Chapter 11 – Kaia
Sitting on a chair in the hospital atrium, Kaia stared at nothing in particular, his mind racing.
Rebel had almost lost her life again and she would’ve died hating him.
No, despising him. In the week since whoever opened their fucking mouths about him and Fia fucking a second time, Rebel barely spoke to him.
When she told him she’d never forgive him, she’d meant it, and he’d never been more regretful of his behavior or disappointed in himself.
Even when he’d lost his football scholarship and fell into a deep depression.
He’d been disillusioned and…something. Now, he was lost and alone, more so than ever before.
He should’ve continued jerking off, instead of drinking and sleeping with Fia. Her attention went to his head, though. He hadn’t felt like a pick-me, or a guy paid to do whatever a girl wanted. He truly liked Fia. He enjoyed her company and talking to her in between their fucking.
She made him feel like a man—even asking him for money.
She teased his poetry in a way that didn’t denigrate him and made him laugh.
She was also grown. Caring about her, wanting her, didn’t make him feel like a creep.
A way he’d never felt with Rebel until he woke up the day after Diesel’s birthday party and remembered pressing her to have sex with him.
It didn’t excuse his behavior with Fia or Jana but he was able to live with himself because he’d been faithful to a sassy, kind girl whom he truly cared about.
He’d told Rebel about his weirdness. He’d never admitted to his impulsivity, which worsened after his career ending injury and the admission of alcohol into his life.
“Kaia?”
He blinked at Fia’s call and lifted his gaze to her. She wore a short skirt, a sleeveless leather vest that revealed her slim, tatted arms, and platform Mary Janes with black knee-highs. “What are you doing here?”
She licked her lips, not heavily made up the way she was most of the time. She looked like a regular girl, even with her sexy clothes. “I-I came to check on you.”
“Me?” He frowned. “How’d you know where I was?” He hadn’t spoken to her since last Saturday.
“Huck called us and ordered us to the club so we can cook for the guys.” She wrung her hands together and glanced away. “I asked about you, and he said you were here. Outlaw called emergency church, so Huck told us to hold off.” She held out her arms. “And here I am.”
Folding his arms, he glanced down the long hallway that led to the elevators. For now, most of the guys were at the club, but they’d return soon. If Diesel saw him with Fia, he’d run to Rebel, the last thing Kaia wanted. “Rebel asked for me.”
Fia pursed her lips. “She cares about you.”
“I care about her.”
“I know.” She nodded to the spot next to him. “May I sit a moment?”
Kaia squeezed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you, Fia. I like you so fucking much. I think you’re an amazing chick. Funny. Pretty. A party girl.”
“No one’s ever called me pretty before,” she said with a surprising amount of vulnerability. “Tommi’s the beauty.”
Her little sister. “You sell yourself short, babe.”
Though he hadn’t given her permission, she sat down anyway. “I’m sorry Rebel found out about us.”
“Me, too,” he said, and then winced. “That’s an asshole thing for me to say.”
Her smile amplified her sadness. “You were just giving me a Dear Jane speech. I know how you feel. Another first. I’m only pussy, mouth, and ass to most of the guys. No one considers me enough to let me down easy.” She swallowed and bowed her head. “Especially…”
“Diesel,” he spat, sharper than intended. He couldn’t escape that motherfucker. “Right?”
She nodded.
“It’s always that motherfucker.”
“It isn’t only him, but he’s a Caldwell boy,” she said, “and a mean fuckhead. We want to be the one with the bragging rights that we tamed him.”
“There’s only one person with that power,” Kaia said with distaste.
Fia shrugged. “I don’t think Jana is strong-willed enough to gentle him down.”
She wasn’t. “Not Jana. Rebel.”
“No shit?” Fia shifted in her seat. “We always thought it was just a schoolgirl crush on her part that he didn’t entertain.”
As much as Kaia wanted to reveal the truth about that pervert, he liked living. Fia’s allegiance was to the club. If she spread rumors that Kaia started and Diesel asked her about them, she’d point Kaia out, then he’d die.
“He might not entertain her crush but gets him to engage in a way only Outlaw can do. Or Axel,” he added, smiling, unable not to like the kid, despite the state of his hair because of how Axel felt about him.
“I always wanted to be an old lady,” Fia started.
Kaia was happy she didn’t say she’d always wanted to be Diesel’s old lady.
“My mother was one at a club in Tulsa. She began as a club girl, though. When we moved west, we settled in Portland. She became a stripper for the Burning Hounds, but then she was killed. Derby made a few calls and Diesel got a trailer for my sisters and me. I was the contact so I was the one he fucked.”
“I thought you started coming around because of Nyx.” At least that’s what she said during their pillow talk.
“Nyx lived in the trailer park, too. And, yeah, she brought me to the club first. I quickly gravitated to Nyx and drank her poisonous Kool-Aid. She hated Meggie and despised Rebel. She didn’t like any of the old ladies or Mattie.
Ophelia and Winnie didn’t count because they are mousy.
Bailey and Harley didn’t count because they are Black. ”
Recoiling, Kaia gave her an incredulous look.
“I’m just telling you what Nyx, Heidi and some of them were saying. Tennysee is biracial.”
No shit? She just looked like a girl who’d spent too much time in the sun.
“We think that’s why Narci doesn’t want her. I don’t care. My stepfather, the biker in Tulsa, was Black.”
“Uh—”
“Don’t tell anyone, though. I don’t want them to look at me differently.”
Discomfort settled into Kaia’s gut and he narrowed his eyes. “Why are you telling me this? I’m not joining the club. I barely have a spot in the household anymore.”
“Diesel has money, looks, arrogance, and a big cock. He has charm—”
“Diesel?”
Fia giggled. “Yes, believe it or not.”
“What’s your fucking point?”
“I never expected to like you the way I do. Even though it wasn’t me who let the cat out of the bag about us, I never expected to fear for my life and…
admire Rebel. I mean truly admire her. I’m still so fucking jealous of her, but I can’t imagine the pressure she’s under.
I can’t imagine how it feels, knowing so many chicks want to humiliate you or break you.
Mentally. Physically. Any way possible. We kind of expected her to fall apart.
She is young. She is a kid. She is sheltered, na?ve, and virginal.
Instead, more of my friends ended up dead. Now I hear you might be leaving.”
Kaia couldn’t process all the fuckery she’d told him, so he responded to her last statement. “She…I don’t know anymore. She wants us to rebuild our friendship. I feel so fucking low for what I did.” Not once or twice, but three times when he included Jana.
He couldn’t exclude her, even if he’d fucked her because he was high and wanted to spite Diesel.
Fuck. As he’d told Rebel, he didn’t recognize himself anymore.
Saying it to Rebel could’ve been chalked up as words to appease her.
Admitting them to himself, though, felt different.
Long ago, he’d known he was lacking money and power.
Greatness died with his injury. He was the family pariah, who his parents abandoned in favor of everyone else during gatherings he wasn’t invited to.
The guy who called Rebel ‘Chi’ to his ‘Huahua’ was the real him.
He was a quirky poet, not a conscienceless Casanova.
Elbows on knees, he covered his face with his hands.
“I’m so confused, Fia,” he admitted, having no one else to talk to.
Kayce congratulated him for sleeping with a club girl for a second time.
He didn’t understand how Kaia felt as if he was fucking up.
“Rebel is gorgeous. She’s stubborn. Opinionated. Spoiled. But she sees me. She gets me.”
“I get you,” Fia responded.
She did, in a different way than Rebel. Kaia regretted not meeting her sooner, though he wondered how she would’ve felt about him when he’d been nothing but Kaia Riggs, the dude with the lost football dreams.
He dismissed the niggling idea that Fia would be a good girlfriend to the Kaia he was now. Rebel had become his ideal. No one compared to her.
Fia shifted. “I-I mean, don’t you think I get you?”
Kaia nodded, pretending he didn’t see her uncertainty. “I care about Rebel so much,” he said, pivoting the conversation back to the girl who mattered the most. “More than I want to admit because she’s young and I’ve messed up terribly.”
“How often did you fuck before you met Rebel?”
He didn’t want to give her false hope. And her question sounded particularly hopeful. There was no hope for them. He scrubbed a hand over his face and glanced over his shoulder. “Two or three times a week.”
“You went from fucking regularly to not fucking at all and you thought that would turn out well for you?”
“I didn’t think about sex. I just thought she was a beautiful chick that I’d spend time with for a bit.
” He straightened and sighed. “She dressed up for our first date and blew my fucking mind. I was so fucking nervous. We talked at length. I admit some of the shit she said, I thought she wasn’t serious. ”
Fia nodded. “How’d you two meet?”
“At Turn Creek. I was there when she cut class.”
“We’re friends. You can tell me the truth. Diesel and CJ set her up to meet you.”