Page 43 of Rolling Thunder

“You’re not making sense.”

“Just believe me,” she said. Her voice cracked. Her eyes were red, but no tears fell. “Just believe me. You have to go.”

He looked at her long and hard. This was a mind-boggling role-reversal. He’d spent the last five years of his life trying in equal parts not to poison good people with his questionable past, and at the same time wishing to have his honor back. Now the hard-won presumed honor was driving away the one girl he was truly falling for. That just couldn’t be possible. He refused to accept it.

“No,” he said finally.

“You don’t even know who I am.”

His gaze on her never wavered. “I think I do.”

Her miserable eyes filled with tears. “You don’t, Evan. You don’t know me at all.”

“I’m listening,” he said, an edge coming to his voice. What the hell was going on? She stood before him with a black eye, looking like someone had sucked the very spirit out of her. She just shook her head and turned away from him.

“Tell me where to find that dirtbag, and I’ll fucking end him,” he fumed.

“No!”

“This is bullshit, Kayla. Why are you protecting him?” he demanded, stalking into her kitchen. He opened her freezer, looking for a bag of peas. There were several bottles of booze, and very little food. He found one small bag of frozen vegetables huddled in the back corner as if it had been there for a decade.

“I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting you.”

“I don’t need you to do that.” He lowered his voice by sheer will. He wanted to grab her and shake her.

He took her face in his hands, once again stroking her hair back without hurting her. He gently laid the bag of frozen vegetables against the bruise. He stroked her jaw with his thumb, wishing he could tame her like she did the horses. Make her see that he could protect her. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, and her lips trembled. She couldn’t look at him. She sat unmoving, staring at some point on the floor off to her side, as if she was locked inside the prison in her own mind.

“Kayla,” he said quietly. Her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes met his. “When you’re ready to talk, you know where to find me.” He took her hand and transferred it to hold the bag to her face. His hand scooped under her chin, raising her face. “I can handle it. I’ll keep you safe.”

She stared at him, and he saw the torment in her eyes. She parted her lips to speak.

“Please go,” she whispered.

Then he did one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. Against every instinct, he turned and left her there, crying alone.

KAYLA

The sound of the closing door was just enough to shatter the fragile pieces of her heart. The pain was sharp and blinding. All she’d ever wanted in her life was a good man who cared, and he was riding away. The father who never existed, the grandfather who never came back. Canyon Bill had held their odd little family together for a time, but then he left, and Leanne took her daughter down the darkest road. Kay was powerless to stop any of it.

She listened to Evan ride away while everything in her screamed to chase him and beg him to stop—beg him to help her. She had no doubt he could handle Trent. But at what cost? He’d fly into a rage, beat Trent, and then go to jail. He was a man on shaky ground to begin with, the media hounding him for his past prison sentence and jeopardizing the business he and Dan built. She knew just what her baggage was, and she wouldn’t subject Evan to it. The truth of it didn’t soften the blow. Her throat closed, and she felt enough pain in her chest to know, in some secret part of herself, she loved him.

EVAN

Driving away, he felt like there was an invisible elastic stretching between him and where he had left her. Why was she so stubborn? Why wouldn’t she just tell him what was going on? Why was she so determined to run him off? The frustration built like pressure from that invisible connection that snapped at last.

The headlines the next morning read, in bold:

“I’ll be damned if I let somebody who doesn’t know me take away something good I’ve done.” HOME IMPROVEMENT STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HIS TRAGIC PAST

Dan texted him. Your interview is going viral. The ratings for season one have gone through the roof, and they want us in contract negotiations for season two!

It was the vindication he’d waited and waited for. It was like waking up from the bad dream that had taken over his life that fateful night when he’d followed Jake. Practically overnight, it felt like the world could suddenly see him clearly. He could have wept with relief. Yet it was bittersweet. He’d worked so hard to start a new life. He’d changed his name, started a business with Dan, and given an impassioned interview to clear his name. At the end of the day, though, he was still sitting alone on his porch in the Florida swamp with only the dog and the dark night. The woman he wanted by his side was just a mile away, but it might as well have been another country. Worse, he knew she was in terrible trouble and needed him to protect her. But for reasons she wouldn’t explain, she wouldn’t let him do it. And of all the irony—it was his restored honor that seemed to drive her away.

He was torn between two worlds. In prison, things were simple. Black and white. He was bad, and so was everyone around him. Reputation was all that mattered. He fared better than most. He’d grown up tough. He was big, and he could protect himself. Ultimately, it was all a ritual of who was the toughest man locked in the cage.

When he got out, he expected vindication that never came. He couldn’t go back and fix the rift in his family. He couldn’t change his new way of approaching the world. He was inked and marked as an ex-con, and that was his lot in life. People either shied away from him or were drawn to him, and both for the wrong reasons.

The payout he got from the state for wrongful imprisonment had bought him some toys and a nice motorcycle. The combination of his persona and the bike attracted girls. He was lonely and wounded. He’d spent months trying to drown it in booze and girls until he got tangled up with Amber. Amber turned out to be a gold-digging fame whore, and he ought to have known it from the start. The hell of it was, the payout from his wrongful incarceration meant to right the wrong only served to make things worse. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, and he didn’t want to be known for his past.

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