Chapter 15
Kennedy
“Are you kidding me?” I blurt out as I stare at the private jet.
Dae stands beside me, his hand on the small of my back. Even through the dress’ material, warmth from his touch penetrates my body. It’s almost as if I feel him everywhere.
The only reason I don’t completely give in and lean into his body for more warmth is my disbelief.
“Why are we staring at a private jet?” I ask, turning to him.
His arm doesn’t move, so now his hand is wrapped around my waist, our fronts lightly brushing against one another’s.
“This is our next date,” he answers so casually it’s as if he’s saying we’re going down the street to a restaurant.
“We have to take a flight to get to dinner?”
His gaze drops to my lips before he answers. “Dinner and more.”
“We can’t do whatever more entails here in Williamsport?”
He shakes his head, his lips twitching.
“Isn’t this a bit absurd for a date?” I ask, still in disbelief. “I have to work in the morning, and …” I trail off before telling him I will not spend the night with him. Because although the words are on the tip of my tongue, I can’t push them out.
I can’t stop the heated thoughts that run through my mind as I think about spending the night with Dae.
“Absurd, maybe …” He leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “But nothing compared to what you deserve,” he says in my ear.
I try to stop the chill that runs through me. “I don’t deserve anything special,” I mumble.
His eyes narrow, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. His expression becomes serious.
“Don’t ever say that again,” he replies sharply.
The urge to defend my comment almost overwhelms me. It’s not that I don’t believe I deserve special treatment or anything like that. I just meant he doesn’t need to go out of his way to impress me.
When I first started dating in my teens and early twenties, I came across too many guys who came from wealthy families like mine but were only concerned with appearance. Not just what I looked like but everything had to be up to their standards. The clothes, cars, dates, social clubs, friends. Everything.
I came to realize they weren’t dating me for me, but because my last name came with the right amount of connections and prestige. By the time I graduated college, I decided I wanted a ‘normal’ guy—the kind who didn’t come from money, or at least didn’t make it a big deal if he had.
Yes, it’s idealistic to wish backgrounds didn’t matter.
But I also like the idea of not having to keep up appearances. Unfortunately, a few of those guys grew some sort of inferiority complex. They’d always bring up my family name or money when I never made a big deal out of it.
“You deserve the whole fucking world,” Dae says in a voice so fierce I don’t think to tell him he’s wrong.
What’s more intriguing, though, is the fierce look in his eyes. He means it. I want to remind him that we barely know each other. But that feels wrong to say out loud.
I cock my head to the side, though. A look, something passes through his eyes, and again, I’m struck with that feeling that we’ve met before.
Not recently.
Another time or another place.
“Did we meet before?” My curiosity gets the best of me. I can’t push the feeling down. “At the club, maybe?” I offer.
“That one time when I kicked out your friend’s ex,” he reminds me.
I shake my head. “Before that.” That night I also got the sense we’d met before. A familiarity I can’t put my finger on.
He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my fingers. “If you don’t remember, then it wasn’t a memorable enough meeting.”
He holds out an arm. “The pilot and crew are waiting.”
With my fingers still tingling from where he kissed, I give a subtle nod and let Dae escort me to the private jet set to take us to a destination only he knows.
“I can’t believe this,”I say as I stare up at the beautifully painted cylindrical ceiling of the famous Jettison Library and Museum. “This place is closed for the day. How did you do this?” I ask Dae.
There’s a satisfied glint in his eyes.
“The family of a military friend of mine donates a lot to this library. His father is on the board. I pulled a favor.”
I narrow my eyes. “Did you serve in the Korean military together?”
He nods. “He has family here and in Korea. He lives here in New York now.”
I nod in understanding, my attention turning to the shelves stacked with historical books, paintings on the walls, and designs detailing hundreds of years of history.
Dae comes up beside me, and again, that familiar warmth invades my senses whenever he touches me, especially when he places his hand on the small of my back.
“We have time to take it all in.”
My stomach chooses that moment to growl embarrassingly loud. I didn’t eat much on the flight and regret it now. Finding something to eat will require leaving here, and it’s the last thing I want to do.
“After dinner, we can explore,” he says.
I frown. “I don’t want to leave.”
He pops an eyebrow. “Who said we have to leave?” A pair of double doors open from the back of the room, and two men roll in a table.
“Sir, your dinner is ready,” says the host who first welcomed us.
“We’re having a private dinner for two right here.”
A smile touches my lips, and I have an immense urge to kiss him. Yet, I don’t. It’s too soon to kiss him like he’s mine or something. Isn’t it?
Dae holds out my chair as I take a seat at the table. It’s not until he takes his seat that the waiter lifts the lids off our plates, revealing beautiful meals of steamed vegetables, mushroom risotto, and cajun honey-butter salmon.
Again, my stomach growls.
Dae narrows his eyes. “Did you skip lunch again today?”
“No,” I defend. “I had a bowl of vegetable soup.”
He frowns. “That’s it?”
“That’s all I had time for,” I grumble, unfolding my napkin and placing it across my lap.
He curses under his breath, which makes me laugh for some reason.
“This looks amazing. Mushroom risotto is one of my favorites.”
“Is it?” he asks while pouring me a glass of the red wine left by our waiter.
My eyelids fall closed upon taking my first bite of the risotto. The delicious, creamy herb flavor bursts in my mouth. “It’s perfect,” I mumble. “It’s so good it reminds me of my first risotto in Rome.”
I’m not kidding.
“When were you in Rome?” he asks, sounding genuinely interested. That’s the thing about Dae. He never comes across as asking questions simply out of obligation but because he genuinely wants to know.
“With my family. Back when we traveled around the world for a year. I went back to Italy on a trip for my college graduation,” I tell him. “Oh, we also went to South Korea.”
He visibly stiffens. Slowly, his eyes rise to meet mine. I pause chewing. An odd look crosses his face.
“Really?” he asks. His tone is off. Detached.
It leads me to believe he has bad memories of living in the country where he grew up. But he’s mentioned his experience in the military a few times without this same expression.
“What prompted the trip with your family?” he inquires.
The change in his tone is so different I briefly wonder if I made it all up.
“My mom,” I say, my heartstrings tugging slightly. I clear my throat and wipe my mouth with my napkin before speaking. “She was sick. Cancer,” I explain.
Concern etches a line on his forehead.
“She’s been in remission for almost twelve years now,” I say with a smile. “She’d been in remission for a year. Then she told my dad she wanted more time with all of us. Kyle and I were going into our last year of high school, and she wanted more family time before we graduated and went off to college.
“I remember thinking it was a joke when they first told us about it on Christmas morning.” I laugh fondly at the memory.
“You didn’t want to go?”
“I did,” I say immediately. “My parents were scared. My mom was nervous that we would freak out because we would miss our friends or regret not starting our senior years in the school we attended since the age of six.”
I shake my head. “Nothing could’ve been further from the truth,” I assert. “By then, I’d already spent time thinking about my mom’s mortality.” I give a slight shrug.
“That’s a heavy burden to carry at sixteen,” he says.
“And my brothers and sister were even younger. Stasi was only seven.” My heart sinks at the possibility of my baby sister losing our mother so young.
The fear of that time is a memory that never goes away. When my mom was sick, there were a lot of nights I stayed up in my bed tossing and turning, wondering if she would be okay. I rarely cry, but I cried into my pillow so no one would see.
Dae reaches across the table and intertwines his fingers into my free hand. His touch reminds me that we’re in the present. The here and now. My mom is okay. She’s healthy, well-loved, and taken care of.
“You were young, too,” he says, his voice so compassionate. “You should’ve been shielded from that pain.” He squeezes my hand, the feeling making my knees slightly weak. Like he would slay all of my demons if I asked him to.
As his gaze meets mine, though, I see something. Compassion, yes. But not only that. It’s not sympathy, either.
Empathy.
As if he knows exactly what it’s like.
Without thinking, I run my thumb up and down the length of his hand.
“You know what it’s like, too,” I say softly. I don’t form it as a question. It’s recognition more than inquiry.
The nod he gives me is slow, reluctant.
“My mother was sick for five years before she died,” he admits. “She had a heart condition and eventually died of heart failure.”
He presses his lips before snorting in disgust.
I wonder what that gesture is about, but I don’t want to bombard him with questions. Even though I yearn to know more.
“I think she was just tired, though,” he continues. “Life wasn’t easy for her. She gave up.” There’s a heaviness in his voice.
It reminds me of our last date when I talked to him about meeting Erika Dalton’s mother. Was it his mother who didn’t want him?
“She died a year before I graduated from high school.”
“I’m sorry.”
The smile he gives me is tight. As if he’s doing it more for my benefit than his own. He lifts my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles like I’m the one in need of comfort and not him.
“I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories for you.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize for talking openly with me. It’s the one thing I want you to do. Always.”
His sharp gaze burrows into mine. He’s urging me to say something.
“Promise.”
“What?”
“That you’ll never hold back. Not because you think it’s too painful for me. Or that you don’t want to burden me. None of that bullshit. If you have something to say, tell me. Promise me that.”
I want to tell him that whatever’s happening between us, it’s too early to start making promises to one another. The piece of me that wants to deny this is even the development of a real relationship. I want to remind him that we’re in this space together because I need information for my investigation.
But my heart and my head know that’s a lie.
I’ll have time to examine why this man, of all people, who is a walking contradiction of everything I said I wanted in someone I date, is easily knocking down all of my walls.
“Then you promise me the same,” I reply.
He lifts an eyebrow.
“I want your guarantee that you won’t hold back with me either. That you’ll always be honest.” I shake my head. “In my career, I see a lot of people and families destroyed by lies and deceit. I want your assurances that you won’t lie to me.”
Dae’s dark gaze meets mine. I ignore the chill that runs through me from the intensity in his eyes. They’re so dark, but not in a way that repels me. It pulls me in, his darkness. I want to spend hours in it, discovering the layers of its depth.
“I promise,” he says, his voice firm, sturdy, and gripping. “I’ll be upfront with you. Always.”
I run my teeth along my bottom lip. I believe him. It startles me that, for some reason, I trust him.
“Let’s finish dinner,” he says, breaking the silence. “There’s more to see after our meal.”