Jonas
Ihad known the moment the chef wouldn’t come out that it was Kenzie. She had to have recognized me at my table, and decided to evade me. She’d soon realize there was no escaping me. As a Titan, I was used to getting what I wanted, and that so happened to be her. It didn’t matter if I was in Manhattan, Phoenix, or Timbuktu. I wanted her and there was no place she could run where I wouldn’t find her. Reece had given me the bare minimum when it came to information, but my resources were able to pull up everything else I needed in order to find her. Now, the last step would be to convince her that we belonged together.
I sometimes would wonder if my friends ever had to try this hard, and then I’d remember the course of the last few years and realized they did. “Nothing worth having ever comes easy,” Mason had told me just days earlier. It looked like he was right.
I bided my time by ordering dessert and then sitting there with coffee. I thought maybe she’d get tired of my presence and at least tell me to leave, but she had instead stayed hidden in the back. I had thrown some money onto the table, then hid out in the men’s room until the restaurant cleared out. I assumed she was still in her office, but as I made my way farther into the back, a light coming from a storage area caught my attention. I slipped inside and it was an act of sheer will to not growl when she got off of her knees and stretched languorously.
Seizing the moment, I closed the door behind me, and that was when she turned. The look of terror on her face might’ve been comical some other time, but it wasn’t now. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me, and hoping to prove that to her, I threw my hands up in surrender.
“Kenzie,” I responded after she called me by name.
I wanted to go to her and pull her into my arms, but she took a cautious step back. I took one forward, then she followed it up with two more of her own. I was soon within inches of her when I reached out to touch her hand. She moved so quickly that I had no time to react and ended up grabbing her wrist instead. She pulled it away, then tried to shrink away from me.
“I know you have to be surprised to see me. I wasn’t sure you would—”
“The door,” she suddenly said, interrupting me completely. I looked over my shoulder and back at her.
“What’s wrong with it?”
She rushed past me and when she tugged on the handle, I realized what had caused the sudden panic. I smirked. So, I had locked the two of us together. What a welcome surprise. The murderous expression of hers didn’t signify that she felt the same.
“You fucking idiot. You’ve locked us inside of here.”
Oh. I could see how that would be troubling to her. It was only an added bonus for me. I continued to smirk at her despair, not because I wanted to upset her, but because of the opportunity this presented.
“I fail to see the issue. I—”
“You fail to see the issue?” she asked, her voice rising an octave.
She paced, and I stood there watching as she walked from one end of the room to another. She was growing more upset by the minute, her face turning a bright shade of crimson. I loved the way her skin flushed, but not when it wasn’t because I had touched her in some way. She was mad. I could see it in the daggers she shot in my direction whenever she’d pause. If looks could kill, I would’ve been slain for sure.
I could see what had caused her despair, and it had to do with a lot more than just me. I moved to the door, then tried to open it. The damn thing was definitely locked. She was nearly in tears at this point, and it reminded me of the last time I had seen her. She’d been spitting mad, and I supposed I couldn’t blame her. I also remembered the temper she’d revealed, and my gaze moved from her to the various shelves and all the things she could chuck at me if given the chance.
“Isn’t there someone you can call?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“If there was, don’t you think I would’ve called them by now, Einstein? I forgot my phone in the office.”
Her voice was cracking as she spoke. Her coloring was even darker, and I could see the fine sheen of sweat building on her. I didn’t mind it so much because it made her tight button-up shirt cling to her. My eyes lingered on her chest, her breasts now heaving with every erratic breath she took. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear she was on the verge of a panic attack.
“Are you going to be okay?” The question sounded dumb, so I rephrased it. “It’s not going to help for you to get all worked up. Just take a seat so we can figure out what to do.”
I thought she would rail at me, but she moved across the storage room and sat down on a stack of unopened boxes. She was shaking visibly at this moment, and her breathing was coming in shallow pants. It reminded me a lot of that day up on the roof. I was taking a calculated risk by asking, but I had to know. “Do you suffer from anxiety?”
My psychiatrist had been running late with a patient during one of our visits, so I sat out in the waiting room and bided my time by reading a pamphlet detailing the different types of anxiety, and how it affected those afflicted. There were multiple types from what I could remember, and it, too, was a disorder like the one I suffered from, although the uncontrollable urge for sex was nothing compared to something as debilitating to what she appeared to have.
“I’m not judging,” I told her. “I just want to know why you’ve become so pale and shaking like a leaf.”
She was busy raking her hands through her dampening hair, and stopped at my words to roll her eyes. “I do, but what I have or don’t have is none of your concern. Once again, this is all your fault.”
I wanted to point out that it took two to tango and if I remembered correctly, she was playing a game with me back at CHG Seaport. It would do no good to point fingers at one another, so I moved closer and was surprised she didn’t try to flee. I wasn’t sure whether to try to sit beside her or kneel in front, so I chose the latter.
Kenzie kept trying to look away, and her tears didn’t go unnoticed. I finally managed to place a hand on one side of her face, then used my other to stroke her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
Words like that usually didn’t make it into my vocabulary. I lived a very unapologetic life, yet I couldn’t help but keep trying to profess my concern to her. She was probably the only woman I had to work so hard to even share airspace with, and that should’ve been a turn-off right off the bat. She was worth it, though. Before the psychiatrist, I had never bared my soul to anyone else other than this woman in front of me.
“When the time is right, you’ll know, son. You will find the one girl that’ll make all others seem obsolete,”my mother would tell me, and I’d laugh it off. As I looked into Kenzie’s watery blue eyes, I finally understood what she was talking about.
“It’s always been you,” I told her, and her brow furrowed in confusion.