Chapter 19 All Because Of Her
All Because Of Her
Kai to Nate: I should have told you about my home life. I’m sorry I didn’t let you in fully. [unsent]
Tess
The bed is empty when I wake up again, Kai’s side cold, telling me he must have slipped out hours before.
I try not to let that hurt me. To dwell on the meaning behind it.
Pushing up from the mattress I stretch my sore muscles as the duvet pools around me.
And of course, it is mid-stretch that the door opens and Kai walks in, dressed in gym shorts and a fitted t-shirt, carrying a mug of coffee, to find me thrusting my tits at him with my arms above my head.
My arms drop down to cover my boobs. Grasping them like I’m ready to give them a breast cancer check. Little massage maybe.
Kai quirks an amused eyebrow at me. “Are you really covering your boobies like I wasn’t buried deep inside your cunt a couple hours ago?”
I stifle a laugh, shooting him a glare. “Did you really just say ‘boobies’ and ‘cunt’ in the same sentence?”
He rolls his eyes, a small smile creeping onto his lips. “Can a man not say ‘boobies’?”
“Oh no, quite opposite. In fact, I think it should probably be law. ‘All men over the age of thirty are hereby required to use the term boobies whenever describi—”
My words are cut off my Kai’s hand covering my mouth.
He shakes his head at me, eyes twinkling as if he might actually find me amusing. “You never shut up, do you?”
He removes his hand.
“Not often, no,” I grump, crossing my arms and pouting.
Kai just shoves the coffee at me. “It’s caramel.”
I burn my tongue on my first sip, but I refuse to admit that, so I keep drinking. “Yum. Thank you.” I beam at him, then remember waking up alone, and how the last time something happened between us he pulled away. My smile drops, suddenly finding the duvet pattern fascinating.
Plain white. So nice. So clean. So—
Kai lifts my chin to look up at him, forcing my eyes onto his. “What’s wrong, Hurricane?” He searches my face.
“Nothing.” The word comes out too quick. Too unnatural.
He holds my gaze until I crack.
“Where do we go from here?” I voice the question that I’ve been dreading asking.
“Given that we’re stuck here, I’d say nowhere.” Kai grins at me. He’s so incredibly beautiful.
I thwack him on the arm.
“Okay, okay.” His voice turns serious. “What do you want Tess?”
I shake my head.
“You go first.”
He sighs, flopping back onto the pillows and covering his face with his arm.
“I don’t know.”
Ouch.
He raises his arm and lifts his head to look at me.
“I like you, Tess. But relationships… I don’t know how to do that. I’m too messed up from my childhood.”
I want to ask him what he means by that. But I’m scared that I’ll just push him away.
“So… friends?” I say. “That fuck?” I add.
Kai laughs, deep and low. “You want to be friends with benefits?”
“Who knows how long we’re going to be stuck here for, might as well have some fun while we’re at it.” I shrug like it’s no big deal. “No strings. No promises of the future.”
Kai considers my words silently. Then, he gives a slight nod. “I can do that.”
“Great!”
Not great.
Not great at all.
What the actual fuck is wrong with me?
Friends with benefits?
Yeah, that’ll help the crush I have on him.
Idiot.
He stands after that, heading towards the door. “See you downstairs?”
“No where else for me to go.”
He shakes his head in amusement as he pulls the door open and disappears behind it.
I sit for a long time, replaying the conversation in my head. Trying to work out whether I just made a terrible call.
Can I really keep sex and emotions separate? Normally I’d say yes. But with Kai… Something about him is different. He has a grumpy shell, and an aura of broodiness. But I suspect it’s more than that. There’s a reason for his need for control, for his anal tendencies and inability to let anyone in.
I want to be someone he lets in.
So, can I keep my emotions out of it?
I already know the answer.
Trudging downstairs, after a long shower, I find Happy and Grumpy talking quietly in the living room.
“What’s happening?” I ask, my stomach knotting.
Happy gives me a tense smile. “The Russians…” he begins then cuts off as Kai enters the room.
“What about them?” I pull his attention back to me.
“They found Kai’s house…” Happy trails off once again and fear spikes in my chest. I look at Kai whose expression is unreadable, but his fists are clenched at his sides like he’s barely holding on.
“What did they do?” he hisses.
Grumpy steps in, recounting the facts as if they’re nothing. “The place is trashed. Just like Tess’s. Seems like they didn’t know that you two were gone, but they do now.”
Kai curses. His entire body turns rigid.
I want to comfort him, to wrap him in my arms and tell him that it’s all going to be okay.
But it’s not. I might not know Kai that well, but I do know that his home is his sanctuary.
His safe place from the world. It’s why he keeps it so meticulously organised. And now it’s ruined. Because of me.
I stand helplessly as Kai storms from the room.
Kai
There’s white noise buzzing in my ears. An insistent hum telling me that I’m two seconds away from losing it.
I should have never said yes to Carina when she asked me to help out her friend.
Then I wouldn’t be here; in a state caught between wanting her and hating her. Here, when my home—my safe place—has been broken into and I can’t fix it.
I’m helpless.
I’m drowning in my own thoughts as everything unravels.
I stumble into the bedroom. I need somewhere away from everyone else. Somewhere I can fall apart.
I haven’t had a panic attack in years, but I can feel it, pushing at the dark corners of my mind as my vision begins to blur.
My legs give out and I’m sucked back into the past.
Mum’s angry again. Always angry now.
“Kai!” she screams from downstairs. “Get down here, now!” Her words slur enough to tell me she’s been drinking.
I scurry from room, taking the stairs two at a time. There’s no use hiding. She’d find me. And it would only make things worse.
My foot hits the bottom step as she steps into the hall. Her face is murderous.
“There’s a cup out on the side,” she says, her voice cold, controlled. “What have I told you about leaving a mess?”
My bottom lip wobbles. I hate how scared I am of her. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Stupid boy!”
Before I can react, her palm connects with my face. Pain explodes in my skull.
The memory slams shut just in time for another to take its place.
Mum's footsteps grow closer and my body trembles with fear.
The door to the wardrobe rips open and she drags me out by my arm, throwing me to the floor.
“I’m sorry!” I cry out, not knowing what I’m apologising for but doing so anyway.
The cigarette in her hand mocks me. I know what’s coming before it happens.
She grasps a chunk of my hair, pulling me upright until her face is close enough for me to smell the vodka on her breath.
“Did you think I wouldn’t see?!” she screams at me. “You think hiding your mess would make it less obvious?”
The cigarette burns into the skin at my shoulder as she holds it to me. I squirm, desperate to get away but she’s strong. Too strong.
“Diana!” Dad shouts, his frame filling my doorway.
Mum hisses at him, “Fuck off Gary. This doesn’t concern you.”
Dad moves to step into the room. To save me. But she picks up my textbook from my bed, throwing it at him. Hard.
We both know that if he intervenes further, it will be worse for him. He looks at me with sad eyes—an unspoken conversation between us, I nod, letting him know it’s okay. He retreats, leaving me alone with her.
Mum slaps my face before throwing me back to the floor. “You know I hate mess. I want this place spotless by the time I’m home from girls night.”
She hums to herself as she leaves the room.
Another memory surfaces.
The knife in dads hand drips with blood, the metal shining under the florescent lights of the kitchen. His face is one of pure shock—eyes wide, pale skin, sweat beading on his forehead—as he looks down at mum's lifeless form.
His gaze travels up to meet mine and we stare at each other.
Moments earlier she’d been screaming at him, she slapped him and picked up the knife, waving it around dangerously. He’d plucked the blade from her hand, but that just enraged her. She fought harder.
Then the knife was in her neck.
Without a word the two of us jump into action. I numbly go to the cleaning cupboard and pull out everything I can get my hands on. Dad comes back inside from the garden holding a chainsaw and I flinch.
The sound of ripping flesh fills the room alongside the steady buzz of the saw. Blood splatters fucking everywhere. It’s too much.
Dad starts putting pieces of mum into plastic bin bags, adding more and more layers until the blood is no longer seeping through to the outside. I start mopping up the worst of the blood, putting rag after blood-soaked rag into bags too.
Once the worst of the liquid is gone, I start spraying everything with bleach. The scent burns my eyes, my nostrils. It seeps into my pores.
It takes hours, but eventually, the place looks blood free. Neither of us has spoken in all that time.
“We need to dispose of the body,” Dad says, being the first one to break the silence.
“How do we do that?” My voice is cold, detached. I’m numb.
“We’ll dump it in the Thames. I’ll add some rocks to the bag so it doesn’t float back up.”
I nod. The two of us carry the black sacks to the car, I jump into the passenger seat and Dad slides behind the wheel. The engine roaring to life beneath me grounds me.
“What will we tell people?”
Dad keeps his eyes on the road, but I can see the tension in his face from here. The way his eyes are narrowed, his face wrinkling with thought. His hands are deathly white as they grip the steering wheel.
“She left. We say she packed a bag and left us.”
Makes sense.
We park under a bridge and walk towards the river. It’s late now, there’s no one around, though that doesn’t shake the prickly feeling in the back of my neck.
I gasp as I’m jolted out of my thoughts to find Tess crouched in front of me, her face a mask of worry.
“Kai?” she nudges my shoulder gently, as if she’s scared I’m going to break.
And I do.
I break.
Sobs wrack my body.
Tess wraps her arms around without hesitation and I grasp onto her like a lifeline. My arms coming around her back and holding her so tightly it must hurt. But she doesn’t complain. She just holds me tighter, smooths a hand over my hair like I’m a child.
I don’t know how long she holds me, but when I finally pull back I feel a million times calmer. And it’s all because of her. Her presence. Her scent. Just her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she whispers, still staying close even though I’ve pulled back. She shifts so she’s next to me, both of us with our backs to the wall.
I almost say no. That’s my default. I never talk about my childhood.
But something makes me say, “Yes.”
She doesn’t speak. She just waits for me to gather my thoughts and places a hand on my knee, squeezing it gently, like she’s trying to let me know that she’s here.
"My mum was abusive," I begin, searching for the right words. "Not always. I think she was fine for the first five years of my life. But then she started drinking, and it began with shouting. Just shouting, at first.
"Then one night, she threw a plate at my dad’s head. Then another. And another. He called the police. They did nothing.
"It got worse after that. She started taking it out on me. Hitting. Punching. She put cigarettes out on my skin.”
Tess sucks in a breath beside me. I pull my shirt over my head, revealing the burn marks, nearly hidden beneath the circuit board tattoo I got at eighteen—an ode to my love of computers and binary logic, a world that made sense. Unlike mine.
Tess traces the scars with her fingers, and I let out a shaky breath.
"My dad tried to protect me, but he wasn’t a brute. Just a lanky man taking the same beatings I was. She threatened to kill us if he ever left, so he stayed."
I hug my legs to my chest, feeling raw, exposed. I’ve never talked about this before, but somehow, the words keep coming. A weight lifting, even as it presses down on me.
"My dad killed her. I helped him get rid of the body."
Tess’s eyes go wide, but I don’t stop.
"He said we’d tell people she left. But when I woke up the next morning… he was gone.
"I hadn’t panicked until then. Before that, I’d been numb. Maybe a little sad she was dead, but mostly relieved. But being alone? That’s when I had my first panic attack. I thought I was dying.
"After that, I shut down. Nate’s the only person I ever really let in—until Carina and Enzo wormed their dumbasses into my life.
I don’t know how to let people in, because when I do, they leave.
I can’t handle change, because my whole childhood was spent not knowing which version of my mum I’d get each day.
I hate mess because she would beat me black and blue for leaving a plate out on the side.
I hate blood because I watched my kitchen covered in her blood as my dad hacked her body to pieces. "
Tess rests her head on my shoulder, and we sit in silence until she finally asks, “Then why do you clean crime scenes? If you hate blood?”
I huff a laugh. "Carina asked me that once. I didn’t really answer her.
She lifts her head, eyes finding mine. "Will you tell me?"
I hold her gaze, then nod. "Because that first time, Nate needed me, and I knew what to do. He’s my best friend, and even though I struggled with the memories, I found that the cleaning actually made me feel in control of it.
Now, I do it because I believe in his cause.
He eradicates the worst people—the ones worse than my mother.
I like that I can be a part of that. Even if I can’t get involved in the killing side. "
“Does Nate know that you hate it?”
“Hate is a strong word. I hate the blood, but sometimes the cleaning makes me feel better. I like cleaning, it’s therapeutic. Do I wish he’d be less messy? Yeah. But Nate needs artistry the same way I need control.”
We both fall silent. The weight of my words settles over us like a blanket.
Then Tess nudges my shoulder playfully. “I think this is the most you’ve ever spoken to me.”
A laugh bubbles up before I can stop it, my chest and shoulders shaking with the force as my head tips back, my lips pulling upwards.
I pinch her side and she yelps.
“Don’t expect it to become a regular thing.”