Anything that sounded halfway decent to say died long before it reached his tongue. He had no right but it hadn’t stopped him from confessing a truth that had burned within him for months. In his desperation to get it out in the open he had failed to consider how Kenna may react to it.
Whether she ran or stayed by his side, the truth would be out. That’s what had driven him to act. Sitting beside her now, that logic seemed misguided.
Her voice tore him from his subconscious.
“I don’t know what love is. I don’t know what it feels like. But, for what it’s worth, when I’m with you … even knowing about your past, you’re the only person I’ve ever felt truly safe around.”
Her hands clenched at her sides until her nails bit into her palms. It was not until she realized this caused her a great deal of pain did she relax.
Dayton must have thought she’d gone mad, admitting that a part of her feared him while she also felt safe in his presence. She wouldn’t have blamed him for thinking it, especially when she thought the same.
The faint ridges on his forehead deepened. “Is that true?”
“I have no reason to lie.”
He stared at Kenna, hard and searching. “Do you really have a paper due for Rothman?”
Heat flooded her cheeks.
“Well, it isn’t due for another two weeks.”
Saying nothing further, Dayton padded into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of tea. He offered to make her a cup but she quietly refused. The clanking of the spoon calmed her.
“If you feel so inclined to work on it, you can use my laptop. It’s on the desk over in the corner. Unless you’d rather go, of course.”
She stood halfway between the couch and the desk, eyeing him from across the expanse of room. “I meant what I said before. If you want me here, I’ll stay.”
He held his tea, standing impossibly still in his sweatpants and t-shirt, wet hair framing his face.
“You know what I want.”
Did she know? Those words felt like the sharp, cold edge of a switchblade flush against her throat. Kenna didn’t feel the slightest degree of relief until she populated the desk chair, alone with her racing pulse and uneven breathing.
Alone as she could be with him 12 feet away.
She didn’t want to work on her paper, not really. But the manner in which she had fled to the desk dissuaded her from leaving the chair. She shouldn’t have been in that house but she was. Dayton shouldn’t have been telling her he loved her and bringing her lattes but he was. They’d gone from a somewhat hostile dinner to her waking up in his bed alone and the infuriating absence of the time in between feasted on her nerves as the computer booted up.
Eyes glued to the keyboard, she asked, “What happened last night, when we came back here?”
“Believe it or not, seeing you clinging to consciousness isn’t attractive to me. You talked yourself to sleep on the couch and then I carried you to my room. I slept out here. That’s it.”
Kenna hooked her arm on the back of the chair, which wasn’t an office chair but a dining chair, and shifted her body 90 degrees so that she faced him. “You took pictures of me, asleep, in my underwear. What am I supposed to think?”
He didn’t comment but cast her a flicker of a sidelong glance. For a moment, Dayton looked like a normal guy, sprawled on the couch with his collegiate shirt and pregame coverage on the television. But in place of a beer he held a mug of tea and the broadcast was muted and even in that fleeting, still frame, something about him was decidedly off.
The home screen loaded on the laptop and she found it odd that it wasn’t password protected, what with his endless supply of secrets.
There were four labeled folders: taxes, residency, practice, ponderosa. She felt a deep sense of gratification upon discovering he had kept a digital record of his university patients. The whole time, she’d been convinced he conducted his clinical work completely offline.
His cell phone rang and ripped through the heavy silence. “Hello?” Scrubbing a hand across his face, he said, “This is he.”
Her eyes wandered to the contents atop the desk, confident he was too caught up with the phone call and football to notice that she had yet to open a browser tab.
“Yes, she is.”
The surface was littered with the most mundane things but knowing they belonged to Dayton piqued her interest. There was a tiny box brimming with receipts. She didn’t flip through them because the rustling paper may have diverted his attention. The topmost one was from a home improvement store, and appeared to be for nothing more than bags and bags of gardening soil. Expression slack, she replaced the lid.
“20 milligrams of olanzapine. That’s daily.”