I’d never felt more out of place than I did standing in front of the door to Kai’s apartment. It was weird to be here, in his space. It humanized him, and I didn’t like that. I wanted to stay angry at him. To keep seeing him as the asshole I hated.
Pulling in a deep breath, I knocked on the door.
A moment later, it swung open, but instead of Kai standing on the other side, a little girl stared up at me with big blue eyes.
“Hi.” She grinned. Long black hair framed her cherubic face and fell to her hips in loose waves.
“Um, hi. Is Kai home?”
“Rain,” an exasperated voice said from inside the apartment. “How many times have we told you not to open the door unless I or Mom is with you?”
The little girl looked over her shoulder. “Lots?”
“And are you going to listen?” Kai appeared behind her, a soft smile on his too-handsome face.
Fuck. This was a bad idea.
“Maybe.” She turned back to me. “Are you Kai’s friend?”
“Um.” How was I supposed to answer that?
“This is Alex. He and I go to school together.” Kai ran a big hand through Rain’s hair. “Let’s let Alex come inside.” He scooped her up and held her on his hip. She leaned her head against his broad shoulder.
I stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind me.
“You remember what we talked about?” Kai asked his sister and motioned for me to follow him into the apartment.
The building was old and run-down like most buildings in the area, but the apartment was homey and lived in. Art prints and photographs dotted the walls, and brightly colored area rugs gave the room a cheery feel, even though it was obvious the apartment had been neglected over the years. The furniture was worn and had seen better days, but it was clean and inviting.
Rain nodded against his shoulder.
He put her down and dropped a kiss on her head. She made her way over to a pile of trucks and plopped down on the floor while Kai sat on the couch, where a colorful quilt was draped over the back.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“She just turned six.” He patted the cushion next to him. “Unless you want to stand for the next few hours.”
I sat, feeling more than a little off balance. Seeing Kai with his sister was fucking with me.
“Is this your apartment?” I asked awkwardly.
He nodded.
“Are your parents working?”
“Our mom is. I watch her every Tuesday while she works a night shift.” He lowered his voice. “It’s just the three of us.”
Was Rain his half sister? That would make sense, considering their age difference.
Crash.
I looked over at Rain, who lined up two cars and smashed them into each other head on.
“Should you be worried about that, Mr. Psychologist?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He smirked. “Nah. I didn’t worry when she cut the heads off her Barbies either.”
I snorted. “Destructive kid.”
“She’s curious. It’s how she learns.”
The fond look in his eyes as he watched his sister did weird things to my insides.
“So, the project.” I cleared my throat.
Kai sat up straighter, his expression serious. “Right. I had a few ideas I wanted to run by you.” He grabbed a laptop off the coffee table, opened it, and clicked on a few keys.
I scooted closer, making sure we still had a few inches of space between us.
The ringing of a phone alarm knocked me out of the haze of concentration I’d fallen into and back to reality. Kai tapped on his phone screen, silencing the alarm.
“It’s time, pumpkin,” he said.
“Pumpkin?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Kai calls me pumpkin because my birthday is Halloween.” Rain came to stand in front of us.
“I used to call her jack, like jack-o’-lantern, but that confused people.”
“You like jack-o’-lanterns?” I asked Rain.
She nodded and tugged on a lock of her hair. “They’re pretty.”
Kai’s phone beeped, and he glanced down at it. “I have to get this.” He grabbed the phone and wagged a finger at his sister. “But then it’s bedtime.”
She nodded innocently.
Kai stood and swept out of the room. “Hello.” A door closed. Rain and I were left alone.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly as Rain stared at me with her big blue eyes.
“Are you Kai’s friend?”
“Um, yeah. We go to school together.”
“I like your hair.”
“I like yours too.”
“Are you sad?”
“No. Why would you ask that?”
She tilted her head. “Because you don’t smile.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
“Kai doesn’t smile a lot either.”
“He doesn’t?”
That was news to me. The fucker was always smiling in that casual, breezy way that drove me up the wall.
“Not his real smile.” She moved around the coffee table until she was right in front of me. “Do you need a hug? Kai hugs me when I’m sad, and it helps.”
“Um…”
“Or you can ask Kai to hug you. He gives the best hugs.”
“I’m not sad.”
She studied me. “Are you sure?”
I pasted a smile on my face. Hopefully she would talk about something else. “I’m sure.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Wow. This kid was like a mini version of her brother. Way too smart and observant for her own good. Not to mention bold.
She held out her arms. “I give really good hugs too.”
Before I could answer, Rain stepped into my space and wrapped her thin arms around my neck. My first instinct was to jump away from her. I’d never been around kids and had no idea how to act around them. Plus, I wasn’t a hugger.
Rain tightened her grip and hummed a soft tune in my ear. Her body was warm, and her quiet voice soothed some of the panic that had been bubbling under the surface since I’d woken up that morning.
A wave of calm washed over me as I hugged her back and closed my eyes.
“Time for bed, pumpkin.”
I snapped my eyes open, my entire body tense. Kai stood on the other side of the coffee table, a soft smile on his lips. The fight left in a rush as Rain gave me one last squeeze, then let go.
“Goodnight, Alex.” She leaned in and smacked a kiss against my cheek.
“Night.”
“I’ll be out in a bit. Make yourself comfortable.” Kai gave his sister a firm look. “And someone isn’t going to stall tonight, right?”
Rain came around the coffee table and, when she was in front of her brother, raised her arms. He scooped her up and kissed her forehead. They headed down the hallway, talking in hushed voices. A door closed.
I looked around the room. Being alone in Kai’s space was weird, and antsy flutters replaced the momentary calm from Rain’s hug.
I jumped up and strode over to the wall covered in photographs. Snapshots of Kai and Rain and a woman I assumed was their mother smiled back at me. Young Kai, older Kai, a baby with dark hair and eyes, and another baby who was identical outside of a set of big blue eyes.
Huh, Kai had gone through an awkward phase in his teens. That was comforting, but it humanized him even more, which I didn’t like. Their mother was an older version of Rain with her jet-back hair, big blue eyes, and easy smile. She also looked way too young to have a kid in college. They were a good-looking family, and they obviously adored each other.
I studied a picture of Kai on some sort of trail. He wore cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a baby carrier with a baby Rain snuggled into it.
In the next picture, Kai sat in front of a Christmas tree, wearing a Santa hat and a big goofy grin. Rain, an elf hat on her curls, was in his lap. She beamed at the camera as she held up a stuffed cat.
My heart clenched at a picture of Kai and his mom. She looked incredibly young in the photo, barely a teenager, holding a sleeping baby with a shock of black hair against her chest. Her smile was soft, serene, and happy.
“That’s one of my mom’s favorite pictures.”
I jumped as Kai’s voice rang out behind me. I whirled around, bracing myself for him to say something about me snooping. He didn’t, just stood there with an unreadable expression on his face.
“Your mom. She looks really young here.” I nodded to the photo.
“She was.” Kai came to stand next to me. “She was fifteen when she had me. That was taken a week before my grandparents kicked her out.”
“They kicked her out at fifteen?”
“Because she refused to give me up.” He chewed on his lip as he stared at the picture. “Come on. Let’s get back to the assignment.”
Feeling off-balance, I followed Kai back to the couch and sat down next to him.
“What you saw, with your sister. She hugged me. I swear—”
“Relax.” He chuckled. “I’m not mad. Rain is incredibly intuitive. I’m guessing she wanted to hug you to make you feel better.”
“She said I looked sad.”
“Are you sad?” His dark eyes bored into me, his expression searching.
“No. Not sad.” I swallowed.
“But there’s something.”
I tore my eyes from his. Dammit, why could he read me so well? “Let’s get back to the project.” I focused on his laptop screen.
Kai ran his finger over the touchpad to wake the machine up.
I half listened as he explained the graph he wanted to use, something about showing the correlation between censorship and political parties.
That antsy feeling was back, but instead of wanting to run as far away from Kai as possible, I had the overwhelming urge to talk to him. To ask him for a damn hug to make me feel better.
It was madness. I didn’t even like Kai, but all I could think about was how nice it would feel to be wrapped up in his strong arms. How warm his big body would be against mine. How safe he’d make me feel.
“Alex?”
I jerked. “What?”
“You okay?”
“Fine.” I cleared my throat. “Just thinking about something.”
He motioned to my leg.
I looked down. I was tapping out a random pattern on my bouncing knee with my fingers.
“You fidget a lot.”
“So?”
All thoughts of warmth and hugs were replaced with defensiveness.
“Just an observation.” He pursed his lips.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.
“Nothing.” He leaned back against the couch. “Why do you hate me?”
My mind blanked. I should have expected the question, but it still took me by surprise.
I wanted to run. To jump up and sprint out of the apartment and away from Kai and his sister and everything that reminded me he was just a guy and not the evil creature I’d built him up to be over the past year.
“You don’t remember me at all, do you?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t. And I’m guessing that’s the problem?”
I crossed my arms to stop from fidgeting. “Part of it.”
He sat quietly.
“We flirted at a party.” I tore my gaze from his, unable to look at him. “Last year. You asked for my number. You said you’d text, but you didn’t.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s very possible. And I hurt your feelings by not texting?”
“It’s not so much that. More that I broke a rule for you, and you didn’t even care.” God, could I be a bigger loser?
“What else?” he asked softly. “I can tell there’s more.”
“You fucked my girlfriend.”
His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open comically. “Come again?”
“You hooked up with my girlfriend. Elissa.”
He blinked. “Who?”
“Wow. You don’t remember her either? Guess I shouldn’t feel special.”
“I’m no saint, but I don’t have sex with people and not remember their names.”
“That party at the old barn last month. You were there.”
“I remember the party.”
“I got there late. When I walked in, you had your tongue down my girlfriend’s throat.”
His expression shifted.
“Now you remember her.”
“I remember kissing her. But that’s as far as it went. And I had no idea she was with someone. She came onto me.”
“It must have been a hell of a kiss because she dumped me for you.”
“What?”
“I confronted her about it when she finally pried herself off you. She said she was done with me. That she hadn’t signed up to deal with my ‘issues’”—I made little air quotes—“and that she needed to be with a real man who could give her what she needed. You were that guy.”
“I don’t know where she got that idea, but I never promised her anything. That party is the only time I’ve ever seen her.”
I snorted, crossing and uncrossing my legs as nervous energy poured into my system. “How fucking pathetic must I be to get dumped after a single kiss? Either that or you’re just that good.”
“I’m sorry I came between you two, I really am. But I don’t hook up with taken people. I would never have kissed her if I’d known you were together.”
I dropped my eyes, the anger slowly draining out of me. I wanted to hate him, damn it. I didn’t want to hear his excuses, to see him as anything other than the asshole who’d not only rejected me after I’d broken my rule against flirting with guys but who’d also stolen my girlfriend.
The worst part about the whole situation with Elissa wasn’t how much she’d hurt me. But how much Kai had.
That night, when we’d flirted, had meant something to me. We’d sat in a corner, completely sober, talking about everything and nothing.
It had been one of the best conversations I’d ever had, and when he’d asked for my number, I hadn’t hesitated. The stupid part was that I’d given him my actual number and not my burner one. I’d thought we’d connected, but I’d obviously just been another person he flirted with.
When I’d seen him and Elissa wrapped up in each other, I hadn’t been angry or even devastated at witnessing my girlfriend cheat on me. I’d been jealous.
But more than that, I’d been jealous of her. That had messed with my head almost as much as her cheating.
Now, after all this time, I found out he hadn’t slept with her. She hadn’t dumped me because Kai had promised her a future or a relationship. She’d dumped me because of me. Because I’d been too much to handle.
I jumped up. “I need to go.”
“Alex—”
“I can’t. Not now.”
He stood and reached for me, but I backed away. He pulled his hand back, indecision clouding his eyes.
I had to get out of there. Kai might not be the asshole I’d thought he was, but that didn’t mean I was ready to face the fact that Elissa had dumped me because she’d gotten sick of me. Everyone always got sick of me.
I raced out of the apartment and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. My heart pounded in my chest, and a roar filled my ears. I needed to do something. To get lost for a while and stop the constant stream of thoughts spiraling through my head.
Loser. Stupid. Crazy.
Digging my car keys out of my pocket, I raced to my car.
You’re not worth it.
My hands shook as I unlocked the door and slid inside.
No one will ever put up with you.
I gripped the steering wheel with one hand and started the car.
No one will ever love you.
Blinking back tears, I put the car in reverse and peeled out of the spot.
