Chapter 9 9

wren's pov

I swear on my mama's hungry stomach, I dif not sleep at all that night! I couldn't, I kept tossing for hours.

I lay in the guest bed with the blanket pulled up to my chin and listened to the old house settle around me, the creak of the radiators, the tick of the clock in the hall, the faint sleepy murmur of Zara talking to somebody in a dream through the thin wall.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw a tall man stepping out of the crowd with a look on his face like thunder, and every time I opened them I felt his hands on my coat, shaking.

"Not even me," I whispered into the dark. "What on earth does that mean?"

The dark had no answer, and I tried counting backward from a thousand, then reciting the Latin names of architectural styles, then imagining a very quiet field with a very quiet cow. By four in the morning I had given up entirely, and I crept out of bed in my socks and padded downstairs for a glass of water.

The kitchen light was already on, and someone sat beneath it.

Kai sat at the island in gray sweatpants and an old sweater with a hole at the elbow, his nose a little less swollen, a mug of tea cooling untouched in front of him.

He looked up when I appeared in the doorway, and for a long moment neither of us spoke a word. It was the strangest feeling, being caught in the middle of the night by someone who looked every bit as lost as I felt.

"I will go," I murmured, backing away.

"You do not have to."

"I only wanted water."

"Then get your water." He pushed the mug aside. "The tap is not going to bite you."

I filled a glass at the sink with my back to him and drank it in slow careful sips, because it gave me something to do with my face. Behind me a chair creaked against the tiles.

"Why are you awake?" he asked.

"I could not sleep."

"Neither could I."

"Is that normal for you?"

"It is normal the night before someone else's flight."

He rubbed his jaw. "I do not know why. I think it is because I am always the one leaving."

I turned around, glass in hand, surprised by the honesty. "I did not realize you minded."

"I do not mind. I have simply noticed it." He glanced at the ceiling. "She will be fine. Paris is full of people who adore her."

"She is going to be spectacular."

"She is going to be insufferable," Kai corrected, and there was a rough fondness in his voice that I had never heard before. "I am very proud of her. Do not tell her."

"I will take it to my grave."

"Good."

We lapsed into the awkward truce of two people who had both run out of excuses to leave the room. I leaned against the counter, he stayed on his stool, and the refrigerator hummed between us like a very bored third guest. The whole kitchen was washed in that soft gold light that only exists in the very early hours, when the world is half asleep and everything feels slightly unreal.

"Can I ask you something?" Kai murmured, abruptly.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether it is the sort of question that ends with you being rude."

"Probably." He almost smiled. "Do you want me to ask it anyway?"

"Go on," I sighed. "I would rather be insulted than wait."

"Has anyone ever told you that you walk into a room as though you are apologizing for the air?"

I stared at him, and the glass in my hand went very still. "I beg your pardon?"

"You do it every time." He spoke carefully, as though picking his way across ice. "You come into a room with your shoulders slightly forward, and your eyes on the floor, and you look as though you are about to say sorry to the furniture. It is the first thing I noticed about you at the garden party, and it is the thing I noticed again on Monday night in the hall, and I would very much like to know who taught you to do it."

"That is a very rude thing to say at four in the morning."

"It is also true."

"I know it is true," I told him, and I lifted my chin. "I am aware of how I walk, thank you."

"Do you want to stop?"

"Obviously."

"Then I could fix it in a week."

"Excuse me?"

"I could." He leaned forward. "I am not saying it to be cruel. I am saying it because I have spent the last six years being taught how to occupy a room, by coaches and agents and a publicist called Margot who once made me walk across a ballroom forty times with a book on my head. It is a skill. It can be learned."

"Why on earth would you want to teach me?"

"Because it is a waste." He admitted it so plainly that my heart did an odd small stumble.

"You are smarter than anyone at that table. You are funnier than Zara, and you are a great deal braver than I am. And you walk into rooms as though you owe them money."

I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. How incredible!

"Besides," he added, with a shrug that was very nearly shy, "I need a favor."

"There it is."

"It is a business arrangement."

"What kind of business?"

"My social media is a catastrophe." He pulled a face. "Three years ago a sports blogger called me a menace, and my agent says it is costing me sponsors. They want a warmer image. A friendlier one. Someone who is not constantly photographed with a bottle in his hand."

"You are constantly photographed with a bottle in your hand."

"It was just one bottle, and watch your tone."

"It was an enormous bottle."

"That is hardly the point." He tapped the counter. "I need someone who understands words. Someone who can write a caption without making it sound like a hostage note. Zara says you are the best writer she knows."

"Zara has a very low standard of comparison."

"Zara has a very high standard for everything, which is why it matters." He cleared his throat. "So. Here is my offer. I teach you how to walk, how to talk, how to flirt like you own the place. And in exchange you take over my accounts."

"That is the most insulting proposal I have ever heard."

"Probably."

"What do the sponsors pay?"

"Enough to matter," Kai answered, and his mouth twitched. "You can have half."

"Half?" I nearly dropped the glass. "Are you serious?"

"You would be doing the work."

"I would be doing all of the work."

"That is why it is half," he noted, with a perfectly straight face. "I am being very generous."

I laughed, because I could not help it, a short sharp startled sound that bounced off the marble. Kai watched me do it with a very strange expression on his face, and then he looked away at the wall, as if embarrassed.

"There is a third part," he added.

"Of course there is."

"I need to learn some Hebrew."

I blinked at him in blank surprise. "Why?"

"There is a girl."

My stomach turned over in a way I did not like at all. "A girl." Fuckkkkkkkkkk??!

"A girl I like." He was rubbing the back of his neck again, a gesture I was beginning to recognize as nerves. "She speaks Hebrew. I want to impress her."

"Who is she?"

"Nobody you know."

"I know a great many people."

"You do not know this one," Kai replied firmly, and he would not meet my eyes.

I looked at him, and some small cold voice in my head whispered it is none of your business, Wren Sokolov, and another smaller warmer voice asked then why does your chest hurt. I put the glass in the sink and took my time about it.

"I do not make deals with men who refuse to name the other party," I told him.

"It is a very private matter."

"Then it is a very bad deal."

"Sokolov."

There it is again!! The way he calls me by my last name and I just fold like a fucking mat.

"What?" I shrugged in pretense.

"I am asking you for help." His voice dropped. "I do not ask for help. It is not a thing I do. I am asking."

The kitchen went quiet, and somewhere in the house a pipe knocked.

I stood with my back against the sink and my hands gripping the edge, and I thought of Zara asleep upstairs, and the month ahead, and the empty guest bed, and the girl in the silver top who had briefly, wonderfully, felt free.

"Terms and conditions," I offered at last.

His whole face changed in an instant. "Terms?"

"I need them in writing." I pulled a takeaway menu from the drawer and a pen from the cup. "Rule one. No lying to each other, ever, even if the truth is embarrassing."

"Agreed."

"Rule two. No laughing at each other's mistakes."

"Agreed."

"Rule three. If I get too uncomfortable, I say stop, and we stop, and you do not sulk."

"I do not sulk."

"You sulk professionally."

"Fine." He took the pen. "Rule four. You do not apologize unless you have actually done something wrong."

"I do not apologize that much."

"You apologized to the kettle on Monday."

"It was in my way."

"It is a kettle, Wren."

I felt my face go hot all the way to my ears. "Rule five," I admitted, loudly. "We do not tell Zara."

"Why not?"

"Because she will make it a whole thing."

"She will make it a gigantic thing," Kai agreed. "Rule five is excellent."

We argued about the rest until the windows began to pale from black to gray, tapping our pen on the back of a menu for the Golden Dragon Palace and crossing things out.

. At some point I realized that I was laughing, and he was laughing too, a low, rusty, startled laugh as though he had forgotten what it sounded like. At some other point he moved his stool closer to mine, and I did not move away.

"It is ridiculous," I told him, folding the menu. "We are two people who have hated each other for nine years, signing a contract on a takeaway menu at dawn."

"I did not hate you," Kai answered, so quietly that I almost missed it.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing." He stood up, and the stool scraped. "Shake on it."

I put out my hand, and he took it, and his palm was warm and rough and callused, and it closed around mine with a careful strength that made my breath catch. We stood like that for a moment longer than a handshake required. Neither of us let go first, and neither of us explained why.

"Deal," I whispered.

"Deal," he agreed, and then, as though he had realized something, he released my hand and shoved his own into his pocket.

"Lesson one starts tomorrow," Kai told me, turning toward the stairs and leaving his mug in the sink for me to wash like a very small prince. "Stop apologizing, Sokolov. You do not owe this world anything."

He was halfway up the stairs before I realized that for the first time in nine years, he had spoken my name without any edge in it at all.