The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient #3)(52)

“I’ll get going, then,” I say. I’ve only been here about an hour and it took just as long to get here, but I know when I shouldn’t hang around.

Her forehead wrinkles with worry. “Are you sure—”

“It’s no problem.” I squeeze her hand once so she knows I mean it, but when I sense her mom is watching us closely, and disapproving, I let her go.

“It was good to see you,” I tell her mom before Anna walks me back to the front door, where we stand in the doorway, not ready to part yet.

“Text me when you get home?” she says.

That makes me smile. “Yeah, okay.”

“Is that a clingy-girlfriend kind of thing to ask?”

“I don’t think so, but maybe I like clingy girlfriends,” I say. Whatever kind of girlfriend Anna is, that’s the kind I like. “Good night.” I kiss her mouth once, just once, and words—I don’t know where they came from—catch in my mouth, wanting to be freed. I don’t let them go, though. They’re scary.

“Drive safe.” She touches my face wistfully, and I leave the house and return to my car.

Once I start the engine, I sit there a moment, thinking about the words that I almost said. I’m glad I held them back, but not because I don’t feel them. I do feel them. I just don’t think Anna is ready to hear them.

I need to win her family over first.





TWENTY-THREE





Anna

AS PRISCILLA SCRUBS OUR DAD’S FEET WITH A SOAPY WASH cloth, I shave the shady-looking mustache and beard from his face with an electric razor. I’m not good at this. I keep worrying he’ll breathe in his shavings, so I wipe his mouth repeatedly. I can tell he doesn’t like it. He keeps grimacing and trying to turn away from me, and it feels like I’m torturing him.

“Are you sure we need to do this?” I ask.

“Yes,” Priscilla says in the brusque, annoyed tone that she often uses with me. “Stop being a baby and get it done. He hates it because you take too long.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” I whisper as I shave the last bit of hair from his upper lip and then wipe it away.

Our mom enters the room, her favorite cup in hand, steam rising from the hot tea, and sits on the sofa close to our dad’s bed.

“What happened to Julian?” she asks.

Before I can answer, Priscilla does—in Cantonese, so I have no idea what she’s saying. Judging by our mom’s face as she absorbs the information and the tone of her voice as she replies, she doesn’t like what she heard.

“It’s an open relationship, Ma. People are doing it these days,” Priscilla says, switching to English for my benefit.

“Julian wanted this? An … open relationship?” our mom asks in disbelief.

I nod and quietly finish shaving our dad’s chin.

“And what does this Quan do for work?” she asks.

“He started an apparel company with his cousin.”

Priscilla glances up from our dad’s feet, arching her eyebrows at me. “You mean he sells T-shirts out of his trunk?”

“I don’t know, actually. He doesn’t talk about his work very much.” I try to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I’m squirming inside. Selling T-shirts from a trunk is a very far drop from investment banking for Goldman Sachs.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know what you guys spend your time doing, and it’s not talking about work,” Priscilla says with a smirk.

“We still haven’t done that,” I reply, perversely happy that my sexual hang-ups—and Quan’s—led to me getting one over on my sister. I squirt shampoo into my hand and carefully work it into our dad’s hair.

“And what did I see in the kitchen?” our mom asks indignantly.

“Skank,” Priscilla says, but she looks envious. “I hope I don’t need to remind you that what you two are doing is just for fun. Don’t go getting attached.”

It’s too late for that, but I keep that to myself.

“Just for fun.” Our mom shakes her head, looking like she can barely understand the concept.

“Oh, come on, Ma,” Priscilla says. “You never dated before Ba?”

Our mom gives a tired sigh. “No, Ba was my first and only.” She reaches past me and touches our dad’s hand, a soft remembering smile on her face, before she focuses on me. “I thought Julian would be your first and only, Anna.”

“I thought so, too, but …” I shrug because I honestly don’t care anymore. I soak a towel in warm water, ring it out, and then use it to get the soap out of our dad’s hair. He likes this, I think. His facial muscles are relaxed, and his breathing is slow and calm. Bath time is the only time he looks this way.

“Are you guys still talking at all?” Priscilla asks.

“He’s been texting recently.” The reminder has my mouth flattening. I have a bunch of texts from him to reply to, but I’ve been putting it off because it’s so exhausting.

“Anna, that’s a good sign,” Priscilla says. “He might be getting ready to settle down.”

That thought had crossed my mind, but unlike Priscilla, it doesn’t make me happy. If Julian is back in the picture, I’ll have to tell someone no, and that is really hard for me.