Chapter 11 #3
“Hey,” I whined. “You’ve known all my business since practically the first date. Not fair.” I cut straight to the point. “What’s your body count, Kain?”
“Lauren—”
“Give me a number,” I demanded, a short laugh escaping me in response to the look on his face. I could almost see him scanning his brain for where he might’ve taken the wrong turn to get pulled into a conversation like this.
Finally, he relented. “I wasn’t counting.”
My eyes narrowed. “First of all—shame on you. And second of all—estimate!”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“If you asked me how many guys I'd slept with and my answer was 'I wasn't counting,’ what would you say?”
Kain laughed a little before saying, “You’re the type to count.”
“Seriously! Go on and count the ones you can remember, then add three.” Kain slightly smiled into a sigh, and I could tell that he was about to give in.
“More than ten?” I asked, and he nodded. “More than twenty?”
He shook his head. “I don't think so.”
I sighed, deciding that his number was somewhere between ten and twenty, which was incredibly humbling for me. For a handsome college-age male, it certainly wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, so I quickly moved on. “So when did you lose your virginity?”
“Wow, we're really doin' this?” he asked. I just looked at him, arms crossed, waiting for an answer. We sat in a two-minute-long stare session before he finally admitted, “I was fifteen.”
I tilted my head to the side and looked at him for a while. “One of the two girlfriends, or one of the ten to twenty randoms?”
“My first serious girlfriend. You want her name, too?” he asked as a joke, but I nodded, completely serious.
“If you're offering.”
“Funny,” he said dryly, but with a slight smile growing as a comfortable silence began to settle.
In the quiet of that living room, I wordlessly took one of his hands between both of mine, tracing every line and indent that made up the hard skin of his palm.
His hands were far from perfect; they had the kind of roughness that served to remind you that you were holding the hand of a man.
I couldn’t imagine them any other way. These were the hands of a man who I felt like I could lean on.
And despite the fact that Kain’s hands were noticeably larger than mine, as I weaved my fingers between his… They managed to still fit perfectly.
I raised my head, fully prepared to call myself his girlfriend. Instead, the words caught in my throat at the sight of him. Holy… crap…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked him curiously. Whether intentional or not, Kain’s eyes were so tender in that moment, adorned with the kind of warmth I could wrap myself in for even the coldest of winters.
Kain tilted his head a little to the right, giving me a questioning look. “Looking at you like what?”
He doesn’t even know. Oh how very hard to feel insecure with a man who quite literally radiates with affection for you. Suddenly, my initial need for a title seemed childish. Clearly, I already had this person. I had this person in the exact same way that he had me.
Kain was already my boyfriend. Looking into his eyes, there was no doubt about it.
Not answering his question, I shook my head and leaned onto him, resting my head along his chest. I found that I was pestered by thoughts of how inconvenient his shirt was.
I craved the feel and warmth of his skin, something I’d never really wanted from anyone.
I could just curl into a ball and tuck myself away in his arms. My desire to be as close as possible with someone had never been so strong.
I'd never really thought about it before, but that insatiable need to be touched by the person you want—it made sex make a lot more sense to me suddenly.
Of course I knew people had sex because it was supposed to feel great, but sex was also as close as two people could ever get to each other.
Heat started to rise up my neck and to my cheeks as I imagined what it would be like.
Against the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat, I lulled myself into a trancelike daydream, imagining his hands… Everywhere.
Kain broke the comfortable silence after about a half hour, a curious question on his lips, “What's on your mind?”
A foreign bout of paranoia settled in the pit of my stomach. Even though I knew for a fact that Kain couldn’t possibly have known what I was thinking, I felt caught. My cheeks got hot with embarrassment, and I tried to put some distance between us.
I stuttered out a, “Nothing.” My tone only seemed to confirm that there was something and before he could ask me again, in a frenzy, I said the first thing that came to mind, blurting out, “Sex.”
I could’ve cringed my way into nonexistence in that moment. Lying on the spot had never been something I was good at. Especially not when, arguably, the most attractive man I’d ever been this close to was asking all the questions.
“Not with you, or anything,” I added quickly, trying to save myself. Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!
Kain sounded both unconvinced and way too entertained when he simply replied, “Ahh, I see.”
“Don’t laugh at me,” I complained, peeking up at him.
“I’m not…” he laughed maybe just a little, “…laughing.”
In my purse beside us, my phone vibrated for what might’ve been the tenth time that night.
Grateful for a distraction, for the first time since I’d arrived, I checked it.
What I thought would be ten missed calls turned out to be nineteen.
All from Dad. Of course he was paying closer attention to everything now that he thought I was hiding a boyfriend somewhere.
I wasn’t even sure if I was in trouble, or not. My parents had never felt the need to blow up my phone with calls. This was a first for all of us.
“It’s so late,” I marveled. The clock was approaching half past three in the morning, and I just knew calling an Uber out of Pembroke Pines to go to Miami was going to be next to impossible.
Kain leaned in, seeing the nineteen missed calls from my father over my shoulder and took in a sharp inhale.
“I’m dead. My dad’s going to kill me. Take a good look at me now, Kain. ”
He actually did tilt his head back, scanning my features, taking it all in.
“So soon? Just when things started to get good?”
I ignored him, tapping at my phone aggressively. “Oh my God, are there, like, no Ubers left in this city?”
“It’s more of a quiet area compared to Miami. No nightlife,” Kain explained with a shrug. He presented that as if to say ‘Oops, guess you’re staying.’ When I didn’t simply give up and decide to spend the night, he sighed, offering, “You know… I could just take you home myself.”
“The last thing I need when showing up at my house in the wee hours of the morning is,” I spread out my fingers and motioned toward the man in front of me, “…all of this to go with it.”
Kain caught my pointing hands in his and promised, “Don’t worry about it. I can drop you off wherever you’re most comfortable with.”
***
“I’m not dropping you off here,” Kain argued.
We were parked just outside the gate that closed off the rest of my community from outsiders.
I was trying to get dropped off just outside my neighborhood and walk the remaining six blocks, but Kain was not having it.
If I knew my dad, he was probably in a lawn chair somewhere in the front yard.
So, I insisted that Kain leave me at the gate.
I couldn't risk him dropping me off anywhere near the house.
“You said you’d drop me off wherever!” I reminded.
“Yeah,” he stressed. “Because I thought maybe you’d pick a house four doors down from yours, not half a mile out. I’m not about to let you walk that far alone at four o’clock in the damn morning. Have you not been payin’ attention for the past six weeks? No way.”
“It’s a gated community.”
“I don’t care.”
“If anything pops out at me, I can finally use the self-defense techniques you taught me. I’ve been wanting to, you know,” I reasoned with a laugh.
He didn’t look amused. “That’s not funny—and no.”
“Listen, Kain.” I got serious. “If my father for one second suspected I was even friends with you, he’d blow a gasket. It is six blocks behind the very high walls of a private community. I am touched that my safety is so important to you, but… chill.”
He stared at me for what seemed like forever, and just when I thought he was going to adamantly refuse again, Kain simply said, “Pull out your phone.”
I watched as Kain pulled his own phone from his pocket, and dial in my number from memory.
This simple gesture brought a smile to my face.
Not only did the power of digital address books make memorizing my number totally unnecessary, but Kain never, ever called me on anything but the phone he’d given me.
So he really had no reason to know my number by heart.
“I’ll stay on the line while you make your way home,” he explained.
“You’re being so dramatic,” I told him as I slid my thumb across the screen to answer his call. “This is such a safe and boring neighborhood.”
“Just stay on the—”
I snuck in a kiss goodbye, stopping him midsentence.
Truthfully, I would’ve stayed with him for at least a few more hours if I felt like I could get away with it, but every minute I spent out was like one more nail sealing my coffin.
Kain’s lips molded into mine as if they were sculpted specifically for me, warm, inviting, addictive…
Pulling away from him took some serious willpower, but somehow, I managed.
“I’ll stay on the line.”
I could feel Kain’s eyes on me as I pressed in the gate code to let myself into the neighborhood.
With one last look back, I tucked my phone in between a raised shoulder and my ear, searching the inside of my purse for my pepper spray key chain…
just in case. The headlights of Kain’s black Camaro lit the way for half a block until the view of his car disappeared behind me.
“So what happens right now if some random appears and snatches me?” I asked him through the phone curiously, halfway into the journey. “What? You jump a seven-foot gate and come to my rescue?”
I’d long since left the reach of the headlights of Kain’s car and now the only light now came from the porch lights of the houses I passed.
Ahead of me, I could see the yellow glow from a streetlamp light the road in a golden spotlight surrounded by dim darkness.
Just behind that streetlamp, I’d only be half a dozen steps from my front door.
“Just get home,” Kain sighed, not amused by my hypotheticals.
“Oh, you're so seri—”
Under the golden spotlight ahead of me, a shadowy figure stepped in from the darkness and I abruptly stopped talking, my phone dropping from my shoulder.
I panicked, hand completely frozen along the trigger of my defense spray, every hair on my body standing straight up.
The goosebumps on my skin began to disappear the second I saw something I recognized. Pajamas.
Dad’s pajamas.
I narrowed my eyes, attempting to adjust my vision for both the darkness and the distance.
The man before me was only my father, and I would have been relieved, but the look on his face told me nothing good was about to happen.
Just as the terror I was feeling was beginning to subside, a new wave of panic washed over me.
I could tell simply from the look on his face.
I was in deep shit.
Before I took any more steps, I reached down to pick up my phone. The screen had shattered and the impact with the ground had shut it off. I tried to walk as slowly as possible, panicking as I tried to turn my phone back on.
Dad had his hands on his hips. It was clear that he was extremely angry with me. As I walked as slowly as I could get away with, I tried one of my smiles on him to try to lighten the mood.
Daddy always had a soft spot for my dimples and my smile; he couldn’t help but returning them.
Not this time. Tonight, he merely scowled at me which only made my steps more drawn out.
The light of my phone screen lit up my face, and that was when my father began to yell at me as loudly as he could in this sleeping neighborhood.
“Lauren, do you know what time it is? I'm not playing with you. Walk your ass on into this house.”
Behind me, in the distance, the sound of running footsteps got closer and closer. I didn't even need to turn around to know who they belonged to. I’m dead, I thought to myself. I am so dead.
After I got scared and dropped my phone, I could only imagine that Kain was suspecting the worse as the line went dead.
Less than five minutes had passed, and he was already close.
So dead. So, so, so dead. As a totally last resort, I turned on my heels and put my arms out, desperately trying to stop him from getting any closer.
It was my only option. He needed to get as far away from the light as possible. I couldn’t let my father see him.
I was too slow. And all of this was happening too fast. Kain was already too close, breathing a little hard from what I assumed was the sprint over here. I didn't even want to imagine how he'd made it over the fence. I looked over him quickly to see if he was hurt anywhere. Not a scratch.
Well so much for secure community...
“You have to go now,” I told him quickly, my explanation coming out choppy and incoherent. “My dad. Dropped my phone. False alarm. Now!”
Kain scanned my face, confusion lining his features for a moment before what I was trying to tell him registered. He sighed, looking over my shoulder then back at me, shaking his head. Kain didn’t need to tell me what I already knew. It was too late.
Directly behind me, my father's voice made me stand totally rigid. “Lauren, who's your friend?”