1. KAYLA
1
N ever in a million years would I have expected to be creeping out of my dorm like a thief in the middle of the night before I graduate. It’s weird how my dream evaporated quicker than I’ve been able to muster up a new one.
My phone feels cold pressed against my ear as I prance under the stone arches of the university. The cobblestones are poorly lit, freaking me the fuck out with every step I take. I glance at my own reflection in the shadow every few yards to make sure I’m still alone.
God knows what weirdos sneak around the campus in the middle of the night.
The sound of my suitcase echoes through the hollow of the arch as I tug it behind me, completely drowning out the sounds of my footsteps.
“Keeks?” A surprised voice reaches my ear, when my cousin finally answers the phone. “Isn’t it like five in the morning in California?”
A jolt of relief warms my chest at hearing Rae’s voice as I walk off the campus toward the cab that’s waiting for me.
“It is. It means I have to hurry. I have less than two hours before the sun comes up and I melt.” I hand my suitcase to the driver, offering him a tight smile and a mumbling hello before I turn around with my hand on the open door.
Glancing over my shoulder, I take one last mental memory of the campus’s main entrance while looking up at the ivy creeping up the beige bricks. A lump forms in the back of my throat, a heavy feeling settling on my chest.
This is definitely not how I thought my time at Stanford would go.
“You’re a vampire now?” she asks, her tone dry.
“Yeah, or a werewolf. I’m not sure.” I lower myself into the car, snapping myself out of my melancholic mood, and close the door, my gaze now peering to the passenger seat in front of me as the driver gets in.
His big brown eyes find mine in the rearview mirror, silently asking me if I’m ready, I assume, and I offer him a small nod before the car moves forward and I’m on my way.
With each yard further away from campus, I’m reminded of the dream I once had, with no clue what the future now holds for me.
“I’m pretty sure they live in the night.”
“Oh, yeah. Shit. So, no werewolf?” I muse.
“What’s going on? Are you drunk? Why aren’t you in your bed?”
Where to fucking start?
I sigh, pressing my fingers into my eye sockets, trying to prevent the tears stinging in my blue retinas from falling down my cheek. “I got kicked out.”
Silence.
Which is actually worse from the indignance I was preparing myself for.
I bring my head up, waiting for her response as I look out of the window when the campus is no longer in sight. Her lack of words slowly suffocates me, making it that much harder to keep a straight face and not let my emotions get the best of me.
“Got kicked out of where? Exactly? ” She sounds shocked.
I can’t blame her. Stanford was my dream, and it all came crashing down before I had the chance to walk up that stage in a red and black cap and gown.
That all vanished like smoke in the air the moment I packed my bags.
“School. Campus. University.” I pause, sucking in a deep breath to build the courage to say the last word out loud. ” Stanford .”
“What the fuck, Kayla? Are you fucking shitting me?” The tone of her voice is filled with disbelief and laced with a little suspicion. As if she’s expecting me to tell her ” April fools!” in the next few sentences.
Which, fair, is totally something I would do in January.
“It would get real messy if I’d be shitting on you right now.”
“I’m serious, Keeks!” she yells.
I think it’s safe to say I established the level of indignance I was aiming for.
“I know, Rae. So am I.” The words leave my lips reluctantly, because it all feels like a scam. Like I’m looking at someone else’s life.
This is not my life. Kayla Lockheart doesn’t get kicked out of Stanford University when she got a full scholarship.
You’re right.
She doesn’t.
She ain’t the type to sneak off in the dark to head home, either. Nah, she’s the girl who’d kick open the door, make an entrance that sticks, and exit with a bang.
But here we are, with a departure that’s quieter than a cat’s footsteps.
“What happened?” Rae’s voice is small and cautious this time, like she doesn’t want to upset me any further.
But in the last six months, my skin has gotten a lot thicker than it used to be.
“My grades have degraded. I failed.” The words sting on my tongue.
A loud exhale moves through the phone, sounding like a gust of wind on the other end of the line. Here it goes . There’s a 99.9 percent chance she isn’t going to let me get away with this explanation since I’ve been a straight A student my entire school career, so I rehearsed this part in my head like ten times.
“You don’t fail, Kayla.”
“Maybe not in high school. But Stanford is not Red Wood Creek High. I thought I could do this. But I went to a few parties too many, and it seems like getting good grades while drunk doesn’t really mix. On the bright side, I know San Francisco like the back of my hand right now?”
“Keeks,” she grunts in a reprimanding tone.
“What!? It’s true! Great city. Oh, and they have this really nice place on Fisherman’s Wharf. They have teriyaki tuna that is to die for.”
“This is not funny!” Rae yelps. “You got kicked out of college, Kayla! What are you going to do?”
It’s not funny, but I don’t want to shed another tear.
“Work at Wendy’s?” I joke.
“Kayla Lockheart!”
“Okay,” I concede, rolling my eyes. “I don’t know, okay? I have no clue. All I know is that I’m on my way to the airport right now, ready to take a flight home. Or anywhere but here.” I mutter the last words, but I mean them.
When I arrived here eighteen months ago, I was ecstatic about the future. I love San Francisco, but now the memories I have are all tainted by the memory of me leaving. I don’t think I ever wanna go back, simply because it’s too painful.
“You’re coming home?”
“I’m on my way to the airport as we speak.”
“What?!” she clips, clearly having a hard time keeping up. “Right now?”
“Yup. So, I hope you’re ready for some cousin bonding time. We can go to the spa. Have some drinks. We can nag your nana together while we force her to make fried chicken. We’re gonna have so much fun!”
“You know I have to work, right? Nana is going to finally retire and I’m swamped in all the work she keeps shoving my way.”
“Yeah, but we’ll work around that.” I brush her words away while bright ideas to keep myself busy are flooding into my head. “We can host dinner parties together like Thanksgiving! That was fun. Oh, wait! I can come stay with you and Jensen! That would be so much better than staying with my parents. Oh, please, Rae, can I stay with you guys?” I plead, pretending that wasn’t my plan all along.
My lashes flutter like I’m about to take off even though she can’t even freaking see me, fueled by a sting of hope. Staying with Rae and Jensen would at least be a ray of sunshine in my now very clouded life.
“Err, I don’t know, Keeks. I love you. But I’m not sure Jensen loves you enough to have you in his personal space the entire time.”
I already expected him to be the hard one to win over. We get along great, but Jared James Jensen is a man fond of his privacy. He said so himself when I walked in one day at nine AM on a Sunday. Good thing he wasn’t naked.
“What?” I exclaim incredulously. “Jensen loves me!”
“Who are you talking to?” I hear a man’s voice in the background, my ears pricking up.
“Is that him? Put me on speakerphone!”
“Keeks.”
“Just do it!”
She pushes out a breath before the sound on the line changes.
“Okay, you’re on,” she says, her voice now a little less clear.
“Hey, Jensen,” I sing-song sweetly.
“What do you want, Kayla?” He sounds like the broody hockey player that he is, and many people would take it as a sign to back the fuck up and continue on with their day. But I’ve seen the fucker with my cousin.
Deep down, he’s a big ass softy and I’m pretty sure he can’t resist my charm. Besides, I’m the one who helped him get her back when he royally screwed everything up. The motherfucker owes me.
I smile. “I’m kicked out of Stanford. On my way to the airport and bound to move back in with my parents. You and I both know that will not end well. I’ll either walk away from home because they’ll drive me nuts, or I’ll drive them nuts and they’ll kick me out. Getting kicked out of college is traumatic enough, so surely you don’t want to give me another trauma on top of that by forcing me to go back to my kin. Besides, what am I going to do? I have no job, no degree, no fucking life.” I huff dramatically.
“If I go back to my parents’, I’ll have to take a job at Walmart and eat dinner with those boring old people every single day, giving me no stimulation whatsoever. I’ll be dead of boredom within weeks. But you wouldn’t let that happen, right? It’s way better if I’m surrounded by successful people like you and Rae. I mean, you’re an NHL player. Fuck, you’re the best defender in the league. You won the Holy Grail! It took hard work to get there. Living with you would be the best inspiration I could get. Not to mention the fact that I can cook for you guys. Doesn’t it sound nice to have dinner waiting for you after an intense day of practice? So, what do you say? Can I please, please, please, come crash with you guys?” The silence that follows after my word vomit is deafening, and I cross my fingers for my good luck while I squeeze my eyes shut in anticipation.
“You can cook?” The surprise in his voice is slightly offending.
I scoff. “Of course, I can!”
“You’re full of shit, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, totally. But please take me anyway,” I whine, running a hand through my wavy brown hair.
“Are you sure she’s related to you?” He asks Rae, before her chuckle travels over the line.
“Yo, hockey boy! You know I’m the funny one, right?”
“Watch it, Lockheart,” he growls.
This is not going in the right direction.
“I’ll wash your dirty hockey gear!” I blurt in a shit effort to persuade him. The thought alone makes me gag, but I can’t waste this opportunity.
“Deal,” he booms.
“YES!” I shout, making the taxi driver startle behind the wheel.
“Are you sure?” Rae questions her boyfriend cautiously.
The driver parks the cab in front of the airport, and I jump out.
“Yes, yes, he’s sure! Thank you so, so much! You won’t regret it!” I squeal way too loud for five-thirty in the morning.
“I doubt that,” Jensen mumbles. “We’ll see you when you get here.”
“Yeah, about that,” I drawl, carefully. “Can one of you pick me up from the airport?”
Another groan from the hockey player drums in my ear. “When?”
“In five hours,” I respond innocently.
“For fuck’s sake, Kayla. You’re already making me regret this. I have stuff to do, you know?”
“I’m sorry! I kinda left in a hurry. Took the first flight I could get.”
He stays silent, but I can just sense the ‘ why’ lingering over the line, trailing along with his muffled footsteps.
“Am I still on speaker phone?” I take my suitcase, slip the driver a twenty and make my way into the terminal.
I register a door closing over the rolling sound of my trolley pulled behind me.
“No, Rae is in the kitchen. What’s really going on, Kayla?”
“I told you,” I huff as the heater above the sliding doors blows through my strands. “I got kicked out. Stanford doesn’t accept shitty grades.”
“You can try to fool Rae, Kayla. She might even play along but you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. I’m a politician’s son, remember? I’m raised to detect bullshit.”
I hold still, my gaze on the terminal caught between night and day. The buzz of the day is not quite there yet, but the peace and quiet of the night is slowly fading under the brew of fresh coffee hovering through the atmosphere.
“I can’t, Jensen,” I admit in full honesty.
I don’t want to drag this out. I don’t want to make this bigger than it has to be.
I just fucking want to move on with my life .
Jensen will not let me move on with all the right intentions.
“Are you in trouble?” There’s a bit to his tone that splits my lips in gratitude.
He’s like the big brother I never had.
“I’m not. I promise.”
“Stanford was your dream school.”
I swallow to hold back the tear that threatens to push through. “Dreams change, Jensen. You should know that.”
“One day, we’re going to have this conversation, Kayla.”
“I know.”
But I’ll do anything to postpone that as long as possible.