Provided he won the vote, which he likely would. I had a feeling Kai Young never lost at anything.
A corner of his mouth tipped up. “That’s one way of looking at it, but if you knew my mother, you’d know she would never give up power this early. She says everything is fine, but…”
His eyes clouded, and my breath stilled when I pieced together the rest of his sentence. “You’re worried she’s sick.”
A pause, then a slight dip of his chin.
“She won’t tell me if she is,” he said. “Not until she can’t hide it anymore. She hates being pitied more than anything in the world.”
A deep, unsettling ache unfurled behind my ribs at the strain in his voice.
There was nothing more gut-wrenching than losing a parent. I wasn’t sure what was worse—the long, drawn-out wait for the inevitable, as with terminal diseases and illnesses, or the sudden rupture of a family, as with accidents and cruel strokes of fate.
Sometimes, I wished my father had been sick. At least then, we would’ve been prepared instead of having him yanked from us without warning.
One minute, he was there, his face filled with loving indulgence as I begged him to take me to Disneyland for my birthday. The next, he was gone. His hopes, his fears, his dreams and memories all reduced to a hollow shell of a body lying among twisted heaps of rubber and metal.
Maybe it was selfish of me. I wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer, but I also never got to say goodbye…
I swallowed the knot of emotion in my throat and forced a smile. I could wallow in the past later, when there wasn’t someone else who had more pressing concerns sitting in front of me.
“There could be dozens of other reasons why she’s stepping down early,” I said in an attempt to make Kai feel better. “For instance, she could be getting blackmailed. Or maybe she met a hot young stud on vacation and wants to spend the rest of her days cavorting with him in the Bahamas instead of listening to boring sales reports.” I paused, my brow furrowing. “Your parents are divorced, right?” I remembered reading something to that effect online. “If they aren’t, forget what I just said and stick with the blackmail.”
“They’re separated, but close enough.” A ray of amusement peeked through the cloud in Kai’s eyes.
“It’s odd that I’m hoping for blackmail, isn’t it?”
“Nope. It’s the most easily solvable out of the options, and I’m guessing you don’t want to think about your mom’s sex life.”
Kai blanched.
“Right. Well, if it does end up being blackmail, let me know after you’ve dealt with it. I need some good ideas for my book.”
Those knowing dark eyes sharpened. “What book?”
Shit. I hadn’t meant to let that slip, but it was too late to take it back.
“I’m writing an erotic thriller.” I tucked my hair behind my ear with a self-conscious hand. I didn’t like talking about it with anyone except Sloane and Vivian. They wouldn’t judge me, but some people got so uppity about genre fiction. Either that, or they would ask me a million questions about my agent, publisher, and release date, none of which I had. “I’ve been working on it for a while, but I’m stuck.”
I’d made decent headway since Gabriel’s call. It was more than what I’d written in the past two months, but it wasn’t enough. Not if I wanted to finish before my mom’s birthday.
Kai’s eyes fastened on mine. To my surprise, I only saw curiosity and a touch of sympathy. No judgment. “Stuck on which part?”
“Everything.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this, but something about today felt different from our previous interactions. Easier, more comfortable. “The plot, the characters…” What I want to do with my life. “Sometimes it feels like I forgot how to string a few words together, but I’ll figure it out.”
Maybe if I said it enough times, it would come true.
“I’m sure you will.” A faint smile touched Kai’s lips. “You chose well. Of all the genres, erotic thriller suits you best.”
My eyes narrowed. “Was that an insult or a compliment?”
“It’s however you want to take it,” he said in that infuriatingly enigmatic tone. “So why did you choose writing? I must admit, I pictured you in a more…social profession.”
It was a small, stupid thing, but the fact that he called it my profession even though I hadn’t published anything made my heart squeeze a little.
For that alone, I let his earlier ambiguous comment slide. “I wasn’t a big reader growing up, but I was going through a hard time a few years ago and needed something to take my mind off what was happening.” Work stress, the flaming fallout from my last breakup, seeing all my high school friends get engaged and realizing my father would never walk me down the aisle…it hadn’t been a good time.
“One of my old coworkers lent me her favorite thriller, and the rest is history.”
Some people escaped into romance, others into fantasy, but I found thrillers oddly comforting.
Sure, I was lost in life and scraping by on minimum wage in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but at least I wasn’t trapped in a cabin with a psychopathic husband or on the run from a serial killer who was obsessed with me.
It was all about perspective.
“Now all I have to do is finish my own,” I said. “Then I can quit and kick Victor Black in the balls without worrying about losing my job.”
Kai’s smile notched up another inch, but his eyes remained serious behind his glasses. “You’ll finish it.” He said it with such unflinching certainty that my heart stilled for a split second.
“How do you know?” I hated the note of self-doubt in my voice.
I’d always been the social butterfly, the person who cheered my friends on and pushed them to step outside their comfort zone. But there were nights when I lay awake, stripped of all confidence and pretense, wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing. Had I chosen the wrong path? Was there even a right path for me, or was I destined to drift through life like an aimless ghost? No meaning, no purpose, just day after day of routine and drudgery. A life wasted on bad decisions and short-term highs.
The familiar vise of anxiety clamped around my chest.
“I know,” Kai said, his calm voice pulling me out of my poorly timed existential spiral. “Because you’re too strong not to. You might not think so, but you are. Also…” A glint of mischief cracked his sober expression. “You tell great stories, condom varieties notwithstanding.”
He laughed when I tossed a cocktail napkin at him.
Heat seared my cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the warmth flooding my veins.
I was seeing a different side of Kai, and I liked it. Too much.
More than I should.
CHAPTER 11
Kai
I took Clarissa to the Valhalla Club’s annual fall gala for our first date. It was a risky move, considering how big the event was, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. The messages from my mother piled up by the day, and I needed to take my mind off a certain brunette with a penchant for impropriety and a smile that’d lodged itself into my consciousness.