Page 8

Kai

I haven’t slept in two days.

Rain streams down the hospital window, distorting the city lights.

Behind me, Lana lays in bed, machines steadily tracking her vitals. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since she tumbled down those stairs.

Twenty-four hours of the same beeping monitors, the same squeaking shoes in the hallway, the same tight knot in my chest every time she stirs. She’s still being kept in for further observation, and I’m powerless to do anything but wait.

My phone vibrates again.

I don’t have to check to know it’s David Frayne, my childhood friend, calling again for what must be the tenth time. Now that things have settled and the last of the doctors have left, I can finally talk to him.

I step outside onto the corridor, away from the constant beep of monitors and connect the call.

“Where the hell are you?” David’s mildly sarcastic tenor fills my ear. “Half of California’s fitness elite have shown up to kiss the great Chase Mitchell’s ass, and you’re not even here to receive their worship.”

Fuck. I pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting the headache that’s been building for hours. I forgot today was the grand opening party of his debut fitness center. David is a renowned personal trainer, swim coach and he’s finally taken my advice to start his own business.

“David. I’m so fucking sorry. Something came up—”

“Convenient, asshole. It is Valencia, after all. We both know how you avoid it like the plague.”

“You, on the other hand, can’t seem to get enough of it,” I retort.

A beat of silence. Then, “Why do you look down on Valencia, Kai?” David is one of the handful of people who knows my real name. “This town made you the star you are today.”

He acts as if he doesn’t know Valencia is the one place that embodies desolation for me. As if we both don’t remember the painfully nauseating feel of brackish lake water on a starving belly.

I choose to ignore the hard edge in his tone and the tightening in my chest and give an objective response.

“I keep telling you, it makes zero economic sense to debut your brand in Valencia. Fresno, San Francisco—anywhere but that dead-end town.”

“Ah.” David’s laugh crackles through the speaker. “So that’s what you’re running from? Ghosts?”

“Fuck off.” My lips twitch despite myself. Thirty years of friendship gives him the right to joke about those days when a couple of scrawny kids would do stupid things for the next meal.

“Anyway, look, can you still get here?” David presses. “Even if it’s a quick in and out. Things are dragging a bit. Your presence is going to boost the night.”

I hear what he’s not saying. David is a very proud man, and for him to admit how much he needs me must frustrate him.

“I’m sorry, man. Not sure I can make it down there tonight. I’m at the Pacific Coast.”

“What, for real? Are you okay?”

I sigh. “It’s Lana.”

The line goes silent for several beats. “What happened to her?”

“Manny fell asleep while cooking and set off the fire alarm. She panicked. Fell down the stairs. Hit her head.”

David swears, and the raw concern in his voice takes me back to all those times he stepped in to be the big brother my kid sister needed while I was too busy chasing Olympic dreams.

He may well have saved her life by taking her trick-or-treating the night our father was killed.

He was always checking on Lana while she was struggling in the foster system.

He even stood on the sidelines while another man put his ring on her.

He was the first to get there on the night of the fire that scarred Lana and killed her husband, because I, of course, wasn’t there.

David is the one sturdy presence in our life, and guilt twists my gut knowing that I’m not nearly as there for him as he is for my family.

“Can I see her?” His voice breaks.

“You’re going to leave your launch party and come to the hospital?”

“Fuck the party. She’s more important than all that.”

I sigh, rubbing my burning eyes. And there it is. He still loves Lana—scars, friend-zoning, and all. But I worry something broke inside my sister the day she lost her husband, something that’s not quite fixed. She’s thrown herself into her charity work and the twins and hasn’t let anyone else in.

“Of course you can. She’s not yet awake, though.”

“It’s fine, I can stay with her overnight. You flew in from Gstaad, what? Two days ago? I’m sure you must be shattered.”

“You have no idea.” The fluorescent lights are starting to drill holes in my skull at this point. “I appreciate it, man. And congratulations again on the gym.”

“Just giving back to Valencia. Someone has to.”

I’m too exhausted to respond to the sly dig.

I don’t bother waiting for David, the pull of my bed too great to ignore anymore.

My steps echo through the sterile hallway as I make my way out. The automatic doors whoosh open, and the night air hits me—all smog and rain and city lights. So different from the clean, crisp air of Gstaad.

My home feels like a lifetime away. But as I walk to the parking lot, exhaustion weighing on my shoulders, something else pulls on me.

A woman who tastes like need and olives and violence, who I see every time I close my eyes.

Who had better be fucking lying awake somewhere and craving the fuck out of me, too.