“Iwill not.” I reach up, grasp his face. I know I am too weak to physically hurt him, so I squeeze his jaw and his cheeks with all of the strength in my hands. “You are not a coward, Kane Richard Sutherland. You must go back to Montana. You must face Luke. You must accept whatever he will say, whatever he will do.”
“I can’t,” he whispers. “Fuckin’ can’t.”
“You can.”
His eyes open, and I have never in my life seen such pain in a human being. “Look at me, Anjalee. I fuckin’can’t.”
I keep my hands clutched around his face. “Youlook atme, Kane. Youcan. And you will. Look—at—me.” I shake him, and he opens his eyes again, blue-green-gray-brown on mine. “You can. Do you know how I know?” He shakes his head. “Because I am asking you to. For me.”
He rips himself away from me, hand clenching, lifting—he spins away from me. Instead of putting his fist through the door as I believe he wishes to, he very, very gently touches his knuckles to the door, a kiss of fist instead of the blow.
Then he collapses against it, forehead to the door, palms flat. “Fine.” His voice is flat. “You’re right—how the fuck it happened I donotfuckin’ know, but you’ve got some kind of hold over me. You got me by the balls, Anj. You’re askin’, so I’ll go.” He turns, slumping back against it, eyes on mine—cold, flat, and dead. “But then I’m putting you on a flight to Vegas. Took the one thing I don’t have to fuckin’ give, and here I fuckin’ am, givin’ it to you anyway.”
My heart squeezes, stomach flutters. “If it sets you free, then so be it. I will go with you. I will stand beside you as you do this thing. And if, after all of that, you wish to be done with me, then I will go.”
“Didn’t want it like this, Anj.”
“It could not be any other way, Kane, do you not see?” I want to go to him, to touch him, to kiss him, but I fear I have lost that privilege. “I see you, and I know you. We are connected, you and I. And I can see so very clearly that you are living as only half of a man. I want the whole man. Perhaps I am greedy. But that is what I want. So, I will risk the half I have in order to get the whole.”
“Losing gamble, darlin’.”
“Perhaps.”
He slumps down to sit on the floor, back to the door. His eyes shut, and he tugs his hat brim down to cover his face. “Get some rest. Leavin’ first light.”
I have lost him.
* * *
I do not sleepmuch or well, and I do not believe he sleeps at all. He remains there on the floor, legs outstretched, arms across his chest, hat down.
I hear him stir, stand—I slide from the bed, put on my shoes, tie my hair back, put on my coat. Face him. “I am ready.”
“Sure about that?” His voice is a dull, lifeless snarl. His kindness is gone. Only the fury remains—and beneath the fury, the self-hate, which is the engine of the fury.
“Yes.”
He yanks open the door. “Only stopping for gas, and it’s damn near twelve hours from here to there.”
I nod. “Very well. I believe I have proven I can handle the ride.”
He just stares at me, then flips his hat backward, shoves his sunglasses onto his face, and stalks outside. I follow him, wait for him to climb on, and then I sling my leg over and settle up against him.
It feels different. His anger at me is a shell between us, preventing intimacy.
He backs out, pauses to check traffic, and then we roar away, north.
This ride is unlike all the rest. He rides very fast, for one. Illegally and frighteningly so. He takes the freeway, the fastest and most direct route. I barely see the scenery, despite the wondrous beauty of it—without Kane, it has lost its appeal.
I hold on to him, and I cling desperately to hope that I am doing the right thing.
If I am not, then I have lost the best thing that has ever happened to me and for nothing.
We ride north, north, for hours. Stop for gas, to drink some water, eat one of the protein bars from his saddlebags. There is no stopping for a leisurely lunch at a cute little diner, or a truck stop, or anything. Only the motorcycle roaring beneath me, my thighs aching, my heart dry and dead from despair. The further north we go, the more I feel him tense, the more anger and pain I sense in him.
We pass a large sign that says, “Welcome to Montana” and I feel him clenching, all of him, his jaw, his shoulders, his abdomen.
We stop for gas a second time, and I nearly ask him to turn around. But I cannot. It is too late.
