White Lies (Blood Brothers MC Book 1) (9 page)

“Who’s there?” Kane asked as he neared the car.

The motor stopped whirring, and he waited. Narrowing his eyes, he saw two heads under the windshield, small and slight. As the passenger’s door opened, a pretty lady started to step into view, and Kane gripped his knife tighter. This had to be a trap. If he was tempted, if he stepped closer, a horde would burst on the scene and hustle him into a van. Kane could feel the blows raining down over his body, and he tensed at the thought of darkness. He’d have enough of that on the inside.

“I said who’s—?”

Lurching forward, Kane was ready to slice into anyone and anything when a beam of moonlight hit the woman.

“Wait! Whoa!”

Kane reeled back as he saw the truth of his supposed attacker. A pregnant lady? Like, really pregnant? Who the hell would send her on what might be a suicide mission?

“You want to cool it with that?” the woman demanded.

Falling back, Kane concealed his knife and threw up his hands.

“What the hell do you want?” Kane asked.

The woman and her expanded belly stepped forward. She paused just before him and sent a quick glance back to her car. Kane followed her eyes and knew that someone else was there. This could be a trick, something meant to make him complacent until the real danger reared its head.

“What is—?”

The woman cut him off with a swift slap to his jaw, and Kane reached for his stinging face.

“What was that?”

“That’s for believing everything that you’re told,” the woman said. “What kind of fool are you?”

Was she the old lady of the ruddy, red-headed prisoner from the yard, the one that laid into him for showing off his new tattoo and swearing that no man would ever be so lucky? The guy had pounced. Kane was barely able to block his blows as he tore his shirt by the sleeves and revealed the name of
his
woman, one that could never be questioned. Now, even as Kane had heard the rumor that the other man’s girl had run off with a neighbor at the first chance, Kane was trapped in the memory.

“You Brenda?” Kane asked.

The woman cocked her head to one side and then the other, her eyes becoming steel slits before she spoke.

“Who the fuck is Brenda?” the woman demanded.

Backing away from woman’s cold glare, Kane knew that he had got something wrong.

Not Brenda. Someone else. Noel might still have…

“What about Angeline?”

Kane’s heart stopped around her question. Around the name.

“What are you…? What the hell are you talking about?”

The pregnant lady started to lay into him with every insult she could call to mind. But Kane tuned her out. His eyes moved back to the car, and he focused on the figure in the driver’s seat.

No. No it couldn’t be.

“And you have
no
idea what she’s been through!”

The pregnant lady kept screaming, but Kane pulled away and forgot her.

Inching towards the car, he stopped when he heard the click of a door opening. Lean limbs hit the grass, and there she was, not looking a day older. But she was thinner, far more tired than he had remembered, and Kane stepped closer to be sure.

“You?” he asked.

She didn’t speak, barely seemed to breathe as she lingered in his eyes. How long he had waited to be near her again, and now that she was close enough to touch, Kane started to reach for her face. Angeline. It was Angeline. His palm drifted to her skin, and he brought her cheek against her flesh. When they touched, a buzz passed between them. Starting away from fire under his fingers, Angeline quickly went for his hands.

“Kane,” she whispered. “I’m really seeing you.”

A small smile formed across her lips as she neared him. She looked good. Better than good. This was what he should have seen at his first moment of freedom. Angeline. Waiting, here.

“Kane?”

Her palm was everything that he remembered. Soft. Warm. She curled her finger around his wrist. For a moment, he was lost in her eyes. But just as quickly as the world was only Angeline, Noel’s knowing smirk flashed across his mind.

“Kane?” she asked again.

She stumbled as he pushed her back. The pregnant lady rushed to her side, steadied her stance. She shot Kane a sharp, cruel glance as she shook her head. Angeline’s face also twisted, and Kane started to move closer, to say something when he was reminded that her innocent gaze was the ultimate deception.

“What do you want, Angeline?” he asked.

Saying her full name felt strange, wrong on his tongue. To him, she was always
Angel
. But an angel was pure and never lost faith. Angeline lay with Noel when her free nights seemed too long while he was the one languishing behind bars and stone walls.

“Kane,” she said, her voice hoarse and strangled. “It’s me.”

What did she think? That his confinement had dulled his senses?

“I know,” he scoffed. “So what’s you deal? Come by to see how I came out at the other end of your sentence?”

Her friend, whoever she was, lunged forward, but Angeline held her back as she spoke.

“I came to see you,” she said. “Just you.”

Kane wanted to engage in their familiar game, to go back and forth until he came up with the win. And he almost let her. If he was being honest, he had missed her. And now, she was close enough to touch.

But he wouldn’t take half of her, just a part of her. And now he knew what she really was.

“Won’t work anymore,” he said. “I’m not buying it.”

With her eyes wide, Angeline left her friend’s side. Kane tried to shift from her hands, but Angeline caught his arms and struggled to keep him in her grasp.

“Get the hell off—”

“Kane!” she screamed. “Just listen to me. I know what you think happened. But you have to—”

“I said get off!”

Shoving her away, Angeline stumbled back and fell to the ground. Her friend went to her side, and Kane hissed.

“You were the only thing that kept me alive in that place,” he started. “I’d dream of you, and I’d get through the next day. No one really bought it. Because I never had a pretty visitor.”

“Because you told me to stay away!” Angeline pleaded. “I… I wanted to come to you every day. I—”

“Until you just couldn’t wait,” he shot back. “You…”

The sight of her starting to cower, fighting against it, moved him. But how could he let her off that easy? How could he ever forget?

“Guess you were getting in the clubhouse any way you could,” Kane said. “Nice to know that I meant so much to you.”

“No,” she said as she crawled towards him, wrapping her arms around his legs. “You don’t understand…”

This had to be a trick, another game that she was playing. Part of him wanted to forget and take her in his arms. Maybe if it had been anyone else, he could have dropped it, found a way for them to start over. But Noel on top of the fact that she had used him to stay free of the joint? Maybe she was only in a new kind of trouble and thought him enough fool to do it all over again.

He would not give in.

“I understand,” he echoed as he stepped away from her reach. “You… you played me. And I don’t believe in you anymore,” he said. “Maybe I never did in the first place.”

Stepping away, he turned back to the house, knowing that Jeremy would tell him that he had done the right thing by pushing her away. Now he was a free man.

But would he ever truly be free?

“Wait! Just let me—”

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Angeline. She seemed determined to tell him something that he had to hear. Kane didn’t want another lie, but she caught hold of him. Her hands were firm around his arms, and she steadied her rapid breath as she met his eyes.

“You’re not even going to give me a chance?” she asked.

“No. Not again.”

“It’s not like it sounded!” she implored. “I never stopped thinking about you. Loving you. I—”

He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her closer, rage in his eyes.

“So you fuck my best friend?” Kane challenged. “That’s love?”

“I… I…”

Angeline eyes fluttered, and she started to fall. Forgetting his fury, thinking only with his heart, Kane moved to catch her as she fell into a faint.

A cool sensation bathed her brow as Angeline regained consciousness. She had no idea where she was and barely remembered how she had arrived in the first place. She heard muffled voices coming from another room and thought that she recognized the sound of Terri in the throng. But the sound grew fainter as she focused on the cold and glanced towards a bedside table. It held a simple lamp and a digital alarm clock endlessly flashing 12:00am: the break of a new day to infinity. Was this dawn? Or was this midnight, the end of everything?

“So you’re up.”

Angeline’s eyes came into focus, and she realized that a damp cloth was swabbing her sweat away.

Then she saw Kane.

He hovered over her, expressionless, but his hand still worked its way down her face. Angeline’s first instinct was to meet his hand, but then she was slammed back to the space of his rage. Noel had gotten to him, and she feared that he would never believe any other truth that she might speak.

His Blood Brother had that power over him.

“You okay?” he asked.

Somehow she was. She was with him again, and she stretched forward to touch him when a buzz hit her brain.

“I…”

Unable to finish her thought, Angeline sank back to the pillow, and everything came back. Noel’s half-truth, her desperate need to tell him the whole story.

And Kane’s rejection.

“Kane, I have to tell you…”

Her speech was slurred as she struggled to sit up.

“Take it easy,” Kane said. “You almost fell hard.”

It was hazy. Angeline remembered him, miserable, when she tried to confront him with the way in which everything had really gone down. Kane wasn’t having it, and she recalled reaching for something that she might have already lost.

But…

“Guess you caught me,” Angeline said. Kane’s face came into focus. His familiar stubble lingered below his dark eyes, and she tried to touch his face. Remembering how he had flinched at the slightest threat of her touch, she drew back and expected him to bolt with cold words. Something along the lines of
she’s fine. Get her out of my sight.

That would be for Terri, and Angeline took some comfort in the fact that her friend was still nearby.

“I’m not a total jerk,” Kane said.

He obviously thought that
she
was, but she moved past it.

Taking in his face by the pale light of the lone lamp, she saw the subtle ways in which he had changed. Little lines here and there, circles that were probably ever-present under his eyes now. Five years never seemed that long, but when she saw his face, Angeline choked on a sob at the thought of how much time they had lost.