Page 94 of Defend Me

Welp. There was that feeling in my stomach again.

We’d been building our relationship for a month and a half. It didn’t feel like a lot of time, but it was enough for me to really start questioning what I was doing here. More accurately, if I was doing something wrong.

The only people I knew- besides myself, of course- who were pretty damn perceptive were Linc and Kai. Of those two, Kai was the one who had a knack for solving problems. He also knew me better. All in all, he was the guy I needed to see.

“Talk whenever,” he said without looking up from his phone.

“Where is everybody?”

“Sen is working. West is god knows where. Probably with Willow.”

I hadn’t met his twin sister yet, but I’d heard about her. According to Sen, they were the same person, which was bound to be a hell of a time.

“So, what’s up with you?” Kai prompted. “Trouble in paradise?”

“I have no idea what paradise you’re talking about.”

“Mhm. That little will-they-won’t-they thing is getting a little old. I vote for ‘will they.’”

I curled my fingers over the counter on either side of me. I was starting to regret coming to him, but then again, this was why I’d chosen him.

“Okay, fine,” I huffed. “There’s no trouble. He’s great. Better than I deserve. He also won’t talk to me.”

He looked up from his phone and cocked his head. “You’re having a crisis, then.”

“No. I mean, I don’t know.”

“You’re always confident and suave. What’s different about this one?”

When I didn’t respond, he dropped his feet to the floor. After grabbing a couple of kombuchas from the fridge, he passed one to me. I raised a brow as I looked at it.

“Healthy.”

He shrugged. “Some of us have to maintain our physique. How do you stay fit?”

“Swimming, mostly.”

“Cool, cool. I’m sure it’s not that you’re self-conscious about your body. I mean, you’ve been hanging out with Dean and Oliver, so maybe that’s it. You wouldn’t look good with all that muscle mass, though.”

“Thanks?”

Leaning back against the counter, he smiled. “It’s a compliment to your current body. I’m not really in the mood to make guesses all day, so let’s get to it.”

“I like him.”

“Is that a problem somehow?”

After rolling my lips a few times, I hung my head. “I don’t have any idea how to do this. Every time I think about it, I know that I shouldn’t pursue it. Besides, I’ll graduate law school in five years. It sort of feels like I’m leading him on when I can’t even give him a future.”

“We’re all moving on after we graduate,” he pointed out. “I want to go back to Maine, but it also depends on if my dad is still around then. And I’ll take Sen’s opinion into account. We’ll decide what we do together.”

Together. It sounded simple when he said it, but that was Kai and Sen. They made sense as a pair, present and future. There was no doubt, no uncertainty.

“Do you not want this to be long-term?” Kai asked. The way he was watching me made my skin feel too tight over my bones.

“It’s complicated.”

“You came here, obviously for that reason. Let’s break it down.”

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