Page 34 of Faithful

I fumble around the pillows and fish out my phone.

There’s aKflashing at me from the screen and judging by the otherwise silent apartment and the lack of noise from the street, it’s probably the middle of the night.

I clumsily stab my finger on the Accept button to answer the call. “Hey.”

Tick… tick… tick…

“Kai?” I whisper, my pulse kicking into a sprint.

“Did I wake you up?” he asks, not bothering with a greeting. All his weirdness notwithstanding, he’s boldly unapologetic for his late-night calls, and this sudden concern for interrupting my sleep schedule is unlike the Kai Delisa I know.

“Naturally,” I say, trying to keep my cool.

“Were you dreaming of me?”

His voice, rough and scratchy, drops to a lower register and I feel it working through me like a blood transfusion. My body comes alight.

“What if I was?”

“Perv.”

“Fuck you.”

There’s a soft chuckle and in it, instead of a single sound, I can hear a multitude.

“How’s Nashville?”

“You’re about to find out, aren’t ya?”

True. I’ve got a plane ticket for an 11:00 a.m. flight tomorrow (well, technically it’s later today) from Sea–Tac that Kai got me just as he promised. Thankfully, this trip falls on a weekend, so I don’t have to make any arrangements at work and Leigh doesn’t know I’m leaving. I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want her to get all excited and drive me mad. I’ll probably have to do some major explaining as soon as I land in Nashville. She’ll definitely figure out I’m gone by then and will blow up my phone with texts. But not before.

Call me superstitious or whatever.

“You haven’t gone all country on me?” I joke.

“Not a chance.” Kai heaves out a sigh. “I’m in too deep.” His voice takes on a dark, sinister quality. “Sucked in up to my eyeballs.”

I swallow, not entirely sure why he’s telling me all this and why our conversation is taking such an unexpectedly grim turn. “Do you like it there?” I ask with my heart in my throat. “Or do you need help getting out?”

“Who says I want out?”

“Maybe I’m reading too much into it…”

“Maybe you are.”

“Or maybe you’re too arrogant to ask for help.”

“You seem to get along with my arrogance just fine.”

As always, he wins this round. I’m not surprised, but the unease in me doesn’t go away. It lingers like a bad aftertaste, clawing at my conscience, reminding me that I was a coward once when Ava needed someone to see her, to see what was happening to her.

I have a strange nagging feeling that by not pushing him harder I’m making the same mistake with Kai.

“You don’t need to pretend with me,” I say quietly.

“I’m not pretending. What you see is what you get, Dylan. I’ve told you that before, didn’t I?” The words come out in a tangle of denial and anger. “You think everyone who’s not like your everyday standard issue wears a mask, and you’re going to find something ordinary and warm and fuzzy and very straightforward under that mask when you take it off, but what if you’re mistaken? What if you’ll find things you may not like? So perhaps you’re better off just staring at that mask instead of what’s behind it.”

“What if you’re underestimating me?”

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