Page 67 of Rolling Thunder

“I just… I want to be the kind of girl you thought I was. I just don’t know if I can be.”

He rolled her gently beneath him so he could meet her gaze. “You’re exactly the girl I thought you were. Already.”

The truth of that hit deep. His words filtered into her psyche like grains of sand in murky water, settling ever so slowly to touch the unseen bottom, where her secret self had been hidden forever. He already knew the worst she could tell him about herself. He loved her. It was as if she’d been floated in outer space untethered for an eternity and she’d just finally found some gravity to bring her feet to the earth. A calm she’d never known settled over her.

He kissed her softly, but she pulled him onto her. It was the first time she could truly relish the feeling as he pressed her into the bed, his mouth overtaking hers, meeting the need he felt there. His healing embrace was a balm, but it wasn’t enough. She needed him inside her again to claim every bit of space from the ghosts of her past and chase them away. For once, she didn’t fear her own memories or her own emotions, because she wasn’t alone with them anymore.

“Let me make love to you,” he murmured in her ear. She looked up at him and nodded. The tears were still fresh on her face, the pain was still fresh in her heart, but suddenly, the connection was there, and she could meet him in a different place. She could fuck. But the tenderness was almost more than she could bear. It was such a stark contrast to all the hurt.

In that moment, she felt his heart meet hers. He was offering her everything. All she had to do was accept it. His mouth was on her, and every inch of herself reached out to him. There was nowhere close enough. This was it, everything she’d ever wanted. She had only to surrender to it.

His fingertips traced down her skin. His fingers rolled her nipples, drawing a cry from her that he caught with his mouth as she arched into him. Her legs wrapped around him, waiting for him to take her. He entered her, and not only did pleasure rippled through her entire body, but a deeper sensation that tugged at her soul. He held her close, rode her gently, touching every inch of her. She felt the tears start again.

“What, baby, what?” he whispered, kissing them off her face.

She shook her head. “Don’t stop.”

“Okay.”

He caressed her face, pushing the tears away, kissing the trail they left down her temples. It only brought more; she couldn’t stop. She quivered beneath him. He looked searchingly into her eyes.

She could say only one thing. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

He ground down on her, and she clenched suddenly, grabbing him in a fierce orgasm that she cried all the way through as he came with her and then rolled to the side, pulling her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her hair.

They lay in the dark together, skin to skin, listening to each other’s breath and heart beats.

“I couldn’t have done any of this without you,” she murmured.

“Don’t sell yourself short. When it came down to it, you totally kicked Trent’s ass.”

She giggled. He squeezed her. The sensation was like sunshine breaking through the clouds. Finally, she was alive, on earth, and warm.

After Evan fell asleep, she lay awake listening for Bill’s motorcycle to come back. She convinced herself maybe she hadn’t heard it through the hot sex that the night had ended with. She got out of bed and slipped into her boots. Abbey appeared by her side, tail wagging and washing a cool breeze over Kayla’s legs. She ruffled her head and told her to stay in the house. Despite that, when she opened the door, the dog slipped out beside her with the practiced skill of disobedience and dashed off into the night.

Before Kayla could begin to truly worry, Abbey reappeared and sat with unusual calm at her side. She could see lights on in Bill’s trailer. She started across the pasture. Wiping unwelcome tears from her face, she raised her hand to knock on his door. This trailer wanted to rip her heart out now, just like it always had. It had been the last holdout before Bill had left and her mother had taken her to Fort Myers.

She knocked on the door, but there was no sound from inside. After a few minutes, she tried the handle. The door swung easily. The constant squeak it had always made was gone. She stepped inside and was assaulted by memories. She could smell Bill’s cigar smoke, could almost see the long-ago ghost of her mother. Always rail thin, with too much makeup, always drunk or high. Fighting with one man or another. Kayla had learned to crawl out of the window in the bathroom and escape to the barn. Just like the faint smell of Bill’s cigar smoke mingling with the ghost of her mother’s destruction, the trailer was both totally different and exactly the same. But one thing was immediately clear: he was really gone. Everything that would have indicated that the trailer was lived in had been hastily removed.

She walked slowly through the kitchen. She remembered Tupperware appearing on the counter from her Gram so Kayla always had something to eat. The counter was bare now. One cupboard was left open, and its shelves, too, were bare. The empty trailer was the very physical embodiment of everything she wanted, everything she needed, that she’d never had. She walked to the little bedroom. Why was she still hoping for a sign that he wasn’t really gone? Why did she even want him to stay?

“Goddammit, Bill,” she muttered under her breath.

The bedroom was equally sparse. There was one cardboard box sitting in the middle of the mattress and she went to it, flipping up one of the flaps. She was still hoping it was Bill’s things…a sign that he might come back. But it wasn’t. It was her mother’s belongings. Things left behind when they’d left the farm that her mother had never bothered to retrieve. She remembered Bill telling her he’d boxed up some things from the trailer when he’d started working on it.

The memories were like smoke in the air, thick and bitter and hard to breathe, making her lungs hurt. She sat on the bed for a moment. A glutton for punishment, she pulled out her phone and googled Cody Vegas. He hadn’t made it big in the PBR. But there was a photo of a young, dark-haired cowboy grinning with a new belt buckle. Her breath caught. She could see her mother’s eyes in his face.

This was her real grandfather. And under the picture, an obituary. He’d died at the age of thirty-six. The reason wasn’t specified, but what was clear was that he was already long dead during most of the years that her mother had tortured them all with her anger. He was never coming back, had never been able to come back, because he’d been long gone. They’d all suffered for nothing, and Kayla was no closer to having a family.

She turned to go. The emptiness of the trailer mirrored the empty hole in her heart that she hadn’t quite realized Bill had been occupying.

CHAPTER 28

This time around, Jake was just full of surprises. Evan’s phone beeped a text.

Jake: Can you meet me at the Barnyard?

It was a favorite local restaurant. A lovely riverside place with cool breezes, plenty of shaded outdoor seating, a great little outdoor tiki bar with a dance floor and small stage for local bands on Friday and Saturday nights. That set Evan at ease. It was a family-type establishment, not likely to involve any of Jake’s outlaw biker friends.

---