Those eyes roared to life for the first time, no longer hollow and depthless but blazing with insistence and compassion. That was when Kenna understood, with absolute certainty, that his heart lay in his work. She may have been too distracted by her own studies to notice it in his office, but now it was impossible to miss.
Something fluttered deep within her. Identifying this felt as if she’d been handed a key that unlocked a hidden part of him. It instilled her with courage and perhaps a sliver of trust.
However misguided.
Kenna scooted to the edge of the wooden booth seat. “Do you remember when we ran into each other at the grocery store? The guy I mentioned?”
“The incident you described as ‘not exactly stalking?’”
“Reid was that guy. He made a fool of me, and I was too naive to see what was coming.”
She said she wouldn’t let him shrink her though they teetered on the cusp of psychotherapy. The venue would have presented an issue had everyone in the shop not been consumed with themselves. They took no notice of her and Dr. Merino, sharp-dressed and forlorn and tucked away in a booth.
“When did it start?”
There was no way out, only through.
“Sophomore year, I went to a party at Delta Psi Delta. Reid accidentally spilled a beer all over me. Well, I found out later it wasn’t exactly an accident.” Kenna bit down on her bottom lip. “He apologized to me and I took it as sincere. Sincere enough to hang out with him until four in the morning. He walked me back to my dorm, like a perfect gentleman.”
Something shifted in her eyes, a horrific twinkling, as she spoke of the dead boy. This was a side of her with which he was unfamiliar.
Gone was the fearless young woman cut from marble who refused to hold her tongue. Now, she tripped over her words as if they were forbidden. Silence, an evasive gift.
“We kept seeing each other. He’d come to my dorm when my roommate wasn’t around. I’d hang out at the fraternity. I assumed we were dating, but we never discussed the specifics.” Her gaze shifted to the window, and through the glass she watched intently as a series of cars passed on the street. “As soon as we slept together, Reid disappeared. He wouldn’t answer my messages, my calls. I went to the frat house to see him, but his housemates wouldn’t let me in, and basically refused to pass along any of my messages.”
It was strange to hear the religious and studious Kenna casually discussing sex over coffee, in a public setting, no less. Dayton hid his amusement behind the lid of his lukewarm coffee.
Her skin appeared pallid under the track lighting. Not a trace of blood flowed through her veins.
“A few months later, I went to another party at Delta Psi Delta. I overheard a group of girls talking about this bingo game and how it was a show of allegiance for the new members. Hazing.”
A bitter taste spread in his mouth independent of the coffee. Dayton had heard stories of the same nature from innumerable patients. Though he was familiar with Kenna’s calculative nature, it seemed unlikely that her willingness to detail her romance with Reid was some convoluted form of retaliation after finding out about Alex. She wouldn’t cause herself pain for the sole purpose of getting under his skin.
None of this was about him.
“I found Reid at the party and confronted him. He wasn’t completely rotten, as it turned out. Rotten enough to go along with frat shenanigans, but man enough to come clean about it. Therewasa bingo game.” Kenna fiddled with her Saint Rose bracelet, tears spilling onto the varnished oak table. An empty laugh emerged but the sound was elongated and distorted. “‘Redhead’ was one of the spaces.”
A fresh ache seared the inside of Dayton’s throat as if he had swallowed a strand of barbed wire. Had he known about the trauma she carried inside, he wouldn’t have … the line of thinking was useless. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Kenna, it had never been a question of claiming her.
It had been an understanding.
Her revelation summoned a dormant feeling within him, a possessive edge which he had never harbored for anyone but his twin sister.
“After what this guy did to you, how was your attendance at his funeral even a consideration?”
“I guess I wanted to come because I feel guilty. I never forgave Reid for what he did to me, and I’ll never have the chance.” She rubbed her arm, speaking softly, “I have to go on living with the weight of that regret.”
“Forgivehim? Are you hearing yourself? Do I need to call in a 51/50 for you?”
That earned him a genuine laugh.
“Matthew’s Gospel, you know? Aren’t you Catholic?”
“How’d you arrive at that?”
“The tiebreaker at trivia. You knew the saint. The obvious conclusion seemed more likely than you being a closet theologian.”
“I was Catholic. Once upon a time.”