Page 15 of Rival for Rent
I laughed, tired and embarrassed at the interlude I’d just allowed myself. Not my proudest moment. Not even my top two-hundred thousand. But definitely one of the hotter ones I’d ever imagined.
I still felt a little dirty, mentally using Mason that way. But it didn’t matter. No one else would ever know, and I was never going to see the guy again.
Right?
5
MASON
The scent of coffee and cinnamon wrapped around me as I stood in the kitchen. I’d slept like shit after coming home from Kai’s and had gotten up early, too exhausted to try forcing more rest. The dreams hadn’t been worth it anyway.
I’d made fresh cinnamon rolls, trying to bake the frustration and worry out of my system. I wasn’t sure it had helped, but at least Dana’s house smelled good now. I’d brewed a pot of coffee, too, and poured some into a mug shaped like a panda munching on a stalk of bamboo. Because nothing said hardened ex-Marine like sipping extremely milky coffee out of a cartoon panda's head.
Soft morning light streamed through the windows on either side of the room, painting the pale wooden floorboards gold. The east wall was a bright, sunny yellow. The west one was covered in green and purple paisley wallpaper that I tried not to look at too hard. Not exactly my aesthetic, but Dana didn’t seem to mind.
She mostly used the kitchen for storage anyway, and not the kind that made sense. Every flat surface, plus half the floor, was piled with spare computer parts. It wasn’t enough for her to bea tech genius at work—she had to build little robots in her spare time like a mad scientist. One of them had nearly blinded me in the shower last week as it attempted to wash my hair.
Even the coffee pot was her invention. She’d wired up an old French press that ran electronically now—but only if you controlled it with a full-sized keyboard. Completely unnecessary, but it did give a chipper little ding when it was done. When I suggested maybe we didn’t need a coffee machine with literal bells and whistles, Dana had looked at me like I’d kicked a kitten.
I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to focus on the peace of the moment.
But the second I did, I saw Kai’s eyes instead.
They’d haunted me all night. In dreams that twisted and turned, shifting between nightmares and memories I couldn’t always distinguish.
Some dreams had been horrifying—Kai crumpling to the ground in the theater lobby, screaming in pain, his hands slick with blood. He’d died in my arms more than once. Still and cold, staring at me like I’d failed him.
Others were sad. Dreams of high school, the two of us younger. I dreamed Kai was in my math class—even though we weren’t in the same track. He teased me all period, gathered his friends to torment me, told me I was stupid and worthless until I ran out of the room, ready to cry.
And then there were the strange dreams of our empty high school turning into a maze I couldn’t escape, with Kai always ten steps behind me. Following. Watching. Judging.
I kept trying to tell myself I’d done the best I could last night. Kai had told me to leave. The only way I could’ve stayed was by forcing myself into his space, and that thought made my skin crawl.
I’d done my best—but once again, my best hadn’t been enough.
“Oooh, is that coffee I smell?” Dana wandered in, already dressed in a brown corduroy blazer with elbow patches and herringbone trousers that looked like they belonged in November, not this sticky heatwave of a day.
“Yeah,” I said, grabbing her favorite mug from the cabinet, this one shaped like a giraffe, with its neck as the handle.
I poured her a cup and slid it across the counter. Unlike me, she drank it black. You’d look at us and think I was the tough one, but Dana had the taste buds of a junkyard dog. I smiled to myself, wondering what kind of coffee Bella would like.
“So I never got to talk to you last night,” she said, wrapping her hands around the mug. “How’d it go with the theater gig?”
I turned and studied her face, searching for sarcasm, but she looked genuinely curious.
“You seriously didn’t know it was Kai Jacinto who called?” I asked.
Her eyes flew open. “Wait, seriously? Like, Kai Jacinto from high school?”
“Yeah,” I said, a shiver running down my spine as I remembered the way Kai had looked at me. Like I was something stuck to his shoe. “How did you not know? Aren’t you supposed to vet the clients?”
She shrugged. “He used a different name. And since he wasn’t booking a date with one of the consultants, I didn’t run the same kind of background check on him.” She shook her head. “So I take it that it didn’t go well?”
“Uh, yeah. You could say that.” I took a sip of coffee and grimaced. Still too bitter, even after milk and sugar.
Dana snorted. “Honestly, I’m surprised he let you leave in one piece, after how you treated him.Youshould’ve been the one with the bodyguard.”
“Okay, someone needs to explain—” I started, but then the doorbell rang.
