Chapter 18
June
M y heart rate wouldn’t settle after my lunch with Kai. I sat at my desk studying my patients’ case one last time before the procedures. None of the information seemed to register in my mind.
It was like my brain had a mind of its own. No matter how I tried to concentrate, my thoughts kept going back to Kai.
I knew for a fact that Kai Li wouldn’t do what he did over lunch to impress just any woman. And the high bid just to date me? He didn’t have to, his charm alone would win anyone over. I was flattered that he did all that for me.
Ten dates would have been enough.
Ten ordinary dates. I would even be okay with it if we didn’t end up in bed again. Those dates were a dream come true for me…sort of. I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I had such a shallow dream – that I simply wanted to date my secret crush.
I wanted more out of life, of course. Being a doctor was a career choice – not my dream – and I knew that from the very beginning.
Having a perfect family – husband, children, dogs – was something I also wanted.
Living in the twenty-first century America had made that dream almost unattainable, though.
Most of the people I know came from broken families.
Perhaps seeing my parents marrying and dating different people had made me want this perfect family more not less.
Happily ever after was too much to ask from a guy like Kai.
He wouldn’t marry someone like me. I could never be his someone special. I didn’t mind being just another one of the women who ended up in his bed. But…with everything that he’d done for me over the last few days, he’d given me hope that I could be the one, his forever.
I shook off the thoughts and tried to think about my procedures.
Nope.
Being his forever meant something else. Something crazy.
With Kai’s parents’ unhappy marriage as an example, he wouldn’t marry until he was certain his chosen bride was his forever.
Jenny told me one evening that all women wanted their fairy tale ending, and it seemed like Kai was ready to offer one – to one lucky winner.
The winner would have it all. She’d share everything he’d built from his empire to his bed.
as well as the biggest prize of all…his heart.
How many women ended up with broken hearts because of him, though?
We all played a game where only one could win, like that famous TV show, Squid Game, where only one person could come out alive and unharmed.
It scared me to death thinking about it. Over the last few days, I have heard a thing or two about his complicated family. Would his hard to please mother even allow a part Asian American woman to enter their kingdom?
Besides that, Kai had an appetite that no one could ever fill.
And I didn’t mean his appetite for food.
He had a hunger for achievements. It was a massive void that nothing could ever fill.
It was that hunger that drove his success in business, the urge to own businesses and properties across the world.
He loved hosting and attending the craziest and silliest parties one after another.
Then there was his love of trying dangerous sports that gave him thrills.
He liked dating different women, and only beautiful women who were top of their class – and doing God knows what with them.
He lived such a loud and noisy lifestyle completely opposite of mine.
And I knew that there was no way I could ever fill that need of his, that excitement that he chased after in life.
It seemed to me that he had this new obsession with me. It couldn’t be fake – I could see it in his eyes. As complicated as Kai could be, his eyes never lied, not to me anyway.
After lunch, he was the gentleman he’d been for the last few days, and escorted me back to my clinic.
My clients this afternoon were all high profile.
One was a politician whose name I wasn’t allowed to disclose to anyone.
They were traveling from Taiwan especially to see me.
She’d wanted to have a child all her life but hadn’t met the right person yet.
Now that she was ready, her womb wasn’t.
I was chosen to fix the problem so she could get pregnant with the help of sperm she’d hand selected.
I couldn’t afford to fuck this up and it made me nervous.
I took out my favorite Zen kit. This one was just a notebook with a black ink brush pen.
I removed the lid of the brush pen and flipped to a blank page, the one after my last entry three days ago, and started drawing circles.
Or Zen circles, some people might call it.
None of them were pretty or to my satisfaction.
My hand was somewhat shaky and shuddered as if I was terribly cold.
With great effort, I inhaled a large breath, and then breathed out as the brush pen touched on the white paper.
These weren’t the kind of Zen circles that you saw in art galleries, or fancy cafes.
Mine were tiny and often flawed by my shaky hand.
I did it as a way for me to study how sturdy my hands were and how calm my mind was.
And after a few pages of deep breathing and tiny circles, my mind would calm down and my hand would behave again.
But today, it took much longer to calm my nerves.
Twelve pages later – my longest record to calm my nerves – things started to switch. My breath was long and deep, the tremors gone.
Although the surgery later wasn’t a life threatening one, every surgery carries certain risks. It was something doctors should always remind their patients of. But – touch wood – if the surgery went well, the woman could regain her opportunity at motherhood.
Unwanted distracting thoughts kept popping up left and right throughout the day. The tremors that I thought that I had under control decided to challenge me again. The fight with distractions was never an easy one. It was much like fighting food cravings and always losing.
From time to time, Kai’s face would pop up in my mind. My thoughts of him were as persistent as the actual person. I could never kick him out of my office, no matter how much I wanted to. I took another deep breath and tried not to overthink what was going on between us.
I had never struggled so hard in the operating room. It was so bad that I sweated continuously and demanded to have the air conditioned blasting at top speed and lowest temperature. My freezing assistant nurse was starting to worry that we were going to run out of tissues to wipe my brow with.
Kai was up to something. Another uninvited thought invaded my mind.
His phone was constantly buzzing while we were having lunch. For whatever reasons, he’d chosen to ignore it – didn’t even take a look at his phone. As soon as he dropped me off, instead of parking out in front of my office like he did for the last few days, he left.
Has he gone cold on me now that I’ve slept with him?
The procedure took longer than I had originally planned. It was entirely my fault. I should have been more professional and focused solely on my patient, and the very important task right in front of me. But where did Kai go? What was he hiding?
I really should pray and thank the god that protected my client. The operation was performed badly but was still successful. And my medical license was still intact, which meant so was my reputation. Soon, my high-profile client would be able to bear children after proper care and rest.
A small part of me thought that I was special.
I thought that Kai wasn’t going to sleep with me and then do the disappearing act.
A universal act that I was warned of by my best friend, and all those Netflix shows that I had watched throughout my life.
I felt foolish for believing that he would treat me differently.
I admit that the lunch clouded my judgment.
Who did something for a woman that he wanted to sleep with and then disappeared?
Many men do that, of course. Kai included.
I was secretly hoping that his friendship with my brother meant that I deserved a little more. Perhaps the extra sweet and considerate lunch that he kindly threw my way was it. Would he have done that if my brother wasn’t his best friend? Shit, was it pity or kindness that he threw my way?
It hurt.
My head was messed up.
I felt pathetic.
Kai had officially ruined me.
* * *
I don’t mind being wrong.
But that was a lie that I told myself and the world.
That lie had earned me popularity among my peers. Who didn’t like a nice fluffy doormat to walk all over? Someone they could easily bully?
I wasn’t someone who had a strong belief in anything.
Changes were necessary. They were part of life.
When they came, I welcomed them with open arms. But I never said that changes weren’t hard.
My parents’ divorce. Chloe’s fake death.
My brother lying about her being alive. None of those were easy to deal with.
Right now, I don’t want more changes. I don’t want to be wrong.
Kai was not there to greet me when I finished my operation.
His little team was gone. The reception area seemed weird without him there.
There was no trace of him, like he and his team had never existed.
Siti seemed to love the silence that had returned.
If she hadn’t mentioned how quiet it was now that they were gone, I would have thought that I fantasized the whole thing, that Kai and his people were never ever here, and it was all a dream.
It would have been much simpler if it was just a dream.
As soon as I finished a routine checkup on my VIP patients, I darted out of my office.