Page 46 of Rolling Thunder
Now the truth was on the table along with the guns and oil. The fight was sure to come to her home if she didn’t comply. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish by telling Bill this. Except that he seemed to feel equally as calm and sure as she felt panicked and alone.
“Sounds like you need to get ahead of it, then,” Bill said. “Does Evan know?”
Their eyes met.
“No.”
He nodded slightly. “Reckon you best go tell him,” he said, turning back to his guns.
This was a straightforward problem to Bill. His kind had a code for how threats were dealt with. A threat to one’s woman was met with guns blazing, figuratively or not. To her, it was the opposite of simple. But now she’d told Bill. Now he was digging in for a fight, and he would either face Trent alone and likely be hurt in the process, or Kayla had to bring in Evan. In order to get away from Trent, she had to endanger everyone she loved.
“Bill, please,” she said softly.
How many times had he just ridden away? Why wouldn’t he just leave now, the one time she wanted him to?
He looked at her long and hard. He didn’t say another word, but he didn’t need to.
Her options ran through her mind, and she remembered her conviction in the face of Trent’s cruelty. She couldn’t go back. There was only one other option. She stood to go.
“Tomorrow, I’ll start teaching you to shoot.” Bill said. She glanced back at him and nodded.
She should have turned left to drive to Evan’s. Instead, she turned right and drove three miles to the corner store on State Road 31. It sold liquor, and she was out. Armed with a bottle of whiskey, she drove back to Evan’s place.
She didn’t get any farther than the top of Evan’s porch stairs. Embarrassed to have arrived with a bottle in a paper sack, she stashed it on the porch railing. Without her knocking, the front door opened. He was the very picture of everything she needed. He was tougher than Trent, but he wasn’t meaner. And that frightened her more than being here.
“I’m in so much trouble,” she blurted. She felt cold, wrapping her arms around herself as if she might simply blow apart if she didn’t hang on to the pieces.
“I can see that,” he said, steady. Her heart hammered in her chest. She’d never come this close to telling anyone the secrets she’d intended to carry to the grave. She made the desperate decision to come here and do this, but now that she stood before him, she just couldn’t bust open the padlocked steel cage in her chest and let the words out.
His gaze remained steady on her. That was both a comfort and a curse. She wiped her clammy palms on her jeans.
She retrieved the bottle she had brought with her and took a swig that made her choke.
“Canyon Bill thinks I have a drinking problem,” she said.
“Okay,”Evan said. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Look, let me be the last person to say keep drinking, even if you think it’s a problem…maybe we should worry about that tomorrow if there are bigger fish to fry today.”
She nodded slightly, grimly, tried to light a cigarette, and couldn’t, the way her hands shook. He lit it for her, then he waited. She swallowed more whiskey.
“Maybe I am an alcoholic. I mean, Bill is. My mother is a junkie. I learned from the best.” She gestured with the bottle. “Who else drinks out of a bottle in a sack?”
He touched her hand gently, interrupting her. “What’s going on, Kayla?”
His words were like a rock dropping inside her. The impact in her stomach made it cave. She stood up and commenced pacing on his porch.
“You remember Trent,”she started.
“That lowlife threatening you in your driveway?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “He owns a club in Fort Myers. A strip club. I work there. I’m a stripper.” The words hung in midair. That was the least horrible thing she had to say to him tonight. And if he was disgusted by that, she was off the hook for the rest. He’d toss her off his porch and say he couldn’t believe his girlfriend was a stripper.
“You’re also a horse trainer,” he said.
“Yes, but before that, I was a stripper. My grandmother raised me in the horse business. She tried to look out for me, but by mother took me to Fort Myers when I was fourteen. That’s when we met Trent. When my grandmother died, she left me the farm, and I thought that was my ticket out. I ran away from them and I came up here. I thought I could get away from the life my mother lives. It would have worked, except my mother came up here guilting me because my Grandma left her nothing.