Page 14 of Kane: One Night with a Biker

I followed that up with texts and even included my favorite picture of us from our cruise. The one where we’d stood on the deck at sunset. The sky looked like a layered dessert behind us with streaks of yellow, orange, pink and red. We’d been looking into each other’s eyes, our hearts full of love and the promise of a happily ever after within our grasp.

Seemed like years ago instead of just a few days. How had everything turned upside down so quickly?

As the truck ate up mile after mile of two-lane road, I sent a silent prayer out to the universe. Please let me find him before he did something he’d regret.

Please let me find him before he’d be lost to me forever.

13

KANE

Ikilled the engine on the bike before I reached the entrance to the cemetery. If my dad was there, I didn’t want him getting any warning that I was on my way. It didn’t make sense that he’d escape from prison and head to my mother’s grave, but based on the letters he’d sent me while he was behind bars, my gut told me this was where I’d find him.

As I walked the familiar path from the gate to where we’d buried my mother over twenty years ago, I noticed a dark form at the edge of her tombstone.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I growled out.

“Kane, is that you?” His voice came out as a whisper, but I recognized it. He stood, barely a shadow of the man he used to be. Prison hadn’t been kind to him, and he’d faded from the tall, powerful beast of a man I remembered.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Every muscle in my body tensed. I hadn’t come here with a plan, but I knew only one of us was going to leave this place alive. “You don’t deserve to pay your respects.”

“I needed to come. Needed to tell her I’m sorry before it’s too late.” He fell to his knees next to her grave.

Rage surged within me, and I covered the distance between us in a few long strides. “Get the fuck away from her.”

He cowered, putting his hands up to cover his face. At one point in my life I might have felt sorry for him, but that time was long past. He’d given in to the demons who chased him, stopped fighting them long ago. I couldn’t summon a single ounce of pity for the man who’d stolen my mother from me, who’d stolen my childhood.

“You don’t understand, son.” He reached out, his arm thin and pale in the broken slivers of moonlight.

“Don’t call me that. I stopped being your son the day you took my mother from me.”

He shook his head. “You’ll always be my boy. You’ve got my blood in your veins, Kane. Whether you like it or not.”

“No.” I didn’t want to hear it. The need to shut him up overtook me. My fingers curled into a fist.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You deserved so much better than the life I gave you.”

What the fuck was he talking about? My heart skipped a beat. In the few letters I’d read from him he’d blamed the drugs, the authorities, the system. He’d never taken responsibility for his actions. Never owned up to the decisions he’d made.

“I’m a dying man, son. My days are numbered, and I needed to come here, to tell your mama once and for all, how sorry I am for the decisions I made.”

My eyes squeezed shut, and I put my hands to my forehead. I couldn’t process what he was saying. “You killed her.”

His sobs ricocheted through me. “I did. And if I could change it, I would.”

“It’s too late.”

He put his palm on the manicured grass growing over the spot where we’d laid her to rest. “You’re right. But it’s not too late for you. I know you came here tonight to get your revenge. Take it, son. I’m ready to go.”

I’d dreamed of this day for so long—the way it would feel to squeeze the life out of him the way he’d taken the life from my mother. I’d imagined how satisfying it would be to watch him crumple in front of me.

My moment had arrived.

And yet, my dreams had shifted.

Being with Abilene had opened my heart. Her love had cleared the cobwebs away. In the short time we’d been together she’d taught me there was more to life than revenge. I’d held the promise of a future with her in my hands and I’d been willing to risk it for what? For trading my life for my father’s?

I’d been a fool.

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