by K. A. Tucker
Chapter 13
NOW
My left heel wobbles a touch as I step out of the elevator. I’m two minutes early and Kyle is already in the meeting room, seated and waiting, his back to me, his attention on his phone.
For just a moment, I lose my nerve and reach back to hold the elevator door. For just a moment, I tell myself this is crazy and that I need to let go and move on before I humiliate myself further.
I don’t know the cool, reserved man sitting in that room; I only know the wild boy he used to be.
But then that familiar thrill stirs in my stomach, the one that Kyle has always stirred inside me like no one else—not even David in our early days. And I can’t dismiss that.
Taking a deep breath, I push through the glass door.
Kyle doesn’t shift or turn; he waits until I’m towering over him to peer up at me. His golden eyes are wary and resigned. That gaze flickers down, over my slate-blue silk blouse—the collar plunging but not unprofessionally so—and then back up. It’s a quick look, but I don’t miss it.
“Is this about that Tripp guy?” he finally asks.
I settle into the chair across from him, putting us at equal level. “No.”
He nods slowly, as if he knows what I’m going to ask. I’m guessing he heard my question yesterday, after all. He chose to pretend he didn’t.
Do I go in hard or do I try a more subtle approach?
His eyes trail my hands as I clasp them on the table.
“How is everything?”
The smallest smirk touches his lips. “No complaints.”
“Are you liking things here so far?”
“Yes.”
“And you like Lennox?”
“Yes.” He’s answering as if he’s being questioned in an interrogation. And maybe that’s what this is.
“Do you like it more than San Diego?”
His smirk falters a touch.
“Gus told me that’s where you moved from.”
He nods slowly. “I figured it was time to come home.”
“Home?” I repeat lightly. “I thought home was Poughkeepsie. Or was it Albany?”
“Both, actually.” His lips twist in thought. “You remembered.”
“Of course I did. I remember everything, Kyle.” I hear the vulnerability in my voice and I hate it. I clear my throat and attempt to steel my nerve. “Unlike you, I’ve never forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” he says quickly, sharply, piercing me with a look that is somehow both hard and soft. “Not a second of it.”
The air in this meeting room has suddenly turned electric.
So then why the act? I want to ask, but I bench that question for the moment.
“When did you move to San Diego?”
He shifts and settles back in his chair, as if to get comfortable. “Two weeks after I left Wawa.”
With not so much as a call or email or anything to me?
He drums his fingertips over the table’s smooth surface in an unhurried tempo, his gaze never leaving mine.
Waiting for me to ask my next question.
My phone vibrates in my pocket with an incoming call. I ignore it. This exchange between Kyle and me feels so much more important than anything else at the moment. “How is your family doing now?”
He sighs heavily, his eyes drifting to the window behind me. “Fine, I guess. I don’t have much to do with them anymore.”
“Are they out?” I don’t need to elaborate.
Kyle turns his head, as if checking the hall behind us to make sure there aren’t any eavesdroppers hovering by the door. It gives me a sublime view of his profile—of that long, slender nose that used to nuzzle against my neck, of those full, soft pouty lips that spent many nights against mine. Does he still kiss like he used to, I wonder, or has that changed along with the rest of him?
“Yeah. Well, my dad and Ricky are, anyway. They were released a few years ago. Max got into some trouble while inside, so his sentence got extended. He gets out in a few months.” Kyle doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and I assume that’s all the information I’m going to get. But then he offers, “They were living in Albany for a bit, but they decided to move to San Diego. Last I heard, my mom and dad are back together, and Dad and Ricky were working construction. Probably looking for their next scam.”
“You don’t think they’ve learned?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ve learned. They’ve learned all kinds of things being behind bars for that long. Like, how not to get caught next time,” he mutters sarcastically, his gaze shifting to the table again.
His opinion of his family hasn’t changed much, I note. In all fairness, I’ve never met them, so it may be true.
“Do they know you moved to Lennox?”
He shrugs nonchalantly, but then shakes his head. “I didn’t tell them. Maybe my little brother did. If not . . . I’ll find out when I call my mom at Christmas.”
What must it be like to have such a dysfunctional family? Not that the Calloways are a poster child for family ideals. Dad and I do dinner and drinks on December twenty-third so he can pass along whatever gift Greta chose for me before he jets off to his yacht in the Cayman Islands. I spend Christmas on Martha’s Vineyard, sipping berry cosmos and listening to Elton John’s holiday tracks while Aunt Jackie gets bombed and Mom admires the twenty-foot designer-decorated tree. Though, now that Rhett and Lawan are in America, maybe we’ll break out the ugly Christmas sweater tradition again.
What are Kyle’s Christmases like? Obviously he spends it with this woman he’s seeing. Likely with her family, too. Do they lounge around in matching ugly sweaters and woolen socks, getting drunk on spiced eggnog and playing board games? Do they draw names for Secret Santa and playfully argue over who gets the task of peeling potatoes?
Who even is Kyle anymore?
And why did he come here?
I watch him closely.
It’s a moment before his gaze lifts to meet mine. That perpetual shadow lingers in his eyes, one that I never saw that summer at Wawa. Maybe it has come with his wisdom and pain.
Or maybe it was always there and I only see it now, because of my wisdom and pain.
“Why did you request a transfer to this building?” I ask evenly.
His jaw tenses. I wait several long moments, but he doesn’t answer.
“You knew this was my building, didn’t you?”
He swallows, his gaze averting to his folded hands on the table.
“Gus told me you put in a request to come here. Why?”
Silence.
“I need to understand, Kyle. Otherwise I’m going to have to give Gus details about our history and then he’s going to have to report it to Rikell, and—”
“I needed to see you again,” he blurts out. He looks up at me, nothing but earnestness in his eyes. “I just . . . I wanted to see you again.”
Such a simple admission, and yet my chest swells with elation. “Why? I mean, why now? It’s been thirteen years.”
He sighs and reaches up to rub the back of his neck. “Like I said, Max is getting out in a few months, and from what my little brother told me—”
“Jeremy. That’s his name, right?”
Kyle’s eyes flash to mine, a flicker of surprise in them. “Yeah.”
How easily the minute details about Kyle come back to me, all these years later.
“He still talks to my mom. She told him that Max is coming to California when he gets out. Apparently he was asking all kinds of questions about my job and if I could get him in.” Kyle snorts. “An ex-con working in security. Right. Anyway, that’s when I started thinking that it was time for me to leave California, cut them off completely. I figured I could come back this way. I knew Rikell has contracts all over the country.” He drags his finger across the wood grain of the table. “I was working the night shift, flipping through a business magazine that someone left in the lobby. You know, just killing time and trying to stay awake. There was th
is big write-up about these father-and-daughter real estate business tycoons.” His lips curl into a knowing smirk. “And there you were, in this long, black dress, standing on a stage.”
“The American Entrepreneur article.” They used a candid shot from the night of my big promotion announcement, of my father and me standing side-by-side in our formal wear, toasting to another good year.
“It was a good article. I mean, I don’t read those kinds of things, but I liked reading about you. Where you went to college, things you’ve said and done—you know, all that.” He smiles, more to himself. “It was weird. I kept thinking, ‘I knew her way back when.’ ”
And better than I’ve let any other guy know me since.
“The article said you were in Lennox, learning the ropes so you could take over the company when your dad retires.” Kyle bites his bottom lip, as if deciding whether to continue. “I asked around and it turned out Rikell does the security here. And I thought to myself, if that’s not the universe telling me something . . .” A flush creeps across his cheeks, his eyes glued to the table in front of him. “That’s when I realized how badly I wanted to see you again. I wanted to see if you’ve changed.”
I swallow at his frank admission. “You could have just called me up, come for a visit. You didn’t have to actually get a job here.” Then again, that does feel like such a Kyle thing to do—going that extra mile.
He shrugs nonchalantly. “I threw my name in and figured, if an opening came up, it was meant to happen. That we were meant to reconnect. I promised myself that if it came up, I’d move here. Why not?”
I can’t help but smile. That is such a Kyle thing to do. “And something came up.”
“Something came up.” He grins crookedly. “And, here we are, seeing each other every day again. Just like back then.”
“Yeah. You see me passing by you. See me sitting in an office as you walk by. You see me, but you won’t talk to me. Remember? ‘Let’s keep it simple’? Something like that?” My voice is light but tinged with accusation.
He dips his head and rubs at the back of his neck again. “I panicked a bit there, at the start.”
“You were a complete asshole to me.”
He winces. “I know. Seeing you brought back a lot of memories.” His gaze flickers to mine, and in it I see a hint of the vulnerable boy I once knew.
“For me, too,” I say softly, feeling the sudden urge to reach across the table and take his hand. I ball my fist tight to resist. He’s not yours anymore.
That’s right. He’s not mine.
“What does your girlfriend have to say about this? She moved across the country with you, didn’t she?” Does she know all the reasons why? Because if I were her, I sure as hell would want to know. And then I’d skin him in his sleep for suggesting the move.
Kyle bites his bottom lip again as he regards me evenly. “I live with Jeremy, Piper. He’s the one who moved across the country with me, and he was happy to get away from the bullshit back home, too.”
“What? I thought . . .” I stammer, my heart beginning to race. “But you said that you had a . . .” My words drift as I replay the conversation. “No, you didn’t say that.”
“You just assumed it,” he says, adding softly, “and I didn’t clarify.”
“Why not?”
His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “I don’t know. Easier, I guess?” Under his breath, I catch him mutter, “At least, I thought it would be.”
My mind is swirling.
Kyle is single. Available.
Not off-limits to me.
Despite how much he hurt me all those years ago, and my irritation with how our reconnection has gone so far, I can’t ignore this feeling that I’m about to float out of this chair, that my blood is rushing too fast for my heart to handle.
He clears his throat. “Anyway, I realized as soon as I saw you that this might have been my dumbest idea yet, coming here. But it was already too late—”
“What do you mean? Why is it dumb?”
He chuckles softly. “Come on, Piper . . . We’re not teenagers at summer camp anymore.”
I frown. What is he saying, exactly? “We’re the same people,” I hear myself murmur, though I doubt that’s true on both accounts.
“You always pretended you were like the rest of us. You can’t do that anymore, though. I mean, look at you.” His eyes flicker to my shirt again, drawing my own eyes down.
“What? My blouse? What’s wrong with my blouse?”
“Absolutely nothing. It’s definitely not the Wawa red T-shirt, though.” That somehow sounds bad, coming from him.
I know what this is about: class and money. Kyle always did seem to have a chip on his shoulder about how much money he presumed my family had, and how little his did. And that was back when he had no idea just who my family actually is.
“Weak.”
His lips twitch, and I wonder if he remembers that first day, out on the cliff, when he was taunting me to jump.
“I’m still me. You can still talk to me. We can still be . . . friends.” The word feels all wrong against my tongue. We were never really friends. We were always so much more.
“Right.” He smiles. “You’re gonna hang out with your building’s security guard in your spare time?”
“If I want to, yes.”
“Your father’s going to be okay with that?”
“My father doesn’t have a say in my personal relationships.”
His eyebrows arch. “You sure about that?”
“I’m a grown woman.” It comes out more sharply than I intended. I temper my tone. “If he had a say, I’d still be engaged to David.”
“That pompous ass in the Maserati.” Kyle grins. “I can’t believe you were going to marry that guy.”
“Trust me. I know. Thank God I smartened up when I did.” I laugh, and my chest feels like it’s going to explode with warmth. I’m actually laughing with Kyle again. “This is so surreal.”
“I know,” he says softly, and I catch a sparkle of mischief in his eyes before it’s extinguished, and silence takes over.
I hesitate, but then admit, “I looked for you.”
He dips his head but doesn’t answer.
“I went to Poughkeepsie, to the Seven-Eleven.” There was only one in the whole town, thank God. “There was an old lady in the apartment. She said that you’d moved.” I remember not being able to breathe as I knocked and listened to the dull shuffle of feet on the other side. And then, when the woman in the ratty blue robe delivered the crushing news—that she heard the family before her hadn’t paid their rent all summer and had skipped town—I thought I was going to throw up, right there on her doorstep. I managed to keep the tears at bay until I was in the parking lot.
Kyle’s eyes drift behind me, to the window and beyond.
I still have so many questions. But I start with the most important. “Why did you just disappear like that? Why didn’t you ever call me?”
His jaw tenses. “I figured it was better. I mean . . .” Another hard swallow. “We were never supposed to last beyond the summer. It was just supposed to be fun. You knew that.”
“No. I didn’t know that, Kyle.” Sure, we’d talked about it, in the beginning. But things morphed. Feelings intensified. All those stolen smiles, those whispered words, those shared laughs, those heated kisses.
Those nights.
Was I really that clueless?
“Are you saying . . .” I grapple with my thoughts, my rising emotions. “So everything you said to me was a lie?”
“No.” He shakes his head.
“But you never wanted it to last?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well then you’re not making any sense!” I feel a knot forming in my throat, which only makes me angrier, because I shouldn’t still have knots forming in my throat over things that happened thirteen years ago!
“Wawa was over for us. We lived hours apart. It just . . . it was never gonn
a work.” His jaw is hard as he spews basically the same line over again.
“Then why are you here?” I temper my volume. These walls are too thin to be speaking that loud. “Why did you come back now?”
“I told you. I was moving back east anyway.”
“And what did you think was going to happen when you showed up? What were you expecting? That I would have forgotten how you hurt me?”
He dips his head. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure. It’s been thirteen years. I figured you would have moved on.”
“I did move on!” I snap, because I’m feeling like a fool right now. A sixteen-year-old pining fool.
A fool still in love. But I have to accept that all I’m in love with is a memory.
“You are right. This was a mistake.” I stand. “Thank you for coming. You can go back to work now. And maybe you should consider applying for a transfer to another building. Gus can help you with that.”
“Piper, I didn’t mean—”
“You broke my heart!” My voice cracks, my chest tight with emotion that I’m still grappling to understand. Maybe time doesn’t heal all wounds.
I march toward the door, acutely aware of the sound of Kyle’s chair banging against the table’s leg, the hair-raising ping of metal-against-metal hanging in the air. A moment later, his hand is around my wrist, gripping it tightly, holding me back from escape.
“I’m sorry, Piper. But you don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Because if all we had was a summer fling thirteen years ago, why the hell would you even give me a second’s thought now?” I dare to meet his eyes. “Did you come here for money? Is that what you want?”
He releases my wrist like I’ve burned him. His nostrils flare. “I don’t want any of your family’s money,” he pushes through gritted teeth.
I shrug, but inside, every bit of me twists at the idea. “How do I know that? I don’t know you anymore. Maybe I never did.” I turn to leave.
“He paid me to leave you alone!” Kyle says in a rush.
My feet stall. “What?” I turn to find Kyle’s head bowed, his eyes squeezed shut.
“What did you just say?”