Chapter 8 #2
Casually thrown across their laps, it was a gesture he made out of comfort. Rachel was a Southern California girl, constantly complaining about the D.C. cold, which always made Northerners like Kell laugh. Jonas was from Minnesota and wore shorts and flip flops in forty-degree weather.
Kell’s kindness in tossing the blanket over them seemed, well, easy. Second nature. It touched her.
Being dumped sucked, no matter how you spun it, she thought. Her attention was only partly on the gruesome scene they were watching, the gray-on-darker-gray lighting making the cold body the detectives prodded even more grim.
And Kell had been dumped.
Yes, he sent the text that confirmed it, but Alissa had basically broken up with him in the most painful way: by not acknowledging him.
As Kell had observed, Rachel was the kind of person who could give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Stretched it further than it should go, even.
Her dad called her a softie, although her mom never commented on this part of her personality, more focused on her daughter’s appearance than her character.
It wasn’t that her mom didn’t care; it was more that she cared about different things.
Sometimes that left Rachel unmoored, with questions about life and no one to ask.
Deanna Luview seemed like someone Rachel could ask.
Kell’s family was so good-hearted, so rooted in a place that was theirs. Imagine living in a town that was also your last name! You owned the town, and the town owned you. Kell belonged there, he had a role there.
If she had that, she’d never leave.
In L.A., the only role anyone had was to be on top, or to try to be on top.
Everyone in her life was ambitious: her mom hustling for acting roles and waiting for her great comeback; her dad a partner in an entertainment law firm that now worked with the giants, like UTA; and her brother working out for five hours a day to prepare for the Air Force Academy, with the eventual goal of space flight.
Tim wanted to be an astronaut. Dad wanted Hollywood power. Mom wanted people to adore her, and the more screens, the better.
Rachel felt like she had no place. She didn’t want to be the best at something so she could be on top; she wanted to be the best so she could feel good about herself, and help others.
“Hey. You there?” Kell said, reaching across that foot of distance and tapping her knee. His touch made her startle.
“Yes, of course! What?”
“You’re a million miles away. Can you believe they killed Gunnar?” He pointed and her eyes jumped to the screen, where a dead face, frozen and slack, was caught. Kell had evidently paused the show.
“Oh. Right.”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Sorry.” She took a sip of beer. “I was thinking.”
“About what?”
Should she tell him? Could she tell him?
When she’d gone away to college, she’d learned that there were lines around what you could reveal about yourself to another person, and those lines were really different depending on who you were talking to.
Kell’s face was open, receptive, interested in what she had to say.
Curious.
Nonjudgmental.
Exactly what she needed.
“I was thinking about your mom, actually.”
He groaned. “I can’t believe you put my mother in touch with Portia Starman. You made her century.”
“I had no idea she was that big a fan. You never said anything.”
“I figured you heard more than enough in your life about your mom. You wouldn’t have gone into environmental policy and moved to literally the opposite side of the country if you wanted people to talk about her all the time with you.”
“That’s very insightful of you.”
He shrugged. “Everyone should get a chance to be who they are without carrying around their family’s baggage.”
She suddenly saw him in a new light. “You, too?”
“Sure. Try being raised in a place where it’s practically a crime to eat a lollipop that’s round and not heart shaped. Or where wearing anything that isn’t red, pink, or white gets you arrested.”
“Not really.”
“No, not really, but you do get pinched if you do it around Valentine’s Day.”
“Wow. I was just thinking about how nice it must be to grow up in a place where you’re so, you know, grounded. Your family founded that town. How many generations have lived there?”
“Six. No, seven! Seven, now that Luke and Amber have Harriet.”
“That’s a lot. And your last name is the town’s name. You have a deep sense of belonging there. Roots,” she said.
“Yeah, which makes it all the harder to break free.”
She let a little contemplative sound escape. “Maybe we’re more similar than I thought. I’m trying to break away from my family culture, and so are you. Not cut it off. Just find my own way.”
“Yep.”
“Yours looks so appealing, though. Your mom is wonderful. Brother and sister-in-law, too.”
“They are.” He smiled. “I know I have a place back home. Dad wants me to take over the tree company my grandfather founded. My oldest brother, Dennis, just announced he’s staying in the military, Luke is a police officer, and Colleen’s a nurse, so Dad’s hurting.
No kid to take over. If I moved back, I’d have everything I need–a job, family, community. ”
“And you don’t want that?”
“It’s always there. I can always go back. But I want to see what life is like in other places. See what I can accomplish.”
“What do you want in life?”
Her question made the air change. Kell reached forward to pick up his beer and her eyes went to the dark hair that peppered his forearm. Most of their time together was spent in the office, in a professional atmosphere, so hanging on the couch in sweats made him more tangible.
More approachable, and definitely more accessible.
“Want? What do I want?” he asked, his voice low and deep with emotion. In a flash, she thought she could see the man he would become, a person of conviction, the kind of guy you build a life of meaning with.
His shoulders shifted forward just an inch or so, eyes on hers, locked in a gaze with a meaning Rachel couldn’t decipher. Breaking it would be like ending her connection to the world.
Another inch. Kell was the one moving closer, as if he were about to kiss her.
Please. Please be about to kiss her.
They were so close, she could feel the heat coming off his shoulders, his breath warm against her chin.
And then, a loud click.
The door to the apartment opened so fast and hard, the door slammed back into the wall, the knob caught by a door stopper.
Rachel turned to see an astonished Alissa standing there, eyes narrowing. She was holding an open box with the top of a bike helmet poking out, a set of keys in her hand.
The box slipped out of her arms and landed on the floor, a balled-up pair of men’s dress socks and a blue toothbrush rolling out.
“What the hell?” She looked at Rachel with an expression that made electricity shoot through her body, pulling her toward the nearest exit, warning her, get out get out get out!
Kell sat where he was, turned like Rachel, but he didn’t get up.
“What are you doing here?” he asked calmly.
Too calmly.
A huge snort came out of Alissa, one Rachel knew all too well. It was a sound she made when she thought she was right, and her entire mission was to make sure that was true.
“I’m returning your crap. I can’t believe you dumped me by text, Kell, and canceled my meeting with your uncle! That’s really low.”
“Which one are you more upset about? Being dumped by text, or losing the meeting? Let’s guess,” he said, voice brimming with sarcasm.
“Both!” Alissa gave Rachel a devastating glare. “And you! I knew it. You were scheming all along to get Kell, weren’t you? You’ve had a crush on him since the day you started at EEC, and you were jealous when we started dating.”
“What?” Rachel leaped to her feet, mortified.
Because what Alissa said was true. Not the scheming part, but the crush, for sure.
“Oh, please.” Alissa turned back to Kell, eyes blazing. “You’re such a jerk. You knew how important that meeting was for me.”
“I’m the jerk? I’m the jerk? You're the one who used me to get access to my uncle!”
“Used is a really dirty term.”
“What you did to me is dirty! Sleazy and underhanded. I’m not a pawn in a chess game you can use however you want, Alissa.”
“You think that’s how I feel about you?”
“YES!” he bellowed, voice booming with righteous anger.
He got up and walked toward the door. “It’s obvious!
You came on to me only when you learned I was a Luview from Maine, and my uncle was commissioner.
Then you looked at the Canada-Maine pipeline and pieced it together and decided to, what? Flirt? See where you could get?”
A gong went off in Rachel’s head.
Because she was the one Alissa asked to research the pipeline many months ago.
“That’s not what happened,” Alissa said, finger in his face. “And you’re hurting the people of Maine by canceling that meeting.”
“You work for Big Oil now, Alissa! It was my uncle who noticed the email change, not me. He’s the one who was uncomfortable on my behalf. Do you have any idea how bad this makes me look to my own family?”
“There you go, worried more about yourself than the state. Nice.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it, Kell?” Alissa began, taking a deep breath. “You–”
“NO!” he shouted, putting his beer down hard on the table.
“I know what you’re doing–I know exactly what you’re doing.
This is not about me. Other than my stupidity at being taken in by you, of course.
This is about you, Alissa. You got into an entire relationship with me to find a way to get to my uncle, to make you look good to MonDex.
And once I got you the meeting, you pulled away.
All these ‘job interview’ trips were for MonDex, weren’t they?
And then you ghosted on me, and when my uncle called me–you really are a piece of work, twisting this to make me seem like the selfish one! ”