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It was a slipup he replayed over and over, something he fervently wished he could erase.
Years of research populated Dayton’s laptop screen and he couldn’t bring himself to sift through it and make new connections in the face of his horrid mistake. Every muscle tensed with the breach of a terrifying realization.
Kenna may never forgive him.
A creaking came from outside and instilled him with a sense of calm rather than fright. The porch.
He meandered around furniture in the near dark of the living room on the path to the front door, opening it before the guest had a chance to either knock or break a window. A blur of red hair and pale limbs brushed past him.
“It’s late,” Dayton said, locking the door. Anything to delay turning around and beholding that magnificent face.
“I know.”
While the blinding laptop didn’t illuminate the entire room, it provided enough light to see Kenna seated on the couch, an angel glowing in the dark.
He thought the scene was an elaborate hallucination.
Droplets from the light rain adorned her hair like jewels. She was a princess of twig and stone, criminally beautiful despite being disheveled by the elements.
As Dayton stepped closer, he identified his favorite scent emanating from her body. A run in the rain. Damp earth and the vanilla of the pines.
Her cheeks were devoid of their usual flush of color. Hands clenched, trembling at her sides.
He wanted to speak but didn’t feel it was his place and had a strong inclination that Kenna, who’d biked in the pitch of a rainy night, had something rather important to say.
Instead, he joined her on the couch, wordlessly enduring the excruciating, ensuing moments. An orchestra of breathing and bated breath.
“What you did last weekend was inexcusable.” Dayton opened his mouth but she held up a hand. Tears gleamed in her eyes. “Let me finish. Please.”
“I know you think you’re irredeemable, but you don’t see yourself the way I do. You can’t. I look at you and I see someone who’s confident, intelligent, so sure of himself. But I also see how lonely you are, how afraid you are of your sickness, and how, despite all that you’ve done, you don’tseemlike a bad person. You’ve made poor decisions, sure. Whatever happened with Charlee, Erin, Alex, and whoever else you crossed paths with before I walked into your office? I don’t care about any of it. You insisted you were every version of the man from your past, but I only know this version. And he’s enough.”
How Kenna could stand in his home and speak to him with such ardor after their last encounter went beyond all comprehension. Lust didn’t have a reputation for being logical.
She had glimpsed the vile and still wanted him. Burrowed into pockets of the past and uncovered ex-lovers.
But Dayton knew her. She could’ve exhausted all possible routes of research where he was involved and it wouldn’t have satiated her.
What she wanted was to know him, completely, in a manner that couldn’t be achieved via the internet or interviews.
The rain fell harder, pummeling the roof.
His hand covered Kenna’s knee and she glanced at him through her lashes, letting his fingers trail along the warmth of her cheek.
“I don’t want you to question who you are to me because of the things I’ve done. You’re not just some girl.Youare everything that’s good in this world. You,” he whispered, thumb skimming her bottom lip, “are my salvation.”
30
LAMB
His salvation.
She’d intended the visit to be her last but Dr. Merino’s words alluded to a degree of permanency. Still, they were just that. Words. And, coming from him, it required no effort to imagine them as transparent, easily punctured.
True or not, Kenna refused to let it weigh her down when he was on the verge of giving her what she had longed for since Brandi mentioned across a sticky bar table that he’d slept with a patient.
Clarity.
He dragged his thumb agonizingly slowly from her lip to her chin, tilting it and claiming her mouth. Fire barreled through her and swallowed her whole. Her heart danced and as she attempted to steal a breath Dr. Merino slipped his tongue past her slightly parted lips. Their mouths possessed little energy, their movement resembling the passionate persistence of a dying flame, fighting for oxygen.
