?
“Do you want Chinese or subs for dinner?” Miranda asks as soon as I walk in the door.
I’m starved, so the answer is easy. “Chinese.”
“Shrimp lo mein, pot stickers, and hot and sour soup,” she says in confirmation, proof we are the best of friends because she knows my Chinese food preferences.
Still, I can’t afford all of that, so I tell her, “Just lo mein.”
Miranda ignores me. She’ll order everything I like and she’ll pay for it, claiming that she wanted to have some too.
“I’m going to go put on some LuLaRoe and take my bra off,” I tell her, which is unnecessary really since that’s my habit every evening. I get in my comfy clothes, we eat dinner together, and Miranda heads out to her bartending job.
My bedroom is small, but we were extremely fortunate to find a two-bedroom place in a fairly decent part of the city and, best of all, only a few blocks from where both of us worked. I get undressed quickly and change out of my work uniform, then I head into the bathroom to wash my face. I’m bent over the sink, rinsing my face off and fantasizing about pot stickers, when Miranda calls out to me.
“Jane,” she yells from what sounds like the living room, and I jump slightly because her voice startles me.
I grab the small hand towel hanging by the sink and press it briefly over my face to dry it. When I pull it away, I yell back, “What’s up?”
“Need you to come in here,” is all she says.
With a sigh, I hang the towel back up and walk out of the bathroom. The hallway that leads into the living room is short, with a small efficiency kitchen just beyond. I see Miranda standing there, looking at me with an odd look on her face, but I pause only briefly on her. For right beside her is someone I’m not prepared to see.
A ghost.
A figment.
A man who should not be standing here right now.
God, he looks good. Different, but really good. His hair is growing in, and it’s blonder than I had realized. He’s also started a beard, which he has neatly trimmed, and he seems to have filled out a bit or it could be that he’s just wearing tighter shirts.
He looks at me warily from across the room, and I can see him swallow hard before he says, “Hello, Jane.”
I just stand there… completely unable to do a damn thing. I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t decide what it is I want.
I never thought I’d see Kyle again in my life, and I went through a mourning process for him. And now I’m inundated with all these different emotions ranging from anger to relief to bitterness to joy to love to hate to…
“What are you doing here?” I manage to whisper as I cross my arms over my chest protectively, not because I’m braless, but to protect my heart from this man who is provoking my world into chaos again.
Kyle’s eyes cut to Miranda, who just stands there looking back at him as if he’s a strange phenomenon, but they slide right back to me, seemingly uncaring that he has an audience. His voice is low and rumbling when he says, “I came to see if I could make things right with you.”
My limbs go weak with confusion and my heart pounds erratically. Miranda’s head snaps my way to see what I’ll do, and I know if I look at her, I’ll buckle. She’s been a rock and an immense support to me over the last several weeks, but she’s also been clearly on Team Kyle, because as she kept reminding me, “There were extenuating circumstances that you have to consider, Janey.”
An irrational fear takes root in the middle of my chest as I remember the pain of him lying and leaving, and I know I can’t go through that again, despite the fact that Miranda seems to see this in a much clearer light.
So I tell the brutal truth in a soft whisper. “There’s nothing to make right. I understand why you couldn’t share things with me, and I’ve accepted that. So honestly, this was probably a wasted trip to come here to see me.”
Kyle winces. I wait a terrifyingly long moment to see if he’ll leave, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “There’s still a lot you need to know. That I want you to know if you’ll give me just a little bit of your time.”
CHAPTER 28
Kyle
There was a time months ago… just before we took Mayhem’s Mission down… that I thought the president, Zeke Powell, was on to me. He looked at me a little different and, with that sneaking suspicion I had, I braced myself for imminent death. If Zeke thought in any way that I could have possibly betrayed him and his club, he would have put a bullet right between my eyes.
So there was a period of weeks where I waited for it, trying to act like nothing was wrong and yet completely resolved that I was going to die. It was a wretched feeling mainly because at that point, I wasn’t in control of my own destiny.