CHAPTER THREE

“PARALLEL  LINES WERE NEVER MEANT TO MEET.”

MAYA

I did not turn around immediately.

I gave myself exactly three seconds. One, two, three — counted in my head while I kept my eyes on the wine glasses in front of me and kept my hands steady on the bottle and kept my face doing absolutely nothing. Then I turned around.

Kayden was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms folded, jacket still on, looking completely at ease the way he always did in spaces that weren't his. Like the world was just one long place he was allowed to be comfortable in. It was one of the most irritating things about him and it had always been one of the most irritating things about him.

I looked at him for exactly the right amount of time before I smiled.

"Kayden." My voice came out easy. Friendly even. I was proud of myself. "You sneak up on people like that often or is that just for me?"

He smiled back. "Just keeping you on your toes."

See, that was the thing about Kayden. He could do this all day. The casual back and forth, the easy smile, the way he held a conversation like he wasn't doing anything at all. He was good at it. He had always been good at it and that was part of the problem.

I turned back to the counter and finished pouring the second glass.

"So," he said behind me. "How've you been?"

"Fine."

"Yeah? Work's good?"

I reached for the third glass. "Work's good."

"Still modelling?"

"Still modelling."

A small pause.

"Doing well with it?"

I set the bottle down. "Doing well with it."

Another pause, longer this time. I could feel him looking at the back of my head and I kept my attention on arranging the glasses on the small wooden tray we used for carrying drinks, making sure they were evenly spaced and not going to slide around. Very important work. Extremely necessary.

"Okay," Kayden said, and his voice had shifted just slightly. Still easy but with something underneath it now. "I see you're going with the one word answers."

I didn't say anything.

"Cool. Yeah, that's cool, Maya."

"I'm just pouring drinks, Kayden, I'm not trying to have a whole conversation," I said, keeping my voice light. "I'm not being rude."

"I didn't say you were being rude."

"Good."

"I just said you're giving me one word answers."

"I'm busy."

He made a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Right."

I picked up the tray and turned around and made myself look at him fully because looking away too much was its own kind of admission and I was not going to give him that.

"Did you want something from the kitchen or did you just come to check on the drinks?" I asked, perfectly pleasant.

"I came to help with the drinks actually."

"I can handle it."

"I can see that."

"So."

"So let me help anyway," he said simply. He pushed off the counter and reached for the tray and I pulled it back slightly, which was a mistake because it threw off my balance and the glasses shifted and I overcorrected and then my foot caught the edge of the kitchen mat at exactly the wrong angle and I felt the whole thing start to go sideways.

His hands were faster than my brain.

One hand caught the tray from underneath, glasses and all, and his other arm came around and caught me at the same time, and for one extremely undignified moment I was suspended between him and the tray and the kitchen floor with my heart in my throat. The wine sloshed but didn't spill. The glasses didn't break. Everything stayed together by about half a second and a miracle.

And then I was upright.

And Kayden was right there.

Close enough that I could see the small scar at the edge of his jaw that I had always wondered about. Close enough to feel the warmth that came off him, which was a lot, he had always run warm, like his body was constantly burning something. His arm was still at my back and his other hand still had the tray and his eyes were right on mine.

"Careful," he said quietly.

I stepped back. Not frantically, I made it smooth, I made it look like I was just finding my footing again which I was, technically. I smoothed the front of my robe with one hand and reached for the tray with the other and he let me take it this time.

"Thank you," I said. Stiff. Even I could hear it.

Kayden looked at me for a moment.

Then he sighed through his nose, quiet and slow, and set his hands on the counter behind him and dropped his head back slightly like he was collecting something before he spoke.

"Maya."

"I'm fine,"

"I'm not saying you're not fine." His voice was calm. Not sharp, not irritated, just steady in that way he got sometimes when he was being deliberate about something. "Just, can you stop for a second?"

I stopped. Mostly because I didn't have a good reason not to that didn't look like running away, and I was not running away.

He looked at me straight on. "We agreed," he said. "Both of us. We agreed to leave it where it was and move on, yeah? That was the agreement."

I said nothing.

"And I have done that," he continued. "I have done my part. I have been respectful and I have stayed out of your way and I have let things be what they are. But every time I am anywhere near you, you look at me like you're waiting for me to do something terrible." He tilted his head slightly. "And I'm getting a little tired of it, if I'm being honest."

"I don't look at you like that."

"Maya."

"I was just—"

"You practically jumped out of your own skin when I walked in here," he said. Not unkind. Just plain. "You've given me about twelve words since I arrived, all of them as short as you could make them, and you snatched that tray back so fast you nearly put yourself on the floor." He raised his eyebrows. "I'm not blind."

I set the tray down on the counter because I needed to do something with my hands and gripping it that hard was going to leave marks on my palms.

"I'm not holding a grudge," I said.

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm just" I stopped. Picked my words. "This is my home. And it's been a long day. And I'm tired. And I just—" I exhaled. "I'm not trying to make you feel like an enemy. Okay? I'm not."

He watched me while I said all of that. When I finished he was quiet for a second.

"I came here for the race," he said then, his voice lower, more direct. "That's it. That's the whole reason I'm here. I'm not here for anything else and I'm not here to cause any trouble and whatever you think is going on in my head right now or whatever you think I'm planning to do" He paused, and something moved across his face that he shut down before it fully formed. "I'm not here to do any of that. So the least you can do is respond to me like a normal person when I ask how your work is going."

The kitchen was very quiet.

I could hear the faint sound of the television from the living room where Yulian had probably settled back onto the couch. The hum of the refrigerator. My own breathing which I was carefully keeping even.

I looked at Kayden and he looked back at me and the thing about Kayden was that he had never been hard to read if you knew what you were looking for. He was telling the truth. He usually was, which was another irritating thing about him.

I opened my mouth to say something, I don't know what, something, some version of okay or fine or you're right, when I heard footsteps coming from the hallway.

Yulian appeared in the kitchen doorway and looked between the two of us and then down at the floor where a small splash of wine had made it onto the tile at some point during my near-fall.

"What's going on?"