says he wants to talk either. I’m not sure what it is.
His fists are bruised, and there is blood splattered on his shirt. Instinctively, I want to check he is okay or ask who he got in a fight with. I clamp my lips together when Rebel stares at me, his look daring me to start an argument.
Behind the anger at whatever happened to him tonight, there is something else in his eyes. He needs something he doesn’t want to ask for.
Against my better judgment, I pull the door open and let him inside.
He’s so big he takes up a lot of the air, or maybe that’s just the oxygen he is pulling from my lungs with how goddamn gorgeous he is. And the stupid part of me is excited about him coming here.
He looks around, anywhere but at me. I’m not stupid, there are things going on at the club that had their president come talk to Colt. He wouldn’t tell me what they discussed, which pissed me off.
Rebel walks toward the spare bedroom, bringing back memories of the last time he was in there.
I won’t run after him, but I follow at a slower pace.
I’d hung a blanket over the portrait of Stryker.
I hate he is staring at it, and can picture the smug look, but when he turns around, he’s anything but.
“Will you finish this?”
He stands beside his own portrait. He made a point of saying I was doing it wrong because I didn’t draw his tattoo. Instead of asking questions or saying no, I go to the easel.
Neither one of us says a word as he takes off his cut and shirt, unfortunately for me leaving his pants on, then he positions himself so I can see the tattoo.
Standing in front of the easel, I gather what I need and get to work.
It’s easy to get lost in my art, something I have done more than once when I needed to shut out reality. Rebel sits still until I tell him he can move if he needs to.
They are the only words we speak for two hours.
By then, my hands are aching, and he shifts, the muscles of his back flex and stretch, I swallow back the rising lust, it’s time to stop. I break the silence, asking him the question playing on my mind since he tugged off his t-shirt and revealed this tattoo the last time he was here.
“Who is it?”
He’s sat so still for so long, the shrug of his shoulders makes him groan, and he follows the shrug with a roll of his neck.
“My dad.”
His voice is low, but still startles me. I do a good job of hiding it.
“He died in Afghanistan. Raven and I were kids.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Our circumstances are different. As an eleven-year-old child, who’d known nothing but loneliness, it still hurt when my father was gone. Mostly because he left me alone with my mother. She was always the worse of the two.
At least during his lucid moments, my dad looked at me as if he felt something. He talked to me, made me peanut butter pancakes, where my lifelong obsession came from. It was one of the few good memories I had of him.
“What about your mom?” I ask, before I go down the rabbit hole of darkness.
I won’t be able to escape it, not by asking these questions because Rebel won’t let me get away without giving him something in return.
“Retired to Florida a couple of years ago.”
I don’t know why that makes me laugh. At least he isn’t mad, the twitch of his lip in a very un-Rebel-like smile tells me he will not tear into me.
“She waited until we didn’t need her anymore.”
I don’t ask, ‘Do we ever stop needing our parents?’
He clears his throat. “What about you?”
“Similar,” I look back at the easel and pick up the charcoal to work on the soldiers’ shadows again, even though I planned to stop. It helps me with what I’m about to say.
“How is it similar?”
Just because he has been open and honest doesn’t mean I have to be. I can count on one hand how many people know my actual history.
Rebel fully turns on the stool, so I no longer see the tattoo. It’s seared into my brain, I could draw it from memory. He won’t let me stay silent, his steady gaze waiting for me to answer.
“My dad OD’d. A neighbor found him. He’d been dead about two hours, there was no saving him.”
Rebel’s brow creases, and I’m grateful he doesn’t delve deeper.
“Your mom?”
“She didn’t retire to Florida,” I huff, setting down the charcoal and dusting my hands on my pants. “Or maybe she did. I don’t know. She left when I was eleven. She was an even worse junkie than Dad.”
“What happened to you?”
My eyes shoot away from him and my nose stings. This is the part most people don’t know, and I never talk about it.
“I didn’t have anywhere to go that I knew of. I just stayed there.”
“Alone?” he asks.
I shrug, grabbing a cloth to get the charcoal stains out of my nail beds. “Only for four days.”
Rebel shifts as if he is going to blow up, but I scowl enough that he stops.
“I knew how to look after myself, had done it long enough. I still went to school. It was the only place that made me happy.”
“No one noticed an eleven year old child was alone for four days?” he asks, his anger clear.
“eventually, of course they did. The cops were called, then Colt’s parents. They didn’t know how bad things were…”
I gloss over how bad the whole mess was at the time with the law, CPS and all the shit that goes along with a child being abandoned.
“They took care of me like I was their own daughter. Colt watched out for me. He’s always been a do-gooder,” I add, trying to make light of my story, but Rebel’s expression is anything but calm. He looks like he wants to hunt down my mother and do her harm.
Talking about this with him bare-chested makes me uncomfortable. When I hand him his shirt, he stares at it for a moment, eyeing the dark smudge of charcoal now mingled with the bloodstains.
“I can wash it.”
“Where are your aunt and uncle now?”
He will not stop, and I’ve started now, might as well finish.
“My aunt died in a car accident and my uncle is… He’s ill.”
Metaphorically cutting open my veins and spilling my past is messing with my head.
“I need a drink,” I announce, before he asks anything else.
He follows me out of the bedroom and watches me open the fridge and grab two beers, then head to the couch. Rebel drops next to me, close enough to reach out and touch my thigh if he wanted. He will not leave, and he is going to ask questions. Might as well fill in the blanks before he asks.
“The day I…” I pick at the label on the beer bottle. Shit, I’m not usually this nervous. I don’t talk to people about my issues. “When you came back here the first time.”
“And you were angry as fuck.” He not so helpfully points out.
“Yeah, that.” I give him a dirty look, but it doesn’t bother him, in fact, he seems amused. “I’d been to see my uncle. He has dementia. Very advanced. He doesn’t remember Colt.”
“Shit.”
“Bet you feel bad about how you treat Colt now.” I shift sideways, pulling my legs up onto the couch, and kick his thigh with my bare foot.
“How do I treat him?” He lifts a brow.
“Probably the same way you treat everyone else,” I snort.
Rebel grabs my foot, stopping me from nudging his thigh again, and a bolt of electricity runs up my leg.
“He doesn’t remember me either. But he… He thought I was my mom.”
No need to explain, his expression tells me he gets it.
“So that’s why you came home and jumped my bones.”
Even with him holding my foot, I dig my toes into the meat of his thigh, enough that he moves his hand and grabs my ankle. When he lifts it and rests my heel on his leg, I stop breathing.
He knows what he is doing when he strokes the skin just above my instep, circling his thumb slowly.
“Why’d you leave LA?”
The abrupt topic change has my guard snapping back into place. I attempt to tug my leg back, but he doesn’t let me. His eyes bore into me, waiting for me to answer. My stubborn tendencies are emerging again.
“Why did you come here so pissed?”
“Shit’s going down at the club.”
“What kind of shit?”
“Why’d you leave LA?”
“You get to ask me hard questions, and I have to accept shit going down at the club?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“You’re a dick.”
“That’s not the worst thing I’ve been called by a woman.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
“It’s dangerous, and I’m not about to drag anyone into that.”
“Why come here then? You want to work off some steam because you and the club had a bad night? I'm just some chick you want to fuck and don’t matter enough for you to be worried about dragging me in?”
I try to pull my foot away. His grip on my ankle tightens, but he turns his hand and slips it under the baggy pants I’m wearing, running it up my calf. He pauses behind my knee, stopping me from moving.
“We had a bad night,” he shifts sideways. “And I need something to take me away from all the shit going on. But no one ever said you don’t matter.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Kinsley.”
Something about the way he says my name has my insides melting and my brain fritzing. Nope, not happening. The hot biker God will not take away my abilities to function with more than just my vagina leading the way.
“With all these questions, I could be worried you’re a plant, watching my club.”
“You showed up at my door with bashed in knuckles and covered in blood, asshole,” I pull my leg back, this time he isn’t fast enough to catch it, but he manages to lunge far enough to stop me getting off the couch.
“No you don’t,” he puts his upper body over mine, my legs trapped on the couch.
“Get off me. I don’t give a shit about your club, or you.”
That’s a lie, a thrill runs straight from my brain down between my legs. This is getting me wet and it makes me want to fight him even more.
“You’re a liar, little villain. There is a lot about me you give a shit about.”