Adrien
My arm is locked tightly around her waist. I feel her trying to slip away, but I’m still too asleep to move. She’s going to have to deal with that.
She keeps shifting, careful and sneaky, trying to free herself from my hold without waking me up. It’s way too cute and irresistible to let go.
A rain of kisses lands on my face, my cheek, my temple, my hair, my shoulder, fast and feather-light, like she’s bribing me into letting go.
“Let me go,” she whispers, trying to summon me, but I hear the smile in her voice.
I can see it even though my eyes are closed.
A phone ringtone violently cracks through the dream I was completely submerged in and drags me into a miserable state somewhere between sleep and consciousness.
There’s warmth behind me, more pressed against me from the front, and the combination feels far too nice to willingly abandon.
But that annoying ringtone keeps going.
“Kas,” I mumble, someone’s hair brushing against my lips.
No answer.
“Pick it up,” I bark.
Nothing.
“Kas,” I try again, louder this time, but all I manage to accomplish is waking up the someone curled up in my arms. She squirms against me, making herself even more comfortable.
“Where is he?” I croak.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs sleepily, snuggling closer and letting out a content sigh.
“He left,” another voice mutters from somewhere behind me, followed by the rustle of sheets as she shifts on the other side of the bed.
I finally force my eyes open and squint into the night.
The guest bedroom sits in darkness and there’s just the three of us in the bed. It’s definitely not morning yet.
He was just here. Where the hell is he?
Then the phone rings again. I shove my way through sheets, pillows and an unreasonable amount of long legs before locating the phone buried somewhere in the mattress.
Kasien.
I check the time before picking up his call.
Midnight.
Why is he calling me when he was literally here before we fell asleep? I’m definitely sober, but confused as hell.
I press the phone to my ear, rubbing my eyes into consciousness.
“Where are—”
“I did something really fucking stupid,” he interrupts me.
The urgency in his voice wakes every cell in my body at once, my attention sharpening instantly as I sit up straighter.
“What happened?”
“I need you to come here,” he states. “Right now.”
“What did you do?” I press.
A brief silence crackles through the line.
“Something enormously fucked up,” he says, his voice carrying an unfamiliar amount of fear for Kasien.
Actually, I can’t remember the last time I heard him scared at all.
By the time the thought crosses my mind, I’m already climbing out of bed and searching through the pile of clothes scattered across the floor, trying to identify which pieces belong to me while balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Can you explain that in a little more detail, please?” I urge, wrestling my way into a pair of pants.
“Just look at my location and come here right now,” he insists. “And take a car.”
Car.
That doesn’t help my growing sense of dread.
“What—”
The line beeps, leaving me standing half-naked and panicked in the silence. I take a deep breath and open his location, studying the address, but it doesn’t ring a bell.
Despite having absolutely no idea what the hell is going on, my pulse picks up speed and instinct takes over.
I clap my hands a couple of times, the sharp sound cutting through the room.
“Wake up, everybody up!” I announce, throwing some clothes at them. “Time to go. Hustle!”
I run around the guest room, searching for my things before shooting out of there, stumbling into Michael in the lobby.
“Can you please escort them out? I need to go,” I shout after him, running down into the garage.
He takes one look at me and wisely decides not to ask questions.
I grab one of the Rovers, start the engine and pull out onto the road, checking the address at the first red light.
It feels familiar, sitting right on the edge of the city, but I still can’t place it. It’s more than an hour’s drive, though.
?
The door buzzes the moment I text Kasien that I’ve arrived, and I step into an old building that smells faintly of cleaning products and decades of other people’s lives.
The elevator slowly carries me upward until its doors slide open onto a long hallway lined with far too many identical apartments.
Everything about the place feels ordinary and insignificant. The kind of residence I’ve probably passed a hundred times without ever really noticing.
Which only makes me wonder what the hell Kasien is doing here.
By the time I reach the second entrance on the right, it’s already opening. Kasien stands there, waiting for me. The sight of him makes my stomach tighten. He looks genuinely worried, paler than usual, his eyes restless.
Without a word, he steps aside and lets me in before quickly shutting the door behind us.
“Kas—”
He turns and disappears deeper into the apartment, then straight into what looks like a large bathroom. I follow him, my pulse climbing higher with every step, but the second I cross the threshold, I stop dead, my mouth falling open.
Kasien drops down onto the edge of the bathtub and buries his face in his hands while I stare at the limp body lying on the floor in front of him.
For a moment, my brain refuses to process what I’m looking at. Then instinct takes over. I drop beside her in an instant and reach for her neck, checking her pulse.
Alive.
Okay. Good.
I take one deep breath and calm down.
She’s alive.
She’s lying on the bathroom rug in nothing but a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top, wavy brown hair spilled everywhere, her face turned toward Kasien, making it impossible for me to see who it is.
I shift into a crouch and rake a hand through my hair, trying to make sense of the situation, but absolutely no version of logic seems capable of explaining whatever the hell this is.
When I look up at Kasien, he’s peeking at me through his fingers, his face buried in his palms, guilt practically radiating off him as he watches me like he’s waiting for a verdict or for me to say something.
So I start the conversation.
“What the hell?”
Nothing.
He doesn’t seem to have words, only his leg keeps bouncing nervously while his gaze remains fixed on the unconscious woman.
I haven’t seen him this nervous in years. It’s unsettling. Very unsettling.
“Please tell me you have some kind of a plan,” I start.
I check the movement of her chest once more, just to make sure she’s actually alive and simply out cold, then I reach toward her chin, intending to turn her face and figure out who she is.
But I barely touch her before Kasien smacks my hand away.
I stare at him, my hand still resting in the air.
He stares back.
Then his eyes immediately flick toward her.
Oh, that’s interesting.
“Who is that?” I ask, leaning in anyway and managing to catch a quick glimpse of her face, but it still doesn’t ring a bell.
He doesn’t answer and instead, he gets up and starts pacing around the bathroom, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.
I push myself to my feet as well and cross my arms over my chest, deciding to solve this mystery myself because, to my immense misfortune, I know that whenever he’s nervous like this, he stops talking and starts running a thousand different scenarios inside that OCD brain of his, desperately searching for one where everything somehow works out.
Then he crouches back down beside her, reverently taking a strand of her hair and brushing it away from her face.
Very gently.
Dare I say, romantically.
That’s when it hits me.
Wait a damn second.
My mouth falls open and my arm shoots up in her direction.
“Oh my God!” I blurt out, my finger pointing at her, then at him, my brain struggling to catch up. “Is this who I think it is?”
Kasien looks up at me, still wearing that spectacularly guilty expression.
“Depends,” he says ironically. “Who do you think it is?”
“That’s Kiara!” I announce with horror.
“Lower your voice!” he barks at me.
We fall silent after that, both of us standing over her unconscious body and processing the situation.
“What have you done!” I whisper-shout.
Kasien grips the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “I drugged her.”
“Oh my,” I mumble and facepalm.
A beat passes.
“You drugged Kiara,” I repeat, trying to make sense of it.
“Mhm,” he hums.
“Was there a reason for that, or were you just acting on instinct?”
Kasien slowly lowers his hands and stares at me, jaw tight with irritation.
“Look,” I sigh. “If this is some new kink, you know I support pretty much all of them, but this one might be where I draw the line. Tell me you’re waiting for her to wake up, because otherwise this conversation is about to get really uncomfortable.”
He winces. “Can you stop talking for a second?”
“I can try.”
I lean against the bathroom counter.
Minutes pass.
He eventually drops back onto the edge of the bathtub, looking completely lost and so thoroughly wired that I’m starting to wonder whether he’s had seventeen coffees before calling me.
“I need you to take her to the manor,” he says suddenly.
“Me?” I widen my eyes.
“You.”
“Why me?”
He looks at me as if I’m the stupid one here.
“She can’t see me when she wakes up.” He shrugs as though that’s supposed to justify everything.
“She hasn’t seen you before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I hope not.”
He shakes his head and looks back at Kiara, checking whether she’s still breathing despite having done that approximately fifty times since I arrived.
“How long is she going to be out?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It depends. On whether she’s eaten… and how much. But she drank almost a whole bottle of wine before she...” He pauses, then gestures toward her, silently finishing the sentence.
I stay quiet, thinking about the fact that this terrifying criminal mastermind currently looks like someone who accidentally adopted a wild animal and has no idea what to do with it.
Then I can’t hold it in anymore, and the corners of my mouth twitch into a crooked grin. I cover my mouth with my hand quickly.