Chapter 9
Triana~
My hands were still shaking when I got home, and even though I always locked my front door, this time, I locked it as if the police were about to descend on my front yard.
What in the hell?
After Kairo had walked me back to the cherry blossom tree, he had pointed to where a sign had been clearly nailed, explaining how the borderlands between both regions crossed.
Having been so upset about my parents, I must have missed it, and my chest still pounded by what could have happened to me had I’d gotten caught.
Crossing borders was no joke, and I would have been arrested by the Sterling Acres region police, then transported back to Rancher Hills to await my sentencing.
Unlike other crimes, you didn’t have the option to post bail if you were caught crossing a regional border, and marriage to a man that I didn’t love would have been the least of my worries.
There’s also the fact that Kairo Booker wouldn’t have been able to help me had I gotten caught.
With his family being the political powerhouse that it was, he would have had to remove himself from that big of a scandal, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
Since racism was still alive and well in the RNA, I could only imagine what he would have been accused of, being caught with a woman from another region.
Nevertheless, that truth didn’t change how taken aback I’d been by meeting him.
Kairo Booker was easily six-foot-three, and he had dark brown hair that was cut close to the scalp, bright hazel eyes that glowed from underneath a bed of dark lashes, and being Black, his face had all those sharp angles that made him look classically masculine, and it looked good on him.
In fact, he reminded me a little of Billy Payne, and anyone who said that Billy Payne wasn’t gorgeous needed their eyes checked.
There was also that body of his. While he’d been wearing a simple t-shirt, jeans, and stomps, the outfit had showcased a very fit and muscular physique, and those arms of his alone were drool-worthy.
There was no way that Kairo Booker didn’t see a gym three times a week, if not every damn day.
The expensive fabric of his shirt had fallen like silk over those six-pack abs that had peeked out with each step that he’d taken.
All-in-all, Kairo Booker was gorgeous, and not only was he out of my league, but he was also legally unattainable.
Still, that didn’t stop me from going into my office to stalk him and his family.
After graduating from college, I’d chosen to live with my parents for a year, so that I could save enough money to put a significant down payment on a house, but I also hadn’t gone overboard.
With it being just me, I had purchased a standard three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car garage home, and working in finance for my parents, I had converted one of the bedrooms into an office, and that left one guest room for Sonia whenever she got too drunk to drive home from my place.
Firing up my desk computer, I thanked God for the internet, then typed Alvin Booker’s name into the search bar to find out everything that I could on the family.
While it could be considered irrational since I was never going to see Kairo Booker again, I didn’t care.
For the first time in years, a man was making me feel something other than obligation, and I liked the way that it felt.
Clicking on the first article to come up, it was a direct link to his Administrator page, and I clicked the About Me tab to see what I could find. Like most fluff pieces, there was a picture of him and his family, and below it was a short summary about each of them.
The summary stated that Alvin, and his wife, Anita, had three sons, their oldest being Dallas Booker, then their twins, Kairo and Leyden Booker.
Dallas was an attorney that worked for his dad, Leyden was in medical school, and Kairo was a biochemist. They were all very refined, distinguished, and incredibly educated.
However, it told me nothing about any of them personally.
There was also no denying how they were all related. Though Kairo and his twin had gotten their mother’s eyes, all the Booker men resembled one another, the twin an obvious given. Nonetheless, it was rather uncanny how much they all looked like their father in everything else.
Closing out that tab, I typed in Kairo’s name, checking to see if he had any social media that I could stalk.
At this moment, I was all in, even though there was no point to it.
Regardless of any logistics that would keep us from dating, there was no way that a man who looked like Kairo Booker was single.
He was probably engaged to his high school sweetheart or something perfect like that, and I was just a psychopath stalking a pipe dream.
As I searched for whatever I could find on him, my phone rang, and I immediately recognized my brother’s ringtone. Since I could only imagine what my parents had told him, I knew that I had to answer his call. My brother worried about me just like I worried about him, and so I owed him.
“Hey,” I answered.
“What in the hell happened earlier?” he asked in lieu of a greeting. “Mom called me, telling me how you started a fight with them at their house and all kinds of other crazy shit.”
“Are you serious?” I squawked, my internet stalking on hold for the moment.
“Yes,” he answered quite seriously. “I just got off the phone with her.”
“Did she also tell you how they told Romelio’s family that I had agreed to the marriage?” I asked him. “They had already agreed to it before dinner on Thursday.”
“You’re kidding me?” he asked, his voice a choked whisper of incredulousness.
“No, I’m not,” I assured him. “That’s why they were so mad when I said that I didn’t want to marry him. They already made promises on my behalf, and now they’re worried about how it’s going to affect their good name if I don’t follow through.”
“Han perdido la cabeza?” he asked. “I mean, they have seriously lost their minds to do such a thing.”
“Oh, I agree,” I retorted. “Like we’re living in the thirteenth century, they really arranged a marriage for me and have the nerve to be upset because I’m not agreeing to it.”
“Triana, I’m so sorry,” he said, and I knew that he meant it. “I can talk to them if you want.”
“If I thought that it’d help, I’d beg you to,” I told him honestly. “But they really think this is a question of honor like we’re on some sort of battlefield of integrity.”
“I...I just really don’t know what to say,” he muttered. “I feel like...well, I hope you know that I’m on your side. So, whatever you need, you just need to ask.”
“Truth be told, I’d like to keep you out of this, if possible,” I told him. “I don’t want them turning against you for agreeing with me.”
“Well, they can’t disown us both, right?” he posed. “I mean, who else is there to inherit the business?”
That made me smile. While I still didn’t know what I was going to do about my relationship with my parents, it was nice to know that Tomasco was willing to stand by me on this. After all, there was no way that I was going to marry Romelio, no matter what.
“Thank you,” I replied, meaning it. “And I promise to keep you posted.”
“Please do,” he harumphed. “Fucking Mom and Dad.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Okay, well...I’ll talk to you later,” he said. “I love you, Triana.”
“I love you, too.”
After hanging up with my brother, I went back to my internet stalking, and when I couldn’t find anything significant, I called Sonia. She was a social media addict, and so if there was anything out there to know about Kairo Booker, she’d know.
“What’s up, chica?” she asked as soon as she answered.
“What can you tell me about Alvin Booker and his family?” I asked, purposely refraining from asking about Kairo directly. I loved the girl, but Sonia was like a dog with a bone when she suspected that something was amiss.
“Why?” she asked reasonably. “What does Alvin Booker have to do with you?”
Trying to play it off, I told her about the fight with my parents, then tried to play my question off as a joke. “Do you think Alvin Booker would have me arrested if I crossed the border?”
“Don’t even play about that, Triana,” she replied seriously. “The Constitution is very clear about the punishment for crossing any border without permission, and your parents wanting you to marry a family friend isn’t a sufficient reason for them to break the law.”
“I’m just in my feelings,” I semi-lied. “I’m really upset with my parents, and...and I am absolutely not going to marry Romelio, Sonia.”
“Do you really think that your parents will fire you if you don’t?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I answered. “After all, if you had asked me last week if I thought that my parents would ever go behind my back and arrange a marriage for me, I’d have said no.”
“That’s valid,” she muttered. “Still, from what I’ve heard, Alvin Booker is a no-nonsense kind of man, and the rumor is that his family are the perfect example of the new American dream.”
“Oh, lovely,” I sighed, finally feeling the crash of adrenaline from this morning.
“It could be worse,” she said. “Your parents could have already sent out the invitations.”
“How do you know that they haven’t?” I retorted, not completely joking.