Chapter 6 Kai Kissed Me
Kai Kissed Me
Tess to Carina: He kissed me… that means he likes me, right? [delivered]
Tess
“You’re not staying here.” His words slice through the fog in my brain like a blade, and for a moment, everything goes completely still.
It’s as if my mind has short-circuited, blocking out everything, trying to shield me from the overwhelming rush of emotions.
I can’t think. I can’t feel. Just an empty, hollow space.
“Tess?”
His voice pulls me from the quiet, but my mind isn’t ready to process anything yet.
I blink, trying to focus on him, but my thoughts are stumbling over themselves, falling apart like a house of cards. “Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
“Um…” I should say something more, but I can’t. The words won’t come.
“Pack up your essentials. Let’s go.”
My chest tightens, and I’m momentarily frozen, the weight of his words sinking in. “Where are we going?” I ask, my voice sounding small, distant even to my own ears.
“Back to mine.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I don’t know why I agree. I don’t know why it feels like the only thing to do.
My body moves on its own as I turn toward my bedroom, stepping over the remnants of my life that have been scattered like broken glass.
The mess—the destruction—of everything I’ve built in this small apartment doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just noise.
I start pulling clothes from the dresser, the action mechanical, detached. Towels, toiletries—anything that feels like it belongs to me, even if it’s just for the night. I shove everything into a bag on autopilot.
What the actual fuck?
The questions keep circling, each one more chaotic than the last.
Why would someone break into my flat?
Did they want something from me?
Is it just some sick joke?
Why the hell does it feel so personal?
Is this some twisted aftermath of Jake’s death?
Did I make a mistake?
How did we even get outside?
I blink as the world shifts around me. Suddenly, we’re in the car.
I don’t remember the drive. I don’t remember when we left.
I’m floating through it, my body in motion, but my mind is a storm.
I barely register Kai as he buckles me in.
His touch is careful, almost protective, like I might break into pieces if he’s too rough with me. I don’t pull away.
My mind is a runaway train, tearing through the wreckage of the past two days. None of it makes sense.
Jake is dead.
He tried to kill me.
My apartment is ruined.
Carina is a serial killer.
I watched pigs tear into a human body like it was nothing.
A farmer almost caught us.
Kai is a criminal crime scene cleaner.
Kai kissed me.
Kai. Kissed. Me.
And I want him to do it again.
“Tess, you gotta get out of the car.” Kai’s voice slices through my thoughts, snapping me back to reality. I blink, disoriented, confused to find us sitting in his driveway. How did we get here? I can’t remember the journey.
I let him guide me out of the car; my legs unsteady as he leads me inside.
I don’t know why I follow him. I don’t know what else to do.
Instead of heading upstairs, he steers us toward the living room.
I sit on the couch, my body still, my mind too heavy to move.
The weight of everything pressing in on me.
A soft blanket is draped over my shoulders, and for a moment, I feel the weight of it, the comfort of something familiar, something real. It drags me back to the present, but only just. I’m still floating in the aftershock of everything that’s happened.
“I’m going to do some digging,” Kai’s voice comes from above, steady and calm, like he’s trying to anchor me to something. “I’ll find out what I can about the break-in. Will you be okay down here?”
I don’t even know what "okay" means anymore. I don’t know what’s real and what’s just a blur of terror and confusion. But I nod, because it’s the only thing I can do. “I… um… Yeah.”
Kai hesitates in the doorway, his gaze lingering on me like he’s searching for something in my eyes.
I don’t know what he’s looking for. Maybe he’s trying to see if I’m broken or just numb.
Finally, he gives a small nod, his expression softening for just a second before he steps out of the room.
The door clicks behind him, leaving me alone in the quiet.
But I’m not alone. My mind is still racing, spinning out of control, and I know that no matter how still the room is, my world is anything but.
Kai
Fuck.
How the hell am I supposed to stick to my routine with her around?
This is how I like my days:
Wake up. Go for a run—clear my head.
Come home. Coffee and toast.
Start work, either from home or the office.
Spend the day glued to my screens, break for lunch—chicken, chorizo, and mozzarella sandwich with chilli jam.
Dinner—depends.
Research Nate’s next victim or clean up his crime (with adequate prior warning).
Sleep.
Repeat.
Since Carina came into Nate’s life, I had to adapt a little on this. Cleaning her crime scenes without any warning. But she’s settled down now the two of them work together. Still, for the most part, my routine was intact.
This is how it’s been since she crashed into my life:
Ahhhhhhh.
I’m fucked.
I watch the security footage from Tess's building on a loop. Three men go in, each wearing balaclavas to hide their faces, then come back out again less than twenty minutes later. There are no cameras inside her building which is infuriating, but I zoom in enough to catch a glimpse of one of their tattoos. It’s a skull with a crown of thorns, just poking out from his top at the back of his neck.
Enhancing the image, I run it through various police databases to see if there’s a match. I use the Interpol system for good measure too.
While I wait, my mind drifts to Tess downstairs.
She’s shaken, understandably so. But it unsettles me to see her like this—so quiet, so…
lifeless. The silence between us on the drive home was too heavy.
I should have relished it, but instead, I found myself wishing she would chatter about something utterly pointless, anything to fill the empty space in the air.
What the hell was I thinking, kissing her?
I can’t let that happen again. She’s too disruptive to the fragile order I’ve built around myself.
Control—it's the only thing that keeps my past from clawing its way back, from drowning me in memories of my mother’s abuse.
The weight of it is always there, hovering just beneath the surface, ready to break free the moment I lose my grip.
When you let someone in, you give them the power to destroy you. I know first-hand how badly that can go.
I can’t afford that.
I have to pull back. Keep my distance.
Friends. I can do friends.
My computer beeps, signalling that it’s found someone. On the screen there’s a profile; Mikhail Petrov. He’s not in the typical criminal databases but he is on a watchlist. Russian Mafia.
Why would someone in the Russian Mafia be after Tess?
“Kai?” Tess calls from downstairs.
I pull open my door so I don’t have to shout. “You good?”
“Yeah. I just… thought I would make us some dinner.”
My chest aches. When was the last time someone cooked for me?
“You don’t have to do that.” My voice is a little gruff, probably too harsh.
“I want to. Does it matter what I use from the cupboards?”
No point in arguing.
“Use whatever you want.”
I focus back on the screen.
Maybe it’s time to dig a little deeper into Tess’s background. After I brought her back here, I did a quick check on her, but nothing stood out. Now, I’ve got the time to dig deeper, and something tells me there’s more to her story than I’ve uncovered.
An hour later, I’ve learned a few things that only raise more questions.
Tessa Sinclair was adopted—nothing too unusual about that.
But it was a closed adoption. Whoever was responsible for placing her left no paper trail, no connection to her biological parents.
She’s twenty-nine, born July 24th, almost three years younger than me.
She’s got a degree in Psychology, though it doesn’t seem to have translated into much of a career. Instead, she works as a receptionist at Fitness Magic. She moved out of her adoptive parents’ home when she was twenty-one, and by all accounts, doesn’t keep in touch with them much these days.
On the surface, nothing stands out as unusual. Her life, on paper, seems… ordinary.
But then I move on to Jake. That’s where things get complicated. His rap sheet is extensive—theft, assault, battery, drug smuggling. It’s a wonder he managed to stay under the radar for so long. I’m willing to bet that no one’s mourning his loss.
But what if he had ulterior motives for getting close to Tess? What if she wasn’t just a random target? And then… the way he snapped. It doesn’t add up. Something’s missing. And I need to find out what.
“Dinner’s ready!” Tess's sunshine voice pulls me from my thoughts.
Shutting down my computers, I head toward the kitchen—and stop dead in my tracks.
It looks like a bomb detonated in the heart of my pristine space.
Every pan I own is out, coated in varying shades of sauce or grease.
There’s not a single inch of counter untouched, and my eye twitches at the sheer chaos.
My heart rate picks up, thudding in my ears. My hands tremble. Memories threaten to pull me under. My mothers voice in the back of my head screaming at me for leaving a glass out on the worksurface.
But then I see her.
Tess stands at the stove, her back to me, swaying her hips in time with the music blasting from the speaker. It’s Taylor Swift—of course it is, she’s Nate’s double—and she’s singing along, horrendously off-key, with zero shame.
She’s plating up two dishes of risotto, completely unaware of the hurricane she’s left behind.