Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 56709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Kay leans down, gently placing her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.”
I clench my teeth so hard I wonder how I don’t shatter them. I almost want to let them explode, let all the tension erupt out of me. Instead, I reach up and touch Kay’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “This isn’t about me. I need to get my act together.”
“You’re allowed to have feelings.”
I almost tell her, Look where our feelings have led us. We’re sitting in the dirt, Ryan betrayed and half-dead, but she’s not in the dirt. It’s just me. I stand, trying to stop myself from trembling, the ruin of my helmet staring up at me like a distorted grimace.
Kay touches my arms and squeezes them gently. “It’s going to be okay. I know it is. Ryan’s so tough. He can fight anything. He will fight anything. You’ll see.”
I’m supposed to be the tough one, but here she is, comforting me. “You’re right. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just…”
“What?” she says, with almost a note of desperation in her voice. “Kai?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Leaning down, I pick up my helmet. It was expensive and sturdy, and now it’s a wreck. “We need to get moving.”
“It does matter.”
She takes my hand and spins me around. We’re surrounded by what feels like our natural setting—dusty miles, the sun already setting, and the dust turning orange. The remaining light shines in my woman’s eyes as she steps forward, gazing up at me. For a second, a paranoid part of me thinks about Ryan watching us. Then I remember the shootout. He’s not watching anything.
“We need to—”
“You can talk to me about anything. This is all moving so fast.” She holds my eye contact stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean you can’t share your pain with me. That’s why I’m here. I hope you know if we ever could be…”
Together. She can’t say it, and I don’t blame her. It’s agony to acknowledge things like that while thinking of Ryan.
“If you’re that concerned for me,” he taunts in my mind, “why are you just standing here?”
“You’d talk to me,” Kay says, “about anything. That’s what I’m here for.”
“It’s nothing. Just about before, when I was a kid. A memory.”
She smooths her hand to my shoulder, threatening to melt me with her delicate features and kind eyes. “What memory?”
“It’s—”
“If you say it’s nothing one more time, we’re going to have a problem. I don’t care how big your muscles are.”
We both laugh, somehow, through the pain. Her eyes gleam playfully when she looks at me, but then she gets serious again.
“It’s about before I came to live with my aunt and found the club. I told nobody what happened except for Ryan.”
She swallows, moving closer to me. A car passes on the road, and I scan it, thinking of the rival club and the threat of violence. The never-ending need to keep my woman safe, no matter what happens or threatens us.
“They treated me like an animal and forced me to fight other kids in a muddy pit in the woods, a bunch of drunks and druggies laughing, cackling, watching. Looking back, it doesn’t seem real, but I once met one of the other kids. We went at it pretty hard on my ninth birthday. He remembers it all the same, too.”
I’m speaking distantly, not letting myself feel the emotions, not letting the sounds and the smells return to me.
“Remembered, I should say. He took his life a few years after I spoke to him.”
Kay shudders, moving somehow closer. With my arm wrapped around her, we’re as intimate as two people can be. Yet each time she moves, I know she’s offering more comfort, more warmth. I kiss her head, holding her as tightly as possible.
“That’s awful. No, that doesn’t even come close. It’s evil. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that happened to you. I mean, I know it did. I believe you. I’m just so, so sorry.”
I sigh darkly. “Me too. It was a bad time, but then I met your brother and your dad. I made a new family.”
She stiffens slightly in my embrace. I get why, I think. I can’t refer to Ryan as family because that would mean that Kay is, too, and we can never go there. It’s a strange notion, letting the idea of Ryan as my brother go. It’s either that or end things with Kay right now, definitively, with no doubts or backtracking.
“I don’t like to think of those years,” I go on, “but Ryan deserved to know. We were together so much growing up. He could always sense when one of those bullshit moods took me.”
“Why do you talk about it like that?”
“Because that’s what it is. Letting some stuff that happened years ago dictate how I feel now.”
“No, Kai. If you don’t let it out, it’ll eat you up. That’s why we’ve got each other.”