The Bride Test (28 page)

He raked a hand through his hair and took a half step toward her. “You were fine at my place until recently. Why can’ t—”

“Do you love me?” she asked softly, giving him a chance to change everything.

He clenched his jaw tight and clasped her hands in his. “I can keep you safe, and I can carry you when you’re hurt, and I can ...” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “I can kiss you like it’s the first time
every
time. I can— I can ...” His expression went determined. “I can work with you on the lawn. I can even get it professionally done. I can fix up the house for you. If you want. Whatever kind of wedding you want, I can—”

“Khải,” she said firmly. “Do you love me?”

His eyes fell shut, and the fight leaked out of him. “No, I don’t.”

She blinked back tears, pulled her hands away from him, and continued packing the sugar boxes. Three pink packets. Three blue packets. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She wasn’t going to fall apart. “You should go. You will be late for work.”

He took a long, uneven breath. “ Good-bye, then.”

She forced a smile. “Have a nice day.”

He leaned forward like he had every intention of kissing her, and for a moment, she was going to let him. She could almost feel the softness of his lips on hers, almost taste him. She turned her face to the side at the last second, and after hesitating briefly, he backed away.

“Bye, Mom.” He waved at Cô Nga.

And then he was gone.

Esme’s shoulders slumped, and she watched his silver Porsche speed from the parking lot through blurred eyes. Sadness swelled and dragged, and she was vaguely amazed she managed to stay standing. Look how strong she was. She could handle this. He was just another man.

Cô Nga came and sat down in the booth, looking shell-shocked and defeated. “I don’t understand when he’s like this. He prefers you, I can tell. It’s clear as daytime. Why did he say that? I don’t know.”

Saying nothing, Esme focused on the sugar packets. She stuffed one last packet into the black box, placed it against the wall next to the sriracha, hoisin, and chili sauce, and moved to the next booth. As she picked up the white sugar packets, however, wet droplets splashed onto the paper. She wiped it on her shirt and got out a new packet, but she got that one wet, too.

“Here, here, here.” Cô Nga pulled her into a hug. “Here, here, Precious Girl.”

Her control snapped, and hard sobs wracked her. She wasn’t that strong, after all. “I’m sorry,” Esme said. “I’m not your ‘precious girl’ anymore. I tried. But then I fell in love with him, and I can’t be with him when it’s like this. I’ll break.”

Everyone deserved to love and be loved back.
Everyone.
Even her.

Cô Nga rubbed Esme’s back like she was shredding carrots. “Here, here, you’ll always be my Precious Girl. Always.”

Esme hugged her tighter before she swiped a sleeve over her face. “I would have liked to have you as my mother-in-law.”

Cô Nga patted her cheek, watching her with sad, wise eyes. Then she got her phone out of her apron and held it as far away as possible as she squinted at the screen, selected a phone number to call, and put it on speaker.

After a series of rings, Quân picked up, asking in a distracted tone, “Hi, Mom, how are you?”

“You need to talk to your brother,” she said.

“Does this have anything to do with Esme— Mỹ? Did you ever find her?”

Cô Nga nodded quickly even though Quân couldn’t see. “Yeah, yeah, she’s here.”

“Oh good, that’s great. I’ ll—” Background voices interrupted him, and there were muffled sounds like he’d covered the phone to speak to someone on his end. “Yeah, I have to go. I’ll call him tonight.”

“Not tonight. Now,” Cô Nga insisted. “And if he doesn’t answer, you need to go see him.”

“I can’t. I’m in New York pitching for the next stage of fund—”

Cô Nga spoke over her son. “Come home. This is
important
. He’s your only brother and needs your help.”

Quân released a slow breath. “Sometimes, he doesn’t want my help.”

“You have to try. He’s your responsibility. Be better than that stinky father of yours.”

There was a long silence on the phone before Quân said, “I’ll take care of it. I really have to go. Bye, Mom.”

The line went dead, and Cô Nga muttered to herself and stuck her phone back in her apron.

Esme grabbed a handful of sugar packets but hesitated before putting them in the box. “I don’t know what Anh Quân can do, Cô Nga. He sounds busy.” This drama between Esme and Khải didn’t seem like it should take priority.

Cô Nga waved Esme’s comment away. “You have to be tough with Quân like this. I know, I’m his mom. But he gets things done when I push him. You’ll see.”

“He seems to do well all by himself. He’s a CEO, isn’t he? That’s an accomplishment.” Esme couldn’t imagine doing anything like that.

“It sounds good, but it’s a small company. Nothing like Khải,” Cô Nga said in a dismissive manner.

Again, Esme got the impression they weren’t talking about the same Khải. Why did people make it sound like he was mega-successful when he wasn’t? She shook her head and got to work. It didn’t matter.

She had to mind her own business. There were three weeks left before she had to leave, and the clock was ticking.

In this country of empowered people, justice, and fairness, opportunities were there for everyone. Marriage and birth couldn’t be the only ways to belong here. She didn’t believe that.

There had to be something she could do to earn her place here, some way to prove herself. She had to keep looking.

K
hai sat down in front of his desk in his office, and he honestly didn’t remember driving here, walking into the building, or going up the elevator. He’d done it all on autopilot.

He’d been too busy adjusting to the knowledge that Esme was safe and unharmed. The previous day had passed in a white blur. Even though logic had told him she was most likely fine, horrible scenarios had possessed his mind nonstop, and he’d been a wreck, not sleeping, not eating, watching the news in case she showed up on a gurney in an ambulance.

Now that he knew she was okay, he finally relaxed and let himself contemplate the fact that she was not only refusing to marry him, but moving out early, too. Back there in the restaurant, he’d made the best case for staying with him that he could. And she’d turned him down— as she should have.

Just look at him now. He’d thought he’d go through a terrible withdrawal when Esme left him for good, but he was shocking himself with how fine he was. Everything was perfectly, perversely, anticlimactically
fine
. He wasn’t sad or mad or depressed. He felt ... nothing.

As he started his computer and watched the screen come to life, mundane work tasks lined up neatly in his head— emails, projects, important shit. He was like a fucking machine. Back online, ready for production.

When he opened his first email, however, it took him three tries before his cold fingers could type “Hi, Sidd” correctly (that would be Sidd Mathur, the
M
from
DMSoft
), and even then, he wasn’t sure he’d spelled “Hi” right. Was it just an
H
and an
i
? That didn’t seem like enough letters for such an important concept.

Whatever, he would plow through. People said he was smart. All he had to do was focus. He was good at focusing, too good sometimes. When he finally finished the email, he checked the clock and was floored to see he’d spent two entire hours on one short paragraph of text.

He sighed and lifted a hand toward his forehead to massage it— and accidentally poked himself in the eye.
Shit.
Now that he was paying attention, his head throbbed, his face hurt, and his limbs felt off, like they’d been taken from someone else and glued onto him. He was probably getting sick. It had been a while since the last time, so he was due something awful. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had a flu shot in years.

He opened his desk drawer, got out the small bottle of ibuprofen he kept there, popped the lid off, and shook a couple of pills into his palm. At least, that was how he envisioned it in his mind. What really happened was he scattered pills all over himself, his desk, and the floor.

When he went to clean up the mess, pills crunched under his feet and knees and slipped out from between his fingers. By the time he’d gathered the majority of the pills back into their jar and accidentally pulverized the rest, he’d banged his elbow on his chair and hit his head on the desk.

He stepped into the hall, meaning to go to the kitchen for water, and he noticed the office was eerily empty. It was like working on Christmas.

That was when he remembered today they had an off-site company-wide team-building thing.
Fuuuuck.
His partner was going to give him shit for being antisocial again. When his phone started buzzing, he dug it out of his pocket and answered it without checking who it was.

“Yo, it’s me. How are you doing?” asked a familiar voice that did
not
belong to his partner.

“Hi, Quan. Everything’s ...” He glanced at the pill bits all over the floor of his office, and look at that, one of his shoelaces had come undone. “Everything’s fine. Why are you calling?”

“Mom says I need to fly back from New York to see you because it’s an emergency. What’s up?”

“There is no emergency.”

“How’s Esme?” Quan asked in a neutral tone.

“Fine.”

Quan kept quiet and waited.

When Khai couldn’t take it anymore, he said, “She’s not coming back. She found an apartment by the restaurant that she likes better than my place.”

“How are you with that?”

“Fine. I’m just ... fine.” And he wished he wasn’t. If he could manage some manner of dramatic emotional upheaval and prove he was heartbroken at her loss— and therefore in love— he could keep her.

But nope. He was A-OK.

“Want me to come home early?” Quan asked. “We can do shit. I dunno, go pick up chicks at a tax convention or something.”

“No, thanks.” He didn’t want to do anything that involved women for a long time, and the thought of “picking up chicks” made his headache worse, even though it meant he got to go to a tax convention.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then, but if you need anything, you can call me whenever. If I don’t pick up, I’ll call you back as soon as I can,” Quan said.

“You don’t need to tell me this. I already know.” Quan was the most dependable thing in Khai’s life.

“Just reminding you. Okay, I’m gonna let you go now. Bye, little brother.”

“Bye.”

As soon as the line went dead, he looked around the vacant office, took a step, and almost ended up facedown on the floor. Sighing, he went down on one knee and grabbed his laces, but he tried multiple times and the things wouldn’t tie. What the fuck was wrong with him? He had to be coming down with the flu. Fed up with the entire process, he took his shoes off and carried them with him as he left the building and walked home. No way he was driving or going to a team-building thing like this.

The trek was long and hot and weird with no shoes on, and he was pretty sure people slowed down as they passed him. He didn’t feel at all like a Terminator today, not one in good condition, anyway. When he reached his place, he was sweaty, dehydrated, and badly in need of a shower, but after the door swung open, he stood there, unable to enter.

His entire body resisted going inside. His head spun, his heart slammed, and his stomach twisted. The house was too dark, and the musty air made him want to throw up. It didn’t make sense. He’d been in there just this morning. But he’d been too focused on possible Esme catastrophes to notice anything else.

He sat down on the concrete steps outside and smeared the sweat away from his clammy face. This flu really sucked. He was
exhausted
. He could sleep and sleep for ages. But he had to shower and air out the house first. That musty heaviness, whatever it was, had to go. Maybe one of Esme’s fruits was decaying in the trash and there were mold spores floating everywhere.

Gritting his teeth, he got up, stepped inside, and tossed his shoes to the floor, not caring where they landed. He couldn’t breathe. The air was thick and oppressive, all wrong.

Mold spores, mold spores.

He marched to the kitchen and yanked the trash out of the cabinet. Empty. What the hell? He searched the kitchen for other locations where fruit could be moldering away. None.

All surfaces were spotless. The only thing out of place was a half-filled water glass on the counter. Esme’s. Warmth pricked over his cold skin in a sick wave. He didn’t realize he was reaching for the glass until he saw his hand approaching, and he stopped himself before making contact. Curling his fingers into a fist, he backed away. He didn’t want to put her glass in the dishwasher like he always did. He wanted it ... right there.

This suffocating
air
. He hurried through the house, opening all the windows and doors, but it didn’t help. His nausea got so bad he spent a few minutes hunched over the toilet, but he didn’t throw up. Bed, he should just go to bed, but not when he was sweaty like this.

Somehow he got through a shower without wounding himself in the process and dressed in an inside-out sweater (to keep the seams off his skin) and workout shorts— he wanted layers, lots of layers, and was looking forward to his heavy blankets. But when it was time to get in bed, his limbs locked, and he couldn’t do it.

It was official now. Esme was never going to sleep in this bed again.

No more naked Esme welcoming him close, inside her body, crying his name as she clung to him. No more Esme weight draped over him like a sloth in a tree, warm and soft and perfect. No more Esme smiles at night, in the morning, and every time he looked at her.

He yanked the comforter off the bed and carried it to the living room, where he wrapped the blanket around himself and collapsed onto the couch. Fuck, they’d had sex on this couch. On the green shag carpet, too. Everywhere. And there was another one of her half-filled cups on the coffee table. He couldn’t escape her— he didn’t even know if he wanted to— and his head felt like it was going to explode.