He doesn't stop until he's right in front of me, and his hands are on my elbows as I stop drying my hair to let him conduct his inspection. "How was the shower? Did you run out of hot water? You're shivering."
I can't get a word in edgewise before he's steering me to the bedroom again, sitting me down at the end of the bed as he stands in front of me and dries my tangled, wet hair. And I let him, because I've had enough of fighting him for one night. Let someone else be the boss for a change. I'm over being in charge, in control.
"Shower was fine," I murmur, watching him from under my lashes as he carefully wicks the moisture right out of each strand like it's a labor of love. "And yes. But I'm fine. I'm not cold."
He lowers a hand and puts it against my cheek, and fuck, if it wasn't warm before now, it certainly is now. "Oh. I guess you are warm."
If he sees my blush, he's not mentioning it.
His fingers are so soothing, I start to nod off, until he asks a question that jolts me awake.
"Tell me about Theo?"
I know it's meant to be a question, not a statement, not a demand, because the end of his tone flecks upward, waiting for me to fill in his blanks. I'm so out of it when he asks, though, thatI fall forward and instinctively reach out to stop my fall before I land headfirst in his stomach.
Instead, my hands grip the fabric of his shirt, just above his abs, and I blush even deeper as he just chuckles and returns to drying my hair while he waits for me to decide to tell him what he wants.
"It's a long story," I warn.
"I like long stories."
Sighing can convey a lot, but it can't begin to express how wearied the prospect of telling this story makes me. Still, it tries.
And Kai waits.
"I used to be his social media manager."
That's the nicest way to put what I was once to Theo Swanson. The real story starts out normal, but gets dark so fast, it's guaranteed to make Kai see me differently. Still, I want to tell it, because he wants to hear it, and I want to make him happy. I want to do it for him. And maybe, just maybe, a small part of me has yearned to tell someone,anyone,for a long time.
"He was always a little grabby with women. Most people shoved it off, and he was my first huge client for his company, so I did what the others did, and paid it no mind. I just assumed that it'd stop, like they all said it would, if I ignored it. Only, that didn't happen. And it progressively got worse."
Worse is an understatement. Theo would frequently find opportunities to corner me alone, often making excuses while filming to take five and seek me out. My contract, which I later learned he negotiated himself, had an exclusivity clause that meant I couldn't work for anyone else while I worked for him. Not only that, but once he'd culled me away from everyone else who might've showed me what a good working relationship with a celebrity could look like, he took advantage of me, in ways I didn't notice until it was too late.
"He'd make me go to dinners with him, insisting he needed me to photo him and his meal, that he had an image to uphold, that his audience expected him to practically be live 24/7, so I fell for it. I went out with him, I tailed his every move. Once, he even made me live stream him swimming laps in the pool, and he took his trunks off and threw them at me, then told me I should ditch the camera and get in with him."
I risk a glance at Kai and see that he's livid. Beyond livid, he'sfuming."He's horrible. That'ssoinappropriate?—"
"There's more. Do you want to hear it all, or just the highlights?"
His brows furrow. "How bad does it get?"
"Pretty bad, actually." I think back to all the times he tried to kiss me, insisting he was just an affectionate guy. "He didn't believe in boundaries. I'd set one, he'd tear straight through it, no care in the world for whether or not it made me uncomfortable. I realized later that he did it because he enjoyed making me uncomfortable."
And that he had bigger plans.
"One night, he got drunk. More drunk than usual. And I think we were at a party a friend of his was throwing." My hands clench in his shirt again at the memory; it hurts to relive this. But in a heartbeat, and then another, Kai's hands fall atop mine, the towel abandoned for now around my shoulders as he watches me, searching my eyes for any sign that I can't take this. That he should tell me to stop.
He's so caring right now, it's like a whole new person I'm seeing. But I've seen the softer side of Kai before, just not in such high doses. I didn't know it came in a concentrated version.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to,kara,"he murmurs, his thumbs rubbing circles over the tops of my hands. "Take a deep breath."
It's like the meditation session I forced on him at the restaurant our first day together all over. "Okay."
"In," he instructs, "hold for ten," and he mouths the numbers as I think them in my head, giving me something to use to ground myself and pace the count. "Now let it out."
My breath leaves me in a whoosh, and I realize I'm still clinging to Kai's shirt. And that his hands are still on mine. It feels . . . not bad.
"While he was drunk, he came on to me. I turned him down, told him no. And he kept at it, until he cornered me in our car after we left." I shiver, and Kai moves his hands from mine to my shoulders, waiting patiently, just giving me something to hold on to. "He tried to force himself on me. And when that didn't work, he threw me out of his car in the rain, halfway between my home and the venue, forcing me to walk three miles in a pile of tulle and lace he made me buy for the event. I called his manager the next morning, like an idiot, and he talked me out of filing a harassment and attempted assault charge. But I called the company next, and filed one there."
