Page 56 of A Taste Of Darkness

“I would never say ‘pretty lady.’” I rolled my eyes in annoyance. She should’ve known that I used way better names than that. Who even said that in the first place? “Besides, why would I?—”

Flora held up one hand, stopping me. “If you’re about to ask me why you would ever ask her out, I will scream. And if I scream, Kai will march in here. And when he walks in here, you will get annoyed. So, think twice about what you want to say.”

That was a good point. The last person I wanted to see or hear right now was stupid Kai Auclaire. That guy made my skin crawl in the worst way possible.

I just couldn’t stand him. He was all cocky and rude, and so… Kai. Plus, his brother stole a million dollars from me years ago, and Kai never repaid me when he, too, lived off of that money and built his empire of doom from it.

Honestly, I didn’t care about the money. I had plenty. But it was about the principle here. He never even said he was sorry that his brother did it, or that he appreciated the fact that I never brought the robbery to the police’s attention. Back when Ethan stole that money, neither of them had the power Kai had now. They both would’ve been behind bars had I mentioned something.

Now Kai was one of the most feared men in Canada, if not the most feared one. He was known for going through with everything he said, and he spared not a single soul.

He’d never know, but I respected the guy. As far as I knew, he came from nothing and built himself an entire empire—using some of my money. Well, he scammed his way into becoming the owner of a casino and then had enough money to go to college and become a lawyer just to “work with the police.” But it was impressive, nonetheless.

“Fine, whatever. Just keep that guy away from?—”

“Hello, Marucci.” That Guy waved into the camera, his expression as unreadable as ever. Kai was always so inanimate. He didn’t know what smiles were, or laughter, or any other expression than brick. It was one attribute that I liked about him, aside from his determined mind.

Come to think, he was probably an okay guy. I was just being petty.

“Ugh.” I threw my phone onto my bed, now punishing Flora with having to look at my ceiling instead. It wasn’t nearly as fancy of a ceiling as the one I had back in Toronto. I missed my penthouse a lot, and it hadn’t even been two weeks.

If I hung up now, was that considered rude?

30

REGRETS AND REVELATIONS

Sterlie Adams

I had huge plans for today. At least I hoped I had huge plans. I still had to run them by Milo and see if they weren’t too dangerous, but I wasn’t ready to face him just yet.

As desperately as I hoped I wouldn’t remember my misery from last night in the morning, I did. Every. Single. Word.

Every ever so stupid decision I had made, I remembered.

His rejection, I remembered.

I knew that he was awake because I heard him as he went to the kitchen ten minutes ago, and I heard the coffee machine running. Though coffee sounded great, I was still pondering whether I should’ve just snuck out and flown back home.

I wasn’t sure I could do another two weeks and six days in Milo’s proximity when it was going to be super awkward, and I wasn’t ready to find out how awkward it was going to be.

Couldn’t I have messed up toward the end of my trip? Why did I have to choose the beginning of the second week to make it weird?

The worst bit was, I still really wanted to kiss him. I didn’t know why I had this urge, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about his lips.

Milo was a great guy, and he smiled at me all the time, but that was no excuse for my brain to think it was okay to just kiss him. I’d never really been attracted to someone before, but if this was what attraction felt like, I sure hoped it would never happen again.

How long would it take until those scary thoughts about kissing him left? How long would it take until fantasies of me waking up next to him would disappear?

And how long would it take until he caved?

For this past week, he’d been so nice to me. He listened to me when I spoke, and I was sure if I asked him to recite every word I just said, he would’ve been able to. Nobody ever listened to me the way he did. Nobody ever cared enough about me to spend so much time with me.

It was very… nice.

As the coffee machine stopped making these awfully loud humming sounds, my stomach growled. Food also sounded good, apparently.

Back in Toronto, I’d get a balanced breakfast. Breakfast oats, for instance. But not just plain oats; no, I’d probably make breakfast oats with chia and yogurt, then throw in some cherries and blueberries. Or I’d make an avocado, egg, and brown rice bowl.

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