Chapter 3 #2
“You’re in no condition to drive. If I went lookin’ for your sister, she’d probably be too drunk to drive, too. So how’re you gettin’ home?”
“You want me to leave,” I guessed.
“Nah,” he replied casually. “That’s not what I said. I see you gettin’ comfortable, though.”
“Can I?”
A half-smile raised his left cheek. “A girl like you’s got parents waitin’ up. You sure you want that headache?”
“My parents?” I grimaced. “I doubt they’ll even notice that I’m gone.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but at the end of the day I was an adult. The worst they could do was complain, right? I’d actually never done anything like this before.
Something about what I said wiped that smile clean off Kain’s face.
“Hey,” he said, quietly but sternly. “Don’t go around tellin’ random niggas your parents don’t check for you like that.
That type of shit could get you in trouble.
” He shook his head as if I were hopeless.
“Let’s try that again,” he said. “Your parents might get worried if you don’t show up tonight… ”
I squinted a little, confused at first by what Kain was trying to do.
“Your parents might get worried if you don’t show up tonight…” he repeated himself, motioning that this was the part where I responded.
“Oh.” I recognized his intent and played along.
“Perhaps they will worry,” I replied, watching his face carefully.
“They’ll forgive me, though. And if anything happened to me, they’d find out.
My dad’s a prosecutor at the Miami-Dade Courthouse.
My mom teaches at U of Miami’s law school.
They’ve got connections. They’d destroy anyone who hurts me. ”
“You’re threatening me now,” he chuckled.
“You practically told me to!”
He nodded. “That’s a good story, though.”
“It’s not just a story, it’s true,” I told him.
“My dad really is a state attorney. He takes down the really bad guys.” I smiled at Kain, but he just nodded, so I nervously continued to speak.
I talk when I’m nervous. “Lately Dad’s been working on the biggest case of his life.
He spends more time at work than he does home.
I bet when I get home later, he won’t even be in. ”
“This is a lot to tell a man you just met,” Kain sighed.
“Yeah, but I can tell you this,” I replied without much thought.
This statement caught his attention and he looked at me curiously before he asked, “Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t take advantage of me,” I said confidently. For a moment it looked like he’d respond, possibly lecture me again. Instead, Kain shook his head at my words, choosing to say nothing. “You wouldn’t take advantage of me, would you?” I asked.
“You know I can just lie, right?” Kain reasoned.
“So lie.”
“I won’t take advantage of you, Lauren,” he said, eyes burning into mine as he leaned forward in his seat. I felt heat rising to my cheeks and I brought my hands to my face in an effort to cool my skin down. Damn, how did he do that?
“Was that a lie?” I whispered, my brows scrunched together.
He breathed out a short laugh. “Can’t tell, can you?”
I shrugged. “Well before you try anything, remember what I said about who my father is.”
“Yeah.” Kain nodded. “But you should really work on what you say to strangers. Not everyone is out here with good intentions.”
“I’m a good judge of character,” I told him.
Kain looked like he might dispute that, but I watched him catch the words before they came out.
It didn’t take long for me to realize what he was going to say.
If I was a good judge of character, he wouldn’t have found me in his room, about to get raped.
He was too polite to use that against me, it seemed.
An awkward silence settled in. In that silence I realized that the noise level from the party downstairs had depleted a great deal.
However, even at four o’clock in the morning, there was still some noise, a sign the party had yet to completely die.
Eager to change the subject, I looked at Kain, a new question in my eyes.
“What?” he asked, noting my expression.
“What’s this party for?”
“My sister,” Kain replied. “Tomorrow’s her birthday. That, and she’s graduating in May, so this is her last official Spring Break.”
“Graduating from UM?” Kain nodded a yes to my question. “I go to UM,” I told him even though he hadn’t asked. “Do you go to there, too?”
The University of Miami was the best university in Florida. In academics. In research. In location. Sports was debatable, but I’d say sports, too. Eying the rows of books that lined Kain’s bookshelf and the air of sophistication that hung around him, it was clear he was educated.
Kain shook his head no at my question. “I’m at Florida State.”
I tried to ignore that he’d said that, as literally every school-spirited bone in my body urged me to tell him that his school sucked.
Florida State University and the University of Miami were rivals, and I had a lot of school spirit. FSU was about a seven to eight-hour drive from Miami, in Northern Florida in a city called Tallahassee, but to hear a UM student tell it, you couldn’t get that school far away enough.
“I’m just back in town for Spring Break,” Kain informed. I looked around and decided that would explain why his room was so clean. With it being the first Friday before the beginning of the week-long break, he’d probably arrived in town today.
Making small talk, I asked him, “So what’s your major?”
You can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to study in school. Are they ambitious? Responsible? Dreamers? Dumb…?
“Philosophy,” Kain replied plainly. “Pre-Law track.” Hmm, aspirations of law school, I mentally noted. Responsible. Ambitious. “I thought it would be useful to have a lawyer in the family.”
“For what? Giving out free legal advice?”
Kain shrugged, breaking eye contact briefly. “Somethin’ like that.”
The convenience of the situation made me smile. Here I was, indebted to the man in front of me, and now I’d just found the perfect way to repay him for all his help.
“Well if you ever want to shadow a successful state attorney, it would look really good on your law school applications. I could talk to my dad for you.”
Kain raised his gaze to meet my eyes. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to!” I pressed. Sitting up from my laid position, I tried to convince him. “It’s the least I could do after everything you did for me tonight. My dad would be happy to write you a letter of recommendation to any school you apply to.”
Kain started to decline the offer. “I don’t think—”
I cut him off. “And after this summer, a letter of recommendation from my father is going to mean a lot. He’s about to take on the biggest case of his life.
Some big-name kingpin whose been raising hell all throughout Miami since, like, the 1980s.
When my father sends him to prison, he will be the most famous prosecutor in America.
Trust me, you’re going to want to network with him. ”
Kain kept a straight face as I sang my father’s praises. After I’d finished rambling, he looked at me for a very long time and I thought he was thinking about the offer. To my surprise, he didn’t jump at the opportunity.
“Your father is Joshua Caplan,” he guessed. I nodded, smiling proudly. “He’s trying the case against Silas Montgomery this August.”
“You’ve done your research!” I was impressed.
Kain breathed out a short, quiet chuckle. He leaned forward in his desk chair, expression intimidatingly serious, and slowly said the words, “Silas Montgomery is my father.”