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Kenna pointed to the document resting in the center of the island. Without so much as reviewing the information on the page, he signed with a single, practiced flourish of the pen. Those mesmerizing strokes played on repeat in her mind while she considered the past week. Her slow acceptance of Reid’s death. Dr. Merino’s absence.
“Where have you been?”
He ventured a look at the ceiling. “I called out as a way of limiting my exposure to you.”
Exposure. The word sounded dirty, as if she were something contagious or altogether undesirable. A quiet rage trellised Kenna’s throat, trailing up, up, and latching onto its walls.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
His mix of hurt and regret was effortless. She wondered if he practiced this cocktail of vulnerability in front of the mirror each morning. She wondered how many other women he had played exactly like this and then understood with blinding surety that there was nothing special about her. Nothing that set her apart from the rest. And the only reason she was burning with fury and felt slighted was because Dr. Merino was a mastermind at his game. This moment felt like a breakup, despite them never having been together, because he’d orchestrated it to feel as such.
He lifted his chin and terror coursed through her like a paralytic. He was so much larger than Kenna. Stronger. It would’ve been nothing for him to curl his hands around her frail neck and demonstrate that strength until a final gasp of breath departed her lungs.
She didn’t believe Dr. Merino was a violent man, but she believed passion inspired irrationality.
Rather than strangling her, he gently tipped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I hurt people. It’s a pattern.”
“What about what you said after the funeral? That you’d never do anything like that to me. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
The sentiment was laced with delicate desperation. A prayer whispered in the dark.
“I wish that were true.” Looking at his face had become too much, the torturous twist of his features. Kenna shifted her attention to the sweat stains on his shirt. Instead, she pictured them as ink blots on cardstock; something to make sense of in this situation that made none. “Kenna, look at me. Please.”
A softness had settled over him, replacing the well-crafted mask he’d worn moments before. Something visceral and raw had crept across his skin and taken hold, and she found that she could not tear her eyes away from this version of Dr. Merino. The actual man living within the shell of a no-fuss psychiatrist. Kenna had caught glimpses of him occasionally, but now he was on full, unadulterated display. The white hot pain of clarity sliced through her.
He wouldn’thurt her.
He came a few paces closer and she stepped backward in response but soon her lower back rammed into the counter’s ledge, making her wince. His eyes darted back and forth as he searched hers. Her pulse beat within her throat. Could he sense that exhilaration? The thrill of having him near.
Dr. Merino planted his hands on either side of her on the countertop. His forearms became bars, a barrier meant to keep her in place. The pounding of her heart spread throughout her body, a constant jolting sensation that left her unsteady.
“Listen to me.” He leaned in and their faces were much too close. There was no room for his words, no space for his breath, yet Kenna loved the warmth expelled onto her skin as he spoke to her, voice low and urgent. “I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried to fight this, and I’ve failed, and it’s because I don’t want to stay away. Ican’tstay away. It’s killing me from the inside out.”
His confession hummed between her ears like a ballad written just for her. Even if it had been recycled from past lovers, she was disinclined to care. She and Dr. Merino were the only two people on Earth. The rest of the world had fallen away and thereby ceased to exist.
“Are you comprehending what I’m saying here?”
Kenna reached out until her fingertips connected with the pink scar that cut across his cheek. He flinched but did not recoil from her light touch, her fingers ghosting along the rippled line of flesh. Happiness coiled itself around her bones and she couldn’t help but feel this was a small victory, the simple connection. She cherished the scene. Heavy but free of expectation.
Mouth dry, she retracted her fingers, slowly bringing them to the exposed skin near the loose collar of Dr. Merino’s t-shirt. She traced the swooping scar that met both sides of his collarbone. That vanilla-spiked sweat scent intensified with him this close and Kenna let herself inhale without any internal admonishment. Her chest fluttered as she caressed his scars and breathed him in. He was in her apartment, letting her touch him, the space between them a scarcity.
“God, I want to kiss you.”
“Do it.” It was a meager dare, a weak command.
The fire in his eyes died down and they returned to neutral pits of black. “I can’t. It isn’t right. I haven’t turned in your evaluation.”
The rules don’t apply to me, Dr. Merino had told her—but that had not deterred him from sleeping with Charlee during her mentorship. Why was he shying away from doing the same with her?
Her fingers fled from his skin as if she’d been burned, hand falling limp at her side. “Have you forgotten what happened behind the bar?”
“I had too much to drink. Still, it doesn’t excuse my behavior.”
Kenna’s heart jackhammered. “I shouldn’t have turned my head that night. I should’ve let you kiss me.” Throat tight, she went on, “I think about it all the time, how I made the wrong choice.”
Dr. Merino brushed the hair out of her face, sweeping it over her shoulder, and then withdrew his hand. “Often, the right thing to do is the hardest. You rejected my advance that night. You acted with your head instead of your heart. And I believe your ability to say no in that situation is the sole reason you then revealed your feelings. You denied yourself physical satisfaction, so you went another route to earn it.”
“You shouldn’t have been physical with me. I shouldn’t have spilled my feelings. I get it. No need for a drawn-out speech.”
