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KAI
When I woke up the next morning, Allie and Jace were gone. I shifted in my seat in front of the monitors and rubbed my tired eyes. Allie had left me a note with a smiley face, telling me that she’d think about my proposal and thanking me for letting them crash here last night.
My heart warmed, but my only fear was that they wouldn’t make it home safely this morning. I hadn’t been out in Redwood yet today, and I didn’t know how crazy it had gotten, especially on the rich side of town.
After glancing into my bedroom to see Imani asleep on my bed with João and Ana and Landon passed out in a chair on the other side of the room, I grabbed a fresh set of clothes from my closet and looked at the bed once more.
While she had been sleeping when I walked in, Imani now had her eyes open slightly, as if she had just woken up and was watching me intently. She shifted onto her side, João’s arm falling off her stomach, and she tucked her hand underneath the pillow.
“Morning,” she whispered, voice soft.
Fuck, I wanted her to wake up next to me like that one of these days. I couldn’t fucking wait until Akio’s parents were taken care of, so I could give her all of me. It was getting hard to hold back because the more I saw her, the deeper and deeper I fell.
“Morning.”
She reached over João’s body, grabbed my forearm, and pulled me toward her, placing her soft lips right onto mine. When she pulled away, she fell back onto the pillows and beamed at me. “Do you remember the first time we were here, alone?”
I glanced over at Ana to make sure she was still sleeping, then scooped Imani into my arms to pick her up out of the bed. After setting her onto her feet, I rested my forehead against hers and sucked her bottom lip between my teeth. “Of course I do.”
“Tie me up again sometime,” she whispered, dragging her fingers down my abdomen and curling them inside my waistband. “With everything going on, I’ve been aching for it again. It’s been too long.”
“You think it’s been long for you?” I chuckled.
She had no fucking idea how many times I’d jerked off to the thought of having her like that again, having her arms pulled into the air, her naked body restrained and ready for whatever I wanted to do to it, her being completely submissive to me.
“Get a fucking room,” João growled from the bed, pushing himself up to lean against the headboard and scowling at us in complete disgust.
No matter how rude João was to Imani, she gave him a small smile, her eyes lighting up. She looked at me the same way, but it still felt different between her and me. We had chemistry, but I hadn’t told her that I loved her yet.
But I wanted to tell her so badly.
So fucking badly.
“Morning,” Landon said, standing next to her, shirtless. He leaned down and placed a kiss on her lips, like she had kissed me earlier. Except she kissed him for a bit longer, with a bit more passion, with more … love.
Fuck.
I swallowed hard and rubbed a hand over my face, letting Imani’s hand slip from my hand and mumbling that I would go check on the monitors in the other room. She looked upset as I left her with João and Landon, but I couldn’t watch.
It had taken everything inside me to tell Allie what she meant to me yesterday. And I knew that Imani would tell me that she loved me back. I just … I … I didn’t want Akio’s parents to take her away from me. I couldn’t let them get in the way this time.
After slouching down in my chair, I aimlessly scrolled through the monitors around Redwood. Shit was still wild as hell, and I hoped that Allie had gotten home safely. I didn’t want to lose her either after last night.
The bedroom door opened. From the corner of my eye, I watched Imani pad out of the room and walk toward me. I clenched my jaw and focused my gaze on the screens, but all I could really focus on was her coming toward me.
Before I could stop her, she sat on my lap bridal-style and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “What’s going on? Why’d you leave like that? I wanted to talk to you about last night and how it went with Allie.”
“It went fine,” I said, cutting it short. But then I glanced over at her and felt so much guilt. I wrapped my arms around her body, slowly coming undone, the way I always did around her, and sighed. “It went better than I’d thought it would,” I whispered. “Thank you for pushing me to tell her or else I wouldn’t have.”
Imani grinned at me, not saying a word. I stared into her huge brown eyes and wondered where we all would’ve been without her. She had come into our world and changed our fucking lives, especially mine.
Before her, I had felt nothing. I had been so numb.
Now, fucking God, I felt a world of emotions come crashing down upon me.
She pushed some hair out of my face, a smile coming onto her lips. “Kai, I l—”
Imani’s phone buzzed between us, and she sucked in a sharp breath and stopped talking completely. I knew what she wanted to tell me. It was the same thing that I had wanted to tell her for so long. And she was about to say it.
Imani sighed and pulled out her phone, as both of us could sense that the moment was ruined. “It’s Allie,” she whispered, climbing out of my lap. “I need to take this. I didn’t even realize that she’d left.”
After she placed the phone to her ear, she paced around the room, her neutral expression turning into one of confusion, then fear. “What?” she whispered. “Allie, slow down. Allie, please. I—” She stopped walking and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “We’ll be there soon. We’re coming.”
“What happened?”
Once Imani shut off the phone, she placed her hand over her mouth and let out a sob. “Allie’s stepfather shot Allie’s mother. She’s in the hospital. We need to go now.”
