The home was immaculate. It had a warmth to it that instantly relaxed Kenzie. There were photos on the walls and cases lined with books, and in that space she got the first sense of who her father was. She was suddenly even sadder than she was just minutes before.
Kai Tamura was sitting at the table in the kitchen when they stepped into the room. He looked up from a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast that he was eating with a spoon, his fist wrapped around the utensil like he was three years old. He eyed them both suspiciously, pulling his spoon close to his chest.
The former champion was a reduced semblance of the man Kenzie remembered. Her father had always been large and magnanimous in her eyes. But sitting there he was frail and vulnerable, completely childlike. It wasn’t the reunion she had often imagined, and sitting there, he wasn’t the man she had wanted him to be.
“Mr. Tamura, you have company!” Angelika exclaimed, her singsong voice ringing warmly. “Mr. Barrett is here, and he brought your daughter.”
Kai looked from one to the other, but he didn’t respond. He shoveled another spoonful of food into his mouth.
Zachary spoke in Thai. “Hey, big guy, how are you this morning?”
Kai nodded his head, but he didn’t answer. His gaze shifted back to his plate.
Kenzie pushed her way past Zachary. “Daddy? It’s me, Kenzie.”
Kai bristled visibly, eyeing her with reservation. Kenzie took a step closer, and his eyes widened.
His caregiver suddenly stepped between them. “He doesn’t like to be touched,” she said softly.
“You need to take things very slow until he gets comfortable with you.”
“He’s my father!”
“I know. But he doesn’t.”
Kenzie’s tears began to fall again. She bit down against her bottom lip and took a step back. Zachary stepped behind her, his hands gently caressing her arms. Kenzie leaned back against him, allowing herself to use his chest for support. The weight of the moment was suddenly too much for her to bear alone.
Zachary leaned to whisper in her ear. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Her head bobbed almost frantically, and although she didn’t say so, she was grateful that he was there. He reached for her hand and pulled her along beside him as they took seats at the table.
“Would you like something to eat?” Angelika asked.
They both shook their heads.
“No, thank you,” Kenzie muttered.
Kai suddenly startled her, his voice loud as he cried out. “Who are you? I don’t know you! Go away! Go away! Go away!” he screamed as he threw the spoon at Zachary’s head.
She grabbed Zachary’s arm, but he didn’t flinch. “My name is Zachary. Zachary Barrett. We used to train together. You and I were best friends!”
“No, no, no, no, no!” Kai hit his forehead with a clenched fist.
Angelika knelt down in front of Kai. She grabbed his arm, stalling the slams he was inflicting upon himself. “Shhh! Stop, Mr. Tamura. It’s okay.”
“Make them go! Make them go! I don’t know them,” he muttered in Thai.
Angelika nodded. “Why don’t we go sit in the sunroom? You can watch the television,” she said as she gently pulled him to his feet and guided him into another room.
Zachary blew a breath. He cut his eye at Kenzie. “Come on,” he said. “I want you to see something.” He rose from his seat and extended a hand in her direction.
Kenzie slid her palm against his. She didn’t have any words, so she just expressed her appreciation in her eyes, her gaze locking briefly with his. Zachary kissed her lips, the gesture brief and gentle.
They moved in the opposite direction, toward the master bedroom at the rear of the home. Zachary opened the closed door and gestured for her to go inside. Kenzie clutched the front of her T-shirt as she spun in a slow circle around the room. The entire space was a tribute to Kai’s life and career. There were photos of moments in time that he had shared with people who’d been important to him. His trophies and belts were neatly displayed, and a stamp collection rested on a table.
One wall had been dedicated to the time he’d spent training Zachary. There were photos of the two together and framed articles about their partnership. And every one of Zachary’s championship belts and trophies was lined up neatly in a glass case against the opposite wall.
Kenzie stood taking it all in. She moved from one side of the room to the other, taking note of each and every item. She came to an abrupt halt at the nightstand by the bed. She tossed Zachary a quick look before she reached for a photograph that rested there. The image was old, a black-and-white photograph of Kai and her mother holding her between them. Her father held her in his arms, and they were both smiling as if it was the happiest time in their lives. Her father had been a giant then, and his smile was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen.
There was one more photo that rested on the table, a collage of Kenzie’s school pictures: kindergarten, first grade, third grade, middle school. Only her twelfth-grade graduation photo was missing. Kenzie’s hand quivered as she stood staring at the images. And then she really cried.
There was no stopping Kenzie’s tears. She was bereft, her loss unfathomable. She could only begin to imagine how it could have been had her mother been a more forgiving woman and her father had fought harder for the two of them. And then she wondered what might have been had she not been so angry at the world, allowing her teenage angst to hammer the wedge between the two of them. But there was no going back, and their future together was slipping away with the darkness that had intruded into her father’s life. So she cried; there was nothing else that she could think to do.
“He’s not always like this,” Zachary said, breaking the silence that had risen between them. “There are times when he’s very lucid and he remembers. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.”
She wrapped her arms around her torso and hugged herself tightly. “Why do you keep some of your trophies and belts here?” she asked, pointing at the wall dedicated to his career. “The ones you lied about being in storage,” she said tersely.
“I have them because of your father. It’s my way of sharing those victories with him since he can’t be with me. If he hadn’t gotten sick, he would still be with me ringside when I fight. He’d still be training me.”
She nodded. “You two were very close.”
Zachary nodded. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. And what I did do I did because I love him. Because he asked me to and I couldn’t tell him no.”
Then their conversation lapsed into silence, both understanding there was nothing else that could be said. He hadn’t told her about her father. It was what it was. Although she wanted to be thankful since Zachary could have continued to keep the truth from her, she was angry, unable to find anything to be grateful about.
“Do you want to go back to the house?” he asked. “We can always come back later.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m staying. I’m not leaving my father.”
Zachary stared at her briefly, then nodded. He turned back to the door, and she followed.
In the sunroom, Kai was watching a really bad Thai soap opera. He was completely engaged, shushing them as they entered the room.
“Shhh! He’s not her boyfriend!” he said excitedly as he pointed to the screen. He suddenly turned his attention toward Zachary; his gaze narrowed as he stared at the man. “You say you’re a fighter?” he suddenly asked as he leaned forward in his seat.
Zachary sat down on the ottoman beside the man. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t look like a fighter. You’re too skinny. We need to get you bulked up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you need to keep your hands up! You can’t win if you keep getting hit!” Kai laughed, and Zachary smiled, his eyes misting slightly.
“Mr. Tamura, I want you to meet someone,” Zachary said. He gestured for Kenzie to move to his side.
Kenzie sat down b
eside him. “Hello!”
Kai tilted his head in greeting. “Women are a distraction. And they are trouble. You do not need trouble. You are going to be the champion one day. You don’t need trouble, and this one looks like trouble.” He winked an eye at Kenzie, which made her smile.
Zachary grinned. “She’s okay. I promise. This is Kenzie. She’s Tanya Monroe’s daughter. This is your baby girl.”
Kai looked at her and him and back again. “Who is Tanya?” he asked, confusion washing over his expression. “I don’t know any Tanya.”
There was a moment of pause, and then he sat forward. “Are you my nurse? I need my medicine. Can you get my medicine?”
Zachary reached out to squeeze her hand. She pulled away from him abruptly, not looking in his direction.
“I’m not a nurse,” she said softly. “I’m your daughter.”
Kai twitched as he tried to focus, trying desperately to remember. You could almost see his mind working, fighting to put the pieces into place. He suddenly looked up with blank eyes. “I need my medicine,” he said.
Kenzie took a deep breath. “I’ll go see if I can find it for you,” she said, and then she stood up, practically racing from the room.
* * *
Kenzie refused to leave her father’s home. She returned to Zachary’s place just long enough to claim her bags, and then she took up residence in the only spare bedroom in Tamura’s home. Every day, she woke when her father woke and rested when he rested. The rest of the time, she tried to talk him into remembering who she was. Into remembering anything about his life when it had included her or her mother. She talked nonstop, and Kai sometimes listened and most times didn’t.
There were occasional moments of lucidity when he gave her brief hints of his past: his fight career, his training days, the women he’d loved, the places he’d seen. He’d talk, and she would become someone he’d known back when, but never once did he call her by name or give her any inkling that he knew who she was.
Zachary had come and gone from the gym in Phuket a few times. He always returned to check on her, on them, always hoping that Kenzie would be ready to kiss her father good-bye and leave. And every time, she told him no and little else, not having much to say to him. Barbie kept tabs on her, tried often to convince her to return to Phuket, and to Zachary, but she would not be moved.
“Jason Williams was my first boyfriend. He’s a minister now, but there was nothing Christian-like about him back then!” Kenzie laughed. “He was also my first kiss, but it was the absolute worst. The boy was like a Hoover vacuum on steroids!” Kenzie grimaced.
Kai sat in his recliner with his eyes closed. He heard her, but he didn’t. If he understood, he didn’t show it. Mostly he slept, waking to memories of other people and things that she had never been a part of or sometimes waking to darkness, an empty world where no one existed but himself and the muddled memories he could never quite piece back together.
Kenzie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her father was snoring, and although she’d spent an hour regaling him with stories about her cheerleading days, he had barely been able to look her in the eye. He had dozed on and off, and now that he was on again, she tossed a throw blanket over his thin frame and headed outside.
They had drained the water from the pool in her father’s yard and had covered the concrete hole. Apparently the patriarch had been prone to wandering, and they feared him falling in and drowning. Kenzie wanted to swim, so she took the short walk next door and threw herself into the warm blanket of water that filled Zachary’s pool. She came every day, needing the time to herself to regroup.
She missed Zachary. She missed him when he was gone. When he came, she wanted them to be good with each other again, but she couldn’t move herself past the anger. Because she was still angry. Angry as hell that she had her father back but that he was lost to her. She was angry with Kai for having failed her, and she was angry that Zachary had gotten caught up in the fray. Hell, she was angry that it was Thursday and she’d gained five pounds and that she hadn’t written anything at all since the day she learned her father was living in the house right next door to the man she was in love with.
She was furious that she couldn’t write—no words fluttered in her heart. That made her angrier than any of the other stuff. Because she needed the words to make sense of it all. She needed to write, wanted to write, believing that somewhere in the midst of her father’s hell was a story she needed to tell.
She swam until she was too tired to do anything else, lap after lap until she was taxed and ready for it to be over. When she couldn’t swim any longer, she lifted herself from the pool. She smiled when she spied the clean towel resting on the chaise lounge; Barbie had snuck in and out like a ninja. Wrapping it around herself, she dried the moisture from her skin. She stood beneath the warm afternoon sun for a good long while, allowing the day’s heat and the sun’s bright rays to dry her.
For a brief moment, she contemplated going back to her father’s, but knowing he wouldn’t miss her changed her mind. Kenzie sauntered past the sliding glass doors into the master bedroom where she and Zachary had slept. She walked out of her swimsuit and into a hot shower. After she’d shampooed and conditioned her hair, she stood beneath the spray of water until it started to run cold. Her fingers and toes were wrinkled, and she was slightly waterlogged, but she was slowly but surely beginning to feel like her old self.
She wrapped a towel around her wet hair and moved back into the bedroom. Dropping down onto the bed, she contemplated her next moves, trying to decide if she should stay or go. Every day she asked herself the same questions, and every day had no answers. She thought about calling Stephanie, but she knew her bestie wouldn’t have any answers for her either. She was alone, and she imagined that in some ways it must be how her father often felt.
She lifted her legs onto the bed and crawled beneath the clean white sheets, pulling them up and over her torso. Then she let her mind go blank, too tired to be scared and angry and frustrated and lonely one minute longer.
* * *
Kenzie jumped, startled out of her sleep by the sound of Zachary snoring softly beside her. His body was curled close to hers, heat wafting from his skin. He felt good, she thought, suddenly remembering everything she was missing. She snuggled closer to him, moving her buttocks into his crotch and her back against his chest. As she nuzzled herself against him, Zachary wrapped his arms around her and pulled her even closer against him. He pressed his face into the back of her neck and kissed her behind her ear.
“Are you okay?” he whispered softly.
She shook her head as she whispered back. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Everything feels so strange. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing anymore.”
Zachary kissed her again. “How can I help?”
Kenzie turned, rolling herself over until she was facing him. “Tell me you still love me. Even though I’ve been a complete and total jerk to you, I’m praying like hell that you still love me. Even if it’s just a little bit.”
Zachary laughed. “You know damn well that I love you more than just a little bit. You know that I love you even if you are a complete and total jerk.”
“I still need to hear it. Especially since I will probably never hear my father say it.”
Zachary pressed his palm to the side of her face. “Kenzie, I’m sorry about that. I really am. I never imagined that keeping Kai’s secret would ever cause you this kind of pain. I didn’t agree at first, but as his disease progressed I understood why he wanted to spare you. He didn’t want you to see him like this. He didn’t want you to be in the room with him and have you feel what it’s like for him not to know you. He understood it better than I ever did.” He took a breath and held it for a split second before he continued.
“I know how much your father loves you. And I will remind you of that every day. Kai can’t say it himself, and I have no problems saying it for him. But know that when I tell you I love you that
it has nothing at all to do with your father and everything to do with the hold you have on my heart. You’ve become my air, and I need to breathe you if I’m going to survive. So don’t you ever forget that.” He brushed away the tear that had fallen from beneath her eye.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She gently kissed that spot beneath his chin, allowing her lips to linger there briefly. “Thank you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Zachary stood at the sliding glass doors staring out and watching the torrential rain that was gushing from the sky. It had been raining for hours, with no sign of relief. Kenzie eased herself into his side, wrapping her arms tightly around his midsection. He felt good, and his being there made her extremely happy.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he draped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. He gently kissed the tip of her nose and then her cheek.
She nodded. “I have a lot going on in my head.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he questioned.
She shrugged her shoulders as she pulled herself from him, moving to one of the wicker chairs that rested in the corner.
Zachary dropped down into the other, pulling it up close to hers. “Talk to me, baby.”
“What’s going to happen? After . . . well . . . when my father . . .” She hesitated, seeming to search for the words to say what was in her heart.
He nodded and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with warm air. His eyes shifted back to the downpour still happening outside. “It’ll be hard for a while, I’m sure, and then we’ll push forward and go on with our lives. It would be what Kai would want for us.”
“What’s going to happen with us, Zachary? I know we joke about being a couple and . . .”
He smirked. “Who was joking?”
She smiled, the lift to her mouth ever so slight. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “I hope that you’ll stay her with me in Phuket. That’s what I want. And we can get married when you’re ready and have lots of beautiful babies.”
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