Chapter 28
“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you've been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
Brooks
The place where modern Ghandi lives
“Hey, bitch.”
Kai looked up from his phone with narrowed eyes. “How’d you get in here?”
“Door was unlocked.”
“I don’t think it was.”
With a wink, I joined him in the kitchen. He was sitting on top of the counter with his legs hanging and ankles crossed. The apartment was extremely quiet, so I assumed he was the only one home.
I hopped up onto the island across from him. While I watched him continue on his phone, I brought my legs up to sit criss cross. I was pretty sure he was playing some sort of fighter game. Every once in a while, his teeth sunk further into his lower lip.
The guy really was dreamy. As I stared, though, I realized that I didn’t feel an active attraction toward him.
Looking at his lips, I thought about Tilian’s soft ones, which formed a smile brighter than the sun. Kai’s eyes were dark green and I wished I could see his blue ones, the color of the sea under the faint illumination of the moon.
Welp. There was that feeling in my stomach again.
We’d been building our relationship for a month and a half. It didn’t feel like a lot of time, but it was enough for me to really start questioning what I was doing here. More accurately, if I was doing something wrong.
The only people I knew- besides myself, of course- who were pretty damn perceptive were Linc and Kai. Of those two, Kai was the one who had a knack for solving problems. He also knew me better. All in all, he was the guy I needed to see.
“Talk whenever,” he said without looking up from his phone.
“Where is everybody?”
“Sen is working. West is god knows where. Probably with Willow.”
I hadn’t met his twin sister yet, but I’d heard about her. According to Sen, they were the same person, which was bound to be a hell of a time.
“So, what’s up with you?” Kai prompted. “Trouble in paradise?”
“I have no idea what paradise you’re talking about.”
“Mhm. That little will-they-won’t-they thing is getting a little old. I vote for ‘will they.’”
I curled my fingers over the counter on either side of me. I was starting to regret coming to him, but then again, this was why I’d chosen him.
“Okay, fine,” I huffed. “There’s no trouble. He’s great. Better than I deserve. He also won’t talk to me.”
He looked up from his phone and cocked his head. “You’re having a crisis, then.”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
“You’re always confident and suave. What’s different about this one?”
When I didn’t respond, he dropped his feet to the floor. After grabbing a couple of kombuchas from the fridge, he passed one to me. I raised a brow as I looked at it.
“Healthy.”
He shrugged. “Some of us have to maintain our physique. How do you stay fit?”
“Swimming, mostly.”
“Cool, cool. I’m sure it’s not that you’re self-conscious about your body. I mean, you’ve been hanging out with Dean and Oliver, so maybe that’s it. You wouldn’t look good with all that muscle mass, though.”
“Thanks?”
Leaning back against the counter, he smiled. “It’s a compliment to your current body. I’m not really in the mood to make guesses all day, so let’s get to it.”
“I like him.”
“Is that a problem somehow?”
After rolling my lips a few times, I hung my head. “I don’t have any idea how to do this. Every time I think about it, I know that I shouldn’t pursue it. Besides, I’ll graduate law school in five years. It sort of feels like I’m leading him on when I can’t even give him a future.”
“We’re all moving on after we graduate,” he pointed out. “I want to go back to Maine, but it also depends on if my dad is still around then. And I’ll take Sen’s opinion into account. We’ll decide what we do together.”
Together. It sounded simple when he said it, but that was Kai and Sen. They made sense as a pair, present and future. There was no doubt, no uncertainty.
“Do you not want this to be long-term?” Kai asked. The way he was watching me made my skin feel too tight over my bones.
“It’s complicated.”
“You came here, obviously for that reason. Let’s break it down.”
“I didn’t want a relationship. Never have, really.”
“Then, why are you caught up on the idea now?”
“Because,” I sighed, “he fucked me up. I don’t know. All my life, I’ve had a lot of friends and no matter how I was feeling, there was a person I could call who fit my mood at the time.”
“Okay,” Kai replied slowly. “And what mood does Tilian fit?”
“All of them. There’s never a time I don’t want to see him.”
“Let’s stop there for a sec. He clearly cares about you. Whatever happened over the weekend made things rocky and, regardless of what caused you to break down, it had something to do with that. Do you have any ideas about what made him pull away?”
“I think so. I was a fucking wreck, man, and we kissed. More than kissed. I know that it was a really bad time to do that, but he does something to me that makes me want to talk to him about some shit going on in my life and I hate that.”
“Do you? It would’ve been easy enough to take a step back or cut things off.”
“I tried,” I admitted. “Even when I lashed out, he didn’t give up. And when I tried to distance myself, I came crawling back. It’s pathetic.”
He breathed a laugh as he took a drink. “That’s not pathetic. That’s something real. Have you really never felt safety like that?”
“Is that what it is? It feels dangerous.”
“Yeah, well, connecting with people makes you vulnerable. So does needing them. You’re upset that he isn’t acting the same, so I’d say you want something with him on a deeper level, but you can’t have that without revealing the things you don’t like about yourself.”
“Were you nervous to do that with Sen?”
“Sure. With him, though, I was more focused on making sure he was okay. We moved fast, but I never worried about that. Early on, we saw the broken parts of each other, even before we were actually dating. He knew the shit with my dad and I figured out after our first kiss that he had some sort of trauma and repression. I didn’t find out the specifics until after Halloween, but every day, we saw more of each other. Good and bad. That isn’t a negative thing, Brooks.”
“What if…” I trailed off and began tapping my fingers.
Was it wise to talk to him about this? I didn’t know if it would make a difference. If I didn’t talk to someone, though, I’d start spiraling again, which wasn’t good for any of us.
“I’m sorta worried that he won’t like what he finds,” I admitted.
His eyes softened and made my stomach feel acidic. “Why?”
“The details aren’t important and I don’t want to share them right now. He knows some things, but I hide more. I just… I feel dirty. Every day, I worry that I’m going to hurt him. It comes naturally to me, like I’m some fucking soulless creation that my parents made to be just like them.”
His brow furrowed, then he shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not.”
“Brooks.” Kai stepped closer, crossing his arms over his chest when he stopped in front of me. “You may be a product of people who live in a world you don’t like, but that doesn’t mean you’re just like them. It doesn’t even mean you have to go back to it.”
“I do.”
“That’s up to you to decide, but it’s insane to think that you can’t break the mold. I don’t know your parents, but if they taught you how to be like them, it’s probably so that you could succeed. It was to protect and prepare you.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve done some fucked up things to get where they are,” I said quietly.
“Okay, that’s on them. If they haven’t asked you to do the same things, why do you think they expect it?”
My gaze fell to the floor. Shame crept through my veins, making my blood feel cold.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Have they?”
“My mom. I don’t know if my dad knows.”
“He should.”
“Look, the point is that I’m capable of exactly the same things they are. The people I grew up around aren’t just hot shot lawyers and people with ass loads of money. They’re politicians, millionaires who are as corrupt as they come, and people who should have gone down for the shit they do, but they have people like my parents making sure they stay rich and happy.”
“They’re that deep? I thought they were just really good at their jobs and made a lot of money. That sounds like the mafia.”
“I don’t know, man,” I sighed. “I wasn’t ignorant to the fact that they worked with shady people and defended ones who didn’t deserve it. And I knew that there was a lot of corruption, but now, I feel like I’ve been seeing how fucked up it is.”
“Let me ask you something. Do you want that life? Do you want to be a corporate attorney like them?”
“It’s the plan. I’ll have a place at their firm. We’re supposed to work together.”
“Fuck that, Brooks. This is eating at you and it’s obvious that you don’t want to be around those types of people. That’s in no way a bad thing.”
“And what if I’m already like them?”
“If you’re worrying about it this much, it means that you’re not. That world you’re so afraid of doesn’t have to be your destiny. You can even work in the same field and choose to stay out of all that. Whatever your family has done is on them, just like everything they continue to do.”
“Say I choose to work with them. I can’t bring Tilian into that. I’ll become…”
He smacked my leg with the back of his hand. “Fuck off with that shit. Power corrupts, but it doesn’t corrupt everyone equally. Most of those assholes would be fucked up regardless because positions of power attract people like them. If you don’t want to be like them, it’s simple. Don’t be.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Nothing is easy. What I do think is that you need to talk to Tilian about this. If you’ve been going through this and denying your feelings, you need to deal with that. Everyone should be on the same page in any relationship, platonic or otherwise.”
“How do I talk to him if I’m still undecided?”
“Tell him that or, better yet, figure it out first. He’s already done this back and forth with you. Don’t you think he deserves to know what to expect?”
“Of course he does.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to have it all figured out, by the way. You need to communicate openly, though. If he’s not okay with what’s going on in your head, then maybe it’s not right. Just because you like him doesn’t mean it’s end game. It could be, though. It sounds like he’s been ready to be there for you for a while.”
“Yeah, to the point of him harassing me.”
He chuckled, then squeezed my thigh. “You have to trust him, man, but also yourself. If you don’t want to hurt him, then don’t. Some things are out of our hands, but most of the time, we can still affect the destination by nudging things a certain way throughout the journey.”
“I really think you’re, like, Ghandi reincarnated or something.”
“Nah. Jesus, maybe.”
“That’s sacrilege.”
“You religious, Brooks?”
“I’m more into the old gods, not the new.”
“I can respect it.”
“Anyway, I’ll get out of here since you value your alone time and shit.”
“Or you can give me an opinion on this suit I got for the team dinner we have next month.”
I hummed thoughtfully as I pretended to consider it. “Sell me on the idea.”
“You have impeccable taste in clothes, probably because you were brainwashed into caring too much about appearances. Since you’re half gay, I trust that you’ll tell me honestly if I look dapper as fuck.”
“Mm. Well, I guess I can do that. Don’t tell me you’re feeling self-conscious about it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted before he turned to lead me down the hall. “Self-conscious? No. But when it comes to Sen, I sort of overthink things.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He seems to think I’m too good for him or something. Apparently, I’m perfect.” Facing me again, he continued to walk backward. “It’s ridiculous, actually. He’s fucking…” A soft smile settled on his lips. “He’s beautiful in every possible way. I’m constantly thinking about whether I’m doing enough for him.”
“You know that literally everyone thinks you’re the perfect boyfriend, right? Goals and all that.”
“Like I said, nothing is easy. He’s put me on a pedestal and it seems like other people do, but I deal with shit too. I get angry, sometimes words slip out that I don’t actually mean, and I have plenty of my own breakdowns. I love him and all I do is treat him the way that he deserves. But that’s a conscious effort, Brooks. We can’t control everything, so take charge of the things that you can. To me, that’s seeing Sen smile and, obviously, I’m extremely protective of him, so if I don’t manage to make him smile, I’ll meet him where he’s at, which is halfway to hell some days. There’s not a single person in the world that life is always kind to.”
“How do you stay so put together?” I wondered, ready to tuck the info away for another day.
“For one, I let myself fall apart. When a structure is unsteady, sometimes the best course of action is to knock it down and rebuild. Maybe it’ll just give you more good days before it falls again, but you can also tweak it each time until you’ve made it exactly how you want it.
“Second, figure out what and who is important. Once you do that, you can add them into your little cycle. Two people rebuilding a house is more efficient than one, but you also have to pop in to do the same for them.”
“Love is selfless,” I mused.
“No.”
“No?”
“It’s a little selfish. Keeping them together helps keep you together too. Maybe it’s codependent, but in a relationship, your emotions are going to be influenced by the person you love. When they’re sad, you’ll feel that and when they’re happy, it’ll help you be happy. Making sure they’re okay is mutually beneficial, so no, it’s not entirely selfless, but that’s not a bad thing. It shouldn’t be hard. You obviously are gone for him already.”
“Not obviously,” I muttered.
“You’ve been wearing your hair down more. He likes it, right?”
I didn’t bother responding.
He pushed his door open and started going through the clothes in his closet. It was only a single bar for hangers with barely enough space for one person. Garment bag in hand, he turned around with a grin.
“Reshape your perceptions, Brooks. You want adventure in the great wide somewhere and so much more than they’ve got planned.”
I blinked a few times. “That’s from something.”
“Nah, I don’t think it is. I’m a quotable guy.”
“Hm.”
He was full of shit. I was sure of it.