Whisper to Me

Hot stinging tears welled up in my eyes as I realized just how much strength he’d provided me during those times.

All of a sudden his breath was on my neck. “Your secret’s safe with me, Rachel. But sooner or later it’s going to come up and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it. So maybe it’s time to fess up.”

“I’ll think about it,” I whispered, and he tightened his arms around me.

My ass was against his crotch and a pyrotechnics display was shooting off low in my belly. All of a sudden, I wanted him to touch me the way he had the other night. I couldn’t help the hum that burst from my throat. It felt too damn good being curled up next to him.

“Trying to tell me something?” he said low in my ear.

“You’re pretty good at this stuff,” I said, reining in my out-of-control breathing.

“What stuff?” His voice held a hint of amusement.

“Making-girls-feel-good stuff.”

He blew out a breath like he was going to have some sort of retort but then stopped himself.

“Is that why you’re here . . .?” His voice was soft, tentative at first, but then became brusque. “So I can make you feel good again?’

“I . . . I don’t know, honestly,” I said, wondering why he sounded both frustrated and earnest. “I’m here because you’re my friend and I feel like I can talk to you. Like, you get me.”

“I do get you,” he said. “I think we get each other.”

His fingertips were swirling a pattern up and down my forearm, making my skin tingle.

“Is that why you let me in, because you saw I could use a friend?”

It felt like we were skating on thin ice, neither wanting to say what we really meant. That we both wanted this closeness. But it was an impossible situation, one too hard to admit out loud. Because we were meant to be friends, family even. Besides, our time together was limited by secrecy as well as the summer break.

“I’m doing it because you’re my Turtle and you needed a good hug.” He tickled my side and I yelped. He placed his hand over my mouth to silence me as I squirmed beneath him.

When I finally settled down and released the giggles still bubbling inside my chest, I blew out a couple of breaths and said, “Kai?”

I felt his heavy breath against my hair. “Hmm?”

I squeezed his forearm, which was now lower, around my stomach, instead of beneath my chest, which helped alleviate my growing desire just a bit. “What happened in Amsterdam?’

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Why did you . . . get kicked out?” I wanted to ask if he’d been smoking too much pot, especially since I spied a bud sitting on the edge of his dresser, but I didn’t want to be too accusatory. I hadn’t smelt it on him lately and I noticed only a hint of it on his skin right now, along with the subtle scent of the products I’d brought him from Pure.

He released a long sigh and flipped onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. I immediately lamented the loss of his body heat. “Johan, the guy I was working under at the studio, had this girlfriend that he was crazy about. She’d come around all the time while we were working and when he wasn’t looking, I’d catch her staring at me. I’d smile or ignore her until the one day she tried to corner me.”

“And let me guess, he walked in on you?”

“Yep,” Kai said, clenching his teeth. “And of course, he accused me of coming on to her.”

“God, that sucks. I’m sorry,” I said, now turned on my side, my head resting against my arm. “Of course, her coming on to you doesn’t surprise me.”

“It doesn’t?” He gave me a quick sidelong glance.

“C’mon, Kai. You know you’ve got your looks going for you.” I tried meeting his eyes, but they were glued to the ceiling. “Girls have a hard time resisting you.”

He became still beside me, and I got the impression that I’d just said something he didn’t like. “What’s wrong?”

“Now you sound like Dakota.” He sounded sad. Disappointed, even. “Is that the only thing girls see in me?”

“No way,” I said emphatically. Did he really not know how amazing he was? “There’s so much more.”

He blew out a breath of relief. “Like what?”

“Seriously? Outside of all the physical stuff girls like—your piercings, your looks, your rock-hard body”—I waited for his eyes to find mine before I continued—“you’re mad talented. And you’ve got a heart of gold.”

“You think?” He suddenly seemed shy, almost unsure of himself. This was the opposite of how he’d always acted around me. Lying next to me right now was the most vulnerable I’d ever heard him.

“Look how you took time out of your day just to hang with me at the hospital,” I said. “I looked forward to those hours with you.”

His eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“Of course I did,” I said, wondering where this timid guy had come from. “I mean, you’d hum me to sleep and play cards and just . . . listen to me.”

He was quiet next to me, so I continued. “Shit, I was such a wreck. I didn’t know what was going to happen in my life. But somehow having you there gave me hope.”

“What kind of hope?”

I grabbed for his hand, winding my fingers through his. “Hope that I’d be okay.”

Chapter Sixteen Kai

“That’s because I knew you would be,” I said, marveling at the unexpected turn of this conversation. I used to whisper those exact words to her while she slept, but I was pretty sure she didn’t remember because she’d never brought it up.

But maybe this was her way of remembering, subconsciously.

“I felt like half of a person. Especially after Miles ditched me. I think my anger—at myself, at him, at the world—fueled me on.” She refrained from saying she was mad at me, but after her admission the other night, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been included in that list. She’d said I’d left her, too, when all I’d fucking wanted to do was stay. I’d thought I’d been giving her what she wanted, what she needed.

She took a deep breath. “By the time I got to college, I felt like I needed to prove something.”

“Prove what?” I sat up a bit to give her my full attention but made sure not to break her hold on my hand. It felt too good having our fingers knotted together.

“That I was whole. That I was a survivor.” She clenched her teeth. “That I could get over Miles.”

I tucked a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “Did it work?”

“For a while.” She absently ran her finger over my thigh, not realizing her touch was making blood rush to a region I was desperately trying not to focus on at the moment. “I loved the idea that nobody knew who I was. My friends didn’t know that I had suffered a brain injury and almost died. Or that my boyfriend had left me during my recovery.”

“It was that way for me in Amsterdam, too. Like it was a fresh start,” I said, tracing a pattern on her palm with my thumb. “Almost no one knew what a fuckup I’d been.”

Her jaw fell open. “I never knew you felt that way. I mean, you got in trouble, sure. But you were always so damn cool about it—like junk just bounced off of you.”

“That’s because it always has.” I shrugged. “But I can’t be that person anymore. I need to figure out what matters to me. What the hell I’m doing with my life.”

I adjusted myself on the bed while she studied me. “My parents are disappointed in me. Thank God Dakota impresses them on a daily basis.”

“She’s pretty darn good at impressing people,” she said, thinking it over. It was probably one of the reasons she was afraid to let Dakota down. It was definitely hard measuring up against her. “I guess I always thought you’d do something with music.”

“So did I, but it’s not really working out so well for me,” I said. “And that sucks, because nothing ever interested me until I picked up my first instrument, that’s for sure.”

“Tell me how that felt.” Her eyes were tender, supportive.

“It felt like it was the one thing missing in my life,” I said, holding her gaze. “Very few things in life feel that way.”