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“Hey, are you alright?”
Voicing her concern for him had been normal once upon a time, but now it was like pulling teeth.
It was funny, really, fretting over being appropriate when they’d never come close to fitting the bill.
A low sound of assurance rumbled in his throat. She studied Dayton’s folded form and winced as she was struck with the realization that no one was usually there to preside over such a scene. Straightening, he shot her a ghost of a smile. She felt compelled to sustain the trace of cheer.
“It’s too quiet around here. You need a dog.”
“I hate animals. They piss on everything and leave clumps of their hair everywhere.”
“Funny. That’s the same reason I don’t have a boyfriend.”
His lips parted into a magnificent, toothy grin and in that split second he possessed the terrifyingly charming charisma of Bundy.
Minus the violent offenses.
The longer she stayed in the bed, the easier it became to stitch together the fractured scenes from that early day in May when, within a period of 12 hours, they had at last come together and then were irreparably torn apart.
Not quite irreparable. She’d found herself in his bedroom once again, after all. What did that say about her?
As much as Kenna would’ve liked to pin the whole of the blame on alcohol, she knew that a small part of her had desired this; that she craved to return to the space where she’d never felt more alive.
A depth of feeling she failed to hide cracked her speech. “We never had our weekend. The one we talked about.”
Over dinner, he had more or less admitted that she’d been a target from the moment he laid eyes on her and there she was blathering on about their toxic romance as if it had been something real. No wonder he had targeted her. In that moment, it was obvious she wasn’t as strong as she’d believed herself to be. It had been easy to forge a cold exterior day by day at the practice but over the course of one evening she had reverted to the way she’d felt in the spring. She found it shocking and irritating in equal measure that those feelings were exhumed with so little difficulty. Though, Kenna never truly wanted to bury them.
Dayton transitioned to lay on his side on the end of the bed, head propped against one hand while he held his drink in the other. “I’m sorry.”
The apology was given without a thought but she could tell he had to fight himself over the rest.
“I know I’ll never do enough to make up for everything you’ve heard, everything you’ve seen.” His dark brows gathered in, gaze falling to the comforter. “The things I’ve done can’t be erased.”
His eyes burned holes into the blanket and her heart beat with such urgency it was primed to spring from the prison of her chest. They were having a conversation as if they’d been in a relationship for years but that was merely the effect he had on her brain. His presence was as seductive as a binaural beat and left her with the same placebic high.
He opened his mouth and closed it again, as if he’d thought better of speaking. It didn’t last.
“You brought out something so foreign in me. It was terrifying and wonderful. Part of me was relieved when you left that day, because I didn’t have to tell you that …”
Kenna wanted to tell him to go on but her tongue grew leaden and an emptiness spread in her stomach.
“I’m in love with you,” he spoke softly, sounding ashamed of the confession.
Everything within her stilled.
It had been the last thing she’d expected to feel on her quest to decode Dayton and yet there was no denying she had felt it too. Not love, per se, but something that held the potential to transform into it.
An affection that had blossomed like a feral rose in a desolate winter garden, beautiful and out of place.
A dagger twisted deeper into his gut with every second that ticked on in silence. Dayton didn’t expect her to mirror his feelings but he expected her to, at the very least, saysomething.
This was the kind of dance he despised.
The showing of the underbelly. It was why he preferred the catch and release nature of his treatment plan. Intimacy sans the attachment. Once he’d opened himself up to Kenna it seemed he had not been able to stop feeling.
Allowing oneself to be emotionally vulnerable with another person proved to be a more exposing act than casual sex.
Unable to await her answer any longer, he crept off the bed and discarded his half-empty cup on the dresser, where he swiped a clean outfit. He migrated toward the bathroom while she headed for the adjacent doorway that opened up to the rest of the house.
