Page 44 of Ghost

“I’m so glad I could do it.” She gave me a quick squeeze. “You better get ready. You’re gonna be turning heads with this new do.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“It’s true.” She stepped back and gave me a warm smile. “You’re a beautiful girl, and I can assure you that the boys have taken notice. You better get ready, but it won’t be long before one of them will stake their claim.”

I must’ve given her a look, because her eyes widened, and a big smile crossed her face. “Unless one of them already has.”

“What?”

“I thought I might’ve interrupted a moment between you and Ghost earlier,”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “Not with the baggage I’m toting.”

Before she could press, I started picking up some of the empty bottles, quickly tossing them in the trash. “Oh, honey. You don’t have to do that. I’ll get it.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No, no, I’ll do it. I have lots of cleaning to do, and while I’m at it, I might rearrange a few things in here.” She glanced around, then rolled her eyes. “It’s the only way I’ll survive being back here.”

“I’m really sorry that you had to leave your sister’s. I’m even more sorry about your house. I can only imagine how hard all this must be on you.”

“Yeah, but I’m still here, and I’m still breathing. That’s gotta count for something.”

“It’s a lot, actually.”

“Yeah, I know it is.” Kay sat down on the edge of her bed with a defeated sigh. “I know I don’t always sound like it... actually, I rarely sound like it, but I really do appreciate what Memphis and the boys have done for me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them.”

“I know you do. They do, too.”

“I don’t know. I don’t make it very easy on them, but it’s just so hard.” She brought her hand up and covered her eyes, sighing again—even more dramatically than the last. “Preacher has become the bane of my existence. It’s like the man is trying to drive me crazy.”

“He’s Memphis’s father, right?”

“He is.”

“So, there’s history there with you two?”

“Oh, there was a time when I loved that man more than life.” A longing look filled her eyes as she continued, “I met him while I was on a work convention. It was one of those deals where you spend the day looking at all the new hair products. It was a total bore, so the girls and I decided to go out on the town. We stopped at a bar closest to the hotel, and that’s where we met.”

She leaned her head back and smiled. “Oh, girl! He was the best-looking thing! He was wearing that black leather jacket, and his hair was dark with this sexy little curl at the back. It waslike he’d stepped right out of some bad-boy magazine, and I was all about it. It just took one drink and that sexy smile, and I was swept off my feet.”

“Sounds like you two had quite the romance.”

“Oh, we definitely did. It was one of the best years of my life. I really thought we’d be together forever, and then I got pregnant, and everything changed.”

“How so?”

“We realized that we wanted different things, and when it came down to it, the club and the life he had here meant more to him than the life he had with me and our son. So, he stayed here in Little Rock, and Weston and I moved back to Memphis.”

Her response took me by surprise. I’d just assumed that Memphis had grown up here with the brothers, especially since he and Preacher were so close. It also seemed strange that Preacher would’ve chosen to stay here instead of being with his family. I was trying to piece it all together when Kay said, “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t all on him. If anything, it was more on me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew how he loved the club and his brothers, and they’d just named him president. It was unfair to ask him to walk away from the thing he loved most, especially when I’d known all along how committed he was to them.” Anguish marked her face as she said, “I just thought he might love me more.”

“That must’ve been tough.”

“It was, and I made everything so much worse by becoming angry and bitter. I used Weston against him, and...” She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “It was awful. I was awful! I hurt him, and I hurt myself. And worst of all, I hurt Wes.”

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