Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
A fter a very awkward hotel breakfast and interview with Rhonda, the reporter from the Mackinac Island Town Crier who’s married to the police officer who became best friends with Kimo last night and who, therefore, gets the only official interview, we’re on our way home.
Luckily, the journey back to Chicago is far less traumatizing than the journey to Mackinac Island was. By that, I mean Kimo is kind enough to charter us a private flight so we don’t have to take a boat again. Oh, and we aren’t being held at gunpoint in the back of a smelly van, so there’s also that.
Despite the fact that we’re the only two passengers on the plane and could easily spread out, Kimo takes the seat right next to mine. I pretend not to notice this, and instead spend most of the flight fretting over the inevitable news headlines about Kimo Kapono’s new “gal pal” while he tries, unsuccessfully, to get me to relax. “I’ll relax when I’m dead!” I snap at him at one point. He just laughs, shaking his head at my antics, like I’m some kind of...Kimmy Gibbler, put on this plane for his amusement.
Kimo purchased a burner phone so he could contact his friend who owns Dumb-Ax Throwing and try to get hold of our actual phones and wallets and whatnot. “Make sure he knows his employee sold us out to the kidnappers,” I insist, looking over his shoulder as he texts. “Better yet, make sure the police know! That has to be aiding and abetting or something, right?”
Kimo looks uncertain. “He might have been held at gunpoint, just like us. What was he supposed to do, get himself shot?”
I stare at him, gobsmacked at his naivety. “Kimo, he’s the one who told the kidnappers we were there. Remember all that texting he was doing and all the weird, shady looks he was giving us?”
Kimo looks like he very much does not remember any of that. He rubs a hand over his face. “To be honest, I was a little distracted by the beautiful blonde who kept finding reasons to rub her ass against my crotch.”
His comment sends an unexpected jolt of heat through me, as I remember the crotch in question, and Kimo revealing it to me last night in his full, naked glory. I haven’t had a chance to fully explore that crotch yet, and that’s a debt I need to repay, and soon. Very soon, hopefully.
But he’s trying to distract me, and I don’t want him to know that it’s working, so I make a show of rolling my eyes. “Don’t be naive—you’re a multimillionaire now. You need to be aware of your surroundings if you don’t want to be an easy target.”
Kimo sighs, looking unconvinced. “How would he have even known to text the kidnappers? That doesn’t make any sense.”
This poor, sweet idiot. He’s lucky he’s so rich and handsome. “Have you been to Dumb-Ax before?” At his nod, I persist, “Do you go there regularly? So regularly that people watching you and trying to keep tabs on your whereabouts would know it was only a matter of time before you popped in there again? Making it easy for them to plan ahead by bribing one of the staff members to let them know when you showed up so they could catch you unawares?”
Kimo just stares at me for a moment, then clears his throat. “I’ll make a call...”
Satisfied, I settle back against the seat. Someone has to watch out for Kimo. It’s obvious he’s much too trusting. Luckily, that’s not a problem that I have.
When Kimo finishes his call, I convince him to let me use the phone to check my work email. At least I haven’t gotten any messages from Jay, hinting at an impending firing. Then again, I haven’t heard from Jay at all. It’s been complete radio silence. Either he’s busy at one of his CrossFit sessions, or he and the other partners are busy conferring about the best way to get rid of me.
“Hey,” Kimo interrupts my downward spiral, his voice gentle. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Mattie. Relax .”
That’s easy for him to say, Mr. Multimillionaire, I’ll-hire-a-private-plane-on-a-whim guy. It’s hard to relax when you’re living paycheck to paycheck and worrying about your job. While I appreciate Kimo paying off my student loans, and that will definitely help my financial situation, it doesn’t eliminate the deficit in my bank account caused by my low salary combined with the high cost of living. And this is compounded by the fact that I’m not only responsible for my own financial needs; I need some extra cushion so that if Sasha’s car breaks down again or Alina can’t make rent, I can be there for them. That’s what being a big sister means.
Some of this stress must read on my face, because Kimo sighs and snatches the burner phone from me. “Hey!” I protest, making a grab for it.
“Nah, nah, nah.” Kimo puts it in his pocket for safekeeping. “You need a break from this. And maybe just a break, period. Here, gimme your shoulders.” He angles me so my back is to him.
Facing away from him, I roll my eyes. I’ve been around the block—I know what a shoulder rub leads to. First the amateur masseuse will dip as low as he can go on my back while still being able to reasonably argue that he isn’t just trying to touch my ass. Then he’ll start rubbing my sides and, whoops, an accidental boob grab, how did that happen?
Not that I didn’t enjoy last night. I enjoyed it a lot. But men using sex as a way to “distract” me from my stress is not as effective a strategy as they’d like to believe.
But after a few minutes, with Kimo humming what sounds like the greatest hits of Bryan Adams under his breath, I realize he actually has stayed strictly in the shoulder and neck region. And, admittedly, I do have quite a few knots there that need to be loosened. I suck in a breath as he finds a particularly sore spot. “Poor Mattie,” he commiserates. “You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, huh?”
I consider the words. “The weight of my world, at least.” I’m not some do-gooder, out to save the planet or the children or whatnot. But I learned a long time ago that no one else is going to care what happens to me and my sisters. If I don’t take care of us, who will?
“I knew it when I first saw you. Tough outer shell, but deep down, you get mālama.”
I frown at the foreign word. “Is that some new kind of STD? Because I get checked regularly, I’m totally clean.”
Kimo laughs under his breath. “No, it’s a Hawaiian philosophy. It means you take care—of the planet, or your community, or your family. Ideally, all of the above.”
I try to wrap my head around the concept. I don’t know about the planet...but if you consider Nina and Helen my community, I guess I do try to make sure those naive, beautiful idiots don’t get taken advantage of by the world. And Alina and Sasha are my only family, so of course I look after them.
Still, it feels awkward to try to claim that I’m some kind of righteous do-gooder. I shrug under the warm weight of his hands. “I dunno. Maybe that’s true.”
“You’re a champion. You kicked a grown man’s ass and then came out of hiding to make sure they wouldn’t hurt me. I see you, Mattie. You’d fight tigers for the people you love.”
I...guess that’s true. Preferably metaphorical tigers, but if push really came to shove, I’d take on a jungle cat if I needed to. But only for the people I really love. And the downside of that is, sometimes I turn into the tiger without meaning to, because I love too hard, and I don’t always know when my claws are coming out.
I don’t say any of that out loud, though, because...feelings. #Uncomfortable. But Kimo seems to get it anyway because he gives my shoulders a quick squeeze. “Who takes care of you, though?”
“I...” The question hits me hard, knocking the wind out of me for a second. I rally as quickly as I can, not wanting to let on how much it’s thrown me. “Me. I take care of me.”
There’s a challenge in my voice. I’m ready to fight him if he tries to tell me that isn’t enough, because it’s gotten me this far.
To my surprise, Kimo sounds thoughtful as he responds, “That’s part of mālama, too. Taking care of yourself. Mālama pono. But sometimes, it’s nice to let other people help out. It goes both ways, you know?”
I don’t say anything to that, because...what is there to say? Of course it would be nice to have someone who looked after me. To be able to let my guard down, to trust that someone else might have my back as much as I’d have theirs.
Unfortunately, life experience has taught me otherwise.
* * *
Once we’ve safely landed in Chicago, I try to think of the best way to broach the subject of money with Kimo. I still don’t have my wallet, which I’ll hopefully be able to recover at some point from Dumb-Ax Throwing or the police, whoever has it at this point. Without it, getting back to my place will be tricky. Kimo’s taken care of me this far, I’m assuming because he feels guilty that I was kidnapped along with him, but I doubt he’s going to want me to stick around forever. He probably has important multimillionaire things to take care of.
My concern turns out to be a moot point, since as soon as we step off the plane, Kimo motions toward the airport with his thumb. “You wanna get something to eat while we wait for the car? It shouldn’t take long to get here, but we have enough time to grab something to go.” He rubs his stomach thoughtfully. “I could go for a burrito.”
“We?” I echo stupidly. We as in... we ? Both of us?
Luckily, Kimo is distracted from my blurted question as a thought seems to strike him. “Shoot. Still don’t have my wallet. I keep forgetting that. Maybe the driver will spot us some cash and let us stop somewhere on the way back?”
I have no doubt, if anyone can sweet talk a total stranger into buying them food, it’s Kimo. Fighting a smile at the thought, I try to keep my focus on the big picture. “So, you don’t mind dropping me back at my place?”
Kimo blinks at me for a moment, like the question doesn’t fully register, then shakes his head. “Mattie. Come on. You think I’m gonna leave you stranded at the airport?”
He says it so easily, like I should obviously take for granted that the guy who gave me an orgasm last night is going to make sure I’m taken care of in other ways, too. Ha. That’s cute. Maybe in Hawai’i they do things differently, but in the rest of the world, I’m lucky to even get that first orgasm, much less breakfast or cab fare home.
Still shaking his head, Kimo wraps his arm around me and guides me toward the parking lot. “Come on, tiger. Let’s get you home.”
The hired car hasn’t arrived yet, so Kimo and I wait at the curb. I’m obviously not expecting to run into anyone I know at Chicago O’Hare the morning after getting kidnapped, so I’m surprised when I hear a familiar voice calling my name. “Matilda?”
Turning, it takes me a moment to fully register who it is. My face blanches as I take her in. “Dominika?”
Dominika Kroft is just as ferociously glamorous as I remember her being, decked out in a designer dress and low heels, along with her usual chic jewelry—no tracksuits and sneakers for this woman, even in a busy airport terminal. Her blonde hair is swept back from her face, the only concession to the fact that she’s traveling, and her intense blue eyes sweep over me once before settling on my face.
There’s a tense beat where neither of us quite knows what to do. Then we hug—or rather, she hugs me. I just kind of awkwardly pat her back. “It’s been a long time,” Dominika reminds me. Not that I’d forgotten, of course. “How have you been?”
“Fine, fine,” I say, much too brusquely for anyone to even remotely buy it. Dominika knows me too well, anyway—or at least, she knew me too well, once upon a time. I’m also keenly aware of Kimo watching us, and all of this is making me feel like an awkward cardboard cutout of a human being. “Busy. You?”
“Things have been good. Luca is married now, you may have heard. His wife, Anna, is expecting.” Dominika waits a beat before adding, with her usual bluntness, “Did you get my email?”
I know exactly which email she means, but still, I feign ignorance, scratching the back of my head. “Um, I’m not sure? When did you send it?”
The look Dominika gives me lets me know she’s onto my tricks. “A few years ago now.” She shakes her head, just a little. “Anyway, I better go. I have a flight to catch. It was nice to see you. I hope you’re well.” She looks at Kimo briefly, giving him a quick nod, before looking back at me. “There’s no expiration date on that email, by the way. If you happen to go back and find it.”
“Oh.” I swallow nervously, trying to smile. “I’ll check my spam folder. You never know.”
I watch her walk away, keenly aware of Kimo’s eyes on me. “An old friend,” I say to him brusquely, hoping we can leave it at that.
Kimo keeps his face carefully neutral. I can tell it’s an act because his eyebrows don’t entirely cooperate with how nonchalant he’s pretending to be. They keep twitching. “I gathered that.”
We remain silent. I tense, bracing myself for him to press me on it. When he doesn’t, I can’t quite help myself from blurting, “From when I was at university. She was my mentor, assigned to me since I was considered an ‘at-risk’ student.” Most likely due to me being in and out of the foster care system, but I didn’t want to go into that right now. “I guess they figured, I was born in Russia, and she’s Russian. A successful Russian businesswoman, at that, so maybe she could keep me from becoming another dropout.”
Kimo just nods, listening.
“I was my usual charming self.” I say this with a self-deprecatory eye roll, because I know better than anyone just how “charming” I can be. “But she was good for me. She called me on my bullshit, told me when I was being too pushy, helped me figure out how to do the perfect red lipstick. She became like an older sister to me.”
The words stick in my throat. I blink, waving a hand in front of me, as if to scatter the thick fog of emotions away. “Anyway. We drifted apart. It happens.” Something in Kimo’s open, interested expression makes it impossible to lie to him. I can tell he’s feeling sorry for me, and I need to set the record straight. I’m not the injured party here. “Well, not so much drifted apart as I kind of panicked and imploded things.”
His face creases into something like a frown—an expression that looks extremely foreign on his usually sunny face. “Imploded things how?”
“I tried to sleep with her brother. Luca. The one who’s married now with a baby on the way, apparently. He wasn’t married then, for the record, or even in a relationship.”
Kimo’s eyebrows notch up a bit before he can catch them. “Were you into him?”
A short bark of laughter escapes my throat. “No! That’s the worst part. I mean, objectively, he’s a handsome man, smart, charming when he wants to be, but it wasn’t about him at all.”
Another furrow of the brow. “Were you into her , then?”
If only it were that simple. “No. Not in that way, anyway. I didn’t want to sleep with Dominika, I just...” Saying it out loud to someone else brings into focus how stupid the entire thing was. “I guess I figured sooner or later we’d drift apart. That’s what happens with people. She’d get a job across the country or get married and start a family, and we’d talk less and less. One day we’d be strangers.”
That lump is back in my throat. This time for Dominika, but also not. My sadness is deeper than that, and older, too. I still miss Dominika all the time, but she was an aftereffect, not the cause.
When I look back at Kimo, something like understanding glimmers in his eyes. I think he’s gotten me all wrong, until he opens his mouth. “You thought you could keep her close if you kept him close.”
My mouth runs dry. “Something like that.”
Now I’m thinking about the first time we met—Kimo overhearing me proposition Grady in the gym locker room. I can tell by the look on his face that he’s thinking about it, too, maybe putting some things together.
“Anyway.” I put a curt finality into my tone, signaling the conversation is over. “Where’s this car? I thought you said it would only be a few minutes...”
Kimo lets me have it—this abrupt exit from the conversation—though I can feel in his silence, his sidelong glances, that he’s weighing me out.