Chapter Nine
THE ELEVATOR OPENED onto a dark hallway, and Kazeyuki stood in it for a moment before stepping out.
The ER was still on him. Not blood, which had been scrubbed away hours ago, but something worse.
It was just one of those stains that no one could see.
It was something that people could only.
..sense, and the only ones who could sense them were those who, like Kazeyuki, worked in places where Death was a familiar face.
And tonight, the workplace...had all it could take of Death, who lingered longer than usual and invited more people than usual to his domain. It was a thought that still rested heavily on his shoulder as he pressed his thumb on the smart lock’s scanner.
The penthouse door recognized his fingerprint, the lock disengaged with a soft click, and Kazeyuki stepped inside and stopped.
The first thing he saw was the food on the kitchen island. A plate on a ceramic warmer, steam still curling from underneath the cover. There was a note beside it, folded once—
Surprise. I'm here a night early.
But I know what you need is rest the most, so...talk tomorrow?
Love you.
How easily she wrote those words. And it was almost as if she had gone to A School for Doctor's Wives, with how she knew and understood that people like him, on nights like this...
The last thing they needed was someone to ask him about how his day went.
Nights like this, they just had to pass.
And Katherine...
The fact that she seemed to instinctively understand what he needed was hard for him to process, and so he turned his attention to something else—
Ah, right.
Kazeyuki lifted the cover.
Gyudon.
The rice was still warm, the beef glistening with a sauce that smelled the way his grandmother's kitchen in Uji used to smell on the nights his mother would take him there as a boy.
The onions were sliced thin and caramelized to the particular shade of amber that meant someone had stood over a pan and watched them carefully, because gyudon onions burned if you looked away for even a moment.
He hung his coat on the back of a chair and sat down.
The first bite was good. Not perfect — the dashi was slightly too sweet, the way it always was when someone used a YouTube recipe instead of memory — but good because of who had made it.
Kazeyuki found himself studying the note as he slowly ate.
Her handwriting was atrocious. The thought nearly had his lips twitch.
The letters tilted at competing angles, the y in you had a tail that invaded the line below, and the dot over the i in I'm was more of a small, enthusiastic slash.
Penmanship-wise, it was almost as if she were the doctor between them.
Once done, he slowly folded the note and placed it inside his pocket before washing the dishes. And as he wiped his hand dry with the dishtowel, without turning around—
"How long do you plan on watching me?"
Gasp.
He turned just as she stepped into sight, a sheepish expression on her face.
She had changed into what he assumed was what she normally wore to sleep: a college sweater and sweatpants, both seemingly two sizes larger than her actual size.
Her red hair was loose and slightly tangled at the ends, and she was standing at the edge of the kitchen in bare feet.
"Sorry," she said in a small voice.
"What are you apologizing for?"
He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. Katherine took a step closer without seeming to realize she had.
"Disturbing your peace?"
She was looking up at him the way she always did, chin tilted because of the height difference between them, and her eyes were still a little puffy. He suspected she had been happy-crying before bed.
"On the contrary." He let his arms uncross. One hand found the counter's edge beside him. "Peace was what I regained with my dinner. Thank you for that."
Her face lit up. "You like it?"
"Very much."
"I know other Japanese recipes," she shared.
"I look forward to tasting them all."
Her cheeks turned rosy at the words, and the sight reminded him of how she had looked earlier when he first kissed her—
Don't go there, Collington.
But when her cheeks kept turning pinker, and she was squirming on her feet, and now she was biting her lip—
I give up.
"May I ask you something, Katherine?"
Her eyes widened. "Of c-course. W-What is it?"
"May I kiss you?"
Her lips parted in shock, and it almost made him smile.
A few more moments passed.
"Katherine?"
"Y-Y-Y..."
He waited patiently. His hands remained at his sides. His breathing did not change. But Katherine was the one who turned out to be impatient, and when she seemed to realize she could not be coherent at the moment—
Thumbs-up.
That was classic Katherine McKenna through and through, and—
Oof.
She had him backing up an inch at the strength with which she charged into him like a tiny quarterback.
She was already crying as he lifted her up, her arms closing around his neck, her legs locking around his waist, and her hair was in his face, copper strands sticking to his jaw where her tears had made his skin damp.
He held her there, one arm bracing her weight, and with his free hand he gently pushed the hair back from her face. Her eyes were wet and wide and green, and the scar on her temple was right there, close enough to press his mouth against.
So he did.
Not her lips. Not yet. Just the scar. The thin, raised line he had put there when he saved her life, and he pressed his mouth to it so gently that Katherine's breath caught and held, and her fingers tightened on the back of his neck.
Then he kissed her forehead. And her closed eyes, one and then the other, tasting salt. And finally her mouth.
This kiss was nothing like the one during Code Orange.
This one was slow.
This one was quiet.
When he lifted his head, she was smiling up at him tearily.
"You're really super in love with me, aren't you?"
Wow.
He could not remember the last time he had such a thought, but that was really the only thing that came to mind.
Wow.
Because even after all these years, every time he would think he had learned everything there was to know about how her mind worked, she would shock him once again by jumping into another conclusion no other person could come up with.
No other but her, and that...
That was when it hit him.
With Katherine smiling up at him, her eyes shining with tears—
Intuition.
That was the moment he realized he wanted it to be real.
Everything she said and believed.
That she was in love with him, and he was in love with her?
He wanted all of it to be real because his intuition—
The one Anastase had expertly predicted would kick in at the right time—
It told him that Katherine was the one girl in the world he didn't have to worry about hurting with his cruelty...because with her, he didn't have to pretend to be good.
Because for her, he wanted to be good and stay good.
And that was why, two hours later—
Unbelievable.
He was forty years old. A billionaire. A surgeon on top of his game. And yet here he was, foolishly taking on a vow of celibacy for the night as the fiancée he had never asked for slept like an angel in his arms.
He gazed down at her angelic features, and he realized he still had room to improve.
She made him want to be good, do good, stay good, yes...
But right now he also wanted to shake her awake and ask if he was made of stone or what?
If his brother were to see him now, Eishun would never let him hear the end of this. Kazeyuki Collington, the man that thousands of women wanted from all over the world (a fact certified by a certain magazine's annual poll), and yet here she was, treating him like a glorified pillow.
He stared up at the ceiling, wondering how...how did he get so fortunate?
He had not wanted this kind of life because he had not thought this type of life was possible for someone like him. A sinner. Even worse, a sinner who had cut another person's life short because of his careless, thoughtless choice of words.
He had caught his first glimpse of it when Konstantin had shared how a once-incredibly-shy Eve had faked being ill just to get close to him.
Later on, he had even seen it in action, having a front-row seat on how another relationship unfolded before him, when his patient Chelsea discovered she was accidentally married to Kazeyuki's billionaire friend Olivio Cannizzaro.
Love used to be a myth for him, no questions asked. And even being in proximity with those two couples, he had still closed his eyes to its brightness, choosing to stay in the darkness because it was what was familiar and safe.
And he would have not minded staying in the darkness...
If not for—
Buzz.
It was Katherine's phone, buzzing with an incoming message from the nightstand where she had left it. The screen lit up the dark, the words spelling out a message that had his chest slowly tightening.
Let's meet tomorrow at my place.
And the name of the person who texted her—
Matt.
Kazeyuki didn't sleep for the rest of the night.