Chapter 2 Kaelee
Kaelee
Kaelee hadn’t been planning on meeting anyone tonight.
She had just finished reading her second book one last time before sending the digital file to Emily.
Even though the contract was for two books, Kaelee had developed a humiliating case of cold feet.
What if it’s awful? That second book wasn’t anywhere near due yet, but she was afraid it would be so horrible that she would need extra time to start over.
Kaelee didn’t want to admit to her editor that she had a complete draft already, but she wanted an outside opinion. So she wrote to her agent.
Dear Emily,
I know books don’t write this fast! However, this one is ready, I think. Because it was so fast, can you please give it a read to let me know if it’s okay to send to Ms. Clayborne? (Reminder: It’s due in January.)
K.C.
Her sequel had spilled onto the paper like Kaelee was just an intermediary taking dictation.
The thought of slipping and telling her editor that the sequel was written before Emily read it was mortifying.
So now Kaelee had to tell her editor to piss off about meeting in person, lie, or try not to blurt it out if she met her.
Every option sounded terrible. So far, she’d managed to seem calm and possibly even reserved in exchanges with her editor.
To do that, she had refused phone calls and edited her emails to sound direct and focused.
“Control the narrative” had been a bit of business advice that she’d kept as gospel.
Right next to it was “keep a written record.” The third law, of course, was the hardest for her sometimes.
“Only one person can know if you want to keep a secret.” Despite all the flaws in the Alden family, the media, financial planning, and business training sessions she’d had to take even in her teen years were still useful.
With that training, she had managed her trust fund, completed two degrees, and was well into a third.
I need to figure out if I want to finish the PhD or see if I can get a master’s in lit or an MFA.
Her book deal earlier that year had required both revision of her life plan and facing her actual goals.
The general mix of success and feeling like a raging imposter both as an academic and as a writer had left Kaelee a mess of anxiety.
She’d considered getting a short-term prescription for anxiety medicine, but instead, she opted to hit the gym harder than she probably should.
The only good news was that, luckily, Emily was used to working with Toni, who was a barrel of difficulty.
Emily really was the perfect agent for Kaelee.
And yet I am still thoroughly terrified of fucking it all up.
The thought of real live people reading her sexy lesbian fantasy romance novel—a genre that was currently called “romantasy” according to Emily—made Kaelee feel anxious, which made her plan to head to the gym for the second time today.
… until Marie connected with her.
Now Kaelee had other plans for tackling her excess energy.
Sex with the curvy little femme on the app was probably better for her body than another day of overexercising, and it would still ease her stress.
Marie was dainty and curvy. That much was obvious in the pictures.
Something about delicate women always made Kaelee’s logic vanish entirely.
Fortunately, though, Marie was just passing through town.
One night. No risk of running into her later.
Those were the best sorts of women. Temporary connections.
Kaelee grabbed her bag, shoved her stack of scribbled-on pages into it, and slung the bag over her shoulder.
It was weightier than the essays she often had to grade for professors, but it wasn’t impossibly so.
Bag secure, door locked, Kaelee headed to the building exit, pausing to say good night to Stan, one of the cleaning staff.
By the time she’d walked to the far lot where she’d secured a parking pass, Kaelee was feeling almost as confident as she pretended she was. Not quite there, but close.
One of the few benefits of growing up in her dysfunctional family was that she’d learned to pretend.
Until she was eighteen, she’d pretended she was a sweet, het, polite girl.
It was that or face the wrath of her mother.
Over the years, Kaelee and her sister, Betsey, referred to their mom as the “Ice Witch.” Julia Alden was a Southern debutante, but under her practiced poise she was akin to any villain.
Undoubtedly, Julia had ice in her veins, and blood on her hands.
But Kaelee had escaped the gilded prison where Julia had been her warden.
Now she was living some version of her dream.
She’d legally changed her name from Sabrina Alden to Kaelee Carpenter, finished a BA in history and an MA in history, and had done so without drawing much from her accounts.
She’d managed to earn scholarships for undergrad, assistantships for the first part of grad school, and so far, she’d had funding for most of her PhD, too.
It was only this term that she’d paid out of pocket.
Because I was busy finishing a novel.
The money Kaelee had pulled out had then been replaced by the money from the book deal. All told, Kaelee was pretty sure she’d proven her parents wrong—not that she ever would go back home and tell them that.
Kaelee shoved her unexpectedly maudlin thoughts back into the mental box where they lived. That life was not hers. She’d left those people behind, along with their surname.
A quick walk later, Kaelee dropped her manuscript on the seat next to her, briefly debating whether to shove it into the trunk.
The truth was, though, that she didn’t want to leave it in the car.
Her bag—with laptop, toothbrush, and clean clothes for after her planned gym workout—would be on her shoulder. Her book could go in that bag, too.
She let her mind wander to more pleasant topics as she headed toward the heart of the city.
Rush hour was well in swing. Tourists who couldn’t navigate the streets around the museums darted between cars, and those in their cars blocked the box in a sort of single-minded selfishness that made Kaelee reconsider her hookup.
Driving in this part of the city was a bit of a clusterfuck.
Is the faceless woman worth it?
Briefly, Kaelee debated heading to the gym instead, but Marie was sexy in a way that hit all of Kaelee’s buttons: tiny, curvy, and direct. She might be worth the traffic … hopefully. Sex was typically more effective at blunting the edge of Kaelee’s anxiety than working out was.
By the time Kaelee reached the overpriced hotel, Kaelee wondered if Marie was a wife who wanted to try something new.
As long as the husband isn’t here, too …
Kaelee had been too mentally exhausted to ask the usual questions on the Sappho’s Kiss Society app, so she would need a minute to get that answered before she went to anyone’s room.
She wasn’t interested in any surprise extras in the bed.
She’d never been intimate with a man intentionally, and she wasn’t going to start now.
After she pulled up to the valet parking, she hopped out of her car and grabbed her bag.
She stuffed her manuscript in it and then handed her keys to the valet with the sort of confidence she’d seen her father use time and again and took her claim ticket.
So what if her car was not perfect? She was stretching her money for a lifetime, and DC had decent public transportation.
Her ten-year-old BMW ran well, despite the odometer’s increasingly dire digits.
“Thanks,” Kaelee told the valet. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be. Meeting a friend for drinks.”
As she said it, Kaelee decided that she was, in fact, going to pause for a drink.
She was all for clear communication about the goals of the evening, and tonight, she didn’t want to go from “hello” to naked with no buildup between.
Though BDSM wasn’t her usual thing, she had dabbled enough to appreciate the focus on boundaries and consent that was prevalent there—and had expanded that to her life at large.
As a woman who had had her own lack of consent ignored in the past, she was extra focused on making sure anyone she was naked with had considered their own lines.
Kaelee strolled into the vast open space of the hotel lobby with the comfort that came from familiarity.
She might be wearing faded jeans and well-worn shoes, but every childhood trip in her life had involved five-star hotels.
After a while, they all started to blur together, and despite going on a decade of living a simpler life, this was unchanged.
This could have been any five-star hotel; they all had the same vibe: polished floors, ostentatious floral bouquets, uniformed staff, and an overall ambiance of privilege.
A part of Kaelee hated that she was comfortable there.
Habit was powerful, though, and she knew how to move through these spaces.
Alden money insisted she could and would be able to act like she belonged to such places, and eleven years of freedom didn’t negate eighteen years of training.
Her clothes were thrift- or consignment-store buys, and her car was nearing the age of replacement, but she knew how to claim space in bougie places.