Page 14 of Passion and Payback

“It just means when you sleep like shit a lot, you get used to sleeping like shit a lot. You adapt. If I laid down and tried to get a full eight hours, I’d probably still wake up after a few hours. And if I did force it, I would probably sleep long enough for you to wonder if I’d slipped into a coma.”

“Oh, gross.”

“It’ll take a few weeks for my body to realize it can actually sleep for a full eight or whatever. No big deal, I’ll nap like I normally do.”

It was hard to argue with that. I knew what it was like not to get much sleep. “Alright, well, you do what you have to do. You know best for yourself.”

There was a long enough pause after I spoke that I looked up in confusion to see him watching me with an odd look. “What?”

His face shifted to neutral as he shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

“Kind of looked like something.”

“Nah.”

“Kai?”

He rubbed at his chest before letting out a sigh. “I just…back in the day, you would have given me shit and fretted over me not sleeping right.”

I felt the heavy thump of my heart as the rate picked up, and I realized what he was saying. A lot had changed from when I could live in blissful ignorance. After moving out of my parents' house, I learned to shed the fears and worries of being able to sleep at night without worrying that someone was going to drag me out of bed or wake me up by screaming. That period of peace was gone, however, taken from me by four men with more evil in their hearts than I ever wanted to comprehend.

“Well, I know what it’s like to have troubled sleep,” I said in the best voice I could manage. I tried to avoid talking about what was going on in my head, but I knew it didn’t make sense to do it around Kai. The man not only knew me better than I knew him, but he was damned good at reading people. Plus, he probably knew how to spot the signs of someone who wasn’t doing the best mentally.

I could feel the questions behind his eyes, but instead, he just nodded. “I’m going to take that shower now. Anything I should know?”

“Not really,” I assured him. “It’s pretty simple. No tricks, no fiddling.”

“I remember your last apartment,” he said with a laugh, his eyes darting to me. “Well, anyway.”

I sighed heavily, appreciating his care for me and irritated by his tiptoeing. “Kai?”

“Yeah?”

“You can bring up things thatmightconnect to Lucas, okay? I’m not going to break down because of his memory. It’s been two years.”

“Is two years enough?”

The bluntness of the question took me more off guard than the question itself, and I stared at him in surprise. After taking a moment to recover, I could only shrug. “It’s enough for now. I moved out of our old place because the memories of him, of us, were everywhere and they were too much. I stored his things for a while for the same reason. But look around. I have pictures of us in the café and my living room. I can finally listen to the music he loved, and I pulled his old paintings out of storage and hung them up a few months ago. So yes, it hurts, sometimes it hurts like fucking hell, and I forget how to breathe, but…I’m not drowning anymore. And you, of all people, should know I’m not a fragile flower.”

He watched me for several seconds before nodding. “Alright. And just so you know, it doesn’t take being a fragile flower to be hurt badly.”

“I know that.”

“Okay, I’m going to take that shower.”

“Then I’ll get these potatoes going.”

His grunt told me he was perfectly fine with that, and I watched him drift out of the room. For one jarring moment, I realized I could no longer track his movements through the apartment once he was out of the room. I didn’t have guests over often, and never for the night, but I suddenly realized I tracked their movements through the house by listening to their footsteps. Except with Kai…there were no footsteps.

I didn’t know which was more unsettling, the realization about him or the one about myself. Yet, instead of dwelling, I glanced at the nearby cat sitting on the floor, watching me serenely. “You know, I think that might be why you guys like him so much. Maybe he’s just a cat that got mixed up in the factory and turned into a human. What do you think?”

She blinked at me, which I took as a yes, and busied myself with the potatoes. I had sliced them into wedges and onlywanted to soften them a bit, not cook them thoroughly. While they did, I prepared the dressing and turned on the stove to be preheated when it was time to finish the potatoes.

I had just got the potatoes out and was stirring them in the oil and herb mixture when a shirtless, wet man appeared in the doorway. Without taking a moment to remember I wasn’t alone, I jerked hard enough to send a few chunks of potato flying across the kitchen to splat on the wall. “Jesus Christ!”

Kai stared at me with wide eyes, his hand balling into a fist but otherwise not moving. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re…you’re fine,” I said with a shaky laugh. “I just forgot I wasn’t alone while I was zoned out on dinner. Fucking hell, you move so quietly, I’m going to need to put a bell on you.”

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