Page 64 of Rolling Thunder
Bill took a step toward her, looking so menacing, even Evan straightened up, preparing to stop him from doing something he’d regret.
“And is that the truth, Leanne? Is it?” he demanded.
Leanne shrank back and dropped her eyes.
“Kayla—” Leanne said, looking miserably from one of them to the next.
“If I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, I reckon you told so many lies you can’t even remember what they are anymore,” Bill said bitterly.
Leanne was crying. “You were too goddam drunk to know, either!” Leanne accused.
“And I couldn’t be more sorry for it than I am right now,” Bill replied.
Kayla stared from one person to the next.
“You all need to get away from me. Just leave me alone,” Kayla stammered at last. “You—” She stared at Bill. She thought of her mother, nineteen and troubled. Bill, her drunken father figure. Her stomach flipped. Was her entire existence based on that? The highest moral failing of a man? Her father might have been there all along? He’d never acknowledged the possibility, and worse, he’d ridden off when she was fourteen and she and Kay had needed him the most. “You better not be there when I get back to the farm. This time, I mean it.” she said through clenched teeth.
Bill nodded, looked down, and walked back to his motorcycle without comment. He fired it up and roared off without a backward glance. Why did she feel like he’d just ripped her heart out? Why did she feel like she’d done the same to him? Why did she care?
For once, Leanne didn’t protest, but slunk back into her hotel room. When they were finally alone, Kayla turned to Evan.
“You knew about this.”
He met her gaze. “She made some comments when we went to talk to her about Trent.”
“So, you’re thinking Bill might have fucked his partner’s nineteen-year-old daughter who he’d raised since she was a child. He might be my long-lost father, but also the scum of the earth, and you didn’t feel the need to tell me that?”
It was one betrayal she simply couldn’t stand, from either Canyon Bill or Evan. These two men had ridden to her rescue, and she’d begun to break down and trust them. Now it felt utterly ruined.
“I made a hard decision. You were a wreck that day. Bill wasn’t any immediate threat to you, but Trent was. I thought if Bill didn’t tell you, I would after Trent was in jail.”
She growled her frustration and stormed down the sidewalk in front of the motel. She heard him follow her. She took a long breath and stopped. Before she could face him, she texted her sponsor Annie, asking if she could pick her up.
“Did he do it, Evan? Is he my father?” she asked him quietly. A deep wound had been ripped open anew inside her. She’d always longed to know who he was, where he was…. why…. why he hadn’t wanted to be a part of her life. And maybe he always had been a part of her life? But if it were true, it was a horrible thing he had done, and she didn’t think she could forgive him for it.
“He doesn’t think he did, but he doesn’t know for sure,” Evan replied.
Kayla sat down on the curb, momentarily defeated.
“I’d be the last person to stand up for someone doing something like that, but…your mother also doesn’t make the most convincing accuser. Let me take you home.”
Her phone dinged. She glanced down. It was Annie, asking where she was. She texted back the name of the motel. Annie replied with the warp speed of a sober person knowing their sponsee was right outside a drug den.
“My sponsor is picking me up. Just go,” Kayla said bitterly.
He moved as if he wanted to reach for her and then thought better of it. She’d had enough of all these men making decisions for her, keeping secrets from her.
He retreated from her and sat in a cheap plastic chair someone had put out in front of their weekly room. She glared at him.
He crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving you alone in Trent’s hood with your mother twenty feet away, so don’t even bother.”
She made another growl of total frustration and threw up her hands, turning away from him to scan the road, hoping to see Annie’s GMC Jimmy pulling in. It was another ten minutes before Annie arrived, during which she and Evan didn’t speak. Kayla both loved and hated him for refusing to leave her. Once she was in the car with Annie, she looked out the window and saw Evan unfold his big frame from the rickety chair and walk back to his motorcycle.
CHAPTER 27
Watching her get into the Jimmy and pull away without a backward glance felt like a kick to his gut. He would gladly have traded being trampled by the man-eating horse if it meant she hadn’t just driven away angry. He’d turned his life literally upside down trying to protect her. Instead, he had the terrible realization that he might have just lost her forever.
He swung a leg over his bike and stared at Leanne’s door for a few minutes. The anger burned hot, and for a moment, he entertained the notion of kicking her door in and giving her an earful about what he thought of her. Why had she practically served Kayla to Trent as a young teenager and then stood by while he destroyed her? Why had she felt the need to drop the bomb about Canyon Bill in the middle of the worst week of Kayla’s life?