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“But you still seek confessional?”
“How do you—”
“I saw you at St. James, Christmas Eve. I didn’t know you at the time, but I recognized you when I proposed my mentorship.”
Dayton understood that, rationally, there was no way she could’ve known why he made occasional trips to St. James, but his adrenaline jumped as he fought to remain perfectly still. His eyes stung from a lack of blinking. He worried his mind had gone transparent and she could peer into it so clearly that she could see the guilt to which he was forever bound.
It was nonsense, all of it. Only under the veil of paranoia did the highly illogical become believable.
“My relationship with God is complicated.”
“Whose isn’t?” Kenna mused. “Who did you light your candle for that night?”
The blinking returned but Dayton’s eyes now burned for a different reason, sodium-tainted pools rising behind his lids and draining just as quickly.
“Myself.”
After Dr. Merino excused himself to handle a call with an unknown person she presumed to be Professor Scott, they hit 99W. Fifteen miles of pavement separated them from Branch Spring. Much of the drive from Portland had been silent.
The eerie confession he gave burned in her mind. He’d lit the candle for himself. It brought Kenna just as much confusion as it did pity. Was that how he viewed himself, someone who needed to be prayed for?
His cold stare fixated on the road ahead. Stoic, stone-faced and clad in a black suit, he was an amalgamation of paradoxes.
Handsome yet lonely. Strong yet broken.
Kenna’s hand crept onto his lap, resting near the pocket of his dress pants. “Thanks for everything today. It means a lot.”
He placed his hand atop hers in lieu of a response.
The platonic touch triggered a stuttering in her heart. She’d thought too often of the night behind the bar, the hot press of his tongue on her skin. She needed to forget.
In a few weeks, the semester would come to an end, bringing with it the end of their connection. Even though her attraction to Dr. Merino had grown beyond any hope of manicuring, even though he’d admitted his attraction to her without a drop of alcohol in his system, even though he cared for her, they were statistically and realistically unfit to be together.
His Adam's apple bobbed as he shot her a sidelong glance. “Kenna?”
“Yeah?”
“I would never do anything like that to you.”
How could she refute those words? Tender and true. Reckless as it may have been, she believed him.
26
RED FLAG
The Portland trip stirred things between himself and Kenna in a way that Dayton never could have foreseen. Discovering what Reid put her through had brought them delightfully close. It should have been easy for him to accept that shiny new facet of intimacy but steel bars ascended and imprisoned him on all sides.
He’d become a prisoner of guilt.
Guilt, an emotion he had strived to snuff out after how things had gone off the rails with Jasmine.
Guilt, what Kenna somehow felt in response to Reid’s passing. That boy was undeserving of her guilt or her empathy or her tears. He’d deserved none of her, yet had every part.
Dayton thought that perhaps he, too, was undeserving of her. All those months spent scheming and clawing his way closer to a young woman who had already been sought out and wrung dry by another’s twisted idea of pleasure.
He and Reid, they were no different.
Her retelling of events haunted him. It clung to his conscience like an unshakable nightmare. His want for Kenna was equivalent to the burning insistence to stay away, some invisible warning buried within the patchwork of her trauma. Dayton couldn’t focus at the office. He was all over the place and it hadn’t escaped her notice. Despite that week being the final days of their mentorship, he’d called out sick. His condition was no better at home.
