“You didn’t get my text?”
“My phone was in my purse. I literally got it when Michelle called for me.”
Michelle smiled. “Take off with your friends. I’ll lock up.”
When we got to Luke’s car, Sam told me to wait while they pulled out my housewarming gift. It was a beautiful wooden easel, exactly like the ones I’d always told Sam I wanted when I was using the cheap ones at school.
My eyes filled with tears and I covered my mouth.
“What’s up?” Sam asked, her face a mask of worry.
I shook my head, wiping my tears away. “I just feel like a bad friend. Here you’ve got me a gift and I haven’t been honest with you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Luke said, walking away quickly.
Sam waited until he had slammed the door to ask, “What’s going on?”
“Okay, you have to promise not to tell your mom because you know she’ll tell mine. Promise me?”
“You’re worrying me, Amy.”
“It’s not that bad, just promise me, okay?” When Sam nodded, I launched into the story. I told her about how Dallon had first appeared at my work after Jeremy told him I was at the Cat and Fiddle and we went for drinks. I told her he had appeared at my work again when I hadn’t answered his messages, and that I had ended up going to his place, where he made me dinner. I explained that he hadn’t wanted me to work at Mix and had suggested I save money by moving in with him. I then told her about what happened at my place and how he had negotiated my moving out with my landlord.
“So you’re living with him now?” Sam asked incredulously.
I nodded, an awkward smile on my face. If Dallon could meet Sam, he’d see that she was even more conservative than me. She was looking at me exactly the way I had expected she would.
“I was afraid you’d react like this,” I said softly. “It’s how my mom would react too.”
Sam’s face softened. “I don’t mean to be a mom about it, but I’m worried. How much do you know about this guy?”
I shrugged. “We’re closer than you’d expect considering the amount of time we’ve known each other.”
“Are you sleeping together?”
“No.” I paused. “Other things, yeah. But no sex.”
Sam nodded and then sighed heavily. “It’s cool I guess that he didn’t want you living at that place anymore. I didn’t want you living there either, so I can’t blame him.” She worried her lip a bit before continuing. “It just seems… quick. Intense.”
“I know.”
“How’s it going?”
I shrugged. “I’m kind of mad at him still so not that great. But it will get better, I’m sure,” I rushed to assure her.
“The way he went about it just seems so… controlling.”
I blanched. Trust Sam to hit the nail on the head. “He’s very protective.”
Sam sighed again and put her arm around me, led me toward the car again. “Don’t be afraid to tell me things, okay? I’m your best friend.”
I smiled gratefully. “Okay. And I’m sorry—I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”
“I just want you to be careful.” She hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Let me know if anything weird happens with him.”
“For sure,” I said, the guilty feeling returning because I knew I still wasn’t being entirely honest; I’d already protected Dallon’s secrets, and probably always would.
When we got into the car, Sam turned to Luke. “We’re going for dinner to celebrate. Amy moved in with Dallon King.”
Luke spun around in his seat to face me. “Whoa, Ames. I didn’t know you two are officially together.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at me, a small smile on her lips.
I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, it just happened. As in yesterday.”
Luke rubbed his face before putting the car in drive. “I can see why he’s so successful. When Dallon King wants something, he moves fast.”
Chapter Fifteen
When I got home, Dallon’s door was still open and he was nowhere to be seen. It looked like he hadn’t come home yet. Maybe he decided to go in to work, even though it was a Sunday.
I made myself a snack, making a mental note that I should at least buy some groceries tomorrow. I ate it at the breakfast bar and then cleaned up after myself. It was after 11 p.m., and Dallon still wasn’t home. I went to my room at watch a movie and heard him come in long after midnight. He went directly to the kitchen and began fixing himself something to eat. Still sleepy, I tip-toed out of my room and into the hallway, stepping far enough forward that I could just see into the kitchen through the railing that lined the hallway of the upper floor. Through the bars, I watched as he grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter, his back to me. He’d pulled his dress shirt free from his pants, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. He was drinking his beer and looking out the window, apparently lost in his thoughts. When he stilled mid-sip as if suspecting he was being watched, I quickly ducked back into my room.
The next morning, it was the same thing: he was gone when I woke up, and I was in bed when he came home, in the early morning. He sent me a text asking if there was something wrong with my phone, but I didn’t reply.
On Tuesday, my last day of work, I went out for drinks with Michelle when our shift ended and got home around ten. Again Dallon wasn’t home, and I was slightly tipsy. I went straight upstairs to my room, but for some reason stopped outside the studio. I hadn’t been in it since the night we met.
I pulled open the double doors and stepped in. It looked just the same as it had the other night, but now I noticed a set of wardrobes on the wall opposite to the door. The first two were locked but the third opened easily. At first glance, it contained canvases stacked together and leaning against the back of the wardrobe, camera equipment on shelves, and storage boxes.
The first storage box contained camera lenses. When I opened the next box, I dropped it, and pictures scattered everywhere. I fell to my knees, desperately trying to scoop them up and put them back in the box. Some of the pictures were tasteful like the ones I’d let him keep, but others were beyond pornographic. It was obvious that Dallon King had a thing for taking pictures of women he slept with, both before the act and during.
“What are you doing?”
I froze, still holding a picture of a naked woman looking up at a camera, her legs spread. She was sitting up, her arms behind her in an awkward position, as if... bound.
I heard the floor creek as Dallon stepped into the room. My heart began to beat so loudly, I couldn’t hear his footsteps approach me. When two bare feet appeared in my vision, I gathered the courage to look up at him, and my breath caught.
If I’d thought he’d looked angry in my apartment, I was wrong. This was the angriest I’d ever seen him. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, his hands balled into fists at his sides, his eyes black.
“I didn’t mean to find them,” I said softly. “I wanted to know what was in the wardrobes.”
“And you thought my invitation to live in my guestroom was also an invitation to snoop through my home.”
He said it with such anger that I flinched. “No, I was just curious. About you.”
He cocked his head to the side, his face still hard. “And are you still curious?”
“No,” I whispered.
He crossed his arms and put a hand to his chin, his eyes still set on me and still furious. The shivers returned again, stretching down my back like icy fingers. “You’re on your knees.”
“I dropped the box and the photos went everywhere.”
“I can see that.”
“I was trying to put them away before…”
“Before I found out. I know.”
I swallowed. He was still staring at me. I returned to the photos, scooping them into the box, my hands shaking and my cheeks re
d. When I had them all back in the box, I moved to stand up.
“Stop.”
I froze, still in my kneeling position.
“I think we need to talk, and it’s easier like this. So you don’t freak out and take off.”
That was exactly what I had been planning to do.
He moved to stand in front of me. “Look at me,” he said sternly.
I peeked up at him nervously. How was it that I was the one feeling embarrassed when I’d just discovered his secret stash of porno pictures?
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
It sounded like a command. I was afraid of him—that was what I was thinking. I hadn’t had a chance to work through anything else.
“Be honest with me. Otherwise there’s no point.”
No point in what? I took a deep breath, afraid of what he might do if I broke eye contact. “When you said you’d taken pictures, I didn’t expect... this.”
“You thought I meant like the ones I took of you.”
“Yes.”
“And?” His eyes bore into me, daring me to say more. “Are you shocked? Angry? Frightened?”
When I didn’t respond, he nodded as if my silence had given him the answer. “When you snoop through people’s belongings, you might find they have skeletons in their closet.”
“I’m sorry.”