Chapter 5
June
I couldn’t stop crying. No matter what my brothers did or said, there was no way the tears would stop streaming down my cheeks. My best friend in life had died.
Lincoln tried to convince me that she was just missing.
But how was that possible? When the media and the police themselves were convinced that Chloe was gone forever.
Besides, my best friend was not someone who would run away from home.
What could possibly make her want to run away? What couldn’t we get through together?
Unless she was abducted against her will. But without her parents to pay for the ransom, she was as good as dead. Would Daddy pay for her ransom though if the kidnappers got in touch? I could pay him back in installments once I started working.
Anyway, it had been six months, and I hadn’t heard anything.
And I couldn’t believe that I still had tears left in me. I never knew that I would love someone so much. I didn’t even know that I had that much space in my heart.
Sure, Mom, Dad, and my brothers were different. I loved them no matter what. Even when my irritating brothers were just being annoying, I still loved them. There were times when I didn’t think I did, and I would react rudely or say something hurtful, but I would feel so horrible afterwards.
Chloe’s death made me realize something. My grief was related to my love for her.
If my grief for Chloe was so strong, I couldn’t imagine ever losing my parents or my brothers.
When Kai walked through my bedroom door on my 18 th birthday, everything changed. My crying stopped. For a bit, but still.
To say that my heartache stopped would be a far stretch, but he most definitely had brought some light back into my life, like I finally saw light for the first time in a pitch-black tunnel that I kept falling deeper and deeper through.
* * *
Three years ago, when Kai stayed in New York briefly for his new business venture, I thought that we might be going somewhere.
We had grown closer after my brother’s kidnapping – a story for another day.
We had spent hours together, not doing much, but simply hanging out and connecting.
It felt like what it would have been like if we were a family, if we were some kind of old married couple, playing house.
When Kai left the country without a proper goodbye, it broke my heart.
It was very selfish of me to think that he would stay for the lockdown, leaving his family behind in China. I should have been happy for him that he got special permission to enter China on his private jet.
I stayed in the U.S. working on the front line, helping patients. I could have died, and he wouldn’t have known. He wouldn’t ever know that I’d had a crush on him since I was eighteen years old. Though I doubted he felt the same way about me.
Perhaps that was the reason I was so angry at him now.
In truth, I was angry at myself, for never having the guts to confess my feelings for him.
I might not have feelings for him anymore but after going through Covid-19, after seeing so many deaths, it messes with your head.
If the pandemic had taught anyone anything, it was that life was precious, and we ought to be mindful and grateful for everything at every moment.
“June, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you, but Kai has left the country.
” I could still hear Lincoln saying those words over the phone in my head like it happened two seconds ago.
It hurt just as much as it did when my father told me about Chloe’s death.
I knew it was only an unsaid goodbye, but there were so many uncertainties in life, and we were losing so many people left and right.
What if he died and I never kissed those lips?
I had my suspicions of what I might be suffering from. Although I didn’t go into psychology, I had studied these things at some point in my career, in my life, and I even took an online test. Apparently, I was struggling with some kind of anxiety, grief and PTSD.
If my patients showed up and told me about their self-diagnoses, I would… Well, I’d want to roll my eyes, or scoff at them, but I wouldn’t because I was taught to be polite. So, when I saw the results, I couldn’t help but scoff and roll my eyes at myself.
But I had never sought out a professional. Because the thought of having a proper evaluation scared me. All I knew for sure was that it caused me pain when people I cared about left me. So, I just had to make sure that it didn’t happen.
* * *
I woke up after my nap and Kai was no longer in my bedroom. My book, Haunting Adeline , had been opened and my pulse quickened. This wasn’t a book for a good girl like me. Well, not the good girl that I appeared to be. Did Kai know about the book? Did he know how dark the story was?
Picking the book up, I scanned through the pages that were left open and felt a little relief. It didn’t get too spicy on those pages. Unless he read the whole thing and just randomly left an uninteresting page open on purpose to throw me off the scent.
A long yawn creeped into my mouth, and I wished for a few more minutes in bed. Despite the interesting morning I had, I’d managed to rest well which surprised me greatly.
Knowing that I had guests in my apartment meant that I couldn’t stay in bed though. Well, I could. But I wouldn’t. My head wouldn’t let me. I had an urge to make sure that they were taken care of.
Feeling a little self-conscious about bad breath, I gave my teeth a quick brush then wandered my apartment on tip toes. The guest room door was closed, and I decided to leave it – someone was probably resting in there. So, I continued to explore, feeling like a stranger in my own home.
Then I heard something, right outside of my yoga room.
“Prozac.”
“What Prozac?” I could have held my tongue and listened to the conversation. He might say more and if I could’ve just been patient and a little bit more calculating I would have got a broader picture of what Dave and Kai were talking about. But I couldn’t help myself.
Both men turned around as I sort of burst into the room.
“Don’t you know how to knock?” Kai exclaimed. It was weird to see Kai sitting on the floor – and having to look down at him – on my pink Yoga mat.
And before this, it didn’t occur to me that Kai would snoop at all. Even though it wasn’t hard to find, he must have looked through my wardrobe to find those mats. And my meditation cushion which I just noticed underneath Kai’s delicious bum.
“The door wasn’t shut and it’s my own home,” I protested, “You should have whispered if it was a secret! It’s nothing to be ashamed of though.”
I had known Kai to be a proud man. So proud that he didn’t like showing his emotions.
When Lincoln went missing, he had a little bit of a meltdown.
He might have thought that I only witnessed it because I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but I thought otherwise.
It was nice to know that I could hug him all night and make the pain go away.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” His face turned away, avoiding eye contact.
“I can refer you to a friend who can prescribe you the medication. How long have you been taking it?” I used my children’s TV presenter voice, sometimes it helped with not stepping on people’s toes.
Kai got up from the floor and walked straight at me, cornering me on the bookcase with his six-foot something frame. “Do I look like I need drugs?”
I coughed lightly and let out a pathetic “no”.
Kai turned and exchanged a look with Dave.
I knew Dave would never say a word, he was the most loyal person to Kai on this planet, so I fixed my eyes on Kai’s face – only inches away from mine. A part of me hoped that I would shoot out some truth confessing laser any second now.
“It isn’t for me.”
I let out a sigh of relief when he finally volunteered that information.
Still, I wasn’t sure if I should believe him.
It was nothing against him, but I had learned that many people hide things. Patients for example would often hide their conditions from their loved ones. Some of them even tried to conceal information from their own doctors.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” As much as I wanted to know, I knew he had no obligation to share. I was nobody to him after all.
“I–” He reluctantly opened his mouth, then after a long deep breath, “You can’t say anything to anyone.”
I rolled my eyes upward and was back to staring straight at his face. That was my way of saying “of course” and hoping that Kai could read my peculiar body language.
“It’s for my cousin.” That was when he took two steps back, then returned to the meditation cushion.
I nodded. Right. I still had my doubts.
“But you really shouldn’t tell anyone about her.” The way he looked at me, with a hint of a glare in his eyes, made me want to roll my eyes at him.
Shaking my head lightly, I sighed then tried to reason with him. “Who can I tell about your cousin? I don’t even know her. Unless she’s some kind of superstar, but still, what good would it do me to gossip about her, huh?”
“Fine. My cousin Jenny is running away from home. We found her at my apartment today. And you know what, she is kind of famous back home. She has millions of followers on her social media.”
It suddenly made sense to me. Cousin Jenny was the woman he said was at his place earlier. So that meant he wasn’t hiding a girlfriend in his apartment then. That information had somehow made my day.
“Is she in danger?” I asked as I noticed a cloud of sadness on Kai’s face that wasn’t there earlier.
“Not in real danger. But kind of in trouble.” He didn’t need to say anything more than that. “I think that she’s been struggling for quite some time after having her first baby.”
“Have you told anyone about this?”