Page 83 of Kane's Awakening
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kane
Two Weeks later
“Yes, Ma, I’m fine,” I repeated for the third time in the fifteen minutes I’d been talking to her on the phone. “Please don’t come down here.”
“Well, how else am I going to see you?” she asked, her voice full of hurt. “It’s been too long since you visited.”
“I just came over not too long ago.”
I hadn’t seen her and my dad as often as I should have, but I tried to see her at least a few times a month. The shit with the drug bust had screwed everything up in that sense. I rarely got out. And during my visit with her, I hadn’t really talked much. She was great at picking out what was wrong with me, so if I said anything off, she would’ve swarmed like a hawk.
“It’s been weeks,” she said. “And you only stayed for an hour. Yes, you came over before that and stayed the whole afternoon, which your father and I loved, but it’s been way too long since we’ve had a proper visit. I’ve kept my space and let you handle things because I know how you hate being coddled, but Kane Nathaniel Matthews, you can’t just cut everyone out of your life when things go south. Being alone in all of this isn’t—”
“Ma, I haven’t been alone,” I interjected without thinking.
Shit, now she’s going to ask a million questions.
“A man?” she asked with a much lighter tone than before. “Oh, honey, who is it? And when do I get to meet him? Is it serious?”
I sighed into the phone.Might as well tell her now.
“Yeah, I met someone,” I answered, smiling despite my previous annoyance. Ryker just did that to me. Weweredating, so my parents were bound to find out eventually. April was right around the corner, so we’d been together for a little over a month. “He’s pretty much been my rock through all of this shi—uh, stuff with the thing from work.”
The following ten minutes was spent with me answering every question under the sun about him. I told her his name, occupation, how long I’d known him, and all of that shit. Of course it wasn’t enough, though, and she insisted on meeting him.
“I’ll talk to him and see when will be a good time,” I said, hoping that answer satisfied her for the time being.
“Oh, I can’t wait to tell your dad that you have a boyfriend,” she gushed. “I’ll make dinner and y’all can just come over and spend the day.”
Boyfriend. I’d never referred to Ryker as that, not even in my head, but I guess that’s what he was; we’d regularly seen each other and had been exclusive for a while, and there was more between us than sex. Boyfriend just sounded weird.
“Sounds great. I just got to the gym and have to go. Love you, Ma.”
We hung up and I pocketed my phone as I walked inside. I hadn’t been to the gym as much as I should’ve in the past few weeks, only going one or two days out of the week, so I seriously needed to get back at it before I started getting flabby and losing what I’d worked too fucking hard to gain.
Zack’s dimpled grin greeted me as I approached the counter to scan my card.
“Glad to see you,” he said, taking my card and setting it behind the counter before giving me a towel.
“Yeah, it’s good to be here.”
He’d cut his hair since the last time I’d seen him, and it was a crew cut. The style suited him and somehow made him look even more intimidating than normal. Not that he intimidatedme, but yeah, some of the smaller guys in the gym cast him glances at times that cracked me up.
The ladies always gaped at him because he had that badass thing going for him. They gawked at me, too, but I ignored them. The one and only time a girl tried hitting on me, I’d said loud and clear that I loved sucking cock and she walked off so fast it was as if she had a fire under her ass.
I went over to a mat in the center of the room and sat down with my legs spread eagle style. I leaned on each leg to stretch my inner thighs before getting up and doing a few side lunges to help stretch my hamstrings. Then, I went to the treadmill, bumped it up to an easy pace to start off with, and began a slow jog.
My slow jog turned into a full-out run, and the only thing going through my head was the music pounding in my ears, the beat that matched the rhythm of my feet on the machine. My heart raced, and I craved more of the adrenaline pumping through my veins. More of the burn. I kept running. Just focused on the fucking amazing way my muscles moved and did what I wanted.
But then I was jerked out of the zone.
Devon was straight ahead of me, doing pull-ups. Our eyes locked, and I stumbled on the treadmill as I lost my rhythm.
Shit!I braced my hands on the side bars and moved my feet to the sides of the machine, so I could shut it down. Fuck. I’d hoped that the other time I’d seen him there had been a one-time thing, but I should’ve fucking known better.
He jumped down and grabbed his towel, wiping at the back of his neck as he walked toward me.
