If it weren’t so damn cold out there on the deck, I’d still be out there, watching the waves roll in.
We’ve already finished the champagne.
Our tipsy state had nothing to do with Kai declaring he was going to make me the best Wagyu steak I’d ever had.
Jokes on him. I’ve never had Wagyu.
When I spotted the price on the label of the package he pulled out of the fridge, I realized why. It cost more than I spend on food in a month.
I don’t know a thing about wine except I think I prefer white to red, but I still pretend to browse the racks like a connoisseur. I eventually find a bottle near the back that’s so dusty, I doubt anyone was going to drink it, anyway. I take it upstairs and uncork it while Kai tosses spaghetti into the boiling water.
“You add salt?”
“I know how to make spaghetti, Heavenly.”
“Out of a can, maybe.”
He grumbles something about me being ungrateful.
I pour us each a glass of wine, suppressing a smile when Kai casually grabs the salt and adds some to the water. He glances over his shoulder, but I pretend I’m too busy studying the wine bottle to watch him.
He walks over, leaning across to read the label. “Good choice.”
“Is it?” I look up at him, honestly curious.
His green eyes drop to his glass. “Fucked if I know,” he mutters.
I laugh as I bump my hip against his. “Idiot.”
There’s a touch of a smile on his mouth, but he smooths it into a line, affecting a serious expression as he holds out his glass.
“A toast.”
“To…?”
His mouth works for a second, gaze touching my mouth, my nose, the crease between my brows. Then he grins, rallying with a bright, “To your first real vacation!”
The realization that he’s right sticks in my throat like I swallowed something without chewing. How many vacations hashehad since he left Riverside? Five? Ten? A hundred?
I bet he’s been more places than this beach house. Probably went to Europe, Asia…and other countries rich people visit when they’re bored and there’s too much money in their bank accounts.
And that’s it, isn’t it?
I don’t know what Kai did or didn’t do, because the first promise he ever broke, long before my sixteenth birthday, was the one he made when he left Riverside.
So, yeah, none of this should make me jealous, but it does.
Guess I’m as petty as I am pathetic.
Me and Kai, we were the same. We both had shitty families who forced us to grow up in shitty mobile homes in a shitty trailer park.
It’s not fair that he got out. That he gotthis.
But I guess I just have to accept it, same as I’ve had to accept every other injustice thrown my way since my mother squeezed me out of her womb.
“Yay,” I say dryly, clinking his glass a little too hard with mine before taking a big swallow of my wine.
Yuck.
