Chapter One #2
He doesn’t immediately pull away. My sleepy body reads it as foreplay and immediately gets hot all over. When he finally releases me, I curl my hand into a fist, shoving it into the pocket of my jeans. “How is Sunny?”
Alec’s face breaks into a heartbreakingly perfect smile. “She’s great. Living in London. Modeling. Maybe you—”
The hotel clerk leans forward to grab our attention. “I can help whoever’s next.”
Alec gives me a small nod, indicating that I can go first, but I’m still feeling the handshake sex. My wallet is in my backpack, my neck feels like it’s about to scorch from this blush, and I really just need someone to drop me in a bathtub and give me a scrubbing with a giant scouring pad.
“Go ahead.” I wave him on, pretending to need to find something. Which I guess I do. Namely, my composure, which must be somewhere in this bag with my wallet. But after only a few seconds, a woman steps out from behind the counter and approaches the remaining five of us in line.
“I’m so sorry to say that we are fully booked for the night,” she says, wincing. “Unless you have a reservation, we’re unable to accommodate you. I know there are a lot of groups in town, but our concierge might be able to offer some alternatives.”
Before I can even react, the other guests have jogged over to the concierge’s desk and formed a line in the reverse order from this one, all clamoring for attention. Great.
Looking down, I send an email through the work travel portal, letting the help desk know the hotel I went to is booked solid.
But it’s almost ten now, and I have no idea how long it will take someone to see it.
I try calling, too, and get a voicemail.
The surfaces of my eyes burn with frustrated, exhausted tears and I squeeze my lids closed, thinking.
What are the odds I could just nap on a couch in the lobby and no one would notice?
Or even return to the airport and curl up on a row of seats there?
I’ve been rebooked onto a flight tomorrow morning at eight; it’s not like I need anything elaborate.
I’m startled back into awareness when a hand comes around my elbow, gently guiding me away from where I stand alone in a line that now leads nowhere.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” Alec asks.
“No. I’m trying to figure it out.”
He gazes down at me. “Do you need me to make some calls?”
I shake my head. “I’m just… so tired and need a shower more than I need my next breath.”
Tilting his head, he studies me with disarming focus for a few quiet seconds. “If you’d like, you can do that up in my room.”
Surely he’s kidding. “I—no, really, it’s okay.”
“If you’re uncomfortable, I understand,” he says quickly, “but you’re a family friend. You look like you might drop where you’re standing. If you want to take a shower upstairs, it’s really okay with me.”
Two more seconds of eye contact and then I break it.
I’ve been whittled down to my barest self. Even my hands feel grimy.
I nod, totally defeated and lifting my chin for him to lead the way. “Thank you.”
Inside the elevator, we stand as far apart as we can and fall deeply, heavily quiet.
The realization lands like a tarp thrown over my head: No matter how badly I need to shower, this is a terrible idea.
I’m five-foot-four, heading upstairs with a guy who easily has eight inches on me, and I’ve just spent two weeks tracking down scum-of-the-earth men all over London. I know better.
I wonder if Alec is having the same thought, or if not the same—surely he doesn’t worry about me physically overpowering him—then wariness about who I might have become in the years since we knew each other.
The quiet is so absolute that it feels like some cosmic force has put the world on mute.
I stare at my sneakers, scuffed and dusty on the gleaming polished floor of the elevator.
I don’t realize he’s been watching me until he speaks. “You can text a friend if you’re feeling uncomfortable,” he says. “Or—God, sorry this is obvious—I can stay downstairs until you’re done.”
Making him stay out of his room until I’m done feels…
unnecessary. He isn’t a stranger, not really, and he’s probably just as exhausted as I am.
I knew his family for six years—spent at least half of my weeknights across the dinner table from him, eating his mother’s Korean home cooking.
He was soft-spoken, playful, attentive. God, eighth-grade Georgia would have kissed him until she passed out if she’d had the chance.
Still, a text is a good idea. If I was better rested, fed, and clean, it might have occurred to me to do this before even getting into the elevator.
My voice creaks out of me. “What’s your room number?”
He slides a hand into his pocket and pulls the envelope out, blinking his eyes down to it. “Twenty-six eleven.”
I text my best friend, Eden. Met an old friend. Using his room to shower because hotel situation is a mess. Seattle Airport Marriott. Room 2611. He’s a good guy but I’ll text within the hour to let you know I’m okay.
Immediately, she replies with a shocked-face emoji followed by a simple Okay.
“Thanks,” I say, pocketing my phone. Just the fact he suggested I text someone makes me feel better.
He’s poised, has such a gentle presence.
I try to imagine him turning menacing and…
I mean, anything is possible. It’s astonishing how well the world hides viciousness. “How’d you manage to snag a room?”
He smiles as he holds the elevator door for me to exit first. “I was lucky to have someone call ahead of the crowd.”
After swiping his key against the door labeled PRESIDENTIAL SUITE, Alec gestures for me to step in ahead of him, and I’m so caught up in the view before me that I’m halfway down the long entry hall before I remember my manners.
Of course, he’s still by the door, stepping out of his shoes.
I’m blurry and wiped, and few things make me feel more graceless than the way he glances down at my feet as I trip out of my Vans.
He carefully wheels his glossy carry-on past me into the room.
Or rooms, really. I knew hotels had suites—I’ve stayed in them once or twice on very extravagant girls’ trips and have been in my share of them for interviews with important people—but this is different.
This isn’t just an apartment, it’s a luxury apartment.
An apartment villa. One entire wall is just floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the Seattle skyline.
There’s a living room, a full kitchen, a separate dining room, and a door leading down a hall to where there seems to be multiple other rooms. “Wow.”
He watches me with a hint of a smile. “You look exhausted, Georgia.”
“I am,” I admit, meeting his eyes. “I’m so grateful for the shower. I’ll head downstairs after and figure out the rest.”
“Are you sure I can’t call someone while you’re in there?”
I shake my head. “We have a travel department.”
“ ‘We’?”
“My work.”
“Ah.” He looks like he wants to ask, but his attention slides to the sag in my shoulders. Alec lifts his chin. “Go ahead. I’ll be right out here.”
Even though he’s so refined, he seems to give each tiny gesture deliberate forethought; after the darkness I’ve seen in London over the past two weeks—after the stories I’ve heard over and over—I’m grateful for the reassurance.
And for the lock on the bathroom door.
I lean back against it once it’s shut, exhaling.
Even though I’m exhausted, I can’t deny Alec Kim still has a real presence.
Masculine and composed and stern. Gently arrogant in a way I find intensely sexy but, wow, what a contrast between the two of us.
Looking the way I do right now, I feel like I’m stealing something by even thinking about him in a vaguely sexual way.
I haven’t had these kinds of thoughts in so long.
Months, to be precise, and Alec is a sharp contrast to the other, more recent man in my sex-brain.
But in the span of eleven months, Spencer lost all the Best Boyfriend points he’d gained over our six-year relationship.
Men, sex, and the complex dance of being vulnerable with someone lost all the shine it once had.
And talk about being vulnerable: in the twenty minutes since our reacquaintance, Alec Kim has looked at me so squarely, as if he can see all of me in a glance.
Spence had stopped looking at me directly, but I realized it only in hindsight.
At some point, he started offering only the briefest flickers of eye contact even when he gave me his trademark dazzling smile.
His smile would crack wide open, but his eyes would angle over my shoulder or down to the side, like he was delighted by something out the window or charmed by the cat curled up in the corner.
That alone should have tipped me off; when we first met, he would stare.
Whether I was naked, clothed, it didn’t matter.
He once told me he wouldn’t ever stop being surprised that I was his.
We were the envy of our entire group of friends, all of us close since college.
While our friends were chaotic and messy, Spence and I were the solid heart of our social circle.
We were playful, affectionate, down-to-earth.
But over six years together—two of those spent sharing an apartment—somehow a switch was flipped.
One day we were Spence-and-G, one word, the next day something was off.
I’d get a quick peck at the door before he rushed out for the day.
Gratitude at night for whatever I’d managed to throw together for dinner—over-the-top gratitude that seemed to expand until it became something desperate and off-putting. That should have tipped me off, too.