by Ella Miles
So I approach her like I would a stray dog. With caution, love, and patience. I hold out my hand and wait, but she never takes my hand.
I want to touch her.
And she said yes to me touching her.
But it still feels wrong when my hand grasps hers.
I can’t let go, though. I need this to feel right. I need her hand to feel like it did before.
But when I look into Kai’s eyes, I know. This is what she knew all along. This is why she wanted me to touch her. Not to feel hope that I can heal her, but to know in the depths of my soul that I can’t. Kai doesn’t want to be saved. She doesn’t want to heal. She wants to live with her scars. And her scars won’t let her love me.
I know the feeling. I’ve felt that way in the past. My father turned my heart sinister. He ensured that loving another would be the most difficult thing I ever did. So I fought with everything I had to prevent it. But still, I fell in love with the fiercest woman I’ve ever known. And it was all for nothing.
There is no hope left. Can I keep fighting for us, when Kai has no hope?
I stare down at our hands that have somehow intertwined with each other. Did I do that? Or was it an automatic response from deep inside that forced our hands together in this way?
My eyes drift up toward Kai’s. They are still hollow, still empty. And I would give away all the love I feel for her just to give her back the soul in her eyes.
Fuck, I love her so much.
Love means never giving up. I can’t as long as I love her. Kai may never be able to love me back, but it’s not enough to stop me.
“Let go,” she says, her voice full of pain.
I exhale all my breath and drop her hand. But I don’t let go of her. I won’t. Ever.
Kai Miller deserves the world. She deserves all I can give her. All of the love I denied her for so long. I will never love again. Not like I love her. Our kind of love is rare and consuming.
Milo may have taken her love, but I still believe I can get it back. Somewhere deep down, her love is still there, hidden away. I just have to find it.
“Never,” I say getting out of my chair and walking to the door, knowing I’ve pushed Kai far enough for today.
“I’ll never stop loving you, stingray. There is nothing in this world that could stop me. I’ve denied myself loving you for too long—never again. Milo hurt you, I get that. But I’ll never give up hope that you can find your way back to loving me. So that is the one request I’ll never give you. I will keep fighting for you, forever.”
TURNS out fighting for Kai is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
Kai tests me, every fucking day.
She tests me by not talking to me.
By not letting me touch her.
Feed her.
Clothe her.
Shelter her.
That one day was the only day she communicated with me. The only words she spoke to me. The only time her eyes spoke to me through blinking.
Now I get silence. If she even looks at me when I enter the room, I consider it a victory.
Most of the time she spends with me is locked away in her own head, or staring out at the ocean, reading a book, or watching TV. She’s effectively shut me out.
It wouldn’t worry me; I understand after what she went through with Milo she needs time and space to heal. She needs to feel safe and secure again. Her body has mostly physically healed, but the mind takes far longer.
So how long she is taking isn’t my concern. My concern is that she is healing, just not with me.
Kai talks to Liesel—a lot.
Every single fucking day—for hours.
Liesel shares every meal with Kai. And then she will stay and talk for at least an hour or more. I’ve even overheard them giggling together.
It stings. Every fucking giggle stings.
I love Kai’s laugh. I love that she is smiling again.
But I hate that I’m not the one bringing the grin to her face. I’m not the one easing her pain away—Liesel is.
Since when did Kai begin to trust Liesel so much?
And each day their relationship continues, it gets harder and harder for me not to stand at the door and listen to every word they say.
I hear their whispered words, and it takes everything inside me not to rest my ear against the door. Or find the security tapes and watch every single conversation. Because I know Kai is telling Liesel the truth. Whatever happened that made Kai stop loving me, she tells Liesel.
And all I fucking want is the truth—and I’m about to get it.
I won’t invade Kai’s privacy; she would never forgive me for that. But I can make Liesel talk.
I pace in the hallway a few feet away from Kai’s door. It's mid-afternoon. Liesel brought Kai lunch as always, and I know they are about to finish for the day. Liesel always heads to the pool by herself in the afternoon.
I torture myself by standing close enough to hear Kai’s voice, but far enough away I can only make out the occasional word.
Milo.
Rain.
The red one.
Pancakes.
Most of the words are trivial. I assume they are talking about the weather, clothes, and foods they want to eat. But I listen as they talk, knowing the conversation started with Milo. And I want to know more about what Milo did to Kai.
And then I hear the word that sends my heart into overdrive.
Enzo.
Fuck, what are they talking about?
The door finally opens, and Liesel steps out. She frowns when she sees me.
“What do you want?” she asks, crossing her arms as she stands in front of the door like a guard dog. “Kai doesn’t want to see you.”
“Then good thing I’m not here to see her. I’m here to see one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world who never keeps a secret from me. A woman who is smart, beautiful, sassy, and is a far better friend than Langston or Zeke ever were.” Please forgive me for lying, Zeke and Langston.
Liesel rolls her eyes. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“Liesel, I just need…something. Anything. I can’t keep going on like this. I need to know how Kai is doing. What happened to her. How to help her. What she needs from me in order for us to start being us again.”
Liesel bites her red lip. She looks worried, and Liesel never lets her worries show.
“Come with me,” she says.
Yes! Yes, yes, yes!
She is going to tell me something, anything.
We walk upstairs to the main deck. She stops at the bar and pours us both a whiskey straight before sitting down on one of the lounge chairs.
I take a seat in the chair next to her, and my happy feeling quickly diminishes. She didn’t bring me here to talk to me about Kai. At least not to spill any of her secrets.
“I’m worried about you,” Liesel says.
“Why? I’m fine. It’s not me you should be worried about.”
“Kai is handling the break up just fine.”
I growl. “We did not break up.” Technically I don’t even know if we were ever together. All I know is we aren’t broken up. That seems far too final.
Liesel nurses her drink, while she waits for my blood to stop boiling. But she’s going to be waiting a long time.
“Just tell me what Kai’s hiding. Why is she able to talk to you and not me? What do I need to do to fix this?”
“Drink.”
I frown. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m answering your question. You need to drink. You need to give her space. You need to continue on with your life. Take care of your employees and run the business.”
“How the hell will that help me get Kai back?”
“It won’t because you aren’t getting Kai back. The Kai you knew is gone.”
I stand up, as I toss my still full glass on the floor. It shatters instantly as whiskey stains the deck.
Liesel’s eyes drop to the broken glass and then slowly f
lutter back up. She was expecting my outburst. She pauses a moment, then finishes her drink, before standing. Somehow we are eye to eye even though Liesel is over a foot shorter than me. Her heels and fury must make up the difference in height.
“I love you, Enzo. I would do anything for you. That’s what love is. And I wish more than anything that I could stop loving you because the ache in my chest hurts all the fucking time. If I could just let go, I would. So I’m not going to tell you to let go, but I will tell you to move on. The pain won’t get any better, but at least you will have a life. Something to live for instead of someone who doesn’t love you back. I won’t promise you that you will ever find that love in someone else. I haven’t. And I can’t promise you Kai will ever come back to you. She might, although where her mind and heart currently are, she won’t.”
I take a deep breath realizing as I stare down at Liesel’s tear-stained eyes, how much she loves me, and how much I hurt her. I understand now more than ever. And it kills me to see her in so much pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be. Loving you and thinking you could love me back was one of the greatest highs of my life. Realizing you will never love me was one of the greatest lows. Accepting that there is nothing I can do about that love is what has helped me to survive in a way that allows me to not spend my life drinking a bottle of whiskey every night.”
I nod. I understand, but her words don’t help.
“Now, let’s go get another drink. And then we can sit and talk about the people we love who will never love us back.”
“But I thought you said to move on.”
She sighs. “You weren’t listening at all. I told you I would never tell you to move on; it’s not possible. I said to keep living. And part of living is talking about the people we love. So tonight, that is what we will do. Tomorrow, you will try to go an hour without speaking her name. Thoughts of her will still be there, but you won’t be allowed to speak them. Next week, you will try an entire evening. And then one day you’ll learn to go days without speaking her name. And you’ll realize that an entire hour has gone without her crossing your mind. That’s when you’ll realize she doesn’t own you. That’s when you’ll realize she didn’t take everything from you. She left one tiny piece, and that piece is what you will build the rest of your life around.”
“Can’t you just tell me what Kai’s hiding? I think it would be a better use of my time to talk about how to win her back instead of talking about her in the past tense.”
She shakes her head and grabs my hand. The touch feels nice since I haven’t held Kai’s hand in a while, but it’s nothing like the spark I get from Kai.
She pours us both another drink and then hands me my glass. “Try not to break this one this time.”
I take the glass reluctantly. Drinking myself into oblivion sounds nice, but I’ve tried that option. It always makes things worse in the morning. And it doesn’t feel fair to Kai. Kai may be talking to Liesel, but that doesn’t mean she’s healed. It doesn’t mean she’s over whatever Milo did to her. So I’ll have one drink, but not more.
I follow Liesel back out to the deck and take a seat next to her, slowly sipping on my whiskey.
“So you want us to talk about the people we love who don’t love us back?” I ask.
She nods.
“You do realize the person you love who doesn’t love you back is me, right?”
She moans and downs her drink. “I’ll be right back with the bottle.”
I laugh and take another long sip of the alcohol. It would be so easy to ease my pain with alcohol, but I won’t. Kai deserves a better man. And that’s how I plan to live my life until I find a way back to Kai’s love. By showing her how much better of a man I am. And how I’ll spend my life showing her.
Five hours later, Liesel and I have talked ourselves out. Liesel is drunk after finishing the bottle mostly by herself. I did drink more than the one drink, but I’ve never felt so sober.
Liesel, on the other hand, won’t even be able to stumble back to her cabin.
“Come on, I’ll carry you,” I say, throwing her arm over my shoulder and cradling her legs.
She smiles brightly up at me as her red fingernails touch my cheek.
“You like me,” she says.
She’s so drunk.
I nod. “Yes, Liesel, I like you. We are best friends, remember?”
She moans. “Ugh, friends.”
I smile, she’s going to regret this in the morning. She may have said we were both going to talk about the people we love, but I mostly talked about Kai while Liesel talked about all the men in her condo building she wants to get with and which of the Hemsworth brothers are the hottest.
“Are you sure? Because I think I feel something hard poking me in the ass?” she says.
I roll my eyes. “That’s my phone in my pocket.”
“Oh,” she frowns.
I carry her down the hallway toward her cabin. Her room is a couple of doors down from Kai’s. This yacht is nice, but not as nice as the Savage. It doesn’t have any special security modifications on it to have separate areas. All the cabins are basically the same.
As I walk past Kai’s room with Liesel still in my arms, I listen, and beg the door to open. I hate going to sleep at night without getting a glimpse of Kai.
But instead of a glimpse, I hear voices. She’s not alone.
The other voice is male and belongs to one of my best friends—Langston.
I bite my lip hard. What the hell?
Liesel, even in her drunken state, notices my change and laughs. “You think Langston would fuck Kai?”
“No…maybe…I don’t know.”
Her laughs turn into uncontrollable giggles, then snorts.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are silly.” She touches my face again, but this time it’s more like a scratch from her nail.
I exhale deeply, trying to calm the hell down. But I want to burst into Kai’s bedroom and figure out what they are doing.
“They are sleeping together,” Liesel says, answering my unspoken question.
“What?” I snap.
“Sleeping, to-geth-er,” Liesel yawns as she breaks each syllable apart.
“I heard you. I thought you said they wouldn’t fuck each other?”
More laughing until I can barely contain her in my arms.
I sigh, walk the extra couple of feet to Liesel’s door, kick it open, and plop her ass on the bed.
“Start talking.” I cross my arms over my aching chest. Please have an innocent explanation.
“They are sleeping together.”
“Yea, I heard that part. Why? When? Explain.”
Liesel snorts which only makes her giggle again. “You think I mean fucking.”
“Liesel, I’m not playing games, what are Langston and Kai doing behind that door?”
“SLEEPING.”
Finally, her words sink in. “Just sleeping?”
She nods hurriedly.
Thank fuck, I exhale.
“Since when?”
She shrugs. “The first night. Kai gets nightmares. She needs someone with her. She doesn’t trust me, and I come to bed most nights drunk, but she trusts Langston.”
I grin. Finally, I have some ammunition I can use. Something I can do to force us to spend some time together. Something I can understand about what happened.
I turn.
“But you can’t! Don’t tell her I told you! She won’t be happy. We have an understanding—a truce.”
“What sort of understanding?” I ask, maybe I should have gotten Liesel drunk earlier. She’s answering a lot more questions now than she was earlier in the night. Even if I have to decipher what she means.
“I mean understanding.” She gets on all fours on the bed and crooks her finger to come to me.
I walk to her and lean my ear down.
“We tell each other secrets.”
“And what are those secret
s?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I mean, we keep each other’s secrets.” And then she snaps her hand over her mouth like she wasn’t even supposed to say that.
“Get some sleep, Liesel.” I walk out of her room and close the door. I’ve gotten all that I’m going to get out of her tonight.
But I got enough. Kai has nightmares. And Langston has been helping her.
Kai may not love me anymore, but she’s going to accept my help.
I storm down the hallway and stop in front of her door. I resist the urge to barge in and instead knock three times. Then I wait. Because for the first time since I got Kai back, I have a plan to spend the night with her.
2
KAI
LANGSTON STANDS in the corner and removes his shirt revealing the leanest body I’ve ever seen. If I wasn’t so fucked up, I’d be drooling right now. I’d be hot and bothered and trying to find a way to seduce him into my bed.
I already get Langston in my bed.
He’s been sleeping in my bed every night, trying everything in his power to keep my nightmares away, but they always come back. We discovered being able to rest my head against his bare chest so I can hear his heartbeat against my face sometimes calms me down, hence why he’s shirtless.
He climbs into bed, waiting for me. I remove my shirt, standing in a thin tank top and shorts. I prefer to sleep naked, but it bothers Langston. I’m completely secure in my nakedness. I have no problem with men looking at my body, but it’s pushing too far for Langston and I’s strictly platonic relationship.
I get into the bed and lean against his warm, hard chest, trying to heat up before I sleep. Langston’s body is definitely warmer than mine, but it is nothing compared to Enzo’s body.
Langston shivers at my touch.
“Sorry,” I say, knowing my touch chills him.
“Don’t apologize. I want to help, even if I become an ice cube after you touch me.”
He’s a good man. I used to think Zeke was the good one, but Langston’s heart is just as big. And Enzo…I can’t go there. Enzo is such a mix of good and bad. One moment he’s killing innocent people, the next he’s saving them. I’m the perfect example of how Enzo doesn’t stand firmly on the good or bad side. He’s saved me from death and sold me. He’s hated me and loved me. I can’t go back to that. I can’t go back to not knowing whether he loves me or hates me, even if it seems his love is real this time. It’s too late. His love isn’t enough to overcome my own problems.
