Yield (2 page)

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Kate - 2002

“This place is a dump,” a man said, the trailer door squeaking open. The floor vibrated beneath a heavy foot that thumped down, as if he was testing it to not fall apart. “Jesus, she lived like this?”

“Who is really surprised?” a second man asked, his voice saying that they weren’t really surprised.

“But still…fuck. Stinks like death in here.” Something was kicked. “Dude, no one’s here. You heard the cop. She’s dead. Whatever is going on, it ain’t her.”

The floor vibrated as someone walked through the trailer. A cupboard door opened and shut, then the fridge.
 

“Jace, dude, there’s nothing here. Can we go now? Pretty sure you can get hepatitis just breathing in here.”

The door made another shrieking noise as it opened and more than one person thumped down the plywood stairs. There was a curse and the sound of wood breaking followed by laughter.

Mouth and nose tucked into the bend of her elbow to muffle breathing sounds, Kate stayed in her hiding place. Fast—so fast—her heart was pounding that she was surprised no one heard it vibrating against the floor. She wasn’t going to move until silence followed after the sound of a car leaving.
 

When it had pulled up, Kate had immediately panicked and hid. It was instinct. The floor groaned in complaint as a foot stepped over the stained and splitting linoleum that stretched throughout the trailer. Her breath caught because she thought they had all left. One remained.
 

Pressing her face into her arm, she tried to ignore the familiar darkness wrapped around her, the moldy smell of the space. She stared at the seam of the wood that hid her from the world. It wasn’t the best hiding place because if she was caught here, then there was nowhere to go.

For years she had hid here. The first time had been because Mom had shoved her in here to hide her when she had brought some guy home. Kate had been too small to understand but from this cabinet under the bench she slept on; she had heard all kinds of things, from sex, to someone smacking Mom around, to people drinking, to drugs being used and sold. Even when the cops had come to take Mom away, Kate had hidden here. She slept here now, afraid that someone would come into the trailer at night to steal something.

At her feet she had a shrinking pile of food, hoarded from those who came hunting for valuables. As if they had valuables.
 

She didn’t want to be found.

Kate was so tired of being lost.

There was a thump above her as he sat on the bench. “Jesus, Beli,” he muttered. Even she could hear the shock in his voice, as if he was stunned anyone would live like this. He didn’t know. No one knew.

Rubbing her fingers over her wrist, Kate played with the dirty frayed ribbon wrapped around it, as his foot scuffed on the floor. Should she tell him she was here? Wasn’t that the point? As soon as she heard the name Jace, she knew who was here. Mom talked about him
all
the time. Usually when she was drunk or high or both. About when she had been young and beautiful. Before Kate. Back when everyone had loved Belinda. But Kate had come along and ruined everything.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here!

As much as she wanted to shout the words, she kept them to herself as she listened to him slide his foot back and forth inches from her nose. She worried one of the ribbon knots back and forth.

He pounded the table hard enough to make Kate jump before he stood. His heavy steps seemed to match the beats of her heart. The door groaned in complaint as it was opened. He was leaving.

She had done nothing.
 

Holding her breath, Kate pushed on the door and slid out of the hiding place. She wanted to see him. This magical being Mom had talked about when she was lost in memories of when her life had been better.

Before Kate.

Kneeling on the bench he had been sitting on, she edged the faded curtain aside. There were photos of him with Mom. They were also kept in her hiding place because they were of Mom smiling. Kate didn’t remember ever seeing her smile. Then again she didn’t remember smiling herself. Not a lot of smiles could be found in this trailer that smelled of death.
 

He walked by the window, his head lowered so she didn’t get to see his face. She knew what it looked like though. Mom called him beautiful and sexy. Kate didn’t know about sexy, but he was beautiful. Like an angel with his brown hair, though it was a lot shorter now than it had been before Kate. He also had pretty green eyes.

According to Mom, he had the sexiest singing voice that made girls of all ages drop their panties.

She didn’t know about that but once she heard him on the radio and she had cried, because he made her wish her life was different: that she didn’t live in a crappy trailer, that Mom wasn’t a strung-out addict who hated her daughter, and that everything was going to be okay.

Unfortunately she
did
live in a crappy trailer and Mom
had
been a strung-out addict who hated Kate and nothing was
ever
going to be okay.

Kate rubbed her finger on the dingy glass as she watched him walk to a shiny car where the other guys waited for him.
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

But just like Mom, he didn’t look back.

Just like Mom, he didn’t want Kate.

Chapter 2

Arms folded on the railing, Kate watched a boat make its way through inky black waters, the running lights sparkling in the night. It looked so serene down there while behind her the party raged on. Music throbbed through the windows, people screamed and shouted. Somewhere in the penthouse suite, her roommates were flirting heavily with the band members of Cyanide. She hadn’t wanted to come. There was zero desire to see who hooked up with who, but her roommates had nagged and begged and finally turned on the bitch because Kate had the power to get them in the door.

Not that it was much of a power.
 

As always, Cyanide had closed out their tour in Vancouver. As always, Kate went to the show. Usually she went alone, but not this time. This time her roommates had caught wind of her ritual. They had heard of Cyanide’s legendary after party.

The band owned the top floor of the condo building, though no one lived here.
 

A hand gripped the railing by her elbow. Panic hit her hard and fast until she recognized the tattoo. Fantastic. “I know,” she said as she watched the boat sail by, “this isn’t my world either.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“I’m going. When you find a world good enough for me, let me know.” She straightened but before she could escape, his other hand landed on the railing, fencing her in.

“You’ve been running from me for a year. It stops now.”

Her fingers found one of the knots on her bracelet and she stared at his hands. “I have not.”

“Kate.”

A shiver moved down her spine at the way he said her name. His voice was low with a hint of threat in it. The promise of a threat. “Well, I haven’t. You were gone for most of the year, so it’s like three months.”

“Kate.”

She bit her lips together because the way her name sounded was enough to make her feel breathless. The first time she had met Doyle he had terrified her. Six and half feet of angry, pissed off male. His black hair had been in a wicked mohawk, with a barbell piercing in his eyebrow and a ring in his lip. Tattoos up and down his arms and his black eyes looked at the world with a healthy dose of hate. The mohawk was long gone and the piercings had disappeared along with his drug use and alcohol abuse. The big ball of anger within him still seemed to be there, though he wasn’t punching out paparazzi and complete strangers anymore.

To say that he still terrified her was an understatement. It wasn’t that she feared he’d hurt her. It was that she
wanted
him to. She wished she could blame the fantasies of those tattooed hands wringing all kinds of pain and pleasure from her on running into him at Edge. But they’d been there for a while.

“Tell me about Edge.”

“It’s a BDSM club. Just across the harbor.” She pointed north. “You can probably—” She gasped in pain when he grabbed her wrist, his grip seeming to press on all the knots at once. Oh holy…

“Breathe through it.”

Her inhale was shaky, as was her exhale. Little hot spots lit up around her skin. Five of them to be exact, because even his thumb was pressing down on the knot against the inside of her wrist.

“Deeper. Take it in, Katey.”

When her breathing was a little more even his fingers relaxed. A humming was in her head and she was thankful the glass railing was there to keep her falling thirty stories to the ground. Fingertips eased under her bracelet, stroking over her skin, stilling where her pulse throbbed.

“Tell me about Edge and pack away the brat because that’s not you.”
 

She tried to pull her hand away, but his grip tightened just enough to make her feel dizzy. It was hard to think as she stared down at her hand as if she had never seen it before. “How do you know? Maybe I am.”

He caught her chin and turned her so he could see her face. That dark gaze searched and probed, looking for something. “The day you trust enough to brat out will be a day for the books.”

Probably.

“Hey, yo, D!”

She found herself spun around so her front was against Doyle. He pressed her head against his chest, a hand on the side of her head so she was gazing toward Stanley Park. The stale scent of marijuana and whiskey made her wrinkle her nose as a not-so-sober Anderson Reeve stumbled into Doyle. The drummer barely moved beneath the impact. The bassist, however, staggered into the railing with enough force she was surprised he didn’t fall over. She felt it vibrate from Anderson’s body.

“Oh hey, look what you found.” Fingers brushed up her arm like a spider crawling. Her wrist was released and a grunt came from Anderson. She wished she could see what had happened. There was something oddly protective in the way Doyle kept her tucked between him and the railing, his palm warm against her cheek.
 

“What do you want, Andy?” Doyle’s voice vibrated against her ear. He sounded not so much irritated but unwelcoming, like Anderson was a pile of shit he had just stepped in and he now had to scrape him off his boots. Anderson was the youngest in the band and sometimes she felt older than him and he was forty. For a while he had been sober, but his third marriage fell apart and he had fallen off the wagon. He had a daughter a few years younger than Kate but they weren’t friends. She wasn’t friends with any of the Cyanide kids. Not even her own sister. Maybe if she hadn’t spent eleven years with her mom. When she had first arrived and learned that there were three other kids her age, she had briefly dreamt of friends, but the cold hard reality had been eye-opening. The twins and Anderson’s daughter had been as welcoming to her as the imagined shit on Doyle’s boot. They had never let her forget she had spent the first half of her life in a trailer and that her mom was a junkie groupie.
 

“Hey, yeah,” Anderson said, his voice slurred from whatever was inside him. “There’s this girl who wants to meet you.”

“Busy.”

“This girl is right up your alley, hey. She comes with her own handcuffs. Do you come with your handcuffs?” Spider fingers crawled up her arm only to disappear. “Hey, man, relax. You need to relax more, D. Hey, hey, you better like it kinky with D, here. Like hard core.”

Doyle pressed on her head and somehow navigated her under his arm. “She does.”

Her stomach went jittery at those two words as he turned, clearly done with the conversation. His fingers pushed against the small of her back, nudging her away. She peeked over her shoulder as he shifted his weight so Anderson couldn’t see her. Well, that was a dismissal. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she slipped inside.

One end of the top floor was locked off and even had a bouncer at the door. The one room open was filled with people and she made her way down the stairs. A hand landed on the small of her back and she flinched away even as she looked up. Surprise flickered through her to see Doyle. He all but propelled her down two halls before he stopped at a door. She watched him dig out a set of keys, unlock the door before she was hustled into a room.
 

No, she thought. This wasn’t a room but a suite. “Holy…” her voice faded away as she saw an enormous bed that was surrounded by two walls of glass. The noise of the party became muted.

“I need to get out of this shit. Don’t leave.”

He disappeared and she wandered around the bedroom. A laptop was on a desk and pictures of his kids gave the space an intimate touch. His eldest daughter was Natalie’s age, but unlike her sister there was a sweetness to her face, not a spoiled, calculated look that no child should sport. She beamed at the camera as she sat on a swing surrounded by fir trees. Another little girl dangled upside down with a joy that made Kate smile.
 

They looked happy and loved. Willow and Danielle. Twelve and ten. The youngest had Doyle’s jet black hair and dark eyes while Willow looked like her red-headed mother. That was about all she knew about his daughters because Doyle and his wife had divorced soon after Danielle had been born. He also kept them separate from the Cyanide world.

Lucky girls.

Black drum sticks had been tossed carelessly onto the desk so she picked one up, rolling it between her palms as she walked over to the sliding doors, ignoring the big bed with its black sheets and mountain of pillows. It was hard to imagine Doyle living here. But there were personal touches all over the place. Movement made her turn. Doyle walked out of a doorway, his hair wet from the shower fell carelessly over his forehead, making him look younger, and worn jeans rode low on his hips while a t-shirt clung to his chest and revealed his tattooed arms. “You live here?”

“I crash here. There’s a difference.”

She nodded as she looked back out the window. She understood that. Instead of staring at the amazing view, she watched his reflection as he crossed to her, his steps muffled by the thick carpet. “Why am I here?”