Free My Soul To Keep (Soul Series Book 1) by Kennedy Ryan Page B

tentative.
    Okay. This is tricky. Start the way you mean to go. I should be honest with her.
    “Yeeeeees.” I draw the word out, pulling apart the letters, exposing all the “maybes” hidden in the crevices. “I’m willing to try.”
    “Try to be friends?” Kai turns her head to look out the passenger window. “That’s kind of the only option, Rhys. It’s friends or nothing.”
    She looks back at me, her tilted eyes picking out my features in the semi-darkness of the car.
    “I can’t give you anything else,” she says. “Is this a real friendship you want to have or just . . .”
    I know what she’s thinking. She’s not stupid. I’d be thinking the same thing.
    “Or just a path to the pussy?” I’m only voicing what crossed her mind.
    Her mouth drops open and then twists with an astonished laugh.
    “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
    “Hey, that’s how I talk to my friends.” I grin, considering for the first time that this might be part enjoyment, not one hundred percent needless torture. “You’re just one of the guys now.”
    Kai nods with a small smile left over from the laughter. I think she means it. I think she does want friends she can trust. Grady says she’s been through a lot, and it shows. I know a guard when I see one. I don’t just live with my guard up. It’s padlocked and on motion-sensored lockdown. With good reason, I don’t trust many with much, but there’s something about Kai. And I suspect, for her, there’s something about me. She could use a friend, and I . . . well, I just want to know her, and since that’s all she’s allowing me for now, I’ll take it.
    “Hey, good buddy.” I take my eyes off the road long enough to tease her with them. “Could you reach back there and grab my food? I’m starving.”
    “Why didn’t you eat at the restaurant?” She unfastens her seatbelt just long enough to grab the Styrofoam container with my burger.
    We aren’t there yet. I don’t know if we’ll ever be. No one knows why I don’t really eat in public. Come to think of it, no one ever notices. Not going there tonight for sure.
    “Can I have a fry?”
    I lean over just enough for her to meet me in the middle with a
    French fry. About fifteen French fries later, we’re at her apartment. That went too fast. She told me more about her shitty night waitressing. I told her about my day, which pretty much consisted of sleep, since I’d been in the studio until three A.M. I thought we’d have more time to talk and figure things out. Though it seems she already has it figured out. I’m squarely, immovably in the friend zone, and Kai intends to maroon me there.
    “Well, guess we’re here.” I start tapping out on the steering wheel the bass line for the track we laid last night. “I guess—”
    “You wanna come in?”
    My eyes snap to her face. Her teeth toy with her bottom lip, and she’s blinking a lot.
    “I mean, you’re hungry.” She gestures to my Styrofoam container in her lap. “I don’t want you driving and trying to eat this bison burger. That’s just not safe. You could, well, you could . . . eat in my kitchen real quick.”
    You’d think, considering that my parents eat their young, and I barely survived it, I would have evolved out of these damn qualms. But no. That dumb voice in my head is qualming away.
    “Are you sure you want me to come in, Kai?”
    We look at each other, and I imagine the dim parking lot lights aren’t showing Kai much more of my face than they show me of hers, but I see everything. I’m not the only one fighting the attraction between us. Kai has her reasons, and even if I don’t get them, I want to respect them.
    She blows out a long breath, tips her head back, and closes her eyes before looking back at me.
    “I guess that depends.” She shifts, pressing her back against the passenger door to study me closely. “Do you mean it when you say we can be friends?”
    “I mean it as much as I can mean