Ritual - Palm South University

Kade chuckles, setting his menu down and lifting his glass to his lips for another sip. “Are you upset about it?”

“No,” I answer quickly, shifting. “Just surprised, is all.”

“I love surprising you.”

“Seriously, Kade,” I say on a sigh. “This is… a lot. I’m just… where is the kid who annoyed me at Spring Break last year? Where is the kid who thought telling me he wanted me to sit on his face was a good pick-up line?”

“I was a puppy then, remember?” he says, using the exact words I had. “I’ve been trained.”

“I didn’t train you to do all this,” I argue, gesturing to the table.

Kade leans forward, resting his elbows on the table and folding his hands together. “You said you wanted to be taken on a date,” he reminds me. “You also said you wanted to be mine, and wanted me to be yours. Am I missing anything yet?”

I shake my head.

“Well, for me, I don’t take any of that lightly. If you’re my girl, then I’m not just fucking you in my dorm room and eating burritos wrapped in foil — though that is a good time,” he adds with a grin. Then, he shrugs. “If you’re my girl, then I’m giving you the best that I can.”

“Color me impressed.”

“Oh, this is just the first date,” he says with a grin. “The best is yet to come. And for the record, you may not have liked the proposal when I first gave it, but you know damn well that you love sitting on my face.”

I roll my eyes, taking a sip of my wine just as the waiter asks us for our order. Kade takes over, ordering three different desserts for us to sample from, and once our menus have been taken and it’s just us and our wine, his eyes land on me.

“So, you’re graduating soon,” he says. “What are you going to do next?”

I chuckle. “Why do you care?”

“Jess, if you want more, you’ve gotta give me more, too.”

His eyes are sincere, and somehow that scares me more than anything.

I swallow another sip of wine, staring at the red liquid in my cup. “Hell if I know. I changed my major last year because one thing I figured out for sure, I do not want to go into politics.”

Kade snorts. “I can’t imagine that ever even being an option for you.”

“I thought it was at one point,” I admit. “I was a poli sci major, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and thinking — like everyone else in that major — that I could someday change the world.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. I mean, the classes were hard,” I admit, and a vision of Jarrett at the front of the classroom assaults me out of nowhere. I shake it off as soon as it hits. “But I think more than anything, I realized that — like Ashlei — I love to plan and organize events. I think I have more passion for that than anything else.”

“So, do you want to go into corporate events and advertising like Ashlei?”

I scoff. “Not a chance. I think… maybe… more like weddings.”

Kade’s wearing his shocked expression again.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “I was just thinking how great you’d be at that.”

“Really?”

“Are you kidding? Kappa Kappa Beta just had the best recruitment they’ve ever seen, thanks to you. And every time you host a KKB event, it’s the best one. You have a great knack for attention to detail. Besides,” he says, taking a sip of his wine. “If anyone can wrangle a Bridezilla, it’s you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

I smile, still watching him with a mixture of confusion and appreciation. It’s just so crazy to see this side of him when I’m so used to the other.

“When you blew me off this summer,” I say. “You said there was some family stuff going on.”

Kade’s smile instantly falls, and his gaze drops to his hands. “Yeah.”

“What was it?”

He lets out a long sigh, looking around the restaurant. “Remember how I told you last year that I was practically raised by two rowdy older brothers?”

“I do.”

“Well… they’re half-brothers. Technically. And their dad…” He pauses, jaw ticking.

“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s okay,” he assures me, and his eyes meet mine. “I want to tell you. I want you to know more about me.”

I smile at that, reaching across the table for his hand. And though I’ve touched every other part of him, this — holding hands across a candle-lit table in a room full of strangers — it somehow feels like the most intimate touch we’ve shared.

“Our mom got sick when I was really little,” he says after a moment. “When she passed away, my brothers went to live with their dad, and I stayed with mine. And let’s just say it put a rift in the family, because their dad was an addict and, frankly, a piece of shit. And my dad, while he took care of me, didn’t really want to take care of my brothers — especially when he found out that my mom had been seeing their dad behind his back once she found out she was sick.”