31. Julia #2
I stop. The motorcycle is black, low and unmistakably familiar, and my body recognizes it before my brain does.
A Kawasaki ZX10R. I know that now because apparently heartbreak turns me into the kind of woman who Googles motorcycles at one in the morning.
My pulse stutters. Before my first appointment with Kai, I had found vague mentions of charity work connected to Pine Ridge, but nothing about a safe house or this property.
Still, as I look back toward the main house, pieces begin fitting together in a way that makes my heartbeat climb.
Could this be his? I hadn’t seen him anywhere inside, but then again, I hadn’t been looking.
Once Renee started speaking, most of my attention stayed on her.
He could have been here the entire time.
The thought sends something warm and nervous through me because the longer Kai stayed away, the more complicated his absence became.
At first, I needed every bit of the distance I demanded.
Then the anger began to loosen around the edges, not because what he did became less wrong, but because nothing I remembered about him felt fake.
The work we did in therapy had been real.
So had his concern, his insistence that I stop making myself smaller, the way he pushed me to believe my choices belonged to me.
Ghost had been real too. The tenderness, the passion, the laughter, the way he stopped whenever I asked and the quiet moments afterward had never felt performed.
He had lied about who he was, but eventually I stopped believing he had lied about how he felt.
The final shift came three weeks ago, when I searched his name again and found the disciplinary order from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice.
Kai had reported himself within days of me leaving his office.
He admitted what he had done, stopped practicing while the investigation moved forward, entered therapy and accepted the conditions placed on his license.
He had no way of knowing I would ever see any of it, which meant none of it had been done for my forgiveness.
That mattered more than I expected. Somewhere after that, forgiveness stopped being a question I kept arguing with and simply became true.
I still hated what he had done, but I no longer wanted him to suffer for it forever.
I wanted him to have learned from it. And once I admitted that, I had to admit the more inconvenient truth underneath it. I loved him.
Not Ghost, not Dr. Blackwood — Kai. Just him.
I look back at the motorcycle, my fingers tightening inside my coat pockets.
If this really is his property, then he might be here.
I have barely begun to turn toward the house when the back door opens behind me.
My heart seems to stop before I turn toward the sound and look.
Kai stands a few feet from the house. For one suspended moment, neither of us moves.
He looks different, although there is nothing dramatic about the change.
He is still unmistakably Kai, tall and broad beneath a dark sweater and black jacket, faded jeans tucked into riding boots instead of polished shoes.
There is no three-piece suit, no glasses, or balaclava obscuring everything except his eyes.
His hair has grown just enough for the wind to catch it.
Something crosses his face before he can stop it, surprise giving way to such naked longing that my chest tightens around it. He hides it quickly, his entire body seeming to lock into place as though even standing here requires restraint.
“Julia.” Hearing my name in his real voice after all these weeks hurts in a way I wasn’t prepared for, warm and aching at once.
His gaze shifts briefly toward the event behind me. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“I know.”
He takes a slow breath, and I can almost see the decision settle over him before he glances toward the garage. “I’ll leave.”
I don’t want him to.
“Kai.” His name leaves my mouth before I have time to think twice.
He stops immediately, not even finishing the turn, and the familiarity of that response sends another ache through me. Whatever else changed between us, he still stops when I ask him to.
“I didn’t tell you to leave.” Not this time.
He studies me for a moment, as if searching for some meaning I haven’t given him permission to assume. “No,” he says quietly. “You didn’t.”
His attention flicks toward the house. “Your firm is connected to the foundation?”
“Apparently more than I realized. We’ve been handling the legal work for a couple of months now, but nobody ever mentioned your name.”
“I didn’t know this was the law firm where you work.” His expression tightens almost imperceptibly before he adds, “I used to, obviously, but…”
“I know.” That makes him look at me more carefully. “I found the Board order.”
For the first time, Kai looks away. His jaw tightens as he stares toward the open field beyond the house, and when he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “I never expected you to see that.”
“I know. That’s part of why it mattered.”
His eyes come back to mine.
“You didn’t report yourself because you thought I’d find out,” I continue. “You didn’t know whether I would ever speak to you again.”
“No.”
“And you did it anyway.”
Something shifts in his face, but he doesn’t defend himself or explain what it cost him. That matters too. For a moment neither of us speaks, and I glance toward the motorcycle because looking directly at him has suddenly become difficult.
I glance toward the house. “So this really is connected to you.”
“Yeah. The property was left to me years ago. I transferred it to the foundation when we opened the safe house.”
I look past him toward the house again, seeing it differently now. The security, the playground, everything Renee spoke about inside. Somehow it fits him and surprises me at the same time, which feels annoyingly familiar.
“You never mentioned any of this.”
“There wasn’t really a reason to.” Of course that would be his answer. No performance, no need to make sure I knew what kind of man funded a place like this. He had simply done it and gone back to work.
When I look at him again, something about the sight of him standing here without the suit, the glasses or anything else between us catches me off guard.
“You look good.” I hadn’t planned to say it, and judging by the way his expression changes, Kai hadn’t planned on hearing it either.
His eyes move over my face before he glances down and rubs a hand across the back of his neck, genuinely at a loss for words in a way I’ve never seen before.
It is unfairly endearing.
His gaze lifts to mine again, warmer now. “You look fucking beautiful.”
Heat rises into my face despite the cold. There is something unmistakably Ghost in the bluntness of it, except there is no Ghost anymore, no darkness or mask to hide behind. It is simply Kai, standing in front of me in broad daylight and letting me see exactly what he thinks.
“Thank you.” I blush.
He nods and pushes both hands into his jacket pockets, and the gesture catches somewhere beneath my ribs because I know those hands too well to miss what he is doing with them.
As Dr. Blackwood, they had held pens and notebooks, occasionally lifted in some irritatingly calm gesture while he dismantled whatever excuse I was trying to sell him that week. As Ghost, they had never hesitated to touch me. Now he keeps them carefully out of reach.
“How have you been?” he asks.
There is more beneath the question than the words can hold, but for once he doesn’t try to dig for the rest.
“Good. Actually good.” I watch his face soften as I say the words we’ve been working so hard to replace “I’m fine” with. His mouth pull into a smile and I can help but smile back.
The moment lingers between us for a beat before the silence settles again, carrying everything neither of us knows how to touch yet.
“She found you someone?” he asks after a while. “Mara, I mean.”
I nod. “Dr. Levin. I saw her for a few weeks. We tapered off, but I know I can go back if I need to.”
Relief moves openly across his face before he remembers he no longer gets to have an opinion about my therapy.
I almost smile. “You can be glad, Kai. I’m not going to report you for facial expressions.”
His mouth curves. “Good to know.”
I look at him for another second, taking in the man standing where both versions of him used to exist separately in my head, and then ask the question I have been waiting to ask since the moment I saw the motorcycle.
“How are you?” I want to know that more than anything.
“I’m okay.” The answer is careful enough that I raise an eyebrow.
“That sounded dangerously close to fine.”
Something familiar flickers through his eyes. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”
“I learned from an annoyingly persistent psychiatrist.”
The smile he gives me is small, but real.
Then I ask, “How did it end with the Board?”
The change in him is immediate, though not defensive. He glances toward the ground before answering.
“I kept my license. I’m back at the practice.”
The relief that moves through me is stronger than I expect.
“I have conditions,” he continues. “For the first two weeks after I reopened, another physician had to be onsite while I was seeing patients. Now I meet with him once a month, he reviews my records, and the Board gets reports. I’m still going to therapy too.”
“For how long?”
“The supervision? Two years unless they decide otherwise.”
I nod slowly, letting the information settle.
“But you’re working again.”
“Yeah.” A single word tells me more than the rest did. His voice changes around it, something quiet and grateful moving underneath.
“I’m glad.” His eyes lift to mine. “I mean it. I know what you did to me was wrong, and none of this changes that, but you were good at what you did before you fucked everything up so spectacularly.”
A rough laugh escapes him, though there is almost no humor in it. “Fair.”
“You helped me, Kai.”