Page 40 of Rough Start

“Keep ‘em,” she offered. “It’ll give me a reason to come back later.”

“Like you need one,” Kye said suggestively as he slid his hand between her legs. She giggled and pushed his hand away before standing. She gave him a wink at the door before she closed it behind her. Kye stretched his arms behind his head, allowing his eyes to close in bliss as he still felt the waves of his pleasure fading.

He’d set up quite the suite in the clubhouse since he’d first moved in over ten years ago. Rather than a bare cot in a room that looked like a cell, he’d been upgraded to one of the master rooms reserved especially for the officers.

Since the days of the Defectors, they’d restructured their club more like a monarchy than a business. It had been months of warfare to squash the uprising of the Vermont chapter and those who had sided with Wayne and Dean from Maine. Those who had remained loyal were sworn in to the new crew while those who hadn’t… well, let’s just say the worms didn’t go hungry that year.

Before the sun rose each day, Kye was making thousands of dollars on sustainable operations.

The Screaming Demons now owned all of Pine Hill. They’d invested their dealings in every business in town and were now the sole import and exporters in town. Nothing came in they didn’t buy, and nothing went out they didn’t sell. Max had a plan to purchase the land from the state in the next few years so they could expand their compounds without pesky licensing agents running inspections.

The Demons had their kingdom and Max, the devil himself, had risen above any petty rebellion. He’d done it with Kye at his side. Kye’s unwavering loyalty had more than earned him a seat at the big kid’s table. It was widely known, if Pine Hill was Hell and Max was the devil, then Kye was the prince who was promised. Perfectly groomed and flawlessly executed, Kye was everything Max had hoped to find in a successor. He just had to keep playing his cards right, use his tactical mind, a little muscle when it was called for, and soon the entire organization would be his. He would have everything.

Almost.

A chirping noise from the top drawer of his dresser startled Kye out of his revelry. Padding across the white carpeted floor in his bare feet, he yanked the sock drawer open and dug around until he found the box of his old burner phones. Usually opting to swap out SIM cards, he still kept them charged in case he needed to recycle old numbers. It took him a moment to find the one that had chimed.

A flood of emotions hit him square in the chest when he saw the number and the voicemail icon in the corner. Before he could overthink it, he hit play:

“Kye?” His heart skipped a beat.

“I doubt you’ll ever get this, but fuck it. My friends are right. I don’t need you. You always said you were riding with the Demons for us, for me, for our future. But you know what? You’re a liar. You didn’t do it for anyone but yourself. If you hadn’t been caught up in all that bullshit we could have had a life together. Maybe it took four years and a college degree to figure it out, but I. Don’t. Need. You.”

Her pointed words were like a knife to the heart.

“That’s right. I have a college degree! I graduate on Sunday, and I did it all on my own. Law school, here I come! I’m going to go on to be a big, successful lawyer, probably start my own practice in New York, and one day you won’t even be a memory anymore. Goodbye, Kye Driscoll. I hope you’re happy with your stupid motorcycle club an-and your guns, and your drugs, and your criminal record an-and your stupid donkey schlong!”

Kye stood for a long moment, replayed the message twice, and stood for an even longer interval before he needed to sit down. She’d called him.

Eliana.

Despite the fact that the club had lost track of Henry and Eliana once they’d passed through New Hampshire, Kye knew eventually where they’d end up. No way Eliana was going to sacrifice her college career for anything. On the down-low, Kye had been able to track Henry who’d spent the last few years working on oil rigs just off the coast of the Carolinas, but Eliana… sweet, beautiful, perfect Eliana had flourished in school.

Kye dug his iPad out from under the bed and fired up the social media apps. While Eliana had done her best to stay off the grid, never creating profiles for herself, it hadn’t been hard to find her on other people’s pages. Especially after she joined the sorority her sophomore year.

He could always find her somewhere in the background at a bake sale, a car wash, volunteering at a soup kitchen over holidays, giving a speech to a local elementary school; he had to hand it to her— Eliana had an instinct for staying hidden. But like the sun during a solar eclipse, she was never going to stop shining.

He still had the newspaper clippings that featured her as volunteer of the year, her humanitarian award, the year she was featured in the school paper for breaking the record for most courses passed in a single semester; she was incapable of not being entirely wonderful.

Kye smiled when he saw the latest picture on Instagram from her friend Lyndsey. She and her two friends were crammed onto a single lounge chair by the pool. All smiles and perfectly tanned skin, he admired how her breasts looked in a bikini top. Wherever the shy Eliana had gone, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to complain at the feast for his eyes as he admired her body in the picture.

Then guilt set in.

His body was still tingling with the touch of another woman, and not the first he’d had since Eliana had left, yet here he was ogling the love of his life like a pinup doll. She was more than that. She would always be more than that. He was never going to be able to get her out of his head or his heart. It wasn’t a new realization. Though it had been four years, he’d given up trying to forget her.

Sure, he was prone to frequent distraction. He poured himself into his work, club politics, and occasionally he buried himself between the legs of a Wall Kat, but Eliana would always be the sole owner of his heart. When Max was gone, Kye would have the power to lift the bounty on her father, and subsequently her, and then there wouldn’t be anything that stood between them. That is… if she still wanted him.

Hadn’t she just called?

Clearly, Eliana was still thinking about him too. Though he hadn’t comprehended all of her slurred words, and he wasn’t even going to begin to guess what she meant by ‘donkey schlong’, didn’t that mean she still cared? If after all this time she was still angry, still hurt, and hell she still had his old cell phone number, then that meant she still, to some extent, carried a torch for him.

That thought brought a smile to his face. He still had the letter she’d written him two years ago. His old foster mother, Carey, had given it to him at Stanley, her late husband’s, funeral. Full of regret and a level of shame, Kye had gone to Stan’s funeral after a heart attack had claimed him. He’d hugged and kissed Carey like a mother, and she’d wept on his shoulder, told him she was still proud of him, and given him the letter.

Kye had driven that whole night and into the next day to get to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the letter, Eliana had told him how she would always love him. How even though he hadn’t come for her, she would wait for him and how she prayed every night he was safe and thinking of her. When Kye had arrived in town, he’d watched from afar as she moved her boxes from her rented truck into the sorority house.

Laughing and bounding on her heels, she looked impeccably happy. How could he ruin that for her? Kye had subsequently mounted his bike, turned it around, and driven home without so much as catching her eye. He had promised himself long ago to never be the reason her life was ruined.

Though he didn’t dare come for her until Max was dead and buried, he wasn’t going to miss this chance to see her. Even if he remained unseen. He couldn’t miss this occasion in her life.