Chapter 10 10

CHAPTER 10

Wren's POV

Zara cried at the airport with a theatrical, messy abandon that drew the stares of two hundred bewildered strangers. She threw her arms around my neck, sobbing into my shoulder as if I were boarding a ship bound for the front lines, clutching her obscenely expensive designer handbag like a life raft.

"Promise me on your life that you will text me every single day," she wailed, her fingers digging desperately into my coat. "Without fail. Every hour."

"I am not texting you every hour, Zara. You are going to be shooting a campaign; you will be entirely unreachable."

"Then every two hours." She pulled back, her designer mascara smeared in dark streaks down her flushed cheeks, and seized my face between both hands with terrifying urgency. "And promise me you will not let him bully you."

"Who?"

"My dreadful brother. If he gives you even half of his usual aristocratic attitude, hit him again."

"I do not think that will be necessary."

"Hit him anyway," she insisted fiercely, wiping her eyes. "It builds character. It is exceptionally good for him."

She squeezed my cheeks one last time, planted a wet, fierce kiss directly on my forehead, and spun around to face Kai, who had been standing stiffly a few paces behind us. His hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his tailored coat, his jaw locked tight against the public display like a man awaiting sentencing.

"And you. Be good to her."

"I am always civilized," Kai replied smoothly, though his voice lacked its usual casual arrogance.

"You are a menace."

"I will be a menace who feeds our guest."

"Promise me, Kai."

"I promise," Kai answered, his voice dropping into a register that carried an unexpected, heavy resonance.

Zara searched his face for a long, quiet moment, her mother-hen instincts flaring, before launching herself forward and hugging him so hard I actually saw him stagger backward. She whispered something fierce and urgent directly into his ear. I didn't catch a single syllable, but I saw him go completely, rigidly still, his broad shoulders locking beneath his wool coat. When she finally pulled away and hurried toward security, waving like royalty, I caught sight of a dark, unmistakable flush burning high along his sharp cheekbones.

"What did she say to you?" I asked, squinting suspiciously as Zara vanished through the metal detectors.

"Nothing."

"You went entirely red, Kai."

"I did not."

"You look like a tomato."

"It is the terrible lighting in this terminal," he lied smoothly, turning on his heel with an impatient flick of his coat and striding toward the exit.

We drove back to the Kensington townhouse in a heavy, suffocating silence. London loomed outside the tinted windows, enormous, historic, and utterly indifferent to the turbulent history humming quietly between us. I felt the hollow, stomach-dropping flutter of being entirely alone in a foreign country for the first time in my life. My best friend was airborne over the Channel, my mother was an ocean away, and I was sitting inches away from the very boy who had made my teenage years a living nightmare, bound by a contract we signed on the back of a greasy gastropub menu.

"You are being very quiet," Kai murmured, breaking the hum of the engine without taking his eyes off the wet asphalt.

"I am thinking."

"About?"

"About how surreal this all is."

"It is quite surreal," he agreed quietly, a dry, self-deprecating note softening his tone. "But it will be fine."

"You do not know that."

"No," Kai admitted, glancing sideways at me with a slow slide of his dark eyes. "I don't. But I am saying it with a lot of conviction, and that has to count for something."

I glanced up, startled by the brief flash of vulnerability beneath his polished armor, and found him watching me with a faint, genuine smile that reached all the way to his dark eyes, eyes where the faint, pale shadows of his old bruises still lingered like ghosts. I looked away quickly, my heart giving a traitorous, uncomfortable thump.

In the quiet hallway of the townhouse, he dropped his keys into the silver bowl and turned to block my path, towering over me with the easy, natural presence of a man entirely comfortable in his own skin.

"Six o'clock sharp," he instructed, his voice low and rich in the foyer.

"For what?"

"Lesson one."

"Do I need to bring a sacrifice?"

"A book," he answered, the corners of his mouth twitching with a slow, wicked little smirk. "A heavy one."

At precisely six o'clock, I dragged myself downstairs carrying an unabridged Oxford dictionary the size of a paving stone, its heavy leather binding digging uncomfortably into my ribs. I found Kai waiting in the high-ceilinged kitchen. He had pushed the massive marble island table against the wall, clearing a long, immaculate strip of polished hardwood floor from the sink to the fridge.

He was barefoot, a detail my traitorous brain registered with entirely too much interest, wearing faded jeans that hugged his hips and a plain white T-shirt that stretched across his chest. He stood with his arms crossed, wearing an expression of such intense gravity that he looked less like a posture instructor and more like a man preparing for battle.

"Put it on your head," he instructed, nodding toward the heavy lexicon.

"Absolutely not. I like my skull unbroken."

"It is a strict requirement."

"I am going to trip and sue you."

"Then you will fall over," Kai insisted calmly, his voice dropping into that maddeningly smooth cadence. "And then you will get back up. That is the point, Wren."

Grimacing, I hoisted the massive book onto the crown of my head, adjusting it until it balanced precariously. "How do I look?"

"Like a very stressed penguin," he deadpanned, though his dark eyes tracked the slow sway of the book with intense focus.

"Glad my suffering amuses you."

"Walk to the fridge. And do not drop my dictionary; it weighs more than your luggage."

I took exactly four stiff, paranoid steps across the floor. Naturally, the heavy tome slid off my skull and crashed onto the tiles with a deafening bang that made us both jump. I stared down at it in mortified dismay.

"Sorry," I muttered automatically.

"Rule four," Kai reminded me instantly, stepping closer with a quiet, purposeful grace. "No apologizing."

"I just dropped a heavy book."

"It is a dictionary, Wren. It does not require your guilt." He scooped it up effortlessly, and as he did, his long, warm fingers brushed against mine, a fleeting, accidental touch that sent a sudden jolt of electricity shooting straight up my forearm. Neither of us spoke, but the air between us suddenly felt entirely too hot, too heavy to breathe. "Again."

I tried eleven more times. On the first four, I stared rigidly at my feet and apologized to the floorboards every time the book wobbled. On the fifth, I nearly collapsed laughing. On the sixth, Kai let out a low huff of breath and stepped directly behind me.

Before I could process the sudden invasion of my personal space, his large, warm hands settled with firm, deliberate precision on my bare shoulder blades, his long fingers drawing them gently back.

"Here," he murmured, his mouth hovering so close to my ear that his warm breath sent a violent shiver rippling down my spine. "Open your chest. Stand straight. Like that."

"It feels like my ribs are cracking," I breathed out, hyper-aware of the hard wall of his chest hovering just inches from my back.

"You are merely reclaiming your posture," he murmured, his thumbs pressing with light, agonizing precision right between my shoulders. "Now look at the far wall. Not at your feet. Never at your feet."

"Why?" I whispered, my voice sounding suspiciously breathless.

"Because the floor already knows you are there." I heard the deep, rumbling amusement in his chest as he chuckled softly against my hair. "Walk to that wall as if it owes you everything."

I took a breath, locked my knees, and walked.

Miraculously, the dictionary stayed put. I glided across the floor, turned smoothly at the fridge with my heart hammering frantically against my ribs, and realized with a sudden jolt that I was standing taller and prouder than I had in years.

"That was actually perfect," Kai murmured quietly, his dark eyes locked onto mine from across the room.

"It was not."

"It was close."

"I only managed it because you were standing so close."

"I was supervising from a professional distance," he drawled, taking a slow step toward me before abruptly clearing his throat and stepping back, putting safe territory between us.

My phone began to violently buzz on the marble counter, the screen lighting up with an incoming video call from my mother, her face framed by a massive flour-dusted apron.

"Is that your mother?" Kai asked, his tone shifting instantly.

"Yes. And she will want to inspect my face." I swallowed hard. "Do not make a sound."

"I am a tomb of absolute silence."

I swiped to answer, and my mother’s face flooded the screen, warm, flushed from the stove, a white smear of flour across her cheek. "Wren, my darling! How is London? Are you eating properly?"

"I am eating constantly, Mum, and the portions are unhinged."

"Is Zara there?"

"She left this morning for her campaign." I angled the phone slightly away from Kai, who was pretending to read the back of a cereal box with intense, scholarly concentration. "I am staying a few weeks to keep the house company."

"Whose house?"

"A friend's place."

"What friend?" she pressed, her maternal radar pinging.

"Zara's brother's house," I mumbled.

There was a long pause. My mother’s eyes narrowed with decades of wisdom. "Which brother?"

"Kai."

"The tall one?"

"They are both excessively tall, Mum."

"The one who put the frog in your school lunchbox?"

"That was Rhys, Mum. Kai was the one who hid a rotting mackerel inside my field hockey bag."

"Ah. The nice one." She narrowed her eyes further at the screen. "Are you safe in that house, Wren?"

"I am perfectly safe."

"Is he treating you with respect?"

I looked up sharply. Kai had lowered the cereal box an inch, and his eyes, very dark, very still, were locked entirely on me over the top of the cardboard.

"He is treating me," I noted slowly, keeping my eyes locked on his, "like an actual human being."

"That is a low bar, darling," my mother told me gently. "But I am glad it has been cleared. Call me every single Sunday."

"I will, I promise."

"And Wren? Do not let them make you small." The screen went dark.

The kitchen fell into a profound quiet. I placed my phone face down on the counter with shaking fingers, refusing to look up.

"She is a wise woman," Kai replied softly after a long beat.

"She is a chef. They are required to be cynical philosophers."

"She is entirely right, you know."

"I know," I whispered, the sudden, sharp sting of tears catching me off guard. I quickly swiped the back of my wrist across my eyes, and Kai politely pivoted back to his intense study of the cereal box.

"Right then," I offered, clearing my throat and shoving the dictionary back toward the edge of the island. "It is my turn."

"Your turn for what?"

"The Hebrew lesson." I grabbed a linen napkin and a pen. "Sit down. This is going to physically hurt you."

Kai raised an eyebrow, a slow, cocky smirk spreading across his face as he folded his long frame onto the barstool. "Educate me."

I scribbled five basic phrases onto the cloth napkin, hello, thank you, good morning, please, and where is the bathroom, and read them aloud to him one by one.

Kai repeated each one back with the grim, hunted look of a man attempting to defuse a bomb. Predictably, he mangled every single one. Shalom came out flat, and Toda sounded like a depressed variety of French cheese.

"Again," I ordered, tapping the napkin.

"I am literally pronouncing it exactly the way you did."

"You sound like you are being strangled."

"It is a hostile language."

"Try it with your tongue behind your teeth."

"Like this?" he murmured, leaning forward so close I could smell the clean, masculine scent of his skin.

"No, you look like an angry goose."

"I do not."

"You are pulling a textbook goose face, and if you do it again I am going to be sick," I laughed, dropping my forehead straight down onto the cool marble counter until my ribs ached.

When I finally lifted my head, wiping my flushed cheeks, I found Kai staring directly at me.

He wasn't laughing anymore. He sat completely still on the high stool, the napkin clutched in his large hands, looking at me with an odd, quiet expression, as though he had just stumbled upon something fragile and unexpected.

"What?" I asked, my breath catching at the heat in his gaze.

"Nothing."

"You are staring again."

"You laugh with your whole face," he admitted quietly, his voice dropping into something raw and unguarded. "It is entirely disarming."

My ears flared hot. "That is not remotely on the syllabus."

"No," he agreed softly, never breaking eye contact, his thumb tracing the edge of the napkin. "It is just an observation."

I didn't know what to do with my hands. Desperate for a distraction, I tore a tiny corner off the napkin and began rolling it into a tight ball. The kitchen had gone utterly silent, the late afternoon sunlight laying a long bar of liquid gold across the white marble.

"Ask me something else," I blurted out, desperate to shatter the electric tension humming between us. "A real question. I will answer you entirely in Hebrew."

"I do not have any real questions left," he murmured, his gaze dropping briefly to my fingers before sweeping back up.

"You must have at least one. Do not be a coward."

Slowly, deliberately, Kai turned the cloth napkin over in his hands. "How do you say... I am sorry?" he asked finally, dropping his voice into a register I had never heard from him before. It was rough, incredibly low, and trembling with a quiet, devastating vulnerability. "For something I did a very long time ago... and never had the decency to apologize for."

I froze. I stopped breathing entirely, my fingers going still against the paper. For a long, suspended moment, the world outside the kitchen vanished.

"Ani mitzta'er," I told him softly, my voice coming out in a breathless, fragile whisper.

"Ani mitzta'er," Kai repeated, echoing the words back to me with agonizing slowness, his dark eyes locked unwaveringly onto mine.