“Kenzi.”
Nadine’s tongue catches my name, the way a magician pulls is this your card? out of thin air.
I blink. I’ve been zoning out—a bad side effect of the pot brownie I ate earlier. It makes me spacey, and it takes me a minute to reorient—that same feeling you get when you wake up in a bedroom you don’t recognize and slowly have to put the puzzle pieces back together.
Jason, Mr. King, and Donovan all went upstairs. Mrs. King is in the kitchen doing dishes. After a couple of attempts to help with the dishes (and subsequently being thwarted), I returned to my chair, sipping my wine and spacing out.
Except now Nadine’s is hovering beside me, honey-brown eyes on mine expectantly.
“Join me on the patio?”
Her fingertips brush my shoulder, and it sends goose bumps up and down my arm.
Stop being weird, Kenzi.
“Um. Yeah. Totally.”
Nadine helps herself to the sliding glass doors—it occurs to me then how comfortable she is in this house. She was, after all, in-lawed into it at one point.
Could I ever be that comfortable here? Or will I always feel like Cinderella, feeding foie gras to my mice friends under the table?
There’s a wide pool here, outlined with stones, but it’s covered up for the winter. There’s a second, smaller pool—a Jacuzzi, I bet—that is also covered up, but looks active, a thin blue light peeking underneath the cover.
They have an array of outdoor furniture here, including comfortable lounge chairs. It’s cold as hell, but the Kings have their own outdoor heaters, these long metal things that look like tiki torches, with yellow-blue flames flickering inside. Nadine and I converge around a heater, and she adjusts the knob, turning it up. It’s surprisingly cozy, and my hands begin to thaw.
“Can we speak candidly?” Nadine asks.
“Sure,” I say. My brain is empty. I’m feeling candid.
“You and Jason. Are you an item?”
Should I feel weird admitting this to his ex? I don’t. If anything, it feels like we have something in common now. “We’re a something,” I say.
She seems to accept that answer with a nod. She glances off, across the way. “That’s good. I’m glad he’s happy.”
I stare at her. She means it. Everything about her is so composed, so pristine. She fits into this house—and Jason’s family—effortlessly.
So I have to ask… “What happened?”
She sizes me up. “What has he told you?”
I shrug. “Not a lot.” I consider it. “I think…it probably hurts to talk about.”
“Coming together was quite simple,” she says. “My father runs Oxim, a multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical company. He worked closely with Mr. King. Our arrangement was good for business.” She tips her glass of wine to her lips. “Naturally, it helped that Jason is a fox. More than that, he’s a sweetheart. Not many of those left.”
I can’t help but grin at that. “Yeah. He is all of those things.”
“We were good for a time. But ultimately, he wanted something I can’t give him.”
“Mm.” I nod knowingly. “A penis.”
She arches a perfect eyebrow. “No. A heart.”
“Oh.”
Well—that one feels like a punch in the tits.
Nadine continues. “My career always comes first. And I would do anything to get what I wanted. I couldn’t date a man who prioritized me above all. The dynamic was…uneven.”
“Huh.”
The conversation has taken a turn. I feel a strange knot twisting in my throat, and I take a swallow of wine to push it back. The heat from the open flames feels too hot suddenly, and I can feel myself grow flushed. I want to jump into the enclosed pool. Let the icy water chill me until I don’t feel anything at all.
Nadine looks at me, and her perfect smile returns. “He seems happy with you, though. Perhaps I was the caustic bitch he needed to get over to find someone like you.”
Or maybe he traded one caustic bitch for another.
We’re interrupted by a hiss—the sound of the sliding glass doors opening and shutting.
“So this is where the party is.” Donovan’s voice breaks through the haze of my self-loathing, and immediately, I feel my spirits lift.
He and Jason come over to join us. Donovan takes one of the chairs across from us, but I’m feeling needy. I take Jason’s hand and give it a squeeze. Rather than pulling away, he leans into it, perching on the arm of my chair and moving his hand to my back. “You good?” he asks.
“Mmhm,” I hum, leaning my head on his thigh. I feel small and safe here.
Donovan has a bottle of red dangling from his fingers. He pours himself a glass, and when Nadine extends her own glass, he tops her off as well.
“What have you boys been up to?” Nadine asks.
Donovan’s dark eyes swoop over Jason intently. “We just had a heart-to-heart.”
With my cheek pressed to Jason’s thigh, I noticed his pants are black—weren’t they blue when we came to dinner? “Did you change pants, or am I going crazy?” I ask.
“We had a wine spill,” Donovan answers. “He had to rub it out.”
Even in the dying light of the sunset, I can see Jason go bright red, his ears positively pink.
Jason changes the topic. “What’ve you girls been talking about?”
“You, mainly,” Nadine says—which isn’t a lie. “Your Kenzi is a real charmer, here. I would hold on to her, if I were you.”
“Because you’re so good at that,” Donovan adds, a sharpness in his tone. “Holding on to things.”
She purses her lips. “Donovan, aren’t you and I ever going to be friends?”
“Don’t count on it.”
Say what you will about Donovan—but he is ride or die, all the way.
“How about a toast?” Jason lifts his glass to break the tension.
“To old friends and new,” Nadine says.
“And everything in between,” Donovan adds.
We click glasses and drink on it.
