I was already on my third beer by the time the clock rolled around time for Kai to get off work. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d already paced my apartment so many times that my feet had started to hurt, and it wasn’t like I had a lot of energy anyways.

Most of the day had passed in a blur after I’d come in to see Kai. I had no idea why he was acting so weird, so jumpy, like a bug in a frying pan, but it upset me. Why else would he behaving that way if he wasn’t afraid of someone finding out about us being together—and more than that, what if he was afraid not about them finding out we were dating in and of itself, but that he was linked to someone like me, someone who was clearly not up to his social level?

Then again, maybe that was me being plum stupid. I tossed back another deep swig of my beer, which had gone warm while it sat in my palm. I didn’t have his phone number to call or text him, yet another thing that ruffled my feathers, but I wouldn’t have had it in me to call or text him even if I did have his digits because I didn’t wanna seem desperate.

In any case, he and I had a lot to talk about, and I hoped he showed up soon because I was going crazy waiting. The bar would definitely be closed by now, and if I knew Jason half as well as I thought I did, he would’ve gotten things done in a heartbeat so he could get home to Dan—and get Kai home as soon as possible, because less time on the clock was less money he had to pay.

So where was Kai? Why hadn’t I gotten the knock at the door yet? Maybe he’d chickened out; maybe he’d decided he just didn’t want to do this anymore. I couldn’t say I blamed him, especially not after the way he was acting earlier in the evening, but it did seem kinda cowardly. For somebody as put together and respected is him, I would’ve at least expected him to break up with me face to face. He wouldn’t just disappear on me, would he?

With a sigh, I stood up, downed the rest of the beer, and made to walk it over to the recycling bin. I had just tossed it in when a knock pounded on my door, making me jump out of my skin. Almost at once, my heart leaped into action, and I didn’t know what to do. Should I let him in? What if I did and whatever he had to tell me went wrong?

But who was I kidding? Of course, I was gonna let him in. I’d been waiting to hear what he had to say all damn day.

I dashed across the apartment and peeked through the peephole. Sure enough, it was Kai, and he was staring down at the floor with his hands in his pockets. I opened the door slowly, looked him up and down, and he gave me a sad smile.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said and stepped aside to let him in. He shivered and rubbed his arms to try to warm up after he got inside, and I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around him, pass some of my infinite warmth over to him. That might come later if we were lucky, but right now I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t want to muddy the waters or make him decide not to share things with me.

“How was work?” I asked. What else was I supposed to say? It wasn’t like we could sit and have a normal conversation, not with all this hanging over our heads like a summer storm.

“It was okay. Jason likes to get things done fast, doesn’t he?” he asked.

“Yeah, he doesn’t screw around. Whenever we were together, we got in and out pretty quick. I kinda like that about him, though,” I said.

“Yeah, it was nice. Not like when you and I work together, and we don’t get out of there until an hour after we’re supposed to,” he laughed.

“I don’t think Jason’s very happy when that happens either,” I said. “Anyway, you want something to drink? All I’ve got is beer.”

“Sounds good,” he said and went to sit down on the sofa. It groaned underneath him, the same way it always did, and for a moment I wondered whether it was me who’d let out the sound. How was I supposed to start this conversation? And how was it going to go? There was something he needed to say, but my pounding heart refused to let me ask what it might be.

I pulled two more beers out of the fridge, cracked the lid off with the utensil sitting on the counter nearby, and came back into the living room. After I passed him one, which he smiled at me for, I sat down beside him, keeping a little bit of distance between us so that I didn’t tempt myself. When I was that close to him, something kinda took over me, and all my senses seemed to go right out the window. I couldn’t risk that right now; we needed to talk, needed to keep things level headed.

“I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll just say it. What the hell was going on earlier when I came into the bar?” I asked. He sighed, looked around the room, and took a deep pull off the beer bottle.

“I was afraid of this,” he said, still not looking at me.

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know, that things would move too fast, that our personal lives couldn’t stay separate from our professional ones,” he said, but I didn’t fully believe him. Was that all there was to it?

“Well, who says they gotta? I dunno if you’ve noticed, but we work for two guys who are in a relationship. It ain’t all that outta the ordinary,” I said.

“I know, but there’s more at stake for me than there is for them,” he said, and despite myself, my eyebrows perked up.

“Like what?” I asked, genuinely curious. What could there be that he wasn’t telling me?

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“We got all night. And I got plenty of beer, so get started,” I said. I was tired of waiting, tired of beating around the bush. Whatever it was he needed to say; whatever it was he hadn’t told me, he needed to do it now before things went any further between us.

“It’s about my parents,” he started, staring down at the bottle again as he drummed his fingers on it. Whatever it was, it must’ve been major, because he didn’t go any further. It was almost like he couldn’t, like the thought itself had turned into a little goblin on his tongue and was holding his lips shut.

“What about them? Are you gonna tell me something stupid like you’re adopted?” I asked, and he looked at me at me with a smirk.

“No, smartass, it’s much more of a big deal than that,” he said.

“What is it? Just spit it out, whatever it is, I can’t be that bad. And you can trust me; you know that” I said.

“I know I can, but don’t say I didn’t warn you of time. It’s a pretty messy situation,” he said.

“Man, my whole life is a messy situation. I’m used to that stuff by now. Besides, if you can’t tell me, then who can you tell, right?” He smiled and nodded at me, then reached over and took my hand in his.

“Before I get started on any of this, I just want you to know that it has nothing to do with you. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about someone else, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said. Again my heart started to hammer in my chest. The only time people started a conversation like that was when they were about to drop a bombshell, the kind of bombshell that might end the relationship—if we could even call this a relationship so far.

“Okay, I’m glad we got that out of the way then,” I said, totally unsure of what else to say.

“Good. I’m glad you understand where I’m coming from. Okay, so, I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shocker to you, but I’m pretty rich, or at least my family is,” he said, and I laughed at him.

“No shit, Sherlock. It’s not like a quick Google search of your name doesn’t turn up a million results for you and your parents or anything. I know you’ve got bank, that doesn’t scare me,” I said with a shrug. Truthfully, I didn’t. I knew a few rich southerners here in the Beauclaire area, and just because they had money didn’t mean nothing. Some of them were nice, some of them were dicks. That’s just the way the mop flops.

“Well, it’s not about that so much. It’s more that there’s a lot of money at stake for me if you catch my drift,” he said.

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” I said. “Why don’t you spell it out for me because I’m feeling a little lost here.”

“Have you ever heard of something called a trust fund?” he asked, and I had to stop myself from laughing.

“Wait, wait, wait… are you telling me the reason you’re having a little freak out about us is that you think money’s gonna get taken away from you?” I asked. I wasn’t upset; I was stunned in the funniest way. Talk about something insignificant, something that didn’t matter to me at all. If he needed to keep us on the hush-hush, well, sure, I could play that game. It wouldn’t bother me much, all that mattered was that he and I continued seeing each other without either of us paying any other consequences if that was possible.

“You make it sound like it’s the most normal thing in the world,” he laughed.

“Well, don’t get me wrong, it ain’t normal, but it’s not like it’s so crazy that I’ve never heard of such a thing before. Is that what you’re scared of? That your parents would find out you were seeing me and they might cut you off because of it?” I asked.

“It sounds so stupid when you say it out loud like that, but yeah, that’s more or less where I’m coming from,” he said, staring down at his lap again. He wiped the condensation off the outside of his beer bottle and let out a sigh. “That’s why I didn’t want Jason to know about us. I didn’t want to risk losing this job because whether or not you realize it, my future kind of rides on holding down my end of the bargain.”

“What do you mean when you say bargain? I was under the impression that inheritance worked no matter how good or bad of a kid you were,” I said.

“Well, then you’ve never met my parents. Everything is measured and doled out in response to my behavior. I don’t know how much you’ve seen online, God only knows what’s out there and what is true and what isn’t of it, but I threw this really big house party at the college that I was going to back in Stockholm,” he said. I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it. This was the first time he’d ever talked to me about what happened, how he’d ended up here in Beauclaire, and I didn’t want to stop him now. I might not ever get the chance again. Instead, I nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“It was fun, quite a bit of fun, but eventually things got out of control. More people than I knew were going to show up did show up, and not all of them were college students. One thing led to another, and before I knew it there was a fire in the house, like, a literal fire,” he said, and I widened my eyes at him.

“How the hell did that happen?” I asked.

“That’s a damn good question, something I still don’t have the answer to. Anyway, the cops were called, and it turns out the person who agreed to host the party on my behalf didn’t even know the owner of the house. We’d all broken into the place, unwittingly, and caught it on fire. My parents had to spend a fortune to get me out of trouble, to keep me from going to jail, and they’d had enough of spending legal fees on me, so here I am,” he said with a sad shrug of his shoulders.

“I mean, I can’t blame them for being ticked off at you, can you?” I asked. I couldn’t even imagine how I would react if I had a kid who’d ended up in a situation like that, especially when my reputation and my career were being judged at every angle because of his behavior.

“No, of course not. That’s kind of what I’m getting at with this. They sent me here just to be rid of me because they were tired of cleaning up my little fires everywhere, but when I got here, I realized I needed to turn my life around. I couldn’t keep being the spoiled little rich kid who had everything handed to them because it was quite literally being taken away. It was long past time for me to stand on my own two feet,” he said.

“Good for you. That’s the American way, right there, in a nutshell,” I said and reached out to massage his shoulder. He smiled at me like he appreciated it, but he still seemed a little uncomfortable. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Well, that’s not all,” he said.

“What else is there? I mean, you just dropped the bomb on me, I can’t imagine how much worse it could be,” I said.

“Well, it’s not exactly worse, but it is a little complicated. See, the thing is, when my parents shipped me off here, they gave me a little bit of money and set me up with an apartment. I mean, they’re not totally heartless, they weren’t just going to let me live on the streets, but the deal was that if they heard of any whiff of trouble from me while I was here—and they did mean any whiff of trouble—they’d revoke my trust fund in a heartbeat and pull out any of the money they’d given me to set me up here,” he said. Comprehension dawned on me like doom. So this was the real kicker, the real problem underneath everything else.

Oh well, at least it wasn’t me, in particular, he had a problem with. He’d started his whole spiel by saying that, but I didn’t believe it until now. Though I was concerned, I was also relieved at the same time, because it meant that whatever conflicting feelings he was having right now weren’t because of me—they were because of his parents and the money they were holding over his head like some carrot on a stick.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly. It’s not that I don’t want to keep seeing you because trust me, I do, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone else to find out about it. I mean, what if word spreads? What if Dan goes and says something to a mutual friend of his and my parents, or even worse, to my parents themselves?” he asked. “He knows them. It could happen, and then what would happen to me?”

“I don’t understand the problem here. It’s not like they’re going to be upset that you’re dating somebody, right?” I asked.

“Not exactly, no. But, well, they’re pretty full of themselves, in case you hadn’t already figured that out,” he said.

“Well yeah, I mean, your arrogance had to come from somewhere, right?” I asked, giving him a playful punch on the arm. It was all I could do to try to lighten the mood. I felt sorry for him, couldn’t imagine being in his shoes, but at the same time, I felt like I was losing him already without him saying it. Maybe he never would; maybe he would just disappear someday, vanish back to Sweden to take his money and run.

“Something like that, yeah,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t think they would approve of me seeing someone older,” he said. “And I don’t mean any offense by that; I don’t want you to feel like you’re not good enough for me or whatever, because you are. I like you, but think about it from their perspective… imagine if I were spotted with you in public and pictures started to surface online. It wouldn’t exactly reflect on them very well, like they’d shipped me off and now I was descending into sexual depravity with an older southern man or something, you know?” he asked, and I laughed, but it wasn’t because I thought it was funny. In fact, I thought it was pretty sad.

More than that, I was almost convinced that though we weren’t calling it quits just yet, it was right around the corner. This had to have been his way of filling me in so that when he did disappear, I wouldn’t be left wondering why. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

“So what do you wanna do about it then? If you need to keep things hush hush for a while until the dust settles, I can live with that. I mean, I’d rather not, but I could if you wanted me to,” I said, and he fixed me with a look that said he very much doubted it. “What? You don’t believe me?”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t believe you, and I don’t think you’d ever do something on purpose, but well, you more or less told Jason earlier today without ever telling him and I’m just worried you might do that same thing with the wrong person without meaning to,” he said and my heart deflated like a punctured tire.

“I’ll have a little talk with Jason, don’t worry about him,” I said. He wasn’t the one either of us needed to worry about. I pulled Kai into my arms, held him close, but still felt like he was sand slipping through my fingers, like I’d already lost him. “And I promise, I won’t say nothing stupid to get us in trouble.”

“Thank you,” he said and nuzzled his head against my chest. “I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

“Why not?”

“I dunno, I just feel like I’m asking a lot of you and I wouldn’t be upset if you told me to screw off,” he said.

“Yeah, that’ll be a cold day in hell,” I said, and he chuckled. “You think I’m just gonna let you go because of your stuck up parents? No way, no how,” I continued. “This is all hella crazy and moving faster than anything in this town ever has, but I don’t wanna lose it. We’ll figure it out, together, one way or another.”

We sat frozen like that, him in my lap and me lost in the rush of my thoughts, for what seemed like hours. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t disappear, that I was just looking for the worst in the situation like I always did, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that that was exactly what was happening.