“Go shower. I’ll have your coffee waiting for you.”
I talked to the glass. “You know how I was so focused on the wrong things?”
Pausing, he took his time to answer. “I’m not focused on the wrong thing.”
“How do you know?” His empty pill bottles taunted me.
“My priorities have always been you. How can I go wrong there?”
I turned around with my arms wrapped around myself. “You let Denny walk right by you.”
He looked down at what he was doing. “No. I let my father walk right by me.”
“What if he does so again? We can’t sit up here like presents wrapped and waiting to be ripped open.”
“I know!” he snapped, showing he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. “I know, Kinley. Let me handle this. Let me protect you.”
And that scared me.
It scared me that Dash was scared.
It meant there were things he’d missed, and those things had guns and there were debts unpaid that neither of us had intentions of paying. “I want to protect you too. That means I have to be a part of it this time. You can’t lock me up again and hope I don’t understand.”
Dread formed on the lines around his eyes. He hung his head, the weight of his understanding pounding him down. “I’m aware.”
I held my breath. “We’re a team.”
Our walls had been torn down. Their rubble lay around us, but they were down, and that was all that mattered. All that mattered in all of this was that we mattered to the other.
His eyes showed me how badly he wanted me on his side. “Go shower.”
Rage moved me. I loved him, damn it. “We are a team,” I insisted, inwardly screaming at the memory of his empty eyes from my nightmare. “I want to protect you just as badly as you want to protect me.” I stomped over to him. “Tell me you know that. Tell me!” I demanded, grabbing his face between my hands. I pressed my lips to his.
His hands settled in my waist. My bare chest met his. Our heartbeats hammered. His eyes were so wanting they ripped my soul out. “I know that.”
But I wondered if he ever would. It hadn’t been as if I helped. Every woman before me in every conceivable way had shown Dash the worst parts of us. That he would devote his life to mine, but questioned that I would do the same, was a punishment I deserved, but one I despised. I kissed him again, falling into him. We backed up into the kitchen and his back hit the fridge. His taste unleashed desire through me, as if I hadn’t gorged on him hours ago. With a sweep of his hands, I was in his arms.
He carried me through the living room and into my room, crossing it for my bathroom. He set me down on my feet, and then began filling my tub. Warm water filled the deep basin as he picked through the soaps he pulled from the drawers beneath the sinks. My naked body stood before me in the mirrors. There were so many different Kinley’s, I had an urge to turn away the way I always did. I was cut in half, the reflection stopping at my hips. But for some reason this time I wanted to see all of me. To look at a body that was actually wanted for once.
The only full length mirrors in the entire bathroom were beside the sinks. There were three, and they stretched from the ceiling to the floor. They were crystal and unblemished. I stood in the middle, and looked my body over. There were no more walls to hide behind. Facing myself this way, so bare, so … the me I didn’t know … made my insides churn.
“I’m waiting!” he snapped, pulling my attention away from the mirrors.
I frowned at his anger, and padded close to the tub. “What’s your problem?”
His intense stare followed me, appearing almost accusatory. “Get in the tub.”
“Are you sure I’m allowed, master?” I put my hand on my hip, trying to understand why his gaze had shifted from tender to suspicion.
“You’re never leaving,” he said quietly, threateningly. “I need your love, not your help. Get in the tub.”
He took a seat on the edge, expression expectant. With a roll of my eyes, I swung my leg over and walked through the warm water to where he was. I sank down, closing my eyes, and moaned, letting the lavish water calm my panicked terrified wanting flesh.
“Damn it, Kinley,” I heard him whisper.
I opened my eyes to find his heartbroken. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer. He only stared as if were losing me. The desperate look unsettled me. I glanced around the room. Had something changed? Had the ING building below suddenly looked up? Or had Dash looked down?
Finally, he blinked slowly, his gaze slightly less dismantled when he reached for a bottle of pineapple coconut soap. He settled behind me. “Duck your head.” After I had come back up, he worked my hair into a rich lather. “Wash yourself as I wash your hair. I’m starving.”
“You mean marshmallows weren’t enough?” I grabbed the bottle, sensing him rushing me. By the time I’d finished washing my body, he was urging my shoulders down. When I rose, dripping water and soap from my eyes, he was standing there with a towel. I took his outstretched hand, and let him wrap me tightly in the soft beige towel. He ran one though my hair, and then took my hand, pulling me along to my closet. I hadn’t even taken a full breath by the time he was tossing clothes at me. “What’s your deal?” I growled, grabbing the wall to balance as he bent to hold my panties out for me. With a fiery blush, I watched him pull them up my thighs and let them go so they snapped in place. He did the same with my pants, these soft dark blue pajamas. He grabbed a white shirt from the drawer and plunged it roughly over my head and fought my arms to get them into the holes.
Clothed and confused, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the living room. His jaw was tensed so hard I could hear his teeth grinding. His eyes were churning. Dash looked like he was falling apart. I stared at the side of his face, struck by how much the sweat dripping down his temple smelled like terror. He hadn’t been alone since we’d left his bedroom. He’d been fine. What changed from us walking into my bathroom?
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he ordered darkly. “Just do it!” he screamed, when I opened my mouth to demand he try being sane for at least part of the day.
I flinched as his rage came over me. I avoided his eyes and did what he asked. I wrapped my legs around his waist and held him around his neck. The moment I was locked in his arms, he relaxed. Sexy psycho.
“Dash? What’s wrong?”
He moved around the kitchen with me attached to his body. “You’re never leaving.”
All of the other times he had said that, there had been a spark of confidence, a sureness that I’d never find the exit. But for the past couple days, Dash didn’t sound confident. He sounded afraid. And though I could equate his changes to the truths we’d uncovered, I knew those truths had nothing to do with the way out of here. I didn’t know how, but I had hit a nerve. In his arms, I stared at my open door.
To comfort him, I pressed my lips to his neck. I kissed where his hair met his skin, letting the soft hairs caress my mouth. The scent of him made our position acceptable. Coupled with the aroma of brewing coffee, and I wasn’t as quick to fight off his insanity.
“I love you,” he breathed, so quietly I heard it mostly in his breath. Without giving me an opportunity to respond, he urged me away from his body. “Let’s drink our coffee.”
On weak suspicious legs, I followed his orders, spying the steam rising from my mug with true unadulterated love. I sank into my seat and brought it to my lips, taking a long hot sweet drink. I was in a fog of ecstasy. Of warm rich ecstasy. But it slowly began to shatter. Denny had met me in a coffee shop. I paused, staring into the light brown liquid suspiciously. I skipped meals in exchange for this. If it came to eating and coffee, my stomach would growl in loss. How had Denny known to pick the most perfect way to cloud my perception?
“Do they watch us before they … take us?” That coffee shop was one I frequented. It was close to the apartment and to my job then.
Dash hadn’t stopped staring at me sin
ce he let me down. “Usually. They’ll know where to hit you if you don’t have an obvious way in. You’ve never done drugs. One simple dig into your past would show anyone that. Alcohol as well. If I were looking for a way in, Kinley, all I’d have to do was watch you one day.”
“Did they pick me at random?” How had I fallen for someone who’d never fallen for me? I’d been a job to Denny from day one. And I’d suffered for his work.
“Maybe. You’re beautiful. Single. No children. Just out of college. You have an unsettling amount of debt. Your degree is simple to determine. You applied for loans elsewhere. You made it known what you wanted to be. My bet is someone tipped them off. The street soldiers aren’t smart enough to look at you and think of all that you could give them. Someone else might’ve pointed you out to them.”
I felt sick suddenly. “They wanted me because of how I look?”
“Your physical attributes are rather similar to his. Light hair, blue eyes. If you had a child, no one would ever question they were his. Look at me. I look exactly like my father. Kenna too. It’s the evil blood in us.”
I shuddered. “So if I had been able to have a baby with him, then what?”
“They would own you. You would have loved your child, my queen. You would have done anything they wanted. Given them all the children in the world just to protect those you had. Or…” He let it hang in the air.
“I’d disappear.” Because I wouldn’t have let Denny take my child. There was no way.
“Exactly.”
“That’s sick.” I set my coffee down. “They can’t do that to people.”
“They care little for morals.”
“But they had to know my price before they approached me. Denny brought the idea up. Not me. He offered me my dream. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Who was close to you during that time?”
I shook my head. “No one. I’ve never been close to anyone.”
“Just me?” he asked softly, leaning forward to kiss my damp hair.
“Just you.” Just Dash.
“May I ask why?”
Shrugging, I took another drink, letting the warmth chase away the cold inside of me. “I don’t know. I never really connected with others. It’s always been everyone else, and then me.”
“No girl friends? No male friends?”
“No,” I whispered, a flash of onyx hair in my memory. But I shook that off.
“Where is your mother and father?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” After all, he knew everything about me.
“I know their names,” he admitted. “I know your mother abandoned you when you were ten. You went to live with your father until you were fourteen. At that point, you became a ward of the state. You were placed in a youth home for teens. You remained in your high school. Finished out the year. Went to Northwestern University, but it seems college really only drove you broke. You had a degree, but no money, and no one would give you a loan with the loans you had already taken out. You met Denny not soon after, and your dreams come true. But that’s all I know. I don’t know how you felt, or how much it hurt you, but that you lie to keep it that way. I don’t know how broken you are inside, but I know you fight everyone to hide it. I know you’re strong, but I don’t know your weaknesses. I understand why Denny looked like a ray of hope, my queen. I do. But he was nothing but a gang member who planned on turning your pain into his gain. It wasn’t your fault you didn’t see him coming. That’s the thing about evil. It rarely shows its true face until it’s too late.”
I blinked the dampness from my eyes. “Your blood isn’t evil. It sets me on fire. Anything that makes me feel alive can’t be evil.” When he didn’t say anything, I reached across the space between us and cupped his face. “Why am I not allowed to love you the way you love me? Do you want me to build a tower too and lock you inside?”
He leaned into my palm, and his eyes closed; his long dark lashes kissed his cheekbones. “Where would you put the exit?”
I frowned at his question. Where would I put the exit? Probably where he’d least expect it. In a place he’d never look. My heart pounded suddenly. I’d looked everywhere, I thought. But only where I thought deserved to be searched.
And it was like he knew my brain was churning.
His eyes snapped open. They were amber and threatening. They were desperate. Breaking. Begging. “Where would you put it, Kinley?”
I scraped my thumb over his stubble, running the places I’d examined through the places I hadn’t. There were none. I’d checked everywhere except his side of the kingdom. “I wouldn’t hide it from you. I’d never be able to relax if I knew you could figure it out at any time. I’m not as cocky as you.”
Tears welled in his eyes. “Where would you put it?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.” His tears spilled over, sliding down the sides of his face.
“I wouldn’t create one. I’d make is so there wasn’t an exit.”
He nodded, as if he knew exactly how I operated. “But I didn’t build this tower to lock you inside. I built it to protect you. I’d never put the exit where you couldn’t get to it.”
My breathing deepened. I knew where the exit was. I knew it, and he thought I did. But I didn’t. I had no idea where it was. “So I’ve been able to get to it all along?” I asked, confused. I thought I couldn’t get out of here without him.
“I knew you’d never find the exit. You’d never look at yourself the way I did long enough to find it. You avoid your insides. You lie right to your own face. That was the only lock I needed.” He was sobbing now, kissing my palm with tear laden kisses. “Without you, I am nothing.”
I pulled in a desperate breath, breaking because he was. “I don’t know where it is, Dash.”
“Yes you do.” He collapsed in on himself.
His pain was overwhelming. It felt like we were already separated. Already apart. “I don’t, baby. I promise I don’t.” I fell to my knees in front of him, and gripped his waist, burying my head in his lap.
His face nuzzled my hair. “You don’t know you do.”
I had to wonder if he had his own nightmare. I pushed to my feet and grasped his handsome face, making sure he knew that knowing the exit had nothing to do with leaving him. “I have no idea where it is. I stopped looking for it.”
His hands gripped my waist. His fingers dug into my flesh. His eyes were so close to brown, I could feel myself bracing for his implosion. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. They’ll get you if you leave. You’ll make a mistake. They’ll know. They’ll hurt you. They’ll take you. I need you. I can protect you. Please let me protect you.”
I shook my head in heartbroken confusion. Moving closer, I cradled his head against my chest as his grip tightened. “They’re not going to get me, because I won’t leave.”
He didn’t believe me. Even if the walls fell and I remained forever, he’d still anticipate the day I’d leave. Because he trapped me, and every woman before him had left long before he built these walls.
The weight of his sadness was heavier than the snow outside. Colder too. This storm was painful.
“I won’t leave,” I insisted, begging him to understand. “I won’t. I promise. I want to be where you are.” That’s all I’d ever wanted. But he couldn’t trap a person and then beg them to turn an eye to the way out. I had a feeling what he had done was catching up to him. “I love you, you crazy idiot. Let’s go sit down.”
“No.” He gently pushed me away. “Drink your coffee. I know you love your coffee.”
I stared sideways at him as he stared straight, ignoring me the way I had once ignored him. As though he wanted me even when he pretended he didn’t. Like I had.
“Is there a reason you enjoy it so much?”
I sank back down numbly, returning to coffee I no longer tasted. “It’s just always been something I looked forward too, I guess.”
“Why?”
If he wanted to pretend the
end was coming, I didn’t know what to do. The end of us meant the end of me. “You did this. You protected me, and you ruined us.”
His body shook. “Saving you was worth it.”
“Yeah, well, tell yourself that when we no longer exist.”
“We’ll exist.” He sounded absolutely positive. So sure that there would be a Dash and Kinley outside of these walls, that I let him lie to me too. “We’re supposed to be together. You know why?”
“Why, my king?”
“Because there is no one else like us in the world. Apart, we’re disregarded. We’re forgotten, we’re abused. Together we’re wanted, we’re hungered for. So we have to love each other, my queen. We have to, or no one else will.”
I wondered if that was what put us here. Love. Something I didn’t even know until Dash walked into my office. Something I’ve never had for myself. Something no one had ever given Dash, at least not for a price. That we had it for one hour in my office six months ago meant we may not for all of the others.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, emotionless.
“What’s next?” I griped, growing tired of the rudimentary diet. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? If I beg, would you cut the crust off?”
He left me to open the cupboards. “For you, I would.”
“I miss meat. Like steaks.” I moaned, rubbing my toes together in desire. “Or a burger.”
“Stop.”
“A cheeseburger.”
“Enough.”
“With extra mayonnaise and fries.”
“Kin.”
“Or,” I continued, loving the way he was trying to block the image from his mind. He turned away from me and groaned. “Doughnuts. Warm gooey glazed doughnuts with a side of crispy salty bacon.”
“Ahh,” he moaned, tossing his head back like a caged animal. “The deep dish pizza down the street from my office was worth the hours on the treadmill.”
“I’ll get some. Be right back.” I slipped down from the bar and began walking to my door. When I got close, I held on to the wall and met his eyes, gauging his response. They struggled to remain impassive, but they weren’t. There was a subtle edge of unadulterated panic. Because I knew where the exit was. I just didn’t know how. “Tell me where it is, Dash.”
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 20