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I try not to think about Berkley, my first choice submission, or the letter that could come any day in the mail now to shatter my dreams.
But of course all of this cycles through my mind at about a million miles a minute, my overactive imagination not doing me any favors.
As the sun shines brightly onto the pages of my book, I remember how Dad raged this morning, stomping around the house with cries of the Chariots and of Kane, his arch-nemesis, something I only believed existed in movies before I saw how badly Dad hates Kane.
Mom says they used to be friends, but that’s so incredibly difficult to believe when Dad’s using Kane’s name as a verbal punching bag.
I might only be eighteen, but Dad’s rants age me sometimes, make me feel like I’m a world-weary pensioner ready to turn down my hearing aid.
Kane has morphed into a mythical figure in our house, a grizzled ancient bear with countless kills and legends to his name, countless reasons to revile him, countless excuses to wish he was dead.
I’ve never grasped all the ins-and-outs, but when the six foot seven shadow passes across the pages of my book and I look up to see Kane Knight himself standing there, something twists painfully in my belly.
He was my naughty crush, the man I never should’ve crushed on, the giant striding around town with his salt and pepper hair and confident smirk, his Chariots jacket fitting like a second leather skin and barely containing his bulging arms.
He was the man I definitely should not have been attracted to, and yet I couldn’t help it, my shy high school mind spiraling out of control every time I saw him speeding through town on his bike.
I look up at him, his clean shaved jaw, his silver hair slightly wet with beads of sweat, slicked to the side. His eyes are a pale, ghostly, captivating blue and pierce me harshly, doing funny things to my insides, flips and somersaults that make me ache.
Why is he here? What does he want with me?
“Uh, hello,” I mutter, when he just stares down at me, his hands crossed in front of him.
He wears no tattoos, an anomaly in the world of bikers, but this somehow shrouds him in even more intensity and toughness, as though tattoos are for other men, more regular men.
And there’s nothing regular about Kane Knight.
Is this about Dad? Does he want to use me to get to Dad?
“Can I … help you?”
My words come out shaky and lacking the confidence I wish I could imbue them with. I feel my grip slackening on my textbook as his fire-blues sear into me, as vicious as a bunsen flame.
“I was just watching you from the bar,” he smirks. “And I was wondering what you were reading.”
Coming from anybody else, that sentence would be imbued with the sort of freaky weirdness that would make me a run a mile, a stalker alert blaring in my mind.
But Kane says it with the casual confidence of an alpha lion who’s used to being in charge.
“It’s just a book on poetry,” I mutter. “On Shakespeare’s sonnets, actually. I, uh, I want to be an English literature professor. I’m hoping to study at Berkeley in the fall. I want to …”
I trail off, my words running out, no clue why I’ve sputtered out so much of my inner life to begin with.
“I’m Kane,” he says, sitting next to me with the scent of leather and subtle woodsy cologne.
A beat passes and I realize I’m supposed to give my name, even though he must know it … surely?
Or, is it possible he doesn’t actually know who I am, whose daughter I am?
“I’m Kelly,” I say, turning to him, feeling a flame of shyness burn through me when I see the look in his eyes.
For a brief flicker of a moment, the idea it’s lust in his fjord-blues strikes me with the force of a lightning bolt, that Kane Knight wants me in that way, a way I’ve never had much experience in, being the Plain Jane in school, the not-ugly-not-appealing girl, the shadow of a girl who just drifted through the hallways like I wasn’t even there.
I shake the thought away, knowing it can’t be true, knowing that a man as muscular and handsome and rich and powerful as Kane Knight must have a dozen women a week throwing themselves at his feet.
And even if none of that was true, he’s my dad’s worst enemy, a man I shouldn’t even be thinking of, let alone sitting next to.
“So, what about it?” he asks.
“What about what?” I counter.
“These sonnets,” he says. “What’d you think about them?”
A giggle escapes me before I can stop it.
“Um, I’m not really sure it’d be your thing.”
His lips twitch into a smirk, but settle almost immediately. “Oh?” he says. “And why’s that? Because I’m just a savage biker without a brain in his head?”
