Chapter Thirty-Three
In only ten days, there were a total of fourteen local news segments about Lauren and I being sighted in various spots around Miami.
To the local media, she wasn’t even referred to by name, but as Joshua Caplan’s daughter.
The son of Miami’s biggest crime magnate and the daughter of Miami’s district attorney in a relationship—it was an instant scandal.
The attention wasn’t too intrusive—people knew to stay out of my way—but Lauren wasn’t used to any of it. After one evening in which we got followed back to The Bayside by local photographers, we both decided that it would just be safer to stay low key.
Whether or not we cared about the world knowing about us, that didn’t change the death threat Lauren had looming over her head.
I hadn’t anticipated this much buzz. Although I knew the constant eyes on us were definitely making it harder for my father to plot on Lauren, photographers giving away our location to Silas was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We’d immediately checked out of the hotel, and found ourselves in what was probably the safest place we could go.
My sister Sanaa’s house, which had been my second choice initially before I picked The Bayside. Now that the hotel was no longer an option—Sanaa it was.
Sanaa lived in an upscale gated community, surrounded by professionals who couldn’t care less about who Silas Montgomery’s son was dating.
Also, I knew that sending anyone to Sanaa’s house was definitely a deterrent for my father.
No matter how much he wanted Lauren dead, Silas had a policy to never get my sisters involved in his business.
Sanaa didn’t take much convincing either.
For ten days, she and Lauren had been going back and forth over the phone, planning a birthday party I didn’t actually want to have.
So when I asked her if it would be alright if Lauren stayed with her, Sanaa was already sold, enthralled by the idea of having her party planning partner in-house.
When it came to my sisters, Sanaa seemed to be the only one supportive of my relationship.
On one hand of the spectrum, I had Cierra, who I hadn’t heard from since the funeral and probably wouldn’t hear from any time soon, and on the other end was Sanaa.
Monique fell somewhere in between, not hating Lauren, but certainly not in favor of the idea of my being with her.
Petra, my other sister who lived in Memphis, would likely choose whichever position Monique decided to take.
Life could be so complicated sometimes.
I was sitting alone in Sanaa’s dining room.
Four days had passed since Lauren and I had checked out of The Bayside, making it a total of two weeks since Amir’s funeral.
I was just starting to get back into the groove of my LSAT prep coursework, turning through pages of logical reasoning practice questions.
Lauren was nowhere to be found, probably off somewhere with Sanaa, shopping on the internet for party supplies.
My days had been quieter since deciding to stay at my sister’s.
During the day, Lauren would leave me alone so that I could find the focus to study.
My LSAT was in September, and even given the events of the past month, I had no intention of rescheduling it.
Sanaa did more than enough to keep her occupied.
I was happy that Lauren had managed to find a friend in my sister.
Even though I was doing my best, I could never be as cheerful and peppy as Sanaa—even before that summer.
Sanaa was next level, like a happy virus, spreading smiles and laughs with her jovial energy.
She made Lauren smile. And that made me smile.
The sounds of Sanaa’s laugh cut through the silence of her dining room, snapping me out of my own head. Lauren was close by as well, her laugh sounding off just as loud.
“Kain, take a study break,” my sister encouraged, reaching for the book I had open in front of me. “It’s lunch time, and I wanna have it at the table.”
Even though I probably shouldn’t have, I welcomed the distraction, tossing a glance over at Lauren.
Her hair was tied back, away from the sides of her face for a change.
She wore an oversized shirt under a pair of overalls, a style I never once thought was attractive until I’d seen her in it.
I didn’t even realize I was smiling until she returned it, her dimples sinking into her cheeks the way they usually did when her smiles were genuine.
She was happy today.
“Something happen?” I asked curiously.
“Yes!” She was quick to share. “Guess what!”
“What?”
“Sanaa told me she has a family album hidden away somewhere,” Lauren beamed.
“Yep,” Sanaa nodded. “I just need to find it. Lauren, could you be a doll and get the food out of the fridge while I look?”
“Of course.”
“Wait.” I reminded them I was still here. “Family album?”
“Yes, Kain,” Sanaa huffed. “You know, a book of pictures.”
“Yeah, I know what a family album is.” My sister rolled her eyes, only half listening as she rummaged through the shelves of a storage closet. “But why?”
“Because I told Lauren you were a cute baby and she wants to see.”
“Yeah, I want to see,” she echoed from the fridge.
I pinched the skin between my eyes, releasing a slow breath.
No, I didn’t want to spend my lunch looking at embarrassing pictures of me from when I was young.
But as Lauren bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet, literally shaking with anticipation over just a few photos, I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
If this was the worst thing that could happen while living at Sanaa’s, then I considered myself pretty lucky.
***
Lauren decided to save a photo of me at age two as the background of her cell phone screen. Every five minutes she would pick up her phone and gush over how—
“This is literally the cutest picture ever.” She was doing it again.
I turned to give her a look, not quite annoyed, but not quite enthusiastic either.
We were sitting up, side by side and sharing a bed in Sanaa’s guest room.
It was late. Night time seemed to be the only time we were ever together lately.
“Look at your little hands! Oh my God, I could literally just eat you up.”
“Okay, I get it.” I reached for the phone in her hand, setting it aside out of her reach. “I was cute, I get it.”
She raised a hand to my cheek, her tone mockingly reassuring when she promised, “Oh, you’re still cute, don’t worry.”
“Hmm,” I thought about this, coming in closer as her hand remained on my face. The distance between us gradually shrunk, her lips pressing on to mine gently at first. Against her lips, I replied, “You not too bad either.”
She came in for another, her soft lips molding against mine with a precision that often had me feeling like, all this time, Lauren was custom built just for me. Each subsequent kiss grew longer and deeper than the last, a feverish heat rising between the both of us.
In the days following Amir’s funeral—which objectively was the worst day of my life for the fact that I watched my best friend buried, and because of the events that followed immediately after—I found myself happiest in the moments when I could just get lost in her.
Lauren had a way of allowing me to forget about the dozens of things stressing me out at any given moment.
She cleared out all the noise, and put me at ease.
“Kain,” she whispered harshly in the low light of the room, as my hand traveled under the oversized shirt she wore. A rejection was coming. “Kain, we can’t.”
“Because?” I questioned softly. My hands didn’t stop, and she didn’t protest as I pulled the shirt over her head, leaving her there in just her panties.
Since checking out of The Bayside, it had been days since I had her, and Lauren was like a drug—addictive.
Going for so long without her was just not fair.
Even as she tried to get me to stop, her lips were still compliant, meeting mine with a desire that didn’t match her protests. I smiled against her, traveling lower along her neck, and waiting for the relaxed sounds of her breathing to shift.
“Because,” she tried to sound assertive, but the word came out sounding vaguely like a moan. “Because your sister’s sleeping next door.”
“Mm-hmm,” I acknowledged this, moving lower along the skin of her shoulders, tasting her with each bite I left behind. Lauren’s mouth was saying we couldn’t, but the way she leaned into my touch said otherwise. “And?”
“And we just…” Lauren drew in a sharp breath just as my fingers slipped under the cotton of her panties. She was so wet. “Mm—we just can’t.”
“Just tell me when to stop.”
She didn’t say the word.
“Kain,” she whispered, completely oblivious about how the breathy quality of her voice was only encouraging me.
“You know I’m a…” I slipped two fingers in her, mindful to pay extra attention to her clit with my thumb.
Lauren brought her hand up to her mouth, desperate to muffle the sounds of her pleasure in the dead silence of Sanaa’s house. “Kain, you know I’m a screamer.”
I glanced away from the view of her hardening nipples, meeting her eyes when I replied, “Yeah… I do.”
“She’s gonna hear us,” Lauren protested, barely sounding like she cared at this point.
“Yeah… she might.”
“Kain,” Lauren whispered my name just as I decided to resume what I was initially doing. And then she said the word. “No.”
It was a meek and indecisive no, but it was a no nonetheless. The first night Lauren and I met, she was in a daunting place, caught between a bed and a rapist. Because of that, if she ever said no to me, no matter how unconvincing it was, I would stop.
My hand slipped out of her underwear, and my eyes came back to hers. I was disappointed, but I was smart enough to know not to show it.
“Are you hard?” she asked curiously.
I had to laugh at this. “Are you kidding?”
“Hmm,” she considered this, eyes falling to the tent in my pants. “Sorry about that.”
There was nothing sorry about the accomplished smile on her face. She was clearly proud of herself. Never in a million years did I ever think I would someday find this kind of teasing ass behavior cute.
“I just make too much noise,” she tried to plead her case, tilting her head to the side with eyes that asked me to understand. I simply nodded, trying to respect her choices. “But you don’t”
“I don’t what?”
“You don’t make as much noise as I do.” Before I could ask, I quickly understood what she was trying to imply. Lauren’s hands latched onto the waistband of my pajama pants, a coy half smile turning up her left cheek before she announced, “There’s a first time for everything.”
Fuck.
Understanding what was going through her mind, my dying erection only took a fraction of a second to come alive again. Lauren took me into her hands, her tongue slowly running along the skin of her lower lip before she nervously bit down.
“Yeah,” she whispered more to herself than to me. “So cute I could just eat you up.”
In spite of myself, I chuckled.
Lauren could be so corny.