I laugh hard. Zadie can always do that. It’s like freaking magic.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. But you have to let me explain before you ask any questions.”
“You’re staying in his apartment.”
“Yes.”
I can picture her narrowing her eyes, her eyebrows furrowing in that way they always do when she’s confused. “And you kissed and… did stuff? But when you told him you were the not-so-proud owner of a V card, he freaked?”
“Yeah. Because he thought we were going to have sex. And he’s angry.”
“I don’t know…” she exhales.
“What? That’s the most likely scenario.”
“It just seems strange that he would let you stay even if he wasn’t interested. Maybe he’s more interested than you think. Maybe he wants to wait for you to be ready.”
I let out a breath. It’s like Zadie has reached inside my mind and grabbed onto my most passionate hopes, throwing them back at me until I’m tempted to latch on and agree. And yet I can’t let myself disappear into impossible fantasies. Something that has no real hope of ever coming true.
“Sure, maybe there’s like a one percent chance that’s true—”
“Kyra,” Zadie says firmly, cutting me off. “Just a few days ago you thought Kayden would never even be attracted to you. He clearly is. And you said he swore on some pretty important stuff that he’s not tricking you.”
“Yes,” I allow.
“So why the doubt? Don’t you believe him?”
I think back to the way he loomed over me, his green eyes glinting as he stared down, as all the emotion of his declaration spilled out of him. It was like he was going to grab me right there, shove me up against the wall, and take me.
Take me hard. Take me until my womb was singing and tingling with our future.
I have to stop thinking like this. Imagining me and Kayden in a house full of laughter and love isn’t helpful. That’s the one aspect to all this I held back from Zadie. I know it wouldn’t make any sense, even to my best friend. It hardly even makes sense to me.
“Kyra?”
“Sorry. Yeah, I believed him. But it’s just so freaking confusing. And I want…”
“What, Kyra?”
More, I answer silently.
I don’t just want to live in his apartment until I’m ready to be intimate with him. I want him to tell me he feels the same, he’s envisioned the same future for us. I want him to tell me he can’t stop thinking about me the same way I can’t stop thinking about him.
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I need to get back to work. Lisa will kill me if she thinks I’ve gone AWOL. Thanks, Zadie. You always help to put things into perspective.”
“I’m always here if you need to talk. Let me know how it goes. This is all so crazy and exciting. Is the apartment nice?”
I laugh in pure delight. “I’m not confused about that part. The apartment is unbelievable. I’m almost scared to walk around it just in case I break something.”
“Enjoy it. It’s not every day you’re invited to stay in a billionaire’s bachelor pad.”
The term bachelor pad causes a twisting mess of nerves to clamp in my belly. It implies that Kayden has a habit of bringing women back there. And who says he doesn’t?
Maybe this is his thing, find poor young women and offer them a supposed way out of the drudgery of their life… just long enough until he has sex with them.
Can I really be so naïve to think he’s going to let me stay there in the long term?
As I hang up and return to work, I find I don’t believe in that line of reasoning. It doesn’t fit with the Kayden I’ve come to know over the past couple of days. Our interactions have been brief, but they’ve flared brightly, holding a more important place in my mind than anything I’ve experienced for years.
My body throbs and pulses just thinking about his hand on me, the way his heel ground against my clit, the pleasure increasing until it became deafening and nothing else existed.
Lisa sends me on a bunch of errands again, as though she knows I can’t endure the sight of Kayden flirting with one of the contestants. Although, if yesterday’s performance is any indication, he’s not feeling in a very flirty mood. Everyone online is saying he prefers Hallie to Oaklyn, but I remind myself of what he said.
He doesn’t want any of them. It’s all a PR stunt.
After work, I head out to the parking lot, finding the chauffeured car in its usual spot. I have to tell myself I’m not dreaming every time I walk toward it, certain it’s going to disappear in a puff of smoke. It still feels beyond surreal.
“Sit up front, Kyra.”
I giggle when I look through the screen divider. The sound of his voice is so welcome, gruff, and reassuring, helping to smooth away my doubts.