Page 26 of Kyle

“Yep. One elementary school, and one junior high and high school combined. I’m telling you the truth when I tell you I knew every kid in town and my parents knew every one of their parents. As you can imagine there wasn’t much to do except cause trouble. And when young boys wanna find trouble, they find it. Nothing but wide-open spaces and clean air.” I smiled remembering all the fun we’d had. “Pine Bluffs borders Nebraska. So, when I was a kid my friends and I would ride our bikes over the border into Nebraska thinking we were hot shit being in a different state alone without our parents. This one time we figured we go south into Colorado.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten maybe eleven.”

“Holy crap.” Anaya smiled.

“Yeah, so the Colorado border was a little farther, almost thirteen miles. But we figured we could do it. We all got on our bikes and headed down old Country Road 164. Our only problem was after almost two hours of riding we hadn’t seen the Colorado sign and we started to get nervous. There was nothing around. I mean nothing. We were on an old dirt road and hadn’t seen another car or house for about thirty minutes.”

“What’d you guys do?”

“We kept riding until we finally spotted an old trailer and stopped to see if someone was home. Thankfully there was, and the old man informed us we’d crossed over into Colorado five miles back.”

“Oh, no. Seriously?”

“Yep.” I smiled at the memory. “There was no marker on the country road welcoming you to Colorado. And let’s just say, by the time my dad had driven to pick us up because there was no way we were peddling back, Wyoming wasn’t very welcoming either.”

“How much trouble did you get into?”

“Dad took my bike for a month. And back then, as a boy my bike was everything and a month was a lifetime. Now he laughs about it, but when it happened, he was pissed. We all would’ve gotten away with it if we could’ve ridden home but we were all too tired.”

“No one knew you were gone?”

“It was summertime and back then you were up out of the house with the sun or else mom or dad would find chores for you to do and you didn’t come home until sundown. Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, looks like it was frozen in time. No one thinks twice about letting their kids roam around or where they are. It’s a different world.”

“That must’ve been nice.” The sadness in her voice gutted me. “Do your parents still live there?”

“No. They sold the ranch and moved to Cheyenne. My dad took a retirement job, as he calls it, with the farm bureau and my mom’s always been a homemaker.”

Anaya yawned then smiled. “It sounds like the perfect place to grow up.”

“It was. Close your eyes and try to get some sleep.”

“Will you stay?”

Her innocent request had my heart pounding in my chest. More trust. And the more she gave the more I wanted to take. The more I wanted to prove to her she was safe with me. I wanted to give to her in return, but what I wanted to give were not things she’d welcome. And those things had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with me tearing down the walls she’d erected and showing her how good life could be. I didn’t think Anaya had a lot of happy in her life. She’d admitted to being closed off, and that was a damn shame because she was missing out. Knowledge that pissed me off. She had so much to offer the world, to offer a man, so she had no business hiding away allowing her life to pass her by.

“If you want me to.”

“Thanks,” she whispered, and her eyes drifted closed.

It didn’t take her long to find sleep, but I couldn’t turn my brain off. All I could think about was how different our childhoods were. I grew up with June and Ward Cleaver in a sleepy small town and she grew up in group homes with monsters lurking around every corner. Totally fucked.

Anaya Baker was an anomaly. A rare and special woman who’d managed to pull herself out of hell.

Chapter 7

My eyes came open with a start.

After I blinked the fuzziness away, Kyle came into focus.

I knew immediately why he was in bed with me. It had been a long time since I’d had a nightmare. Years of therapy had thankfully cured me of them, or time had. Either way, I no longer had night terrors. But last night my dream had been so real. Only I wasn’t back in the basement I’d been kept in, and I wasn’t chained to a wall or in a cage. I was in Amisha’s house forced to watch as men traipsed in and out. Even after I’d woken up, the girls’ cries rang in my ears.

I studied Kyle’s face for a moment, he looked different—relaxed. Less lethal, when his features were slack with sleep. There was no doubt about it, Kyle was good-looking. A hank of hair had fallen on his forehead, it was too dark to be called blond but too light to be called brown. I wasn’t sure what color to call it but I was sure I wanted to push the unruly piece back and see if it was as soft as it looked. But I wouldn’t, for a variety of reasons, the main being the gesture would be too forward and a little creepy. And besides, the sweep of hair almost made him look cute in a badass, former SEAL kind of way. Though he’d still yet to confirm he’d been special forces—but I knew. His movements and intensity belied his denials.

I smiled as my gaze traveled down to our hands. We were still on our sides facing one another; his hand was in the same place it had been last night when he’d offered it to me. We weren’t holding hands—not really—mine was just resting on top of his. The sight made me weirdly happy but at the same time sad knowing in a few days he’d be gone. It also made me wish I was the kind of woman who could go for what she wanted, who didn’t have hang-ups, who didn’t have a shipping container full of regrets. And not reaching out to touch Kyle was just another one of those regrets I’d stack on top of all the others. Another missed opportunity because I was too scared to ask for what I wanted.

Not that I thought Kyle would be receptive to me touching him, or that he’d close the distance between us so I could kiss him. A thought I couldn’t get out of my head, not since he’d had me against the wall, only to intensify when he’d laid beside me. His rejection would hurt, but moreover, I was totally out of line even thinking about kissing him.