Chapter Eighteen – Kayla
My back kind of hurts after I fell asleep at my desk, but at this point, it is what it is. When I wake, I find the list is gone, which means someone snuck inside the room while I was passed out and took it. Only two possibilities there, either Bradford or Hayden.
I crack my neck, feeling stiff, and in the process the bruise there reminds me of its presence, a dull ache spreading from the area.
Holding in a groan, I reach up to my neck and lightly touch the skin there.
Doing that reminds me of my brother and the fact that Bradford and Hayden aren’t going to let me leave this house today.
Though I don’t want to, I suppose I should text my brother and tell him there’s a lot of work to be done here and I’ll be putting in some overtime.
The mere prospect of extra money should be enough to make Jeremy accept my lie at face-value—although, when my first check comes, he’ll clearly see I lied.
By then, I don’t know where I’ll be. Will things have returned to normal? Will I be back at home with my brother? Bradford and Hayden can’t keep me in this house forever.
Or maybe they can, and they will. At this point, I don’t know what the future holds, where I can go from here. I’ve never been good at picturing the future for reasons that should be obvious, but after this morning the future is even more murky.
I spend a good twenty minutes composing the message to Jeremy, and when I send it off, I cross my fingers he’ll receive it in a good mood and that he won’t text back with too many questions. The more I say, the clearer it’ll be something’s wrong.
In reality, nothing in this house is wrong.
If anything, the thing that’s wrong is my life outside of this house.
Jeremy and what he does is wrong, the things he makes me do are wrong.
Why do I want to go back to that? It’d be really nice if a long-lost relative would pop up out of nowhere and offer to take me in, no questions asked.
Jeremy doesn’t respond right away, and I don’t know whether to take it as a good sign or not.
I wouldn’t put it past him to come here and demand I go home; he likes exerting his control over me.
At the same time, he has to know if he pulls something like that, the odds of me keeping this job long-term and, thereby funding both our lives, will be next to nil.
I check my email and see that Bradford had sent me a summarized list of things he did today—something he doesn’t normally do. I assume he did this so I could copy and paste the contents of that email into a new email to his father for my second weekly recap.
Hey, if he wants to make my job easier for me, let him. After the morning I had, my energy is zapped, even after that nap.
After that email is sent off, I get up and stretch. My stomach rumbles, but I’m good at ignoring it. It’s right as I finish stretching that I hear a knock on the door, and seconds later Bradford appears.
“Did you have a nice nap?” he asks, and though the Bradford I met on day one would have asked that question with a cold, snippy tone, the Bradford of today sounds curious. The fact that he brought up my nap must mean he’s the one who took my list.
The first thing out of my mouth is, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He holds the office door open with his back as he checks the watch on his wrist. “I thought you could pick out your room while we wait for Hayden to get back.”
Out of habit I say, “You really don’t have to do any of this for me.” I keep my voice low. If I talk softly, my throat doesn’t hurt as much; I learned that during my chat with Bradford in his old bedroom. “I can handle it.”
The expression he wears tells me he’s not going to hear it. His mouth is a thin line when he says, “It’s already been settled. It’s not up for debate anymore, but I can imagine it’s difficult for you to accept any sort of help.”
He’s not wrong, unfortunately. Accepting help means acknowledging the fact you need it in the first place, and if there’s one thing I learned from Jeremy, it’s that all help comes with a price. No one helps out of the goodness of their hearts, not without expecting something in return.
But maybe that was just my brother’s hang up. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe… maybe Bradford and Hayden really do just want to help and that’s all there is to it.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Show me the rooms.”
He gestures for me to follow him into the hall, and as I do so, he says, “I’ll bring you to the room I brought your clothes to yesterday. Don’t feel obligated to pick it. I can bring your things to any room in this house.” More quietly, he adds, “There are a lot of empty rooms here.”
I walk along with him. “It is a big house for one person.”
“Yes, it is.”
I can’t imagine what he must think, every time he passes his old childhood bedroom.
Staying in this house must fill him with so much self-loathing and resentment.
Like hell would you ever catch me in the apartment I share with Jeremy if my brother wasn’t there.
I don’t know what I’d do or where I’d go, but if I was alone, I definitely wouldn’t stick around.
But I guess Bradford felt the same as me: he has nowhere else to go.
“You’ve never been lonely here all by yourself?” I don’t know what makes me ask it. It’s a private matter, and he has no reason to meet that question with a reply.
He doesn’t miss a beat: “No. This is the only life I’ve ever known. Before I was under house arrest, I could come and go as I wanted. I went to events. Mingled with people when I had to. I played my part in Alpha Life. It wasn’t like I was always alone.”
Bradford stops walking, and I halt beside him, seeing the wheels behind his dark eyes turning.
“What’s sad is that I don’t miss any of it.
I hate this blasted monitor around my ankle, but I don’t miss the pointless parties and the fake niceties.
I’ve always been the most content when I’m alone.
” When he says that, he comes across as wistful, regretfully so, like he knows he shouldn’t admit such things but can’t help the way he feels.
And with his past, with all those scars on his back… I get it. If you’re alone, no one can hurt you.
He doesn’t say anything else. We head to the main hall, up the stairwell.
Bradford brings me to the room with all the bags, and I step past him and head into the room.
It’s huge. Puts the studio apartment I’m used to to shame.
Even littered with bags as it is, there’s still plenty of room to walk around.
“This room is fine,” I say.
“There’s a bathroom across the hall you can use,” Bradford tells me. “And if there’s anything you forgot to put on the list, tell me and I can see about ordering it—or send Hayden out tomorrow for it.”
A few seconds go by, and I hesitantly meet those dark eyes of his as I say, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for any of this.”
With a shake of my head, I whisper, “Not about that. I’m sorry for being here.
If you prefer being alone, I’m here messing that up.
” Being content when you’re alone is something I can understand too; it’s the only time you feel as if you can truly be yourself, that you don’t have to worry about putting walls up and bolstering your defenses.
“You’re not messing anything up,” he says.
I shrug and look away, mumbling, “It feels like I am.”
Bradford is before me the next moment, and though a good foot and a half remains between us, his nearness does something to me. I breathe in through my nose, detecting his scent: clove and musk, and it takes every ounce of willpower in me to not lean closer to him.
He’s untouchable for so many different reasons.
“You’re not,” he tells me. “If I didn’t want you here, I wouldn’t have told you to stay. You’re not messing things up, Kayla, because there’s nothing for you to mess up. You’re… you could never mess anything up.”
He didn’t really say much, but at the same time, he said enough.
A gentle smile tugs at my lips—an expression I don’t often wear—and I tuck some of my hair behind my ears, feeling some kind of way beneath that pitch-black stare of his.
A different sort of feeling, something I’m not used to, something that makes me feel hotter than I should be and forces a slight blush up my cheeks.
Bradford coughs and steps away, giving me his back when he says, “I’ll let you be for now. When Hayden gets back, I’ll come get you.” And then he leaves without saying anything else, shutting the bedroom door behind him on his way out.
Whatever weird feeling that’s inside of me must be in me only, not him. That’s fine. Totally fine. I don’t need to linger on the omega hormones in me any more than I already have to. All this extra sleep and that donut; I can’t imagine how I’ll be if they make me eat three full meals a day.
I’ll lose my mind. I’ll go insane. I’ll be blushing and sputtering and trying to get close to them, all so I can memorize their scents and forget about anything outside of this house.
It’s probably a good thing Bradford has no interest in things like that. I honestly don’t know where we’d be if he did.
Well, for starters, if he was interested in the physical side of things, he’d probably already have a pack living here, which means he wouldn’t be able to help me out like this.
It’s an impossible thing for me to think; my mind automatically refutes that suggestion, but not because it would involve Bradford not helping me.
No, my mind denies it because that would mean he’s not mine.