Today felt like the longest day of my life.
I open the throttle and accelerate down the backcountry road. Only rolling hills and green pastures for miles. The only other living soul I encounter is the occasional grazing cow. I speed up and down the countryside leaning into the sharp curves as the serenity of the backcountry helps clear my head. I’ve missed this. The wide open¸ untouched land. The beauty of nowhere. I lived the fast life, working in a big city. But it wasn’t the fast I was looking for. I wanted more freedom and less pretentious attitude. I wanted to be where people were genuine, and what you saw was what you got. And I knew exactly where to find that. The place I grew up. It may not be fancy. There are no strip malls or shopping outlets, but the main road through town has two decent restaurants and a few small, family-owned shops. It’s simple and uncomplicated. To most, it may not be much, but to me it’s home.
I pull up to the road that leads to my house a little later than usual. It’s almost dark, but not quite. There’s still enough light to see Kayla sitting on the front porch as the night sky creeps in over our heads.
I park my bike right in front of her and hop off. I don’t take her sitting out here with a beer as a good sign.
“Rough day?” I take a seat next to her.
“You could say that.” She takes a long sip from the bottle.
“I have a cure for that.”
“Do tell?” She entertains me.
“A rough night.” I smile suggestively.
She grunts and rolls her eyes. “I’ll pass.”
“In no mood, huh?”
“Nope.” She smacks her lips.
“How bad was it?” I read her tense body language.
“Let’s just say I would rather hear nails being dragged down a chalkboard than hear him call my name again.”
“That bad?”
“I don’t think those extra pain meds you gave him are working. He was ultra-irritable today. I couldn’t do anything to make him comfortable. He drove me crazy. Has he always been such an entitled, ornery ass?” She carries a hint of humor in her tone, but not nearly enough to convey she’s joking.
“Surprisingly, no. He definitely has his diva moments, but normally, he’s tolerable. Even likable sometimes.”
“I couldn’t imagine.” Kayla laughs lightly with the rim of the glass bottle to her lips.
“Speaking of, what’s Reese doing?” The house is eerily quiet.
“Napping. Finally.” She drops her head back.
I want to empathize. I know Reese is being a bigger handful than usual. “Try to cut him a little bit of slack.” I slide closer to her, continuously picking up whiffs of her coconut shampoo in the soft breeze. “His career was just sidelined and being back here doesn’t really dredge up the fondest memories.”
“Why?”
“We grew up in this house,” I explain. “My mom left it to us when she moved to the Midwest a few years after our dad died. They were so close,” I stress. “He was Reese’s biggest fan. When Reese started racing in the streets, we could all see he had talent. He was poetry on two wheels. What he could do on a bike was amazing. So our father started taking him to the racetrack by Sutter’s Point.”
“Right. I know it.”
“He was only sixteen, but man, he was sick to watch. He just strolled in like he owned that track. It didn’t take long before the right people started to notice.”
“That’s a nice picture, Dev, but what does that have to do with Reese hating it here?”
I sigh, the pain is as potent today as it was twelve years ago.
“The day before Reese signed on to ride professionally, he found our father dead. He’d had a heart attack right here in this house. Reese came home late that night and found him in his usual spot asleep on the couch. Only he wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh, how terrible.” Kayla covers her mouth.
“It rocked Reese pretty hard.”
I steal the beer from her hand and take a long, hard pull. It’s never easy sharing that story. It was hard enough losing a parent, but what was harder was consoling Reese. I will never forget the way he broke down in his room that night after the coroner bagged and removed our father from his own home. I’ve never seen anyone cry the way my brother did. My eyes water from just the memory. I’m convinced that if Reese could trade all his fame and fortune for one more day with our dad, he would without batting an eyelash.
“Dev?” Kayla smooths over my name.
“Mmm hmm?” I turn my head vacantly to look at her. Her gaze is soft and compassionate.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” I sniff, rubbing my eye. “Just not the most fun trip down memory lane.” I laugh at the sappy idiot I am, then down the rest of Kayla’s beer.
“I get it.” She knocks her knee against mine. “I almost lost Sam when I sixteen. She was shot trying to stop a robbery.”
“That’s pretty fucking scary. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Luckily, there’s nothing to be sorry about. But it definitely was one of the worst moments of my life,” Kayla muses, staring with wide eyes straight ahead.
Geez, what a couple of downers we are.
“Hey.” I bump her shoulder with mine. “How about I go grab us two more of these,” I ring the bottle, “and we swap some happy stories? They don’t even have to be fucking real.”
Kayla laughs. “You want to make up fake stories about ourselves?”
“Why not?”
“Seems deceitful,” she jokes.
“Only if you try to pass them off as real.”
Kayla pauses, looking at me quizzically.
“What did I say?” I question her.
“Nothing.” She shakes it off as if she’s being silly. “I could use that beer now.”
“Coming up.” I use her knee as leverage to stand—and as an excuse to touch her—before I creep into the dark house and hear Reese sleeping soundly. I swipe two more bottles from the fridge and sneak back out like Ethan Hunt just stole some highly classified intel.
I sit down next to Kayla, making sure our bodies touch. I pop open her beer first then my own. To my satisfaction, she doesn’t try to shift away or break our physical connection.
I’m still in my scrubs, so the thin material makes it easy for her warmth to seep through. I can’t see much of her face anymore, as the sky has turned black, but the backcountry is dark enough for the moon to illuminate our silhouettes in a silvery-gray shadow. It’s late June, so the temperature will stay comfortable well into the night.
“So you going to tell me a story?” I ask Kayla.
“Mmm, I don’t think I like the idea of fake stories. I think I’ll keep it real instead. I’ll remember what you told me about Reese and try to cut him some more slack.”
“Just Reese?” I tip my beer back, letting the tangy taste wet my taste buds.
“Dev,” she says my name softly, almost fatigued. Maybe I’m weighing on her. Maybe I’m finally wearing her down.
“Kayla,” I respond firmly as I inch closer to her. “Why do you keep fighting it?”
“Because,” is her weak response.
“That’s not a good enough excuse.”
“I know.”
At least she owns up.
“Do you have any idea what I want to do to you? How good I can make you feel?” I rasp in her ear, wanting her irrepressibly. Wanting her to want me irrepressibly. A reel of dirty images runs through my mind. Mainly of me licking her pussy right here on this stoop.
“I have an idea.” She shivers.
“You have no fucking idea.” I go in for the kill, but the second our lips touch, Reese’s groggy voice calls out for her.
She jumps, her work instincts kicking in.
“Fucking Reese,” I mumble irately.
“Coming!” Kayla yells back. Before she bolts into the house, she places one finger to my lips. “Dream about it,” she whispers.
“I’m tired of dreaming.” I look up at her, grabbing my crotch, the pulse in my cock thumping.
Kayla wants me to dream about her?
I already fucking do. Every painful night.