Her blood ran cold. The paper announced the time and date of an annual vigil for Bella McAnders, as if God were reminding her that Dayton was bad news.
Quickly, she took a picture of the flier before the click of a car locking ushered her to shove the phone back into her pocket. Liza had insisted on giving her a ride and she’d been too caught up thinking about her impending afternoon with Dayton to refuse.
She approached, all smiles and wide-eyed excitement. For true academics, like both of them, few things were more stimulating than the start of a new term.
“I dropped my phone through the gap between the seat and the console. Took me ages to get it. You weren’t waiting for me all this time, were you?”
“Oh no, I was just admiring the view.”
“Really? You seem …” Liza searched her face while reaching for the right word. “Upset.”
Was she? Last semester, she spent five days a week in Dayton’s office. Now, he was no longer an employee of the university and—while she shouldn’t—she felt largely responsible for his resignation. And though she spent every second of break hating him, his absence on campus hurt more than she cared to admit.
The girls fell into step. They wandered along the paved pathway that cut across the lawn and diverged into routes for different buildings. They passed a guy Kenna recognized from her biological psych class last spring and he looked her up and down as if she were a rare cut of meat.
“Welcome back, slut.”
Her skin tightened and a cold sweat broke out, chasing away the sheen the humidity had left behind. If Liza heard the remark, she didn’t say anything. Not directly.
“I know you said it’s all gossip, but that doctor?” Her fingers sailed through her hair, ruining its part. “You don’t have to answer, I’m just curious. Did you have feelings for him?”
Everything that connected her to Dayton flashed through her head. Every shard of every broken memory.
“Almost.”
* * *
Kenna stood at the sink in her bathroom, wiping off the plum lipstick she’d applied for the third time. Her lips looked fuller as a result of the excessive scrubbing. She tossed the tissue into the trash with a deflated huff.
While she had welcomed the morning’s familiar chaos of rushing around to classes, that high had settled and terror laced her bones as she regarded herself in the mirror. Dayton was expecting her at his office within the hour.
Getting involved with him a second time defied all logic, but it was almost as if she’d had no choice.
Something within Kenna had compelled her to leave the letter in his dropbox. She suspected, with a powerful certainty, that she had hardly uncovered all he had done.
What she knew about him wasn’t enough.
She wanted to dive headlong into the depths of his darkness. Excavate the parts of himself he’d kept hidden.
There was one small oversight in her plan.
His new practice was 15 miles away, which meant biking 30 miles round-trip. Blind rage had precluded her from considering the logistics of transportation to and from East Haven when she delivered her application. Then, she’d taken a cab, but 10 rides per week was far from practical.
Dayton’s job posting had quoted an hourly pay that exceeded what she earned at the Nicholson Library, and more still than she’d earned bagging groceries at Roth’s while she begrudgingly redid her mentorship. Kenna didn’t mind working there. They were, at the very least, oblivious to the sexual politics of the university.
The slight salary bump was just an extra perk.
The real value of the arrangement was all the clinical experience she’d have under her belt—that and whatever new information she could suss out. For someone she knew so much about, it seemed she knew Dayton very little.
Stomach roiling, she stared at her reflection. Her outfit did not stray from her typical style: an off-white peasant top, flared jeans, and ankle boots. The top was sheerer than she liked but the white bra she sported beneath eased some of her discomfort. The bra that, months ago, she’d dug out of the bathroom trash. She hadn’t wanted to retrieve it, not exactly, but a manic corner of her brain insisted upon it.
That was the moment she understood that he had left a mark, that she was destined to one day tell fond yet disturbing, tear-filled stories about him like the young women she’d spoken to last semester.
Kenna was one of them. Marked. Marred.
Thoughts running wild, the bra’s band seemed to dig into her skin, a lasso tightening around her ribs without mercy.
She hated herself for trying to impress him, for seeking out this job and once again getting tangled up in his web. Most of all, she hated the feelings for him she still harbored, the affection she carried around while overlooking its rotten, decomposing state.