“I don’t expect you to understand, but I feel close to him. I wanted to come clean about it.”
Hand planted on her hip, Alex cocked her head to one side. “I felt close to Dayton, too. Look what he did to me. You can’t live in this fantasy where you think you mean something to him. He’s a monster, and he’s manipulative, clearly. One minute you’re saying he hurt you and the next you’re saying you feel close to him. Do you know how messed up that is?”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
He was manipulative, of course. Dr. Merino had permeated her mind and lived there full-time, an unshakable fever dream. Kenna wasn’t sure if they were on speaking terms and she was defending his honor.
“Cut the rose-colored bullshit. None of us reallyknowhim. He doesn’t want to be known. He’s charming long enough to have his way with you, and then he’s gone.”
“That statement is completely unfounded.”
But it wasn’t. It was the cold, hard truth and she had files upon files that supported as much. Redirecting her attention to her laptop, Kenna loaded the drafts of her acute trauma presentation and paper, figuring if she ignored Alex long enough she’d get the hint.
She was thankful when her roommate shuffled toward the door but that feeling evaporated when her hand landed, featherlight, on Kenna’s wrist.
“I know it isn’t what you want to hear.” Her speech was gutted with a hurt they had come close to sharing. “But this won’t end any differently for you.”
* * *
Though Kenna had beendishonest about the recording being a requirement of the assignment, it provided a cover for what she really wanted.
Dr. Merino’s consent.
If nothing else, she thought it’d be invaluable for her investigative records. The audio track played on repeat through her earbuds as she toggled between her presentation and composing her paper, occasionally scrawling cues on index cards. Late spring rain pelted the window but Mother Nature’s calm couldn’t be heard over the chaos whispering through Kenna’s ears. Too often, she’d pause her work and listen with rapt attention to particular sections of the audio, convinced that some hidden meaning lay in his words but ultimately found none and blamed her state of burnout for producing the auditory phantoms.
Midnight neared and her gooey brain begged her to turn off the computer in favor of crawling in bed; her restless heart had other ideas and as the hour waned so, too, did her sanity. She restarted the recording.
The deep, familiar sound of his speech filled Kenna with infantile comfort, as though it were a lullaby.
Dr. Merino trailed off as he spoke about his heart condition and her lids shut, leaden with exhaustion and memory, remembering the way he’d met her gaze and revealed without fanfare the scar marking the device that kept him tethered to this life. A dog on its back, weak spots exposed.
At the first mention of Audrey, her comfort morphed into razor-edged anguish, not because she pitied him but because she knew he’d fed her lies during the majority of their mock session. The indisputable knowledge filled Kenna with a complicated mix of emotions she herself couldn’t sort out.
His voice continued until she reached the part about him sleeping with Audrey. She ripped out her earbuds and closed the app.
It was then Kenna heard the rain, the soft pattering against the windows. The repetitive nature of the sound soothed her anxiety and in the quiet moment of serenity she was reminded the world was a beautiful place filled with ugly people. People who did awful, unspeakable things.
And she’d fallen for one of them.
Blood pounded in her temples as she regarded the box. She thought of lifting the lid, retrieving the note, tracing over the words he’d written for her alone.
But the obsession had gotten her nowhere, no closer to the truth. Finals would begin Monday and shortly after, she’d graduate. Grad school in the fall. Yet amid all of the accomplishment, failure festered at her core like a malignant growth. She had not succeeded in what she’d set out to do that semester.
To understand Dayton Merino.
The lone thread of connective evidence among the girls was that they were all students of the university. Beyond that, Kenna had nothing, no rhyme or reason to account for why Dr. Merino had engaged in the behavior.
Rereading the notes she’d collected felt like an optical illusion. Fine details that served as a distraction from the real picture. She wasn’t willing to believe intimacy had been the sole reason for the short-term relationships. He had a purpose. What it was, she had no idea.
Brave in the face of the panic rioting within, she snagged the underwear from the box, rolling the lace between her fingers.
One thing Kenna knew for certain. She’d never truly understand unless she sacrificed herself.
The night sky wept beyond the walls of his home as Dayton fought and failed to concentrate on the digital documents before him.
Hours before, a call from Owens-Adair had snatched him from sleep. One of his patients—female, severely depressed—had fainted and gone unresponsive in the hall of her dormitory. She had not eaten in three days.
When she came to and saw him standing among the people gathered by her hospital bed, she’d only said, ‘I told them not to call you.’ Dayton had spent the drive home wondering if that was how he came across to most people, someone who couldn’t be called. Someone to be avoided at all costs. He also found himself wondering if Kenna felt that way about him. It would’ve explained her lack of calls and absence of visits to his office, but he suspected her sudden exit from his life had more to do with the hand he’d had around her neck.