In My Arms You Shall Hide

Chapter 26

Kittie

“ G in Rummy is part strategy, part luck,” Raney explains to Cory and me as she deals cards.

I glance up at Cory for guidance, but he only shrugs at me from across the dining room table. We’re on our fifth game of the night, and Raney’s second piece of advice. She’s grinning and animated while I’ve been soaking up the cozy warmth of the estate against the chill of the March evening outside. Julie London’s soft vocals emanating from the stereo add another layer that makes me want to fall asleep.

Raney always gets so competitive, but I don’t mind, and Cory doesn’t seem to either. He’s tried to help me, noting that he waits until he can stack melds and layoffs to sweep the entire play in one go.

I’m barely following the rules, so I just lay down the cards as I go, and Raney corrects and scolds me if I make the wrong move. I’m just happy to be spending time with them.

Cory stuffs an eight of diamonds in my three-card run and places his last card on the discard pile. He nods once and wordlessly marks his winnings on a notepad to his right. He’s mostly robotic, but I catch what looks like a touch of a smirk on his face.

Raney grumbles and throws her handful of cards onto the table. She waves me off when I lift a finger to count his points. “Don’t bother, he won.”

Cory begins to gather the cards to reshuffle them. “Maybe you’ll stop calling it luck, Raney. And Kittie, you’re very easy to win against; a very gracious loser.”

I shrug, smiling at him.

Soft thunder rolls in the distance. The cards zip and clatter in Cory’s hands as he breaks the deck and shuffles. Raney thumps an elbow on the table, cheek resting in her hand as she stares with displeasure out the window. The sun is gone from the horizon, leaving the room to bask in the glow of two standing lamps in either corner.

A pair of headlights appear at the end of the driveway, causing my heart to flutter.

“Looks like your husband’s home,” Raney teases.

I want to correct her, but it’s difficult against a torrent of butterflies in my stomach. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to call Dorian my boyfriend, let alone something as serious as that.

“It’s late,” Cory decides so abruptly that I wonder if something else is going on. I worry that I might have done something wrong, but when Raney gets to her feet, I catch her concealing a mischievous grin.

I get the feeling they want to give us space. Whatever for, I’m not sure.

Raney and Cory begin picking up the room, allowing me to brush my teeth and change into comfortable clothes. When I leave my bedroom, I find Dorian in the living room on the loveseat. He left that morning in his usual suit, but he’s disregarded his jacket, and I get to ogle a little at how good the burgundy-colored button-down looks on him.

Just as I take a seat on the cushion next to him, he stands, turns, and sits on the coffee table, facing me.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I expected to be home much sooner.”

“That’s okay!” I pop up from the coffee table enough to peck his mouth excitedly and plop back down.

Dorian returns my brief kiss, but the strain on his face makes me frown. I’m worried he’s stressed, but then he says, “I was thinking that after everything that’s happened, I could give you a reward?”

Although some perverted things come to mind, I try to think practically. As I run through some possibilities—new yarn, notebooks, or clothes—I watch him pull out his cell phone. I frown, confused at where he’s going with all this. He rarely, if ever, has it out around me.

“I’m going to call your mother on speaker phone,” he explains with a sad smile, “so you can hear her voice.”

Shocked, I blink at him.

“Now, I’m putting my trust in you that you will be very quiet, Kittie. I’m asking you to make absolutely no noise. Can you do that for me?”

I nod quickly, delight spreading through me. “Yes, I swear I’ll be silent.”

Dorian gauges me. As my heart flutters, he unlocks his phone and scrolls through it. The crickets outside and the creaking of the estate fade away. I become tethered to the phone in his hand once the call connects.

It rings so many times that I’m afraid it’s going to voicemail. That would be fine, too, in a way, because it means I could at least hear her answering message.

Then, she picks up. “Hello?”

A cry of relief bubbles up and threatens to burst out of me. I slap hands over my mouth to silence myself.

Dorian watches me closely as he speaks. “Hi Dana, sorry it’s late. Just thought I’d call to check in on you.”

“Oh, honey, you know it’s no problem at all. It’s always great hearing from you.”

It feels so good to hear her voice, to connect with some part of her. A surge of joy courses through me, but it doesn’t stop a fracture from forming in my heart. I want to tell her I’m okay, that I love her so much. But I must follow his only rule.

“How are you holding up these days?” he asks. “How’s the boyfriend?”

My eyes widen. My mom has a boyfriend? I only tear my eyes away from the phone to his face for a second, and I can see the outline of a smile. He asked for my sake, to fill me in on the little details of her life since I’ve been gone.

My mom laughs; the noise stings my eyes. “Oh, he’s fine . I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call him my boyfriend, but things are going fine with him.”

“You deserve to be happy,” Dorian tells her, and he sounds like he means it. “You tell me if he’s not treating you right, and I’ll come down and kill him for you.”

While my mom laughs again, a chill rolls through me. He sounds jovial, but this man can be violent, no matter how off-handed his words sound.

“Are you still a part of that Historic Women’s Club?”

“Oh, I’m not sure if I’m going to go back,” she sighs. There’s movement in the background. I could die to know what she’s doing. I assume cleaning and putting things away. They’re little noises of her life, and I’m so grateful to hear them.

Dorian’s eyes never leave my face, even as I glue mine to the phone in his hand, but he smiles at her words. The warmth leaks into his voice. “You seemed like you enjoyed it last time we spoke.”

“Oh, you know me and my fads,” she chuckles.

Tears begin to stream down my face. She’s still her . When sobs threaten to take me over, I press my hands tighter over my mouth to muffle any accidental noises.

No , I can’t make a sound. If I do, he’ll hang up. I need just a little more time to listen.

“Oh, but what about you, Dorian? Is anything new with you? Work being its usual pain in the ass?”

“You know it.”

So, he checks in on her? Gratitude swells in my heart that someone is looking out for her when I can’t.

There’s a hesitant pause, and my mom asks, “So, any new girls in the picture for you yet?”

Dorian’s eyes dance across my face. “You know there’s only one girl out there for me.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she breathes. “If you want to move on, it’s okay. Kittie would want you to be happy. Not waiting around for her.”

“I know she would. Sorry, Dana. No one compares.”

“I appreciate that you care about my daughter, but I just want to make sure you’re living your life.”

“I am, don’t worry about that.” He pauses and says, “She’s lucky to have a mother like you. I know you love your daughter, too.”

My mom lets out a pained sigh. “With my whole heart.”

My throat tightens. Sobs threaten to burst from me. Muffled little cries escape from behind my hands, and my shoulders begin to shake violently.

Dorian promptly taps the screen and brings the phone to his ear, cutting off her voice. “Well, I’m going to let you get some sleep. I just wanted to call to check up on you…thanks, Dana, I will. Take care.”

I wait for him to end the call and lower it from his ear. When he slips his phone back into his pocket, I drop my hands from my face and wrap my arms tightly around myself as if I can hold myself together. A sob escapes me before I drop my head, curling in on myself to weep from both sorrow and relief. Had he pulled that out of her at the last second so that I could hear her say she loves me?

I worry he’s mad that I couldn’t hold it together, but I watch through my blurry vision as he gets to his knee in front of me. I throw my arms around him, and he pulls me into an embrace. I sob loudly into his shoulder; I sink until we’re both curled up on the floor.

As my tears soak his dress shirt, he rubs circles on my back as I weep.

And I realize my tears aren’t just over the phone call. I cry over the fear I chose to ignore, that a perfect stranger wanted to do me harm. I cry for Raney, the grief over her mother, the life she can never truly have. I cry for Dorian’s mother, the one he so dearly loved. I cry because it feels as if there’s this heavy sadness over me, as if the estate itself is pressing down on me. It’s a grief so deep and raw that I can’t comprehend it.

Eventually, the hitching of my breath slows. The flow of tears stops. The grief lingers, but I focus on the form of Dorian’s arms around me, like a buoy in a storm.

However, as I calm down, he slowly pulls away from me and gets to his feet without a word.

I stare in confusion from the floor as he walks out of the living room toward the entryway. With his back to me, I can’t gauge his face or his thoughts. I can only scramble to my feet and stumble into the hall after him.

“Dorian?”

When I reach him, he’s standing by the front door. The security system’s beeping brings me to a halt, and I watch him punch in the code. The panel flashes red, disarmed, and he roughly flips the deadbolt.

Without a word, he throws open the door.

When he turns back to me, I’m confronted by his version of grief. His brow is bent, his expression weighed down by guilt and pain.

Dorian reaches out to me, and reflexively, I close the distance between us, allowing him to wrap an arm around me. He draws a shallow breath and presses a kiss to my temple.

“I’m taking you back,” he tells me.

“Back?” I repeat foolishly, voice cracking.

A chilly breeze whips through the entryway, bringing in a mist of rain.

I try to crane my head back to look him over, but he buries his face in my hair, clutching me close.

“I thought I was different from them,” he mutters, not indicating who they are. “I thought the madness hadn’t claimed me because I love you. But I won’t kill you slowly like this, Kittie.”

“But you’re not—”

“Go get your coat and your shoes.” Reluctantly, he loosens his hold on me, injecting an agonizing space between us. “It’s cold out.”

I stiffen against a lick of anger. “You’re getting rid of me now?”

Dorian shakes his head quickly, gathering my face in his hands. “No, Katherine, never. But I can’t break your heart like this anymore.”

I clutch onto his wrists, glaring up at him. The wind-swept rain causes me to shiver in the doorway. “And what am I supposed to say? What will my mom do if you drop me off on her front porch? Am I supposed to just live with the fact that they’ll arrest you?”

“Let me worry about that, Kittie.”

I dig my fingers into his skin, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. I feel my tears returning, but this time out of fear. “I don’t want to leave.”

Dorian blinks once and searches my face, maybe for conviction, but when he finds it, he grimaces. “Stay here; I’ll get your coat. I don’t want you getting sick.”

Once he breaks away, he steps past me to cut further down the hall. The abrupt and cruel absence of him leaves me burning with fury.

The only thing I can do is slam the door so hard that it practically shakes the walls. When I whip around to face him, Dorian’s already staring at me, bewildered.

“I can’t live with the thought that something bad might happen to you,” I declare, stealing a step toward him, then another. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? That I would never want to leave. Because now I’m in love with you, and I can’t—I won’t leave you. This is the first time I’ve ever felt wanted by anyone, the first time someone’s taken care of me and loved me. And if going back means that something will happen to you, Raney, or Cory, then I refuse. I’ll deal with whatever pain comes with this choice.”

“Kittie—”

I can barely speak over the lump in my throat. The tears return with a vengeance, and when I shake my head quickly, I send them running down my face again. “You’re mine , Dorian. Don’t you know that?”

I hang my head. I can’t look at him while all these complex feelings converge and slam together. I’m saying goodbye to my mother but departing from a life in which I felt like nothing. A burden, but also depended upon. Needed, but the world wouldn’t stop if I vanished.

But here? I’m whole.

Dorian’s shoes come into view. I don’t have the courage to lift my head, but he slowly lowers himself to his knees before me, peering up through my hanging veil of hair.

“This place is no longer your prison, Kittie,” he tells me softly. “And this life of mine belongs to you. Turn me in if you wish or leave and never think of me again. Kill me. That’s all I can offer you now.”

I shake my head again, and an involuntary gasp falls out of me. Tears trickle down my chin, patter against his cheek, and trace lines down his jaw.

“I just want to love you,” I tell him. The words are so broken I can only hope he understands my blubbering. “Can’t you let me love you?”

Dorian gets to his feet, gathering me up just as I collapse into sobs again. One hand braces me tightly to him, the other catching my tears as they flow down my face.

When I can’t calm down—when my sobbing takes root in my heart and refuses to relent—Dorian carries me upstairs.

In his bedroom, we slide onto his mattress, but there are no ropes, no blindfolds, no pain, no pleasure. Instead, he holds me in the walls of his arms, allowing me to sob openly into his chest. Months of frustration, confusion, and longing pour out of me, and he remains a silent witness to it all.

When I reach the end, a weight falls away from me. The new-found quiet of the estate walls around us greets me. I thought I knew silence before, but it feels like something chased the heavy atmosphere from this place with the slamming of the door.

And even when I find myself in another nightmare, it’s different. I’m in that closet again, my father’s footsteps fading as he walks away. But this time, a soft breeze blows in from a crack. I lean forward and push the door open, startled to find it unlocked.

Then, I’m greeted by light.