Page 41 of DOG Part 2
4
Kim
“Damn,” I muttered to myself, trying one of the silver keys for the second time. There were nearly a dozen of them on the keychain, and I only had use for three of them. That was my problem. I had a tendency to be sentimental, so I had hung on to several old, unusable keys over the years. That resulted in not being able to immediately get into my goddamned apartment most of the time.
I stopped my frantic clawing at the door and took in a long breath. It was stress. That’s why I was borderline freaking out. That’s why my hands were shaking almost uncontrollably.
Actually, it wasn’t stress. It was grief. It was time to face the music. I was grieving, and I shouldn’t have gone to class that evening.
Too bad I had.
Honestly, what else could I have done? It wasn’t as if there was any point for me to stay at home alone. I’d probably have had a meltdown. There was no place to go or people to grieve with either. My mother was an only child who mostly kept to herself, her parents were dead, and I was her only child too. The only living relative I had now was him. Jake Banner. Lawbreaker, biker gang member, roughneck, badass and mostly absentee father. There was no way I was going to see him to share in the pain of losing Mom. I hadn’t been to his place in years, and I had no intention of stepping foot there ever again.
I hadn’t told anyone at college about the call I’d gotten that morning either. I hadn’t told anyone that my mother, the person I’d been closest to in the whole wide world, was now dead.
Probably murdered.
Instead, I’d gone about my day like it was any other, picking up my books and going to Pharmacology and Pathophysiology classes, and even made it through three hours of studying at the medical library afterward, as if losing her was no big deal.
Of course it was. I was just numb, and now, the emotion was coming to a head. In fact I wouldn’t have been pressing my forehead against the front door of my ground floor apartment right now, crying in the dark because I couldn’t find the right key, if I hadn’t just been through the worst day of my life.
“Ugh!” I yelled, pounding my fist against the peeling wood. The tears were red hot fire, blinding me as it seeped out of my closed eyelids and trailed down my cheeks.
I fumbled in my pocket for my phone, thinking about calling my friend Bethany and asking her to come over. She was my best friend, but I really didn’t want her to see me break down. I couldn’t even imagine keeping it together long enough to tell her to come over on the phone without sobbing my eyes out. Bethany had seen me at some low moments, including breakups, disappointments over campus job losses and the odd bad test grade. This personal catastrophe felt too heavy and abysmal. I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone else.
I gave up reaching for the phone and just let the tears flow down my chin, against my neck and either to the floor or the top my shoes, depending on how powerful each sob came. The world had been flipped upside down in one day and I was suffocating under the weight of it. With each breath I took, it became harder to think.
A few minutes later, the roar of motorcycles interrupted the pity party.
I didn’t even bother wiping my face. Every ounce of energy allotted for that day had already been consumed on campus while I pretended that things were fine. The charade had gotten old. Whoever was riding up could see me just as I was.
My heart did a little jump in my chest and a lump formed in my throat when I turned around.
Bikers.
Badass bikers.
Dangerous-looking badass biker.
Fuck me.
A bunch of hardened bikers were riding up my quiet, suburban, off-campus cul-de-sac. Although the authorities ruled the collision Mom was in as an accident, my father insisted she was murdered by a rival gang, and that they could be coming for me next. If it was that gang riding up my street, what was I supposed to do? I had no means to fight them off or escape, and dammit I couldn’t find the right freaking key to the front door of my street-level apartment.
I froze when they slowed down and parked in the free space behind my Ford sedan, but a wave of relief went through me when I saw their badges, clear even in the dim street light.
Rugged Angels.
Dad’s motorcycle club.
Their arrival wasn’t totally welcome, of course, but at least they didn’t show up here with intent to kill. There were five of them, and the one who had parked closest to the walkway climbed off his Harley while the others waited on their rides. This guy approaching me was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair that was buzzed short. Stubble dotted his jaw, and his face was somber, but even in my distressed state, my hormones reacted.
“Kim?” he asked, pronouncing my name in a gravelly tone that had me near fixated on his lips.
I cleared my throat, rubbed the tears off my face with the back of one hand, and sniffed. “Who’s asking?”
God, that sounded pathetic. I couldn’t even begin to try and act tough.
“Kane Angelo. I’m President of the club now.”
