Page 56 of Rolling Thunder

“What did you do?” she demanded.

There was a hardness to him that she wasn’t accustomed to.

“I told you not to do that,” she said. “I won’t let you go to jail for me! You can’t throw your life away when it’s finally going right!” He turned to her with fiery determination.

“You know what I never regretted, Kayla?”

She stared, waiting.

“I never regretted going after my little brother and trying to stop him patching in with the Pirates. I was nineteen and he was seventeen and stupid. Even after everything went so wrong, I still don’t regret it. I hate what it did to my family, I hated prison, but I know who I am. I’m not a man who’ll just stand by while my little brother makes a life-changing mistake. And I’m not a man who just stands around while a man like Trent comes here and hurts the woman I love.”

He choked on his emotion. “He threw you down in the dirt!”

He took a step closer to her, his eyes burning into hers. She could feel the indignant outrage radiating off him, and it terrified her. Though not directed at her, it felt like a punch to her heart.

“Some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth taking the fall for.”

She took a tiny step toward him. “Not me. I’m not worth you going back to prison and I won’t let you take the fall for this,” she whispered.

“You’re worth that and so much more,” he said without hesitation.

“And…I can’t lose you too,” she sighed.

“You’re not gonna lose me.”

She put her hands on his face, feeling his clenched jaw, feeling the passion radiating from him. Her hands drifted lower, and she hit him lightly on the chest. “You told me to trust you, and you just went and risked it all.”

“I’m still telling you to trust me,” he said in a low tone to soothe the high-pitched fear in her voice. “Come with me…”

He took her hand and led her out the door and down the driveway back to the barn. Intrigued, she walked with him in silence. She did trust him.

When they entered the barn, he walked her to Trent’s vehicle, then turned to her.

“I didn’t do what I wanted to do, which was to fucking kill him.”

Relief flooded through her.

“I didn’t do that because I knew you wouldn’t want me to.”

He paused. “But I had to do something.”

He walked to the back of the vehicle, placed his hand on the locking Tonneau bed cover handle, and looked at her meaningfully. “So, I brought him back here to let you decide.”

With that, he twisted the handle, and lifted the hard cover.

Trent lunged upward, but Evan swiftly and easily swatted him back down. Trent crumpled like a pathetic noodle. Kayla gasped and jumped back reflexively.

“We can do whatever you want with him. We can call the cops and have him arrested for violating the restraining order.”

Trent righted himself miserably, looking suitably pitiful.

“Or,” he said calmly, but raising his volume to make sure Trent could hear him, “I’m still perfectly willing to go cut him up and feed him to the gators.”

Kayla approached slowly, thoughts of the last time she and Trent had been in this very hallway swirling in her head.

He sneered up at her from the bed. He’d been knocked around, but she knew what a beating from a man Evan’s size looked like. She knew he’d held back. And she knew he’d done it for her. Renewed appreciation and regard for Evan flooded her.

“What do you want to do with him, Kayla?”

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