15. Kai
— ? —
Kai
Tuesday evening, and I’m coming home late as usual, headlights cutting through the dark, when I see the car in my driveway, a red Porsche, and I know that car.
Isabella Lockhart steps out before I’ve even killed the engine.
She’s wearing a red dress cut low in the front and high on the thigh, designed to make men stupid, and her red hair is perfectly styled and her makeup is flawless, and she’s carrying a bottle of wine like she’s here for a casual visit.
“Kai.” Her voice is honey and poison. “I heard what happened. I thought you could use some company.”
Every muscle in my body goes tight. A few months ago I’d have taken the wine and asked her in and poured two glasses and talked about her father for three hours and called it work. I know that about myself now. It’s the ugliest thing I know.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Lucky guess.” She saunters toward me, hips swaying. “You look terrible, by the way. When’s the last time you slept?”
“What do you want, Isabella?”
“I told you. I’m here to help.” She holds up the wine. “Thought we could talk. Catch up. You’ve been so busy lately, we never get to see each other anymore.”
The pieces slot into place with sickening clarity.
All those private dinners, just the two of us, while Erika sat at home wondering where I was, Isabella insisting on confidentiality, claiming her father needed discretion, when really she just wanted to isolate me.
The award night, when she showed up at my office with a crisis right when I should have been leaving, a crisis that had to be worked out over dinner, at Maestro’s, and ran for hours while my wife accepted an award alone.
And the timing, always the timing, always managing to need me exactly when Erika needed me more.
“You planned this,” I say.
Her smile flickers. “What?”
“All of it. The dinners, the emergencies, the constant need for my attention. You’ve been playing me for months.”
“Kai, that’s ridiculous. We were working on getting my father to sell you those lots.”
“He was never going to sell, was he?” I step toward her, and she takes a half step back. “Not to my father, not to me. You knew that the first night. You were stringing me along, keeping me busy, making sure I wasn’t available for my wife.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Am I?” My voice drops low. “The night of Erika’s ceremony. You showed up at my office at five with a crisis that couldn’t wait, and you insisted we go to dinner to discuss it, and you kept me there while my wife sat alone in a ballroom with an empty chair next to her.”
“That was a coincidence.”
“Bullshit.”
Her mask cracks, just slightly, and I see the ugly thing behind those green eyes, the thing I’ve been too blind to see for months.
“Fine,” she says, and her voice has lost its honeyed quality. “You want the truth? Yes. I knew about the ceremony. I knew you were supposed to be there. And I made sure you weren’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t deserve you.” Isabella’s chin lifts. “She’s a nobody, Kai. A secretary who got lucky. You could have anyone in the world, and you chose her?”
“That secretary is worth more than you’ll ever be.”
“Please.” She laughs, harsh and brittle. “Meanwhile, I could have helped you build an empire. My family, your family, together? We could have been unstoppable.”
“I don’t want an empire. I want my wife.”
“Your wife left you.” Isabella steps closer again, undeterred. “She’s gone, Kai. Living in some apartment, pretending she doesn’t need your money. Is that really the future you want, chasing after a woman who doesn’t want you?”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.” She puts her hand on my chest. “I’m right here. I’ve always been right here. Waiting for you to wake up and see what’s been in front of you this whole time.”
I look down at her hand, the manicured nails, the designer rings, everything polished and calculated, and I think about Erika’s hands, bare and ink-smudged, resting on a typewriter she wouldn’t let me carry inside.
“Get off my property.”
“Kai.”
“I said get out.” I remove her hand from my chest, not gently. “Whatever you wanted from me, whatever game you were playing, it’s over. Don’t contact me again. Don’t come to my office. If I see you at an event, you’d better walk the other direction.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“The only mistake I made was not seeing through you sooner.” I step back, putting distance between us.
“My wife is gone because of me, because I was too arrogant and too fucking blind to see what was happening right in front of my face. That’s on me.
But you made it worse. You found every crack and you got your nails into it. ”
Isabella’s face twists, the beautiful mask slipping away to reveal the petty, vicious thing underneath.
“You’ll regret this,” she hisses. “When she doesn’t take you back, when you realize you threw away everything for a woman who doesn’t even want you anymore, you’ll come crawling back to me.”
“I’d rather die alone.”
I mean it, and she can see that I mean it, and it’s the first honest thing I’ve said to her in all the months I’ve known her.
Then I turn my back on her and walk into the house, and behind me I hear her heels clicking on the pavement, the slam of a car door, the screech of tires as she peels out of the driveway. Good riddance.
I lean against the closed front door, heart pounding, hands shaking.
All those months of dinners and emergencies and late nights, and I never once questioned it, never once wondered why Isabella always seemed to need me at the worst possible moments.
It was right in front of me, the looks Erika gave me when I mentioned Isabella’s name, the tension in her shoulders every time I came home late from one of those private meetings.
She never had to tell me. It was all right there, and I didn’t see it.
And there’s a worse thought under that one, the one I don’t want to look at directly, which is that even without Isabella I’d have found a reason.
Some other dinner. Some other name on the calendar.
Isabella saw the empty chair before I did, that’s all.
She didn’t make it empty. I did that myself, one late night at a time.
I need to tell her. Not the part about Isabella, she’ll already know that part, she always knows. The part where I finally see it.
I grab my keys and drive to her building, breaking at least three traffic laws on the way, and the whole drive I’m rehearsing it, Isabella came to the house, Isabella admitted it, and every version sounds like a man showing up at midnight to hand his wife an excuse, which is exactly what it is, and a neighbor coming out lets me in behind her without a second look, and by the time I’m standing outside her door I’ve thrown all of it out and I’m out of breath and probably look insane, and I knock anyway.
“Erika. It’s me. I need to talk to you.”
A long pause. Then the door opens, just a crack.
“It’s almost midnight, Kai.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But this is important.”
She sighs, unlatches the chain, and opens the door just wide enough for me to step inside, and I’ve never been past this door, and I look at everything at once, a living room barely big enough for a couch and a TV, a kitchen that’s more of a hallway, a bedroom I can see through an open door.
The typewriter sits on a small desk by the window with a sheet of paper rolled into it, half a page of type on it already, and I want to walk over and read it more than I’ve wanted anything in weeks, and I don’t, because it’s the one thing in this room she’s made clear isn’t mine, and seeing it there makes my chest ache.
But it’s hers, she paid for it herself, and that makes it more impressive than anything I ever gave her.
“What do you want?” She’s standing with her arms crossed, the couch between us like a barricade.
“Isabella came to my house tonight.”
Erika’s expression doesn’t change. “And?”
“She was playing me. The whole time. She admitted it. She wanted me distracted, wanted you out of the picture.”
“I know.”
I blink. “You know?”
“I never had to tell you, Kai.” Her voice is patient and tired, like she’s explaining a thing to a child. “It was right in front of you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was blind and stupid and…”
“I know.” She holds up a hand, and I fall silent. “You were blind. Isabella played you. She’s a manipulative snake who targeted our marriage. I know all of that.”
“Then…”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The words knock the air from my lungs. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
“If it hadn’t been Isabella, it would have been some other reason.” She unfolds her arms, and her eyes are unbearably sad. “She’s not why our marriage failed, Kai. She’s just a symptom.”
“I know. I know that. That’s what I came to say. Not that she played me. That I finally see it, and that it was me.”
“And what do you want me to do with that? You show up at my door at midnight. You buy me gifts I didn’t ask for.” She pauses. “You stood outside my window for an hour like some lovesick stalker.”
I wince. “You saw that.”
“Of course I saw it. I turned off the light and you were still there. That’s not healthy, Kai. For either of us.”
“Then tell me what is.” I come around the couch, closer to her, and she doesn’t back away. “Because I can’t keep going like this, Erika. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t think about anything except you.”
“That’s not my problem to solve.”
“I know. I know it isn’t.” I step closer still, until we’re barely a foot apart. “But I love you. I’ve always loved you, even when I was too stupid to show it. I don’t care how long it takes or how many times you slam the door in my face.”
She stares at me, and her eyes are shiny, and I realize with a start that she’s close to tears.
“Sign the papers,” she says quietly. “Please. Let me move on.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to eventually.”
“No.” I hold her gaze. “I don’t. I will spend every day for the rest of my life trying to earn you back, and if you still say no at the end of it, I’ll accept it. But I’m not there yet.”
A tear slides down her cheek and she wipes it away angrily.
“You need to stop.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s over, Kai.”
“It’s not over until you hate me.” I hold her gaze. “And you don’t hate me yet.”
A flicker crosses her face, one she tries to hide and can’t quite manage.
“Goodnight, Kai.”
She steps back and opens the door, and I walk through it, and I turn at the last moment.
“I meant what I said.”
The door closes.
I stand in the hallway for a second with my hand still on the frame, the way I stood in the hallway of the Beverly Wilshire and the hallway outside this door the other day with the boxes, and I’m getting to know the outsides of her doors better than I ever knew the insides of our house.
But she didn’t deny it. She doesn’t hate me yet.