Page 92 of Faithful

“You think so?”

“I know so. How long have you lived here?”

“About a year, I believe.”

“You believe?” I laugh. “You don’t remember when you moved in?”

He pushes himself up and rolls over to rest his head on the pillow. “When you’re on the road all the time, when you’re not really in charge of your own schedule and have to follow the one someone else made for you, time gets distorted. Days kinda just blur into weeks and weeks blur into months. You live from one key moment to another, and everything in between is white noise.”

“And the music?”

“The music is the glue that’s holding you together while you’re drifting through life, waiting for that next key moment.”

“What are those… for you? The key moments.”

Next to me, Kai is silent and still, and I’m almost convinced he stopped breathing.

“This,” he rasps out several heartbeats later.

I wait for more with a flutter in my stomach, stupidly hoping he’ll open up or talk about us. He doesn’t.

Instead, the mattress shifts under the weight of his moving body. He slides from the bed and walks toward the stairs. “I need a smoke.”

When I lift my head, his naked silhouette is poised at the edge of the first step, and he throws a quick over-the-shoulder glance in my direction. “You coming?”

“Yeah. Just give me a second.” I sit up and attempt to search for my boxers but it’s futile. Our clothes are scattered all over the room and I don’t feel like turning on the lights, so I follow Kai just like this. Completely nude.

Downstairs, I find him on the balcony.

There’s no light there, just the scattered glimmer of the nightlife from around and below.

He’s leaning against the railing with his back facing the city. It’s the end of November, so it’s fucking cold outside. I stop at the threshold and watch him take a drag and then release the smoke into the freezing Seattle air. The wind tousles his hair, whipping it across his cheeks and shoulders, and looking at him alone gives me fucking goosebumps.

“Like the view?” Kai asks out of the blue.

“Yes.”

He laughs a deep, throaty laugh and sticks the cigarette back into his mouth and inhales.

“Aren’t you scared paparazzi are going to catch you like this?”

“Not if I’m on the seventeenth floor and they’ve got no good angles to work with. Why do you think I’m renting this place?”

“Come on. I’m freezing my balls off out here.” I step onto the balcony and yank him to me and toward the door.

“I haven't finished my cigarette,” he says in protest.

“Why you gotta smoke it butt naked when it’s thirty degrees outside?”

“'Cause I can.” He snakes one arm around my waist and presses his cold body to me, his chin on my shoulder.

“Let’s go inside.” I attempt to steer us past the threshold, but Kai resists so he can take one last drag before putting out the rest of the cigarette in the ashtray by the door.

“You’re fucking crazy,” I mutter as we tumble back into the living room. My tongue is barely working. My limbs are stiff, and my skin feels like it’s covered by a layer of frost.

“But you like that.” Kai slaps his icy-cold palms against my cheeks, the weight of his body nudging me to walk backward where the couches are.

“We’re not sitting on leather right now,” I say. My frozen ass can’t handle further abuse.

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