“Guess what happened at the zoo today?”

“Uhhhh, you saw animals?”

“Of course, we saw animals, dummy, but two orangutans started fucking!”

So everyone stood around gawking at these two creatures sharing their most base, intimate moments in a manufactured wild.

That’s how I feel, pulling up to Kai’s apartment, where a pack of paps lie in wait. The video of our fight, our most base, intimate moments, has gone . . . if there is a level beyond viral . . . it’s gone that. And if this is our zoo, our manufactured wild, I’m the crazed orangutan, scouring the preserve for my mate, mad and exposed, dick dangling in the wind for all to see.

“You’re not seriously going out there, are you?” Gep asks from the driver’s seat.

We broke a dozen laws getting here at top speed. From the passenger seat, I’ve called and texted Kai so many times I’ve lost count. No response, unless I count that as her response.

“I have to try, Gep.”

“Are you sure she’s even here?” He scans the twenty to thirty photographers between the parking lot and Kai’s apartment door.

“No, but I see San’s car, so I know he is.”

“Okay, on the count of three then.”

I nod, pulling the bill of my Dodgers cap as low as it will go, obscuring as much of my face as possible. Gep blocks as many shots and flashes as he can with his bulk, but he can’t block the questions hurled at me like grenades.

“What did you and Kai fight about?”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Is it over between you two?”

I tune the questions out, focusing instead on putting one foot in front of the other until I reach the door. I ring the doorbell and wait along with everyone else to see if I’ll get in. When there’s no response, I bang on the door twice, three times, four. Thankfully, before I move to the pathetic, “Rocky” stage of yelling Kai’s name hoarsely from the street, the door cracks open, tethered by the chain. San peeks out at me. This is some door déjà vu.

“Let me in, San. I need to talk to Kai.”

“Oh, because that has gone so well since the last time I let you in.” San shakes his head. “Don’t think so.”

I grit my teeth and check my natural asshole reflex. He sees me standing out here in a hurricane with not even an umbrella, but he’s gonna give me shit right now? Antagonizing San will not get me to Kai. He’s the gatekeeper.

“San, please.” I humble my voice, keeping it low so the vultures behind me don’t hear any more than necessary.

“You stole her shot, you son of a bitch,” San spits through the crack. “Do you have any idea how many years she worked for that moment? And you just took it away because, what? You couldn’t do without the pussy for six weeks?”

Gatekeeper or not, he’s gonnna get punched in the face when I get on the other side of this door. My hands have been insured since I was six years old, and today’s as good as any to test the policy.

“San, I was protecting her.” I keep my voice reasonable, even though blood pistons through my veins. “You gotta believe me. Just let me in so I can explain.”

San looks me in the eye for a few seconds before nodding and taking the chain off. I slip in fast, leaving Gep with his back to the door until I’m done.

I don’t even bother making good on my fantasy of punching San. I’m too anxious to get to Kai. I jet down the hall to her room, half expecting the door to be locked, but again it opens right up.

But unlike last time, she’s not there.

I look around the room, studying the boxes she had packed to move in with me. We were so close. I could strangle John Malcolm. I will find a way to make him pay. I shouldn’t have done what I did. I see that now. I was controlling and manipulative and all the things Kai accused me of. And, yes, I got it honest. I’m my parents’ spawn, but I thought I was protecting her. Ironically, my last sight of her was Malcolm holding the exit door for her, probably driving her home or wherever she is right now. So, where are they?

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone.” San leans against the doorjamb, considering the stacks of Sharpie-marked boxes lining the walls.

“Gone where?” I scowl so hard my face hurts. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

“You’ll find out anyway.” San straightens, walking farther into the room and sitting on Kai’s bed. “She’s gone on tour.”

“What tour?” My heart is an eagle in a birdcage, panicked and trapped. “What are you . . . I don’t . . . explain.”

“Apparently, they filled the spot you made sure Kai didn’t get on Total Package.” San gives me a dirty look. “But Malcolm had other ideas for Kai.”

I just bet he did. Serpent.

“Go on.” I stand with my back against the wall, but my composure is slipping and sliding down its surface, already on the floor.

“He wants Kai to open for Luke’s tour.”

What the hell?

“But she’s not ready for that.” At San’s evil look, I clarify. “I don’t mean talent-wise, I mean, she doesn’t have a set or anything ready. How would that work?”

“Oh, John had a plan. It’s a three-month tour. The opening act is only booked for the first few weeks. During that time, Kai will sing background vocals in the shows, but she will work on her own set too so by the time the opening act leaves, she’ll have her own set together and be ready to open.”

I push away from the wall, pacing the small bedroom, shoving my hands through my hair.

“This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of. Malcolm works his talent to death. Luke almost collapsed last year.”

“Luke seems fine to me. He’s got a top twenty album and a world tour starting.”

If you’ve never been the person pimped out for your gift, so exhausted you wished you didn’t even have it so you can rest, you don’t know what it’s like.

“It’s not that simple, San.” I start toward the door. “I’ve got to—”

He blocks me. The motherfucker blocks me.

“Get outta my way, San,” I say, voice low and hard.

“Do you love Kai?”

What does he think this is about? What kind of dumb question is that?

“You know I do.”

“We have the video on Spotted’s site. Sorry, but seventy-four-year-old grandmas can watch it on Facebook, so of course we have it.”

His point?

“You can’t make out everything Kai says, thank goodness,” San continues. “But I distinctly heard her say that what you did is the exact opposite of love. She told me about it when she came to grab her things, and I agree.”

“Kai knows I love her. She knows—”

“You need to let her go do this.”

“I can’t.”

I shake my head vigorously. The selfish part of me intrudes. I can’t risk her well-being with that snake Malcolm, but I also can’t be separated from her for three months.

“I know Kai loves you, but I think if you don’t let her do what she wanted to do in the first place, make her own way, you’ll lose her for good.”

I hate the ring of truth his words carry. Every muscle and cell in my body strains to tear this city apart until I find her. Until I find Malcolm and can rip into his fleshy face, but somewhere in my heart, the part of me that knows Kai best and feels her deepest, I know San’s right. And it’s from that part that I draw my resolve.

“Could you give me a few minutes?” I ask quietly.

My eyes are trained on the cheap carpet, but I feel San’s eyes on me for long moments before he leaves, closing the door behind him. I sink to the bed I got to share with her only once. I rarely even came this far back in their tiny apartment. Most of our friendship developed in the front seat of my car, skulking around in disguise when I picked her up from The Note. In her living room, on her lumpy couch quoting movies and watching fifteen-year-old television shows, talking sometimes until the sun came up.

The spotlight has sought me most of my life, and I have often shied away. Kai’s been steadily making her way toward center stage, one step forward, two steps back, since she was a little girl. We’ve wanted exactly the same thing, and exactly different things our whole lives.