Page 19 of Keys

“Go grab yours.” Hell, there was a part of me that wished I had an extra. Watching her walk toward her own ride filled me with anxiety that she wouldn’t come back. Jesus, I was straight fucked in the head when it came to her. My worries were quickly squelched as she made her way back to me while popping her own full-face helmet over her head. “Anything you prefer or don’t like to eat?”

“I’m not picky, but I’ve been wanting to go check out The Wing House, if you’re game.” Her voice was muffled a bit by the helmet on her head, but I heard her clear enough.

“Wings? Hell yeah, I’m game. Hop on and let’s go.” Keys tossed a leg over and slid on the seat behind me. Her body pulled up close enough to my own that I could feel breasts pressing into my back. That kind of sucked, because all I could think about was the time that she rode me, and her tits were bouncing all over the place. It was a fucking pain to ride with a hardon, but it looked like that was what I would end up doing if I couldn’t get my imagination and memories under control. Keys giggled as if she knew exactly what the holdup was.

“Are we going for lunch or waiting around on the bike until dinner?”

“Ha!” I smacked her thigh as I laughed along with her. The fact that she was teasing me about anything made me feel all gushy inside. Yeah, gushy. Fuck it, I was man enough to admit that we felt all warm and fuzzy about shit sometimes too. I finally managed to get us moving and on the road. The ride to The Wing House was going to be a short one, but with the sun shining the way it was, it would still be enjoyable.

One thing I hated, and had to seriously adjust to after moving to Sierra High, Georgia, was the fact that it rained a fuck of a lot. It made me treasure the beautiful days far more than I ever had before though, especially when it came to just getting out there on the road and enjoying a little motorcycle therapy.

There were only two trucks in the parking lot when we pulled in, which meant we would get our pick of seating. Granted, most of it was outdoor seating anyway, but I had hoped to keep us tucked away in a little corner to ourselves where we might go unrecognized. The Wing House was located across the street from Young Harris College. That meant that anyone passing by in that 35 mile per hour zone could potentially see us and decide to pop in and ruin my alone time with Keys. There was no way in hell I wanted that to happen after she miraculously agreed to come out and share a meal with me.

After we ordered and found a seat, she glanced around and laughed. “I’d ask why you decided to hide us way back here in the corner, but I think I know.”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “I wanted you all to myself for a while, so sue me.”

I felt her answering smile somewhere deep in my soul. There was no reason for me to feel the way I did about Keys. She had thwarted my efforts to date her at every turn, yet there was something that compelled me to keep trying.

Keys was gorgeous, but pretty women were plentiful. It wasn’t that. There was an inner strength about her that made the infuriating woman glow. It also turned her into a puzzle I wanted to solve. There was a deep-seated need in me to know why she had turned out this way, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I also hoped I could fix whatever had been broken in her. She was too good a person to live a lonely life because of something other people had done.

“You suddenly have an angry face. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“You probably don’t want to know.”

“I asked.” She reminded me while tilting her head to the side studying me for a moment. “Do you have regrets now that I agreed to go somewhere with you?”

“What? No! Why the hell would you think that?”

“Don’t know why else you’d suddenly look ready to murder someone.”

I sighed. “I was wondering who had hurt you so much that you never wanted to take a chance on another person or on your own happiness. Honestly, I was just thinking that if I ever met that person, they would regret their ability to breathe.”

For a moment, Keys sat there quietly as she stared at me. Then, she tipped her head down and eyed her sweet tea as if it held answers within those murky brown depths. “My father strung my mom along for most of my life, and obviously a while before I came along.” I couldn’t believe she was finally telling me something about her past. “After she had me, he married someone else.”

“Damn, that’s cold. He just decided the family life wasn’t for him?”

“No. I mean, obviously our family life wasn’t for him, but the problem was, he never left my mother. He married another woman to help further his career. They had children together. Children that he took care of, where he did not do the same for me. My mom tried to move on a few times and every time he caught wind of her with someone else, he would step in and ruin it. Then she would take him back, because it looked like he was the only man who constantly wanted her.

“She was blind to the fact that he was disgusted to have had a daughter with her. If anyone found out about me, everything he had worked so hard for would be ruined. He brainwashed my mom into believing that he loved her and would leave his wife for her eventually, when she was no longer useful to his career.”

Sarah laughed before taking a sip of her tea. “The thing is, she never once considered what that would do to his other family, his other children who actually knew him as a father. She didn’t care, because in her eyes, his wife had always been the other woman. As true as that was, considering the timeline, he had still married that lady and not my mom. She just couldn’t see that.

“I swore that I would never be with someone like him, that I would never end up like her. The more I watch the people around me fall in and out of love, the more I understand that love is nothing more than a mindfuck. No matter how you swing it, it’s all illusion and lies. So, why would anyone want to put themselves out there for that? I don’t. I’m sorry if that’s what you’re looking for here, but I just don’t think I’m capable of that.”

I was fucking speechless. “Damn, and I thought the bullshit my parents are always going through fucked me up.”

That time her laughter felt genuine, and I managed to join in. “Seriously, what your dad did was unacceptable. Your mom, well, I don’t know what to say about that. You must know that you aren’t a weak person though. Your mom was weak, and your dad was a manipulator.”

“I know that, but where does it leave me? Somewhere in the middle?”

“Nah. You’re the person who saw their shit for what it was, learned from it, and became a far better person than either of them as a result.” Again, she just stared at me as if she couldn’t believe what I was saying.

“I know you’re a good man, Quickshot,” she said. I waited because it seemed as though there would be a ‘but’ in her statement somewhere. She took a beat before trying to explain herself once more. “I know that you're a good man, and I’ve been trying to talk myself out of being so damn attracted to you. I worry about getting so lost in something – someone - that I can no longer find myself.”

“I’d never allow that to happen,” I promised.

She nodded her head. “What if I hold you to that and say let’s try this?”

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