Chapter 14 #2
“Almost three months and he never mentioned her once.” Cierra shrugged, adding, “Yeah, just last week, our oldest sister Monique was trying to set Kain up with her best friend’s younger sister.
It would’ve been the perfect time for him to let us know you exist.” She shot me a raised eyebrow, totally amused. “No mention of a girlfriend.”
“But he also vehemently denied the offer,” Sanaa tried to make me feel better. “A lot more offhand about it than usual, too. In hindsight, he reacted to it exactly the way you would expect a person in a relationship to react.”
“Sure, Sanaa…” Cierra was unconvinced, her sarcasm thick.
Sanaa was quick to change the subject. “Oh my God, Monique!” she exclaimed.
For a moment, I was terrified another sister of Kain’s had showed up.
Thankfully no one new was here. Sanaa was only remembering something.
“Monique would literally die if she met you. She is the one who’s always saying Kain needs more female energy in his life. ”
“Kain has four sisters, Sanaa,” Cierra cut in.
“No, not us,” Sanaa sighed. “A special kind of feminine energy. The kind that softens you a little, reawakens the soul, makes you better.” She focused her attention back on me as if to say I was going to be all of that.
I swallowed nervously. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had adopted this much responsibility. “Lauren, can I take a photo of you?”
I stopped chewing, my skin running a little cool. “Why?”
“For our sister Monique. You’re so freakin’ cute. She’d just fall in love with you.”
Having a photo of myself in Sanaa Montgomery’s phone when I was number one on Silas Montgomery’s Most Wanted list didn’t seem like the smartest idea.
“Um…” I stumbled on my words, looking at my sister beside me for help. She ran a hand through her silky hair, unable to offer me an out. “Uh… My hair… it’s so… it’s really not a good day for me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable being photographed looking like this.”
“Are you kidding? You’re adorable,” Sanaa argued, pulling her phone from her purse.
“Um…” I panicked, reaching out to cover the camera. “I’ll just meet her in person! Someday… I promise. I’ll be more… put together then.”
Sanaa perked up, setting the phone down. “How about next weekend?”
“Next weeeeeeekend,” I echoed, stretching the word cautiously. “Well, about that… I’m kind of grounded. So I dunno about next weekend…”
“For how long?” Sanaa questioned.
I raise my shoulders until they practically touched my ears, backing further into my seat shyly. “All summer.”
“Since the beginning of the summer?” Cierra guessed, to which I nodded. She cackled. “If you met Kain over spring break, then the majority of your relationship was long distance because of school. And now that he’s in town, you’re grounded. Honey, you’re not his girlfriend. Y’all are pen pals.”
Sanaa looked like her heart was breaking for me. It was so overbearingly dramatic. I almost laughed a little. If I was being honest, though… Sanaa was growing on me.
“You haven’t seen him in, what? Four weeks?”
“Three,” I corrected Cierra.
“Look at that,” Sanaa gasped, hand to heart.
“She’s counting the days!” She pushed out her lower lip, pouting with exaggerated emotion.
Sanaa then turned to Morgan, acknowledging her for the first time since we’d sat down.
An idea flashed in her eyes. “Oh my gosh, what is the point in having a twin if you can’t use them for emergencies like this. ”
“Emergencies,” Cierra echoed, her tone incredulous, sarcastic.
“Lauren and I don’t look alike enough to pull a switch on our parents.” Morgan could already see what Sanaa was getting at.
“I thought you were her,” Sanaa reminded.
“Yeah, but…” Morgan tried to pick her words carefully, trying not to offend Cierra’s older sister by saying exactly what was on her mind. She passed it through a filter first. “Our parents have no problem telling us apart.”
“Well…” Sanaa drawled. I noticed her voice took on a much less friendly color as she addressed my sister.
It was… intimidating. “I’m sure your parents don’t inspect you as y’all walk out the door.
Say Lauren flat irons her hair and wears something you would normally wear.
They catch the back of her head, and think nothing of it. What do you think?”
“Um…” Morgan hesitated before ultimately conceding. “Yeah… that might work.”
“Well there you have it!” Sanaa clapped her hands, turning her attention back to me.
“Three weeks without seeing your boyfriend. You two need a date, right? I’m sure Morgan won’t mind a test run switch this weekend.
Why don’t you try to make yourself look like her, and see if you can get past your parents?
If it works, try doing the same thing next weekend.
We’ll have dinner at my house. Me, you, Cici, and Monique”
“Are you okay with all this, Mor?” Cierra’s tone took on a softer quality as she checked on Morgan’s comfort level. It was the friendliest I’d heard her all lunch. Sorority sisterhood must’ve meant something after all.
To my surprise, Morgan replied, “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.”
I snuck a glance at my sister almost as if to confirm I’d heard her correctly. Morgan raised her eyebrows briefly as if to say, ‘What?’
“You’re really going to let me pretend to be you?” I asked.
“No.” Morgan sighed with a shake of her shoulders.
“All I know is that… I’m going to stay home tomorrow night; have some me-time.
My staying home on a Saturday night doesn’t mean I’ve condoned anything.
If you decide to straighten your hair and dress like me to sneak out the house while grounded…
That’s all you. I have nothing to do with that. ”
Morgan had all but given me the green light. Looking down at the half-eaten fruit salad in front of me, I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
***
“And somehow I got pulled into a dinner with three of your sister’s next weekend,” I groaned as I complained my recap of the day’s events to Kain over the phone.
He seemed to think this was funny, the sound of his laugh both lovely and frustrating to hear.
“It was either that or have Sanaa take a photo of me. Which I didn’t think would be a good idea. ”
“True,” Kain agreed, his chuckling subsiding. “Sanaa, Monique, and Cierra, huh?” he recapped the guest list.
“Yeah…” I sighed. “Should I be worried? Should I even go?”
“It’s Sanaa,” Kain replied, his tone amused. “If you said yes to her, she’s holding you to that. Ain’t no backin’ out now.”
The sound that came out of me was a cross between a whimper and a groan.
“They’re harmless,” he assured. “There’s not much to worry about.”
“Not much,” I repeated, indicating that this was not the most comforting way to put it. “Since you put it that way, what should I be worried about?”
“Monique and Cierra might come at you real suspicious,” he offered, explaining, “You and I have never talked about this, but… I’m kind of the only person on my father’s will.
” I already figured as much. It only made sense, considering Silas transferred all his business holdings to Kain two years ago.
“It’s not because he doesn’t give a damn about my sisters, or anything,” Kain added.
“It’s the opposite, actually. He doesn’t want them to be to be used, or to be targets—”
“So he put the biggest target on your back.”
“He knows I can take care of myself,” Kain countered vaguely. What the hell does that even mean? “And he knows I’ll take care of them if he can’t.”
“That is… Unless you meet a gold digging Siren who leads you astray, eats up all your time, tells you to forget everything you were taught, and begs you to spend all the money on designer bags and trips to Europe.”
Kain pushed out a breath, leading into a quiet laugh. “Yeah, I guess you could say they’re worried about that.”
“Sooooo, I guess now would be a really awkward time to tell you that I saw the cutest Burberry Nova Check tote online the other day, and that I’ve always wanted to go to Switzerland.”
“Oh, you’ve got jokes,” he mused, joining me as I laughed at my own humor. “Nah, but for real though,” he grew serious, “you’ve got nothin’ to be worried about with those three.”
“If not for… everything. You know, my dad, your dad, and everything in between… Would you have introduced me to them yourself?” I asked curiously. I was nervous as I added, “Or at least told them about me?”
I’d kept my cool throughout the entire lunch, as Cierra Montgomery chipped away at my sense of security. Despite everything that I knew we’d be up against if Kain publicly claimed me, it still hurt to have it thrown in my face that he didn’t.
“Sanaa already kinda knew about us,” Kain revealed. “Mostly because she’s asked about you every time she’s seen me since that morning she met you last spring. She doesn’t know much, but she knows you’re important.”
I’m important to Kain Montgomery.
Of course, I already knew this, but hearing it gave me butterflies. He just dropped that so casually. How the hell does he set fireworks off in my insides without so much as a change in his intonation? Does he even realize that he’s doing it?
Now that I thought about it… When Sanaa had mistaken Morgan for me, she’d introduced her as, “Kain’s little girlfriend,” to Cierra back at Designer Greens.
I’d mistaken her warm reception of me as residual friendliness from the first time she’d met me, but knowing what I knew now painted a more believable picture.
Sanaa was nice to me because Kain had already let her to know I wasn’t just some fling. He told her I was important to him.
“You’re important to me, too,” I reciprocated. Unlike him, I was unable to deliver that truth with such a composed tenor. My words were shy, unsteady. But only slightly. It might’ve only been noticeable to me because I said them. “I… uh, just thought you should know that.”
The silence that followed my impromptu admission fired up my anxiety. So I tried to fill the quiet by continuing to talk.
“I think about you all the time, actually. Sometimes… um, during the day… when I’m bored, I sort of…
have conversations with you in my head. I imagine what you’d say, and then I think about…
you know, what I’d say in response to that, and…
” My inner voice was begging me to stop talking. “This is so… I… I’m being stup—”
Kain stopped me before I could finish that sentence. “No,” he interrupted. He was frustrated. I could hear it in his voice. “You’re not being stupid. Lauren, why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“You say some real shi— facts sometimes. One moment, you don’t hold back; you say what you feel, honest as hell.
And then it’s like you… rush to tear yourself down.
It’s like you assume what’s goin’ on in my head, so then you try to beat me to the punch.
You really think I heard all that and thought, ‘She’s bein’ stupid’? ”
“Well…” I hesitated, before resigning into a defeated sigh. “Well… no, but… I can feel myself doing the absolute most sometimes. It’s… It’s…”
“You,” he finished my sentence. “What you call ‘doing the most,’ is really just you bein’ yourself, no holds barred. And believe it or not, that’s how I like you best,” Kain informed, the slightest hint of exasperation in his words. Butterflies.
A realization set in.
Kain doesn’t like me in spite of my dorky tendencies. He likes me because of them.
It was a difficult fact to wrap my head around.
I’d always pictured Kain better fitted with some sophisticated young lady who is “‘bout that life,”. A fashionable, pretty girl who would stimulate him intellectually, physically, emotionally, and also wouldn’t flinch at the sight of the evils of his world.
In my mind, I was not Kain’s type at all.
The fact that Kain Montgomery called me, Lauren Alyssa Caplan, his girlfriend had always felt like one of life’s many accidents.
A happy mistake that could fix itself at any moment.
And so I did my best to keep myself in check, always worried that I might say the one thing that would snap him out of whatever flash of insanity that brought him to me in the first place.
I was the opposite of everything Kain was. Wrongfully, I thought this was a bad thing; something I needed to draw attention away from.
I was sorely mistaken.
It had long occurred to me that Kain spoke to me like I was a much needed vacation. My inner wannabe psychiatrist theorized that this was a detachment method. As long as I didn’t know what was going on over on his side of the tracks, he could always leave that world when he was with me.
Kain didn’t need—or want—a female version of himself.
He needed someone far removed from his reality. He needed a way to get away from it all. He needed an escape.
He needed me.
“Hey, Kain,” I broke the silence just before it could settle.
“Hm?”
“Tomorrow evening, six o’clock. I’m busting out of here,” I announced. “Meet me at the Safe House?”
“The Safe House?” He pushed out an exhale, knowing to which house I was referring, and hearing my name for it for the first time. “You’re so corny.”
“Yeah.” I smiled, not offended. “And you like it.”