12. Chloe
CHAPTER 12
CHLOE
I don’t know why I expected a date with Kain to be normal. Since I was desperate for some peace and quiet in my chaotic life, it was obvious that my scent match would pull off a series of crazy stunts. But honestly, I wasn’t expecting for this to be so much fun.
Kain had that grin on his face that I couldn’t help finding adorable, while letting the penguins out of their enclosure, reassuring me that he could get them back with promises of sardines easily enough.
“It’s good for them.” He’d shrugged.
I raised an eyebrow at him, communicating wordlessly. Really?
“No one should spend all their time caged. It’s healthy to get out, shake things loose every once in a while.”
So that was how I found myself surrounded by penguins that were waddling all around me. They were little chubby birds wearing sleek tuxedos, like they had been all invited to a fancy party with good food.
We passed by a rainforest section, surrounded by tanks that had thick gnarly tree roots, with enormous fish swimming under them. The penguins waddled straight up to the glass and tried to take a bite out of them. Which luckily wasn’t happening. I wasn’t sure if it was even good for the penguins to be eating fish so far out of their habitat. Surely it would give them indigestion or something.
There were seven of them. I knew it, because I kept on neurotically counting them whenever we walked to a new area of the aquarium.
Kain didn’t seem to have any problems corralling the penguins around. Obviously, it was something he had done before, as he would let out a little whistle when one of them got too far, and then the chubby little birds would go running back towards him excitedly, like he was their favorite fish dealer.
Kain brought them to a theater within the aquarium. Then, he went into the back and put on a short film about penguins. A narrator, with a deep British voice, started droning on about the natural habitat of the Humboldt penguins, as the ones we were taking on a walk tried and failed to hop all over the theater seats.
I’m not going to lie, I went on this date expecting nothing but free food and looking for any excuse to turn down my scent matches once and for all. I could remember each and every one of my excuses, how I didn’t have enough time, that I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with a pack of men in the first place, how I didn’t need scent matches to find my dream job…
Each of those excuses sort of faded away every time that Kain looked back in the midst of doing something ridiculously crazy, and winked at me.
Like right now, he had a line of penguins following him out of the theater, back to their enclosures like a group of slow moving but enthusiastic puppies.
I couldn’t help it. There was something in his ridiculously handsome face, something about his casual confidence, that had me melting.
Just a little bit.
Maybe. Just, maybe… it wouldn’t hurt to give these guys a little bit more of a chance.
I mean, what did I have to lose if it turned out he was a red flagged asshole after all? I could always break up with them later.