Chapter Eleven
“Are you seriously missing the beta Halloween party to hand out candy?” Charlotte visibly pouts, crossing her arms in front of her sailor girl costume, which, by the way, looks insane on her. I would never, and I do mean never, look that good in any costume, let alone one that tight.
“I’m missing the party to hand out candy at Kai’s grandma’s house,” I remind her, still unable to wrap my head around the fact that he actually invited me to his freaking grandma’s house.
“I still can’t believe he’s taking you there. All the years I’ve known him and I think I’ve only met her once, and that was because she came to some school event.” Maisie shakes her head like she too is having a hard time wrapping her head around this recent turn of events.
We’ve been hanging out , for lack of a better word, or at least, for lack of a more appropriate word, for nearly a month now, and every time I think surely he’s going to end it soon, he does something like invite me to meet the woman who raised him. Like what the hell is happening?
“I think he really likes her,” Char says to Maisie like I’m not even here.
“I’m starting to think maybe you’re right,” Maisie agrees.
There it is again, that little voice of hope that says maybe this could be more, maybe we could be more. I try to push it away, ignore it the way I do every single time Kai even looks at me a certain way, but that damn thing will not be silenced, no matter how hard I try to do just that—silence her.
“Standing right here,” I remind them.
“You’re choosing to hang out with a guy over us, so I’m refusing to acknowledge your presence,” Charlotte quips playfully.
“Yet you said that right to me, therefore acknowledging my presence,” I retort.
“Technically, she has you there.” Maisie laughs as she slides on the last piece of her costume, a black silk robe, completing her boxer costume, which is really just short, tight black shorts, a black sports bra, and a robe, though I do believe she also has boxing gloves too.
It may be simple, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t look incredibly hot in it. Then again, Maisie, like Charlotte, would look sexy in a trash bag, so it’s really no surprise.
“Well, how do I look?” she asks, giving us a twirl.
“Amazing,” I say.
“Hot as hell,” Char chimes in next.
“Hot enough to make a dumb football player regret treating me like dog shit?” she asks with a smile.
It’s safe to say at this point, her affection for Macallan has quickly turned into something else entirely. Not sure if hate is the right word. Vengeance maybe?
“Hot enough to have him on his knees begging for forgiveness,” Char quickly agrees.
“Good.” Maisie nods, satisfied. “You sure we can’t change your mind? I have a costume you can wear. You know I had to buy two because I couldn’t decide which one I liked better.”
“Even if I wanted to go, which I don’t, you could not pay me to wear your other costume.” I give her a pointed look. “This body and leather do not mesh.”
“Are you kidding me? You’d look downright edible in leather,” Charlotte disagrees. “And I know a certain someone who would most definitely agree with me.” She grins, obviously talking about Kai.
I return her smile, mainly because I know she’s right about one part of that statement. Kai would love it. In fact, he’d probably love it so much that he’d want to take it right off me the second he saw me in it. I’ve never had someone look at me the way he looks at me—especially when I’m naked underneath him—like I’m the most delicious thing he’s ever seen and he can’t wait to devour every inch of me.
My lips tip further.
My God, what this man does to me. What the mere thought of him does to me...
“Damn,” Maisie mutters, giving me a soft shake of her head. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I do not,” I croak.
“Yeah, okay.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Look at you, you’re turning so red you’re practically purple and Char didn’t even say his name.”
“I do not know what you’re talking about.” I feign ignorance. “Besides, it’s not like that one is much better.” I point at Charlotte, turning Maisie’s attention to her instead of on me. “Do you see the way she looks at her phone when she’s texting mystery man?”
“You mean like she wants to jump right through the screen and then jump him?” Maisie snorts out a laugh. “Oh, I’ve noticed.”
“Probably because it’s true. I do want to jump through the phone and jump him,” Char says unapologetically, owning her feelings in a way I’m too afraid to do. Maybe because I know the second I admit my feelings out loud, to anyone, they become real, and that will only serve to further complicate things.
We all three look at each other for a long moment and then burst into laughter.
I love these girls. Truly.
Coming here, I didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know if I’d like my roommates, if I’d hate them, if I’d be the weird out-of-state person with no friends who spent every night holed up in her room, sinking further into her own self-pity.
Honestly, that was one of my biggest fears when I chose to switch schools at the last minute and move to a state I hadn’t even visited before, that I would be even more alone than I already was. But that has proven not to be the case at all. And it’s thanks to these two.
We fall silent when there’s a knock at the door.
“Lover boy is here,” Charlotte whisper-hisses across the room.
“You’re lucky I love you,” I whisper-hiss right back, crossing the room to tug open the door, my heart thudding wildly in my chest when a pair of blue eyes meet mine.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the way my body physically reacts to seeing Kai.
“Hi.” I smile up at him, at the strands of hair, still wet from the shower, that fall across his forehead, making him so impossibly handsome that I could just melt into a puddle right where I stand.
“Hi.” He flashes me a grin that he seems to reserve only for me. “Ladies.” He tips his chin to Char and Maisie behind me. “Thanks for letting me steal Lyric for the evening.”
“We aren’t letting you do anything.”
I can hear the pout in Char’s voice.
“She didn’t give us a choice.”
I don’t have to turn around to know she’s pointing at me.
“You ready?” I ask, suddenly very anxious to get out of here. Probably because I’m worried Charlotte will say something I don’t want her to say, like the fact that all I want to do is to be with him, and when I’m not with him, I’m thinking about being with him, all of which I confessed to her in secret the other night in a moment of weakness.
“Yep.” He steps back, giving me room to slip past him into the hallway.
“Have fun at the party. I love you. Be safe,” I ramble off quickly before tugging the door closed behind me.
“Everything okay?” Kai quirks a brow in question.
“Yeah. Those two are just a bit much sometimes.”
“I can imagine they are.” He takes my hand, halting my movements before I can even take one step down the hall. “Come here.” He pulls me close, his hand splaying across the side of my neck seconds before he lowers his mouth to mine. “I’ve missed you,” he murmurs against my lips before kissing me, slow and deep, making my insides tremble in the way only he can.
“You just saw me yesterday,” I remind him with a smile as he pulls away.
“Exactly.” He reluctantly releases me as I step back but holds tight to my hand.
I try to ignore the impact of his implication, but it’s impossible to do, especially when he looks at me like that.
“We should probably get going if we’re going to make it to your grandma’s in time for trick or treating,” I say, knowing if he keeps it up, we won’t be going anywhere tonight but his bed. “She does know I’m coming, yes?”
“She does. Though she was more surprised than I expected when I told her.” He squeezes my fingers as we make our way down the hall.
“If this is the part where you tell me you’ve never brought a girl home to meet her before, I’m turning around and going right back to my room,” I teasingly warn.
“Okay, then I won’t tell you the truth.”
I glance up at his profile, gauging for any sign that he’s messing with me.
“You can’t be serious. There’s no way you’ve never brought a female home.”
“Oh, I’ve brought plenty home. Just not when she was there.” He chuckles.
My stomach sours at his words, at how casually he says them to me like it shouldn’t bother me to hear him say things like that.
“You sure know how to make a girl feel special.” I attempt to tease, trying not to let the sting of jealously show in my voice.
It’s irrational, of course, to feel jealous about a past I was fully aware of going into this. But that doesn’t mean I have any control over it whatsoever. I’m finding I have very little control over any emotion I have when it comes to Kai Elliot.
“She’s a little up and down.” He falls serious, and it occurs to me for the first time that maybe he’s actually worried about what I might think. “She’s the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet on a good day.”
“And on a bad day?” I push for him to continue.
“Let’s just hope it’s a good day.” He blows out a hard breath.
“We don’t have to do this.” I stop abruptly just as we clear the outdoor steps. “If you’re—”
“If I didn’t want to do this, I wouldn’t have asked you to join me.” He’s quick to cut me off. “I want you to meet her.”
My heart does a full somersault in my chest and I instantly feel guilty for letting my own stupid insecurities take away from the fact that this man invited me to meet the woman who raised him. Which even if he hadn’t told me so, I would guess he doesn’t do often, if ever.
Though, the flip side to that is not letting my mind run away with thoughts that this means more than it does. He probably just didn’t want to hand out candy alone and I was the most convenient ask. And the fact that he can take me home and have his way with me afterward probably didn’t hurt.
Casual, Lyric , I remind myself for the millionth time over the past few weeks. Just two consenting adults having sex with no commitment and no hope of a future. Don’t get ahead of yourself.
But how can I not get ahead of myself? When he touches me like he never wants to stop. When he looks at me like I’m all he can see. When he kisses me like he feels it too. When he says things like he’s obsessed with me, that he basically stalked me for weeks. When he invites me to meet his only living family. How am I supposed to temper my expectations when every move he makes says this is real, when he told me from the beginning that it wasn’t.
“So how many kids do you usually get?” I wait until we’ve resumed walking to ask.
“A lot.” He glances over at me. “My grandma does full-sized candy bars, so every kid in the neighborhood makes her house one of their priority stops.”
“Full-sized candy bars? Those things were like gold when I was a kid.”
“Apparently, they still are,” he tells me, opening the passenger door of his car the moment we reach it. He waits until I’m tucked inside before closing it.
He crosses around the front of the car, and a smile I try to hide touches my lips. I can’t help it. He just makes me really... happy. Which is such a stark contrast to how I felt just a few short weeks ago.
Honestly, I’ve barely even thought about Leo since I started spending time with Kai. Sure, it still stings when the memory of what happened seeps in, but it’s not all-consuming like it once was. With Kai, I don’t feel like I’m struggling for air. For the first time in a long time, I can actually breathe, and my God, does it feel amazing.
“You good?” he asks as he slides into the car next to me, immediately reaching for my hand, which I happily give.
“I’m great.” And for the first time in a long time, I actually mean it.
Lifting my hand, he kisses across the backs of my knuckles.
“This is going to be difficult,” he murmurs across my skin.
“What is?”
“Trying not to think about you naked all night while we’re handing out candy to a bunch of kids.” He gives me a wicked grin and my stomach instantly tightens in anticipation.
“Well, lucky for you, you only have to wait a few hours and then I’m all yours.”
He abandons my hand for my face, his fingers sliding across my cheek before locking in the back of my hair.
“All mine,” he repeats, eyes growing dark as his mouth closes down around mine.
Yours, I think but certainly don’t say.
All yours...
“This is insane,” I tell Kai, reaching for another candy bar as what feels like the five-hundredth child climbs the front porch steps to where we’re sitting at the top, holding out their bag.
I was so nervous on the way over here that I felt like my stomach was about to fall out of my butt, but after arriving and meeting what is possibly the nicest woman on the planet, I realized I worried myself sick for nothing.
I no more than walked into Norma’s—as she insisted I call her—house and I felt immediately at home. She’s a petite woman, almost as short as me, with short dark hair peppered with gray at her temples and eyes almost the same shade as Kai’s. Clearly something he got from her side of the family. She’s younger than I expected too. Whenever he mentioned her, I always envisioned a white-haired lady in her eighties, but there’s no way she’s a day over sixty-five. Which, of course, immediately made me think about just how young Kai’s mom actually was when she died.
“Told you.” He grins, reaching for a new box of candy when I take the last bar from our current box. “Every kid in the neighborhood.”
I have to admit, knowing what I know about Kai and his past, I never expected to pull up to his grandma’s house only to find that she lives in a big, beautiful house on a gorgeous street where every house is just as nice as the last. He’s never struck me as the type that came from money, but given that his grandmother’s house is even nicer on the inside, it’s clear that I know even less about him than I realized.
“What does your grandma do for a living anyway?” I finally ask the question that’s been on my mind since we arrived here nearly an hour ago. “Because this is a really nice neighborhood.”
“She’s a retired nurse.”
“And your grandpa?”
“Died before I was born.” He drops a candy bar into the bag of a child dressed up like the grim reaper.
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, realizing maybe this isn’t the best time for this conversation.
“Don’t be. My grandma hated him.” He chuckles when my eyes grow wide. “They divorced when my mom was just a kid.”
“I see.” I grab another bar and hand it to a cute little toddler dressed as a dinosaur. “Happy Halloween,” I tell him, giving him a little wave as his mom leads him away. “So cute,” I say aloud.
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, well, I think that’s pretty obvious.” I gesture behind me at the house. “This house is really nice. I just figured she’d have to have had a pretty amazing job to afford this kind of place.”
“I bought it for her.” He surprises me by saying.
“You?” I give him a questioning look.
“The company that owned the apartment building where...” He clears his throat. “They were found negligent for not fixing electrical issues that had been reported for several months. Since my mom was the only fatality, I got a very large portion of the settlement. I was also the only beneficiary on her life insurance. Once I was old enough to access the money, I used it to buy my grandmother this house. I didn’t grow up here. In fact, the house I grew up in was much smaller.”
“The house I grew up in is like a shoe box compared to this one.” I smile in an attempt to lighten the heaviness that has suddenly settled over us. “When you’re trying to raise three kids on teachers’ salaries, you can only afford so much. I never felt like I didn’t have everything I needed, though.” I shrug. “It’s really incredible that in all the ways you could’ve spent your money, you chose to take care of your grandma.”
“She stepped up when I had no one else. I could buy her a hundred houses and it wouldn’t be enough.”
“It’s what family does. They take care of each other.” I reach over and touch his leg. “You pay for her medical expenses too.” It’s not a question. I’ve paid enough attention to pick up on this fact.
“I just need to know she’s being taken care of. That she’s not alone.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
“I would argue it’s the other way around.”
“Maybe you’re both lucky to have each other,” I offer.
“Maybe,” he softly agrees.
“You really are full of surprises, you know.”
“How so?” He tilts his head.
“I just... I had this perception of you that I’m quickly learning was pretty far off the mark.”
“And what perception did you have of me, exactly?”
“To be brutally honest, I thought you were a selfish man whore who only cared about what wet hole he could stick his cock into next.” I grimace apologetically.
“And now?”
“Now.” I blow out a hard breath. “You’re smart, driven, talented, funny, caring. Basically, all the things I never dreamed you would be.”
“I think you give me too much credit.”
“I think you don’t give yourself enough,” I disagree.
He thinks on that for a long moment as he hands candy to another small group of kids. It looks like most of them have cleared out, though I can see another large group just a few houses down.
“What about you? Are you close to your parents?” He waits until they walk away before asking.
“Yeah, I guess you could say we’re close. I mean, I don’t talk to them as much as I should. Or see them as often as I’d like.”
“What about your brothers?”
“What about them?”
“Do you get along?”
“For the most part. I mean, River and I used to go at it sometimes when we were kids, mainly because I’d follow him and his friends around all the time when I was little. There’re five years between us,” I quickly explain. “But as we got older, we grew extremely close. He’s not just my brother. He’s my best friend.” I smile at the thought. “Dalton, on the other hand, is more like a second father. He’s ten years older than me and has always treated me like a baby. It’s gotten better since he had children of his own. My two nieces.”
“How old are they?”
“Lyla is three and Lacy is one.”
“You miss them.” It isn’t a question.
“I do.” I nod. “I miss all of them. I’m excited to get to see them for Thanksgiving, though.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Five days.”
“Five days...” He lets out an audible sigh. “Not sure how I’m going to pass the time while you’re away.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I wink, turning my attention to the large group of kids that start up the stairs toward us.
We continue to pass out candy for another half an hour, and somehow, miraculously, don’t run out before the last child comes. Shortly after, Norma invites us to stay and watch Hocus Pocus with her, and of course, I can’t say no.
Watching Kai interact with his grandma really is a sight to behold. There’s no sign of the hardened man he portrays on campus. Not even a glimpse of the cocky smolder he wears on his face like a mask. He’s completely himself with her and by extension, with me. I’ve never seen him laugh so freely or talk so animatedly.
He brought me into his home—his safe space—the place where he can truly be himself, and he let me see him. Truly see him. And it was in that moment, in the quiet of the room when he was watching the movie and I was watching him, that I fully let myself embrace my feelings for this man.
I love him.
There’s no denying that anymore.
The only question left is, what in the hell am I going to do about it?