He won’t.He’ll say no. My barely healing heart will shrivel to the size of a raisin. I’ll be alone for the rest of my business-floundering, pimple-mounding life.
My phone buzzes on the table. I rush to it, catch my foot on the corner of the rug, and nearly fall on my face as I snatch the device like it’s a magic bar of infinite gold.
It’s another text from Marsha. It has Kai’s name on it.
I swipe right so hard I nearly break my thumb.
My heart skips three whole beats.
And the answer from Kai is…yes.
My mind registers this as happy news and sends a full-on parade through my body in celebration.
My heart, however, wants no part of the action. I can already see it, frantically building walls to protect itself from a second onslaught. Already, the stitches that hold it together are splitting loose. I can feel the sting as it pulls the slightest bit. Small for now, but dangerously close to tearing wide open.
I sigh and slump to the floor, wanting desperately to rewind time and say no to the whole thing.Just what am I getting myself into?
Chapter Two
Day1
I’m aboutto see Kai. I’m seriously about to see Kai.
The obnoxious chant repeats in my head as I hoist my shiny pink suitcase up the steps of the staged studio house. The Arizona home, tucked into its gated property, is big, beautiful, and chock-full of cameras that will stay aimed at Kai and me for the full five days.
I’m about to see Kai for the first time in years!
Goosebumps ripple over my skin nearly every time I think it. Which explains why my leg hairs keep growing despite my valiant efforts to arrive with a clean shave.
The Arizona heat is stifling even though the sun dipped thirty minutes ago. It’s nearing twilight, and I can’t help but picture the nights I spent watching Kai play football. Not that I can avoid memories like that; Marsha Langston, AKA theQueen of Reality Love Shows, is one clever cupid.
It’s been exactly one week since I accepted the offer to come on the show. Math isn’t my strong suit, but after a brief calculation, I surmise that those seven days have taken roughly one-hundred and thirteen days off of my life. Between obsessing over what I’m going to wear and how I’m going to act, I spent that week filling out a seriously lengthy, highly invasive questionnaire about everything from our first kiss to our final words.
Talk about wrenching. And revealing too. I might be stepping onto the scene in a fabulous dress I picked out with excruciating precision, but inwardly, I feel naked and exposed.
Marsha knew that reliving those tender moments would have meachingto see Kai again.
This is why my younger brother Nate, along with his also-invested friends, have been lecturing me through video chats from Washington State University. They have all sorts of things to say about me coming on the show, but the consensus is that I shouldnottake Kai back after he broke my heart.
Honestly, I have no idea where Kai’s head is at. He might not want to get back together. Maybe he’s just doing this to save face—the whole school knows he left me behind to endure the chaos of my lifealone. Perhaps he knows how charming and attractive he is and figures that after a TV appearance such as this, he’s likely to become one of America’s most eligible bachelors.
That idea is a madman’s machete to my heart. It makes me want to claim Kai Kingston as my very own and dare any woman to even try to take him from me. I feel desperate to show everyone that he lovedmefirst. And maybe, just maybe, he loves me the most too.
It’s this exact type of torment that urged me to come up with a few rules. Well, just two rules. Grandma always says to never set more than two rules—one for each fist. It’s the only way to hold tight to the ones that matter.
So, Rule Number One: Guard my heart. The poor vessel has been working overtime to guard itself while screaming in desperation to my traitorous mind while it daydreams of being reunited with Kai.“Hey, Earth to Nikki! Can I get a little help here?”
I can’t very well let Kai weasel his way back in with those gorgeous brown eyes and that broad, boastful smile. I’ll serve my five days with him like some sort of prison sentence and end it.
Rule Number Two: Guard my lips.
This one may or may not have been inspired by a dream I had the night Marsha called. A dream I replay in my mind with great precision. I need to guard my lips since they’re connected to my heart, and that leads right back to Rule Number One.
I envision myself clenching tight to my rules, one in each fist. They’re important. Crucial is more like it. Whenever I think about seeing Kai again, I want to invent a time machine and type ‘every time I ever kissed Kai’into the destination box.
Of course, that’s the real purpose of the reality TV show—it’s called Time Warp, after all. And this High School Reunion series is designed to give high school sweethearts a second chance.
But I’m not here for a second chance like viewers at home might think. I’m here to get my money and go. Yet there’s a bit of Vegas attached to this deal—a gamble if you will, because I haven’t shaken the traitor inside of me. Traitor Me is alive and kicking, and she wants somethingotherthan the hundred-fifty Ks that come with the deal. Traitor Me wants two specific Ks—she wants Kai Kingsley.
