“I’m going to shower. Will you be here when I get out?”
“You drove me here. That doesn’t leave me much of a choice, does it?”
“We can go get the Caprice.”
Kenna beheld him with her burning gaze and he studied her with an intensity that she quite possibly found offensive, but, every time she looked at him, he feared it may be the last. And so he cataloged every crease, curve, and dimple, not willing to forget all of the little details that made her who she was. His saint, his saving grace.
Beyond the walls, the seasons may have been changing and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was in that room. The wicked tenderness of her face.
So this was love, both frightening and thrilling.
“If you want me here, I’ll stay.” She raised her cup a hair as she turned to leave the room. “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”
A chill wreathed his spine in time with his bare feet meeting the ceramic tile in the bathroom. Each cell in his body was on high alert. He felt himself harden and instinctively spun the cold dial in the shower, leaving the hot one untouched. After peeling off his sweat-soaked clothes, he stepped into the icy stream of water. Being submersed in the biting cold did little to dissuade his arousal.
Idle hands, they say.
Instead of wrapping around himself, he reached for the shampoo. Dayton decided it was unwise to indulge in lewd activity with Kenna over. He’d already dumped an unwanted profession of love on her; if she heard him masturbating through the drywall, she’d probably transfer universities and take on a new identity.
Though it pained him, he kept the shower chaste and threw on his clothes without ceremony. He ran his fingers through his hair a few times, flicked the lightswitch, and wandered through the poor excuse for a hallway that let out into the living room. An inexplicable warmth bloomed in his sternum at the sight of Kenna nestled on his garage sale sofa. He kept a blanket draped along the top of it to disguise the fine rips in the leather which she had repurposed as a cloak.
A forced smile spread on her lips. The action was mechanical, the antithesis of her searing stare in the bedroom.
Perhaps she deemed politeness the safest form of expression to display toward him. The forced nature of it all had Dayton gritting his teeth as his feet carried him to the kitchen rather than the vacant space on the couch he was dying to occupy. Was this how their interactions were forever destined to be, weighted by the past?
His hands shook as he filled the kettle in the sink and was pierced with a possibility more formidable than Kenna never trusting him again.
A part of her may always fear him.
He put the kettle on to boil and, without reservation or permission, joined her on the couch. They’d sat in the same spot hours earlier when alcohol danced through her bloodstream and inhibitions were but an empty, hollow thing. Scratchy and suffocating silence hung between them. A noose for two.
Kenna pointed out his green and yellow shirt. “The Ducks, huh? Where’s your loyalty to UCLA?”
“Are you afraid of me?”
The inquiry was harsh, even to his own ears.
Her eyes darted from him to her lap. A tangle of words spilled from her lips as she half rose. “I should go, really. I have a paper due for Rothman.”
His hands shot forth and covered Kenna’s thighs, keeping her in place. The thudding of his heart intensified as her pupils grew three sizes, ballooning with terror.
“Answer the question.” Her lips were a flat line as he peered into her eyes. If she refused to speak, he had no problem coaxing the truth out of her. Dayton seized a strand of her limp, red hair and slowly coiled it around his finger. “You’ve looked at those pictures on your phone until you’re drunk on ‘what ifs’ and it’s led you to believe that I’ve hurt some of those girls. I must have, right? Tell me, how far does it go in your mind? Do you think an unlucky few were hacked to pieces? Do you think I have their organs pickling in jars below the floorboards?” His voice quavered with thinly bottled rage. “Make no mistake, Kenna, I’ve done horrible things. Things that I regret beyond your wildest dreams. I’m a sinner, but I’m not a monster.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” Chin trembling, her fingers laced with his atop her legs. “But my attachment to you scares me. How much I still care for you, how much I need you.”
“And you’re scared of that attachment because, to some degree, youareafraid of me?”
Her eyes settled on the sliver of space between them, the waxy brown leather. The kettle squealed but Dayton didn’t move a muscle.
“The only thing I’m afraid of is your capacity to hurt me, and knowing that when you move on from me, you’ll hurt others.”
“Like in the past?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s what you implied.”
She pulled her hands away and sunk into the corner of the couch. “Interesting you didn’t link my flighty behavior to what you said in your bedroom. What right do you have, saying something like that after everything you’ve put me through?”