Chapter 7

Kimani

As much as I wanted to see him, I could not do it.

That was what I told myself in the three seconds between Ashley asking the question and my mouth opening to respond. I could not walk into a formal interview with Roan King pretending to be someone else while he was currently giving me the silent treatment and I was currently trying to decide whether I was actually going to attempt to make him hate me. That was too many things happening in the same room at the same time and I did not have the emotional bandwidth for it.

"Ashley." I turned to look at her properly. "Do you realize what you are asking me to do? You want me to walk into a professional interview setting, representing you, and conduct a full interview with the richest man in the country on your behalf." I shook my head. "I cannot do that. This is something you have been working toward since before I met you. You should be the one sitting in that room, not me."

"I know what I'm asking," she said, and her eyes had already gone soft and targeted in the way Ashley's eyes went when she had decided she was going to get what she wanted and was simply selecting her approach. "I know exactly what I'm asking and I would not be asking if I had another option. But I cannot miss Landon's game, Kimani. I cannot."

"You can, actually."

"No one will even know," she pressed on, ignoring me completely. "You go in, you ask the questions, you get the answers, and I take it from there. My name goes on it, my professor gets what she needs, and you never have to think about it again. Please." She pressed her palms together. "Pretty please. With everything on top."

She made the face.

Ashley had a specific face she deployed in situations like this. It involved her lower lip and her eyebrows and a particular tilt of her head that she had clearly practiced at some point in her life and perfected, and I had told myself multiple times that I was immune to it and I was not.

"Okay," I said. "Okay, fine, I will do it."

She grabbed my hands. "Thank you, I love you so fucking much."

"Where are the questions," I said, because if I was going to do this I needed to think about it practically and not about the fact that I was going to be sitting across from Roan in a professional setting while he was currently pretending I did not exist. "Give me what you have prepared so I can look at them before tomorrow."

"I will give them to you right after your class." She kissed my cheek with a loud smack that made the girl sitting next to me look over. "I have to run, thank you, you are saving my life, I mean it." She was already backing toward the door.

"Ashley…"

"After class," she called back, and then she was gone.

I turned to face the front of the room and sat with what I had just agreed to.

I was going to see Roan tomorrow. In a professional setting, with questions on a page, with a reason to be in the same room as him that had nothing to do with us. My heart was already doing things it had no business doing considering I had told him less than forty-eight hours ago that I wanted to break up with him. Considering he had not texted me since.

I pressed my palm flat on the desk and made myself focus.

The lecture started and I did my best to actually be present for it. I was studying nursing and I was serious about it even when my personal life was actively trying to dismantle my concentration, and I could not afford to fall further behind than I already was with the chemistry test sitting on the horizon like a wall I was not fully prepared to climb. I wrote notes. Real ones, detailed ones, the kind I would actually be able to use when I sat down to review. I kept my phone in my bag and I did not check it once during the two hours and that was a personal achievement I was giving myself credit for.

When the lecture ended I packed my books into my bag slowly, rolling my neck once because I had been holding tension in my shoulders for the better part of two hours, and I walked out into the hallway.

Ashley materialized at my side before I had taken five steps, appearing from whatever corner she had been waiting in with a file folder already extended toward me.

"Here." She pressed it into my hands. "Ten questions. He is a busy man so realistically aim for eight solid answers, that is enough for the piece. Try to keep it moving, don't let the conversation stall, and if he seems impatient just go to the next question without…"

"Ashley," I said. "Don't you think this is actually a bad idea?"

She stopped talking.

"I have been thinking about it for two hours," I said, and I had, in the margins of actually paying attention to my lecture, the doubt had been building in a consistent and inconvenient way. "I am not you. I do not have your instincts for this kind of thing, I have never conducted a formal interview in my life, and if something goes wrong it reflects on you. You should just do it yourself. Landon will have other games."

"No no no." She grabbed my arm with both hands. "You have already agreed. There is no going back, that is not how it works, you said you would do it and I am holding you to it." Her grip tightened slightly for emphasis.

"I said okay under duress."

"You said okay and that is a binding contract between best friends." She released my arm and adjusted my bag strap for me in that maternal way she did sometimes when she wanted to soften a position she was not going to move from. "You are going to be fine. You are charming and you are smart and you ask good questions naturally. Just follow the list and let it breathe a little. You'll be great."

I looked at the file in my hands.

"I'm always so dramatic?" she said, preempting whatever I was about to say next, which made me almost smile despite myself.

We had been walking while we talked, moving through the corridor toward the main entrance, and I was formulating a counter-argument that I genuinely believed had merit when something changed in the atmosphere of the building ahead of us.

Noise. A specific kind of noise, concentrated and high-pitched and building, the kind that meant a crowd had gathered around something or someone and was reacting. Girls, mostly, from the sound of it, the kind of reaction that meant whatever was at the center of it was worth reacting to.

We kept walking and the noise got more specific and I could hear distinct voices in it now, excited and overlapping, and there was a small gathering near the main entrance that had not been there ten minutes ago when we started walking in this direction.

I could not see past the cluster of people yet.

Ashley went up slightly on her toes to try to see over the heads in front of us. "What is that?"

We moved closer together, weaving through the edge of the small crowd until I could see past the people blocking my line of sight, and I looked toward the center of whatever this was.

My heart dropped straight through the floor.