in the six months she’s known him, and his musical tastes mainly comprise Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Nirvana. Great Seattle bands, sure, but they’re all before her time, and they remind her of her dad, who used to play those albums loud until the summer he moved out. They also remind Kenzie that Derek is older, and while at first those differences were a turn-on, it’s a loose thread that they both keep yanking on, and their relationship is starting to unravel.
It can’t unravel. Kenzie’s invested too much into this.
The Cedarbrook Lodge is a hotel thirty minutes outside Seattle, right by Sea-Tac. When Derek first told her about it, she assumed it was going to be one of those generic airport hotels. But it’s surprisingly nice. It has a fancyish restaurant and a luxury spa, and the suite Derek books is nearly as large as the apartment Kenzie shares with her roommate Tyler, but with a fireplace. The property surrounding the hotel is well tended and lush, and it’s rather romantic. But that isn’t why Derek likes it. They come here because he isn’t likely to run into anyone who knows him, and if he does, he can always say he’s got an early flight the next morning.
Whatever it is they’re doing has zero to do with romance.
Derek pulls into the parking lot and instructs her to wait in the car while he takes care of the front desk business and picks up the key cards. He’s back a few moments later.
“We’ll use the side entrance,” he says to her, and now he’s smiling, cheerful, trying to distract her from the fact that he doesn’t want the desk clerk to see her. They’ve used the side entrance every time, and it’s insulting that he still feels the need to remind her, as if she’s a child who requires consistent repetition to learn something.
They enter through the side door, Derek carrying his overnight bag, and she carrying hers. In the beginning, he would always carry both bags, and Kenzie loved the chivalry of it. Somewhere along the way, though, he stopped offering. She commented on it once, and he laughed at her.
“Come on, Kenz. You’re a millennial and a self-described feminist. You can’t be those things and then expect a man to carry your bag for you.”
Maybe he’s right, but it’s not about expectations at all, and she doesn’t know how to explain this to him without making it a bigger deal than it is. She wants Derek to want to be the guy who carries her bag when they’re entering a hotel. She wants him to be the guy who holds her hand on the sidewalk, who comes upstairs when he picks her up, who takes her to dinner at places his friends might be, who takes a selfie with her that she’s allowed to post on Instagram.
Kenzie wants him to be so many things he’s not, but she doesn’t know how to ask for them, because she’s never wanted them until now.
She knew he was rich from the beginning. She knew he was married. She knew his young son was missing. She knew he was vulnerable, ripe for an affair, and open to anything that would take the pain away. She also knew he was generous with his wallet.
He was, in short, the perfect mark.
She follows him down the hallway, wondering for the hundredth time how it all could have gone so wrong. She was never supposed to fall for him. And if she doesn’t figure out her next step soon, she’s going to fuck up the entire plan.
Chapter 11
Her nude selfie is Marin’s iPhone wallpaper.
And now, every time she picks up her phone, there are McKenzie Li’s tits. Every time she checks the time, there’s McKenzie Li’s crotch. She stares at the cherry blossom tattoo that winds its way up the younger woman’s slim torso from her hip to her breast. Marin knows next to nothing about tattoos, but even she can acknowledge the artistry, the bold fuchsias and pinks inked on in a watercolor effect. Only a twenty-four-year-old woman with a body like this could feel comfortable lying half-naked on a folding table for the hours it must have taken for a stranger to etch ink into her flesh with a needle.
The picture fills Marin with rage, and she keeps staring at it. Rage is better than sadness. Rage is better than numb. This woman is everything Marin is not, and she can only