Page 58 of Angels Are Falling

He grabbed his drink off the table. “What do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “What were your parents like?”

Kai watched me over the rim of his Arnold Palmer. When he didn’t speak, I realized he had taunted me with the getting-to-know-him offer. Of course it was an empty promise. Kai wasn’t the type of man to let anyone in, no matter the liberties he took with them. He broke the family I loved but couldn’t part with basic information about himself. Stupid me for trying.

I shook my head. “Let me guess. Poor little rich boy with mommy and daddy issues.” There was more heat to my voice than I’d intended. Mostly because I felt humiliated for falling for his trap. “Did they ditch you constantly? Did you grow up eating dinner alone just like me? That must’ve left you with a deep fear of commitment because the people you loved always disappointed you.” Perhaps I was projecting my own fears, but I was on a roll and couldn’t stop. “You’d rather marry someone else’s wife than find one yourself, because then you don’t ever have to fully commit. What was it that you told Stefan? Business is stressful enough without factoring in other people’s feelings,” I parroted Kai’s words that Stefan had repeated to me. “If you need to leave for Africa, you can’t be bothered with fighting your wife, and you wouldn’t have to if there was someone else to pick up the pieces.”

My chest was heaving by the time the vile words were out. I had no idea why I was triggered by his simple refusal to share. Perhaps because it seemed Kai knew everything about me but thought so little of me that I wasn’t allowed to know anything about him.

He lowered his glass. His eyes were blank, giving nothing away. The waitress dropped off our pizza, which he ate very little of, while my appetite was completely gone. I still picked up a slice just to have something to do with my hands.

“My mother was a doctor,” he said suddenly. “She owned a fertility clinic. My father owned his own law firm.” Instead of touching the pizza, he speared a cheese-stuffed mushroom with his fork. “They kept a brutal work pace but made time for me. They were good parents and did their best to give me everything. But if you want me to rate their parenting skills, I’ll give them and my childhood a nine out of ten.”

It dawned on me then that he kept referring to his parents in the past tense. “They were good parents⁠—”

“They’re dead.”

Chapter

Eighteen

AMELIE

The slice of pizza slipped from my hand.

They’re dead.

The words landed in the space between us. The table felt even smaller than before. I pressed my hands flat against the table and said nothing.

I looked at him, really looked, and the set of his jaw made my chest hurt. Kai’s grave expression gave nothing away. I found myself searching for hints in the details of his face, the faint tension at the corner of his mouth, the stillness he fell into, the tightness of his jaw. His eyes didn’t avoid mine, nor did they search for sympathy. If anything, they seemed to flatten the whole memory of what he’d just said, as though the admission had cost him nothing. It made me wonder whether the recounting of their death was just another item on a long list of tasks he’d grown used to performing.

I had expected stonewalling. I had not expected this.

“Oh God, Kai, I’m so sorry. I-I don’t know what to say.”

He didn’t respond. I felt the pinprick of guilt behind my ribs and tried to form a better apology, anything to make up for the horrible things I said. But all I could do was stare at the sliver of pizza drooping sadly on my plate.

Kai’s arms were crossed at the chest, posture flawless, the fabric of his shirt pulling slightly at the shoulders. Not a single muscle betrayed the emotion beneath the surface. I was such an asshole. No wonder he never shared anything with me. I didn’t make it any easier by always pushing him away.

“Do you mind if I ask what happened to them?” I tried.

“I do mind,” was his curt response. His gaze flicked to the wall clock behind my head. “If you’re done eating, we can go.”

With my eyes down and a torment of shame spiraling inside me, I stood slowly. Kai threw down a wad of cash instead of waiting for the check. He strode beside me so calmly that you’d never guess he had shared something monumental at lunch. I was acutely aware of the few inches between us, his steps making mine feel unsteady by comparison.

My heart hammered as I followed him to his car. I couldn’t detect his mood at all. Was he sad after speaking about his parents’ death? Angry? Or did he not feel things?

He started driving, and soon, I realized we had passed the city limits. The skyline shrank quietly in the side mirror. “This isn’t the way home.”

His dark eyes were on the road. “Why would we go home? I still have you for another seven and a half hours.”

I inwardly groaned. That was why he had looked at the wall clock—he was calculating how much time we had left together. After the heavy conversation, I assumed he was angry with me and wanted to go home. But if he wanted to go on a drive to cool off, who was I to deny him?

We spoke very little during the one-hour drive, watching the city unspool into open country. Kai was awfully cryptic, his mood somber. We finally exited the highway and rolled into a quiet suburb.

“Are we visiting someone?” I asked when we parked at an estate. It was near a lake, ringed with trees.

“No.” He exited the car without looking back. Kai’s stride didn’t break as he cut across the perfectly raked gravel, the soles of his shoes grinding the stones with a crisp certainty.