She nods, glancing around. “Nice. So you and Tori work with their kids while they come here?”
“Us and some others. Simone’s our physical therapist.”
“She mentioned that.” Her lips quirk up in a small smile. “I bet you all have a lot of patience.”
“You have to have patience when you’re working with kids.”
She walks up the stairs to the hot tub. “So you’re an occupational therapist for kids, and you’re telling me you’re a bad boy?”
“I’m sure I didn’t say I was a bad boy.”
She dips a toe in the water. “What’s the correct term then, player? Hookup king?”
I roll my eyes. “This is getting old,” I say, but I’m not one bit tired of her.
She sits on the edge of the hot tub, letting her feet dangle in. “You never did tell me how you got into occupational therapy for kids. I mean, I know you worked in games and then moved to Kids Company. But why OT?”
I walk up the stairs and sit near her, careful not to get too close. I don’t like talking about Matthew to strangers, but she opened up to me, and that couldn’t have been easy. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to share a little. “That was more out of necessity than anything.”
“What kind of necessity?”
I scratch my forehead, my chest panging, but she’s not some girl I’m gonna sleep with then move on from. She seems like she might actually care about what I’ve got to say. “I knew someone who could use the help.”
She considers me. “Your brother?”
I’m surprised that she put it together, but then I remember telling her a little about Matthew in the ocean earlier. I look down at my hands and nod.
“Does your brother have a diagnosis?”
I huff a laugh. “Diagnoses are for kids with families who have money, or at least have their kids in schools with money. The school my brother and I went to struggled just to feed all the kids.” I get the feeling she never looked for her next meal to be provided by the school.
She blinks. “I thought pretty much all schools in the United States were required to offer help for kids with special needs.”
“Ours did, but our schools were so underfunded, unless there’s an obvious need, you really have to have someone to advocate for you. I was fourteen when Matthew was seven. I was never even in the same school as he was. I had no idea anything was really wrong until a teacher came to our house one day to talk to my mom about it all.”
“That seems unusual—a teacher coming to your house.”
I don’t want to badmouth my mother, so I just say, “It was an unusual situation. Of course, it did no good. My mom was dating this worthless dickhead at the time, and he told the woman to stay out of our business. That was the end of that.” The memory has me gritting my teeth.
I dare a glance at her, and the look of pure heartbreak in her gaze makes my stomach roll. I shake it off and hop into the hot tub. “Fuck it.” I hold my hand out to her. “Come on in. The water feels good.” Reluctantly, she takes my hand, and I pull her in. “Did I lie?”
She cups water with either hand and lets it drain into the tub. “You did not.”
I meet her gaze, letting my hand brush hers. She doesn’t move it, so I take it in mine, my instincts working harder than my willpower. She’s lost her bravado, becoming shy and tentative. This is the moment I should pull her to me, taking charge of this situation and getting her to give herself to me for the night.
“Hot tub time!” comes a shout from the opening of the grotto, where Simone, Bailey, Logan, and Isaac crash the moment, wading toward us. Kylie and I pull away as they all infiltrate the hot tub with stories from their walk…something about catching Buddy taking a whizz behind a bush, an image that definitely breaks the mood I had going with Kylie. It’s probably for the best, because if I were to have taken her to bed tonight, I’m not sure I could have walked away tomorrow.
10
Kylie
I wake up around ten, but the house is still quiet, so I brush my teeth, get dressed, and then head for the front door. Unlike yesterday morning, Brett is asleep on the couch…or at least he’s pretending to be.
I try not to stare for too long, but it’s really hard. I feel like we turned a corner last night. I think he might have been getting ready to kiss me when the group came back from their walk. And I’m pretty sure I would have let him, silly girl I am. It’s so like me to be a pawn in the playbook of the first player I meet post-breakup.
I set up my laptop in the business center to do the online orientation. I stupidly assumed this would be a short video I could watch at some point during my first week, but after reading through my welcome email to see where I needed to report in the morning, I realized this orientation was a bigger deal than I thought. Apparently, they don’t trust that you’ll watch the video on your own, so there’s a test at the end of it. I tried taking the test after watching the first ten minutes of the video, and I failed it, miserably.
Two hours later, I’m still trying to get this thing finished. You have to take the test until you get it perfect, and I can’t get it right. Part of my problem could be that I keep drifting off during the video, thinking about Brett’s lips and the touch of his hand on mine in the hot tub last night.
“Hey,” comes a guy’s voice. I
