Chapter Eleven
"SO IT WAS ABOUT TWOyears ago when she came to me, and the moment I saw her wearing ripped jeans that weren't really ripped but fake ripped?" Matt shook his head. "I knew she was a gold-digger."
"You don't have to apologize," Katherine protested. "I totally understood where you were coming from. Our dad cheated on your mom with my mom. You had every reason to struggle with my existence." She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "But I always knew you were a good person at heart. The moment I saw your snow globe keychain? I knew one day everything would be alright."
Matt squeezed his sister’s hand. “You’re too kind.”
“No,you’rethe one who’s kind!”
“No, it’s you.”
If Kazeyuki needed any other proof that these two were truly related by blood, then this was it. Their rose-colored glasses. Their readiness to appreciate and ask forgiveness. But most of all, the proof of these two being siblings was how, despite being raised in two different homes, they both shared an incomparable ability to jump to the craziest conclusions based on the most illogical premises.
Ripped jeans made one a gold-digger? A snow globe keychain made one a good person?
It was hard to determine whether he was more amused or incredulous as the two siblings took turns to explain how they came together, their voices overlapping and correcting each other with the ease of people who had already told this story to themselves enough times that the rough edges had been worn smooth.
The rest of it, Kazeyuki pieced together as he listened.
Two years ago, Katherine had reached out to Matt, with her brain surgery making her realize that life was too short, and that she had to at leasttryhaving a relationship with her half-brother.
Matt at that time, however, had only seen her overture as a prelude to leeching off a wealthier family member. He had hurled insults and called her names, and to top it all off, he had also threatened Katherine with a restraining order if she were to contact him again.
That encounter alone could’ve traumatized Katherine for life. But for some reason, it had made her think that her brother simply needed more time. And surprisingly enough, shewasright. In a way. Because it was only weeks ago that Matt had reached out to her, and in fact, it was their phone call that Kazeyuki had overheard that day at the hospital.
At that time, he had thought she was speaking with someone who wanted to go out on a date with her. Not that he was jealous, though. It was just what Kazeyuki had...inferred.Because that was smart and mature men like him did. They were very logical in their...inference.
But as it turned out, that was one of the rare instances he had been incorrect. It was not another boy but Matt, who had beendiagnosed with a meningioma, and whose subsequent, panic-driven research had led him to wanting a consultation with Kazeyuki—the same doctor who operated on the half-sister he had just called a gold-digger, among other things.
During that call, Matt had very stiffly offered to pay Katherine a sum of money to connect him with Kazeyuki. She had very naturally refused and offered instead to speak to Kazeyuki on his behalf. Quite naturally as well, Matt—who was by then made paranoid and guilty by his earlier treatment of Katherine—had instead gone berserk and accused Katherine of having plans to avenge herself.
I know what you’re planning! You’re going to tell your doctor to kill me and pretend it’s all an accident, aren’t you? I’ve done my research, damn you! I know you’re close to him! Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.
The next time Matt had talked to Katherine again, it was in person. He had gotten drunk, taken a cab to Katherine’s apartment near midnight, and started banging on her door. Katherine could’ve turned the tables around on him at that moment. She could’ve been the one to ask for a restraining order against him.
But instead, Katherine had given her older brother a place to sleep, nursed him through her hangover, and come morning, was just as sweet and understanding as she listened to Matt, who had finally realized he was wrong about his baby sister.
That was the day Katherine had ended up late for her consultation with him at the hospital, and it was why she still had the snow globe in her possession, with Matt only remembering to hand it to her when she was about to leave.
Our father gave it to me when I was ten. It’s one of the few things I have from him, and I want you to have it.
As Katherine and Matt continued to reminisce about all the things they had in common despite growing up separately, Kazeyuki found his thoughts drifting in a similar direction. For so long, he had refused to even think of the past...because of her.
Inori.
He had not allowed himself to think about her in years. The name itself was something he kept sealed behind the same wall that held everything else he had decided, at seventeen, was too dangerous to feel. But sitting here, listening to the story of what Matt had done to Katherine, the wall was doing nothing. The comparison had walked straight through it.
The words Matt had used against Katherine were worse than anything Kazeyuki had ever said to Inori.
Not by a small margin. By a chasm.
Matt had called her names. Had threatened legal action. Had treated her like a con artist and a parasite, and had done so repeatedly, over months, with the full weight of his anger and his fear and his grief behind every word.
And Katherine had survived it.
Not just survived. She had come out the other side still believing her brother was worth loving. Still showing up. Still holding the door open for someone who had slammed it in her face, because Katherine McKenna did not know how to stop believing in people, even when they gave her every reason to.
She was the living proof of something his father had once said to him in the back of a limousine, twenty-three years ago.
