Chapter Three
The rain decided to start up again about a mile from the shopping plaza where Marilyn was broken down. Fortunately, Kyle had his rain jacket in the cab of the truck. He spotted her Toyota Camry in the Winn Dixie parking lot and was able to park nosed in in front of her. He pulled his rain jacket on before getting out.
When she started to get out, he waved her back in and walked over to her door so she could talk to him with it cracked open a little but not getting soaked. Kyle leaned in so he partially sheltered her from rain splashing in.
In the back seat, Dillon waved at him. “Hey, Kyle!”
“Hey, champ. Did you take your mom’s car out street racing again and break it?”
The boy giggled. “Nooo. Not this time.”
“Thanks, Kyle,” Marilyn said. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. What’s it doing?”
She turned the key and it clicked, but didn’t try to turn over.
“Might just be the battery. Pop the hood for me.”
She did, and he walked around to the front and raised it. The battery terminals were gross, and the battery, once he finally wiped the sticker clear of gunk so he could read it, was over five years old.
He walked back to his truck, dug jumper cables out, and connected them. Then he got in and started his truck, let it run for about a minute, and indicated for her to try starting it.
It tried to crank, so he told her to hold on and wait. After another couple of minutes, it started.
He disconnected the battery cables, closed her hood and his, and tucked the jumper cables back into his truck before returning to her door.
“There’s a Suncoast Car Zone just down the block,” he said. “They’re open until nine, and they replace batteries for free when you buy one. I’ll follow you to make sure you get there okay.”
“Thanks again, Kyle.”
“You gonna come work on the coupe this week?” Dillon asked from the backseat.
“I’m gonna try, buddy. Had a bad day at work today, though. Several guys out sick. Might have guys out tomorrow, too.”
“Can I help you when you do?”
“Of course you can, as long as your homework’s done. Let’s let Mom drive, though, okay? I’ll catch up with you at the parts store.”
Ten minutes later, Kyle was carrying Dillon on his shoulders, keeping him distracted for Marilyn while the counter guy looked up what she’d need for her car. He could tell from the tense set of her shoulders when the guy quoted the price that there was a problem.
He walked over, arching an eyebrow at her.
She looked a little sick to her stomach, glanced up at Dillon, then back to him. “I don’t get paid until Friday.”
Kyle understood immediately. He pulled out his wallet and handed over a credit card. “Put it against my garage rent next month?”
Relief filled her expression. “Thank you!” She hugged him, and the feeling of being a white knight and lonely as fuck was almost enough to make him forget all the reasons why they’d broken up in the first place.
Why he’d had to break up with her.
Add in the fact that she now had a boyfriend. “You’re welcome.”
Twenty minutes later, she had a new battery installed and warrantied for three years. Once Dillon was safely belted in the backseat, she stepped onto the walkway in front of the store, where the awning protected them from the misting rain.
“Thanks again, Kyle. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”
“What’s Louis going to say?”
“Not telling him.”
“Eh, not sure that’s wise. You know Dillon will say something. And you do know Dillon hates the guy, right?”
She cringed. “I know.”
He bit back the urge to offer advice. “Okay. But I can’t lie for you.”
“I know. I’ll…handle it somehow.”
At least the asshole wasn’t living with her yet. “Fair enough.” He smiled and waved at Dillon through the windshield. “If you’re having trouble making the house payments, let me know, and I’ll talk to Dad and Mom for you. Maybe they’ll modify the terms.”
“No, it’s not that. I had to buy all new school uniforms for him last week. That took a bigger chunk of my discretionary budget than I thought it would. I’ll be okay again by next month.”
“Donald late with support again?”
“Of course he is. The attorney is dying to file a contempt motion against him. Again.”
“Let him.”
“I don’t know what good it’ll do. Besides, that’s more money to spend that I won’t get back. I’m close to thinking I should just file to terminate his parental rights. Bastard hasn’t bothered asking about him in six months. Hasn’t even called me to ask to see him. Only reason I knew he was alive and didn’t miss a payment because he died or something was I cruised by his job yesterday after work and saw his car there.”
“This isn’t good for Dillon.”
“I know.”
He finally met her gaze and bit the bullet. “I can be a friend to you and Dillon, but I can’t replace his father. You and I got pretty toxic there toward the end, and I didn’t like who I became. We can handle friendship, but we can’t handle anything else.”
“I know,” she softly said. “Me, either. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” He opened his arms for a hug. “I’ll be your friend. I always will. But we had to break up before we hit that point of no return. If nothing else, for Dillon’s sake.”
Compared to his six feet, her tiny, five-two petite frame felt fragile, breakable in his arms.
“I don’t deserve a friend as good as you,” she mumbled against his chest.
For a moment, he remembered the hurt that had quickly flashed through Tristan’s eyes a little while ago in the kitchen before he’d schooled his expression, the look his friend had worn when Kyle said he had to go.
The slight edge to Tristan’s voice when Marilyn’s ring tone had sounded.
I don’t deserve him.
Sooner or later, he was going to have to sort that out and get his head on straight.
“We’ll be okay as friends,” he finally said. “If nothing else, for Dillon’s sake.” Hell, he was still the emergency contact at Dillon’s school, with notarized permission to pick him up or, god forbid, get him medical treatment if needed.
He ended their hug and stepped back, one more smiling wave to Dillon as he watched Marilyn get in her car and head out.
Yeah, I need to deal with that sooner rather than later.
Except now he was even more exhausted than when he’d first arrived home after work.
Another reason things hadn’t worked out between him and Marilyn, because while Kyle was still attracted to women in general, Tristan had worked himself under Kyle’s skin and wasn’t going away. He knew his best friend had the hots for him, but Kyle had never actually been with a guy before, although he’d identified as bi and had more than fleeting attractions to various men before Tris.
Just not to the extent where he’d wanted to be with a particular guy, take things all the way with them. What he wanted with Tris was more.
Much more.
Make him mine.
He climbed into his truck and headed home. How would that work, anyway? They were both Doms. Another reason things hadn’t worked between him and Marilyn was that she was totally vanilla and he…wasn’t. He needed a certain level of kink in his relationship. Marilyn knew about him going into it that he was kinky, that he taught classes and co-hosted the rope group with Tris, that it was an integral part of who he was.
She’d always start fights with him, like clockwork, before he had to leave for a BDSM event, trying to make him feel guilty about doing something he was open and honest about doing.
Trying to change him when he refused to be shoved back into a vanilla box and had made one of their boundaries when they’d started dating that he would not stop going to events, e
ven if she didn’t want to go with him.
Yet another reason he’d been playing dumb, to a certain extent, and holding back broaching the topic with Tristan. He didn’t want to fuck up their friendship. He didn’t want to lose where he was living, either, if they tried and epically failed at being…whatever it was Tristan wanted them to be.
Neither of them were subby in the slightest.
Add to the fact that being with Tristan meant putting to bed for good his hope of one day maybe being a father. Dillon wasn’t his son, but he was the closest thing he had to one.
Very likely the closest he’d have to a son for the rest of his life.
Was it so horrible if he wanted to try to maintain an amicable friendship with Marilyn so he could stay in Dillon’s life? The kid didn’t really have a dad, and he didn’t have a son.
It wasn’t a hardship for either of them.
When he returned home a little before ten, the kitchen was clean and Tristan was closed off in his bedroom. He could hear the TV playing, but Kyle didn’t want to knock and interrupt him. He scrubbed his hands in his bathroom to get the last traces of grime off them and retired to his own bedroom.
When his parents had decided to sell the house Kyle had grown up in, they’d given him first choice. Except at the time, and with his crappy credit rating, he couldn’t afford it, even when they’d offered to finance it for him. And he didn’t want pity. That was their retirement, money they needed, and had earned.
He’d been doing decently until he’d met and married his ex-wife, Anne. Her parents had money, and he’d lost his ass in the divorce because she’d out-lawyered him.
Since then, he’d been struggling to regain his financial footing, until he started renting a room from Tris. That had given him enough breathing room to finally start getting ahead and even putting some money in savings every month.
The only catch about not getting the house had been it meant he’d lose the garage space he’d been using in the detached building in back, where he was restoring his 1948 Chevy coupe.
When Marilyn, who worked for friends of theirs, offered to buy the house and let Kyle rent the back garage and work on his car there, since Tristan’s HOA wouldn’t allow Kyle to do that, it seemed like a perfect deal.
Until Kyle made the mistake of letting Marilyn talk him into spending the night one evening after she’d made him dinner and plied him with wine.
And…that had led to nearly a year of escalation, until Tristan had solemnly asked Kyle one night what the honest fuck he thought he was doing to himself and Dillon—and Marilyn.
Which had led Kyle to step back, taking a long, hard, honest look at himself, his relationship with Marilyn, and the miles of text arguments with her, in addition to their countless hours of in-person fighting.
He’d finally Dommed up, took charge, and gently ended it before they ended up seriously hurting each other in a way that apologies couldn’t fix.
Or worse, hurt Dillon.
The past fourteen months since then had been gently bumpy in places, but Marilyn, seeing that Kyle was devoted to Dillon, had allowed them to find a friendship that had lasted longer than their original relationship, as well as longer than three more boyfriends for her.
At the rate Louis was going, he was soon going to be her next ex.
When the yawn hit Kyle, he realized how exhausted he was and that he’d have to be up at five in the morning to do it all over again.
Nothing was going to be discussed or settled tonight.
As he climbed into bed, he thought about the man just a wall away, who right now might as well be a world away until Kyle finally got his feelings and thoughts sorted out about him.
I cannot lose him as a friend. Whatever I do, I have to be careful.
Because there wasn’t an alternative. He would not lose Tris as a friend.
Chapter Four
Hurricane Kiley had done a number on the greater Houston area. An advancing front from the north had swept in sooner than expected and stalled the storm on top of the city, pulling in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. A repeat of devastation from a previous hurricane, but people had thought it wouldn’t happen again because of improvements to the flood and drainage systems around the city.
Worse, areas that hadn’t flooded in that previous storm had flooded this time, catching people off-guard.
She knew Brad was still in Dallas, because she was friends with him on Facebook and he’d posted that was where they were.
Rather, Jessica’s fake identity “Kathy” was friends with him, Brad thinking she was someone he’d gone to high school with. It was how Jessica had caught him cheating when he’d set certain posts to not be visible to her and Brenda and a couple of other of her friends, but he’d left them visible to others.
Including the women he’d started seeing behind Jessica’s back.
She’d been tipped off by screenshots from a mutual friend of her and Brenda that it was going on, and it’d set Jessica off to hunt down the truth. She knew of at least three women he’d probably cheated on her with, including the toothpick, but there were likely more.
The house she’d shared with her cheating rat-bastard of an ex-boyfriend was normally less than a twenty-minute drive from Brenda’s.
Between the steady rain, flooding, nonfunctioning traffic lights, and storm debris, it took her nearly an hour to wind her way around from a different direction. There were still a few inches of standing water in the streets, but nothing her Ford truck couldn’t make it through.
No cars sat parked in front of Brad’s house, and the water line on the front door and exterior walls, like other houses near it, sat about three feet up.
The next door neighbor was home, a growing pile of debris, ruined belongings, and carpet and drywall growing in his formerly manicured front yard. She got out and slogged up to his open front door, the rain softly pattering against the hood of her rain slicker.
“Hey, Paul.”
He was ripping out more drywall from his living room walls. “Jess!” He stood and walked over to hug her. “How are you?”
“About the same as you are, I suppose. Except I was in a mobile home. I spent the storm at a friend’s house. It’s dry, and I’d moved a lot of stuff there ahead of the storm.”
“Lucky you.”
“Kim and the kids okay?”
“At her mom’s in San Antonio.” His smile faded. “Told her to go ahead and enroll them in school there. Their school was completely flooded, and not like this place is habitable. Plus her job’s gone, at least for now. I’m staying in a camper in my friend’s driveway right now.”
“Sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s all insured.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” She hated to be so calculating, but knew this was her only chance. “Don’t suppose you still have a key?”
He grinned. “Sure do.” He pulled a keyring from his pocket and led her next door to let her in. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? Water got up pretty high.”
She knew Paul wasn’t fond of her ex, but her ex didn’t know that. When she’d left, Paul had offered to help her haul everything out she wanted to take.
“Actually, yes. Just a couple of things. And they should be safe, if they’re still there.”
The woman Brad had cheated on her with didn’t work and was usually home all day, not offering Jess an opportunity to sneak in and get what she wanted and get out. This was her literal last chance.
It was a disaster inside. The living room furniture had shifted, a bookshelf lying over in the muck. It already smelled gross inside, and mold was creeping up the walls. In the kitchen, the refrigerator lay on its side, doors open. The living room carpet squished under their feet.
“Hope it was up high,” he said.
“The attic. I had six tubs of Christmas ornaments and stuff that belonged to my grandparents. That’s all I need.”
Despite her father being a shit, his parents had been sweet and loving to her. It??
?d devastated her when they’d died in a car wreck when she was eleven, but the tubs held all the mementos she had from them.
She led the way to the hall and he helped her pull down the trapdoor to the access stairs.
She breathed a sigh of relief to find the plastic tubs still there and undamaged, just covered in dust.
He helped her carry them out to her truck. “That’s all you want? Really?”
“It’s kind of karma that his shit’s all ruined now. When I left, I made sure I got everything else. I forgot about these and knew he’d never let me get them if I told him I wanted them. I was just waiting for a chance to get in to get them. Guess this was it.”
“Other than that, you doing okay?”
“Yeah. Kind of in limbo now.” She stared at the house she’d shared with the cheating bastard for much of the five years they were together. A rental, but she knew he didn’t have insurance. It was something she’d always begged him to get but he’d put his foot down about it, calling it a waste of money.
And since he’d declared himself her Master, it was supposed to be his call.
So he said.
Jess supposed she hadn’t been a very good slave. She’d picked up an insurance policy without his knowing about it, at Brenda’s insistence, and had transferred it to her new place when she’d left him.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He stared around the neighborhood. Some of the houses also had growing piles of debris out front.
Some were eerily empty and silent.
“Oh, and now I have a dog,” she said.
He laughed. “Good for you. When’d you get him?”
“About two hours ago.” She told him the story, the man’s jaw gaping.
“They left the poor thing there?” He and his wife had three small mutts they loved every bit as much as their two-legged kids, and Jessica had spent countless hours in the backyard talking with the couple and playing with their sweet dogs.
Another reason Paul preferred her to Brad.
“Yep.”
“Son of a bitch. Assholes.”
“I know, right? I’d like to think that maybe they weren’t home when the flooding hit and couldn’t get back in, except as malnourished as he is, that didn’t happen in a day or two. So I have to assume they were just assholes.”