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He caught me by the shoulders and steered me back along the path to the road.
I dragged my feet with every step.
“Gonna be a slow-ass run if I have to poke you the entire way.”
I sighed overdramatically and picked up the pace since I was out here, and Kian was clearly not giving up.
Kian jogged alongside me, grinning at me like I was his star pupil. “That’s it! You’re doing so well. Breathe in through your nose. Out through your mouth. You were born for this, Rebel! Go girl!”
I stopped and stared at him.
“What?” He ran around me in circles.
“Your pep is inciting violence. I just had a flash of me pushing you off the Saint View bluffs, and it brought me great joy, even though you were shouting motivations at me the entire way down.”
He sniggered. “Fine. No more pep. We can run in silence. Even though that’s really boring.” He broke off and headed down the road again.
I moved my ass to keep up with him.
For a minute, the silence was bliss. I loved every second of it.
Until he started singing.
Kian belting out Britney Spears songs in an off-key warble was disturbing. But clearly, Kian didn’t do silent contemplation.
“Tell me about Vaughn’s dad.”
Kian stopped in the middle of the “Toxic” chorus. “Bart? Nicest guy you’d ever meet. Went out of his way to be good to people.”
“You knew him well?”
He shrugged. “We weren’t best friends or anything. We didn’t stay up late at night sharing secrets. But there’s not really many secrets when you live with someone anyway, even if you are just the hired help.”
“What sort of secrets did Bart have?”
He shrugged. “There were some late-night phone calls, I guess. I just assumed they were from his business partner. They didn’t always get along.”
That sparked my interest. “What makes you think that?”
“Nothing terribly exciting. A few arguments floating out from behind Bart’s study door. The occasional look between them when they thought no one else was paying attention.”
“A look? Like a sexual one?”
He huffed out a laugh between sucking in breaths of air as we jogged along. “No. Bart wasn’t the one exchanging sexual looks in that house.”
I widened my eyes at him. “Who? Vaughn?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Maybe.”
“With you?”
Kian didn’t say anything. He just ran faster.
I pumped my legs to catch up with him. “Kian! You can’t just drop a bomb like that and then run off.”
He glanced over at me, laughter in his eyes. “Maybe I just said it to get you to run faster.”
“Well, it worked. Tell me more and a girl might even sprint.”