Chapter 12
12
Kit
I n the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were still pink from Liam’s question. My chest heaving. My skin. All this skin. What was I thinking being so naked in front of him?
He wanted to know why I’d done it. Why I’d gone to bed with him. Because he thought everything about that night had been a set up. That I’d been a honey pot sent by my father to seduce him out of his money.
None of it was true.
Why did I fuck him? Why did I take that chance on a man I’d just met who looked at me as if I was the most beautiful woman in the world? Who was sweet and funny and never once made me feel like I was prey. Or that he was looking for an easy score, and his mission had been to get me into bed. I’d had those encounters before and I’d always run in the opposite direction.
What had made Liam different than any man I’d ever been involved with before was how simple it had all been. Effortless. Real. It just happened and I had no control over it at all.
That incredible connection, like being tied to another person with electricity. His first kiss? I still dreamt about that kiss. Five years later, I woke up at night wet and trembling remembering that kiss.
The way he made me laugh? That was the last night I’d laughed like that. So hard my stomach hurt.
He thought it was an act when it had been the most genuine emotional connection of my life. I couldn’t tell him that though. He had absolutely no reason to believe me. All he knew was, he came out of that bathroom and I was gone.
The next day the news broke and all of Liam’s money was gone.
He didn’t know how I’d sprawled happy and giddy on that bed one instant before grabbing my purse to check my phone. He didn’t know about the twenty panicked texts from my Dad. Or the way I put on my dress so I could step out into the hallway and call him back.
He didn’t know that my innocence and my college dreams and my entire sense of self were destroyed that night.
And I would never tell him.
Liam
Harrison and Denise called everyone to come and get some food. I was surprised and happy to see Tess take a full plate over to one of the chairs in the shade where we’d put our stuff. I got my own plate and joined her.
Still no sign of Kit. I sat so I could see the door to the pool house.
Was she sick in there?
“Hey!” I said, taking a big bite of a hot dog. “You do like food!” I said, and grinned at Tess as she shoveled in macaroni salad.
“This food,” she said, smiling back at me. Her face was pink from the sun and the ring of her goggles.
“Yeah?” I said and leaned over so I could get a look at the food on her plate. She had chips and veggies and fruit. A piece of cheese and some crackers. A heap of mac and cheese.
“You need some protein,” I told her. “You want a hot dog? Or a burger?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” Tess said, pushing those pink glasses further up her nose.
“No shit?” I asked. I don’t think I’d ever met a kid vegetarian.
She shook her head. Jeez. I thought about the pepperoni pizzas and chicken wings. I could not stop blowing it with this kid. I looked over at the pool house again, hoping Kit would come out. But the door stayed closed.
“You really like Kit, huh?” I asked Tess, finishing off my own hot dog. Something about hot dogs made me sad. They reminded me of my dad putting a hot dog in our hands for dinner and telling us we had to go outside and play because mom wasn’t feeling well.
“She is very nice and very fun,” Tess said definitively.
“Would you like it if she came and hung out with you while you’re staying with me?”
She looked at me with a lot of excitement. So I figured I’d do whatever I needed to do to actually make Kit the nanny.
Why did that get me excited?
Finally, Kit came out of the pool house with a gauzy, brightly colored cover up over her swimsuit and her glasses on like armor.
Which…fine. I had no business trying to get answers from her I wouldn’t like.
I knew what I knew. She’d been her father’s plant. She’d flirted with me. Made it seem like she was helping me out by giving me her father’s contact information.
Fucked me to take the sting away, I guess?
Kit got a plate and sat down on the lawn chair across from Tess and me. She had barely any food on her plate. “You’re not hungry?” I asked. “There are hot dogs.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Hey! Locke!” Cohen walked over and I was happy to see that Kit had no problem not staring at his chest. “What’s the story with your brother?”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard this rumor he got married to that singer… what’s her name?”
“Sydney Malloy,” Bingham supplied. “Friend in Vegas said they were out the other night and got shit faced. Vegas wedding, baby!” Bingham said.
“Is it bullshit?” Cohen asked, grinning like he already knew the answer.
“I don’t know, Cohen.” I asked, putting my hands behind my head. “Does Wyatt Locke seem like the kind of guy who engages in bullshit?”
I grinned at him. In game four Wyatt laid a hit on Cohen that made our winger look like a rag doll. He had to leave the game to get his breath and dignity back.
“I’m just saying,” Cohen said, who clearly did not know when to walk away. “The guy is going to be in a sappy break up song one of these days.”
“I like Sydney Malloy,” Tess said, so seriously.
“Me too,” Kit said.
“Me three,” I said.
“Whatever, man,” Cohen said and turned and walked away.
I would defend my brother until the day I died, but I also couldn’t have my teammate walking around with a chip on his shoulder. I got up, chased after him until I caught him. Wrapped my arms around him and crashed both of us into Harrison so all three of us went splashing into the pool.
“What the hell, man?” Cohen asked, brushing his hair out of his face.
Grinning, I splashed him. He splashed me back.
Harrison splashed both of us.
The kids cannonballed in and soon it was an all-out water fight.
Kit and Tess sat on the chair, watching. Not smiling. Eating chips off each other’s plates. They were like a foreign language I didn’t understand. But I kind of wanted to.
“Hey,” Staski said, coming up behind me and sweeping my legs out from under me. I went down and came up sputtering. “I think you like the nanny,” he said, quietly. “I think the nanny likes you too.”
“The nanny does not like me,” I said, wiping a hand across my face.
“The nanny looks at you like maybe she would like to see what the fuss is about.”
I looked over at her and she looked away so fast she made it obvious she’d been watching me.