Chapter 36.
36.
Cabin Fever (n., phrase)
a state of mind that can develop when a person is confined and unable to have social interaction
a mounting need
D amon and I stare at each other, the walls of his already compact room seeming to shrink with every moment that passes. We spend so much time together every day, sitting beside each other in court, during meals. But rarely have we had the opportunity to really talk. And rarely have we been completely alone. Each time we have found ourselves alone, I’ve thrown myself at him.
Damon reaches over and grabs something off the dresser. “Vending machine mystery pastry?” he offers, the cellophane crackling beneath his grip.
I shake my head as I tuck some loose hair behind my ear. We continue to stare in some sort of weighted standoff. I’m not sure why it’s so muggy in here. “Why do you make me the origami animals?” I ask. It seems a silly question once I’ve asked it.
He leans forward in the chair, rests his forearms on his thighs, and clasps his hands in front of him, his fingers slowly interlacing. I can’t look at those hands without imagining the feel of them on me. “Elephants are symbols of strength, remembrance. Cranes are good fortune. Owls are my favorite. They’re guardians. It’s meant as a protector. To protect.”
“Protect me from what?”
He leans back. “I don’t know, this case? From getting too swept up in it all? From drunk guys at Outback Steakhouse?”
I hate that I think it, but I wonder if my heart also requires protection from him . “Thank you,” I say, though it comes out weak.
“You already said thank you.”
I reflect on all I’ve learned about him, mostly through our notes. I know a lot, thanks to those notes. But I want to know so much more. “Tell me more about what you’re like outside of here.”
He leans forward again, takes on his previous position. “What do you mean?”
“What’s your life like? This isn’t normal, living in a hotel room on lockdown, listening to a murder case day in and day out. What’s your normal?”
“I told you, I go to work, ride motocross on the weekends. Meet up with friends. Pretty basic.”
Basic is the last word I would use to describe Damon. He is so much more than basic. “No, I don’t buy it. What’s something most people don’t know about you?” I say “most people,” but I mean me. Because I relish the idea that I already know much more than most.
He smirks.
“There’s totally something! What is it?”
He rubs at his chin with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. “No, I’m reacting to you. Why do you assume everyone except you has these crazy, extravagant lives?”
I contemplate his question. Do I? I suppose I have assumed most everyone is out there doing extraordinary things and I’m the only one who has opted for small, safe.
“There’s one thing that comes to mind,” he says eventually, looking at the door as if Raphael might burst in at this very moment to stop him from divulging.
I lean in, and our knees graze.
“You know all those wild animal documentaries on Netflix? I watch one almost every night. It’s like my weird comfort before I go to sleep.”
I smile, picturing Damon—big, wide, tatted Damon—curled up in bed watching Antarctic penguins singing for mates under Barack Obama’s or Morgan Freeman’s narration.
“I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“I’m glad you did,” I say.
“You’re not laughing. I thought it’d make you laugh.”
“I don’t think it’s funny. I think it tells me a lot about you.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows raise.
“Yeah. I think it’s your way of coping with the world. It’s so heavy out there.” I flick my hand in the direction of the window. “Sometimes you need to shut it all out and focus on something not so heavy. That’s what Authentic Moms is for me. Or was, at least. I don’t know that I can watch it anymore after all this.”
He tilts his head as if surveying me, and my cheeks grow hot. “I suppose you’re right,” he states. He exhales and presses his hands atop his knees, ready to change the subject. “What about you? What’s your weird thing?”
“I don’t have a weird—”
“Stop.”
After some thought, I say, “Okay. But if you tell anyone—”
“Who would I tell? Cam? Judge Gillespy?”
He has a point.
“Okay,” I say emphatically. “Every time I pass a fountain, or any body of water of any kind, really, I have to throw a coin in and make a wish. I purposely keep change on me at all times specifically for that reason. And I always make the same wish.”
“What’s the wish?” he asks.
Perhaps it’ll lead me off a cliff, but I choose to stand with my toes against the edge anyway. “I wish for love.” I don’t elaborate because the admission already feels pathetic on some level, but that wish isn’t necessarily for something romantic. It’s about someone, somewhere, filling the void of a lifetime of feeling unwanted.
I watch him, too invested in his reaction. His left eye twitches, and then both narrow in concentration. His eyebrows inch closer together, though not all the way. Just a millimeter or two. His face hasn’t significantly changed. But I see a world of surrender in it.
“I hope you never have to make that wish again,” he says. He says it like he says everything—so matter-of-factly but with a deep entanglement of vulnerability—so much so that I have to believe him.
Now would be a good time to address our past, beyond surface-level apologies. But if I’m honest, I don’t want to risk ruining what we’ve built back over these last few weeks.
In need of a distraction, I stand and take the step to his dresser. I lift a squat black bottle and evaluate it. “Trail.” I read the name from the label, then tap a spray of the cologne into the air between us. He looks on, amused. The smell of him envelops us, and it sends an immediate, undeniable pang of want through my core.
“Why do you choose to smell like a horse saddle?” I ask, not wanting to let on how fond I am of the scent.
“It smells like horse camp.”
I cock my head. “You never went to horse camp.”
“I did. Once.”
He stands and takes a half step toward me, unmistakably broody, his eyes fixed on mine. Looking into those infinite eyes, I’m smacked with understanding that nearly buckles my knees.
Sagawa. The summer before sixth grade. I rode Echo, a resplendent American quarter, the entire summer. She was moodier than the others, rearing at anyone who brushed her without a purposeful technique or chomping harder than necessary at a held carrot. At eleven, I thought I was special. That she held a sweet spot for me. That we had this indescribable bond that made me some sort of majestic animal whisperer. Looking back, she likely chose me because I was the least threatening—nervous and gentle, more attentive and less boisterous than the other kids.
Damon and I exchanged letters all summer. Better on paper, he absolutely was. It was crazy how much he had to say in those letters, more words exchanged via the post office than we likely would have in person all summer. He wrote about the training he was doing to “get fit” before school started, which was mostly running and push-ups. He told me all the cute new things Kara was learning, including all the new words she adorably mispronounced. He told me how boring it was without me there, which I secretly relished.
In the final week before my scheduled return home, I took Echo out on an afternoon ride on one of the back trails. It was my favorite ride, alone with her through the tree-covered path. The ancient evergreens and mossy earth made it feel like I could be somewhere far away, anywhere else with so many varied options of different life circumstances. I loved the idea of that. Each time I was out on the trails alone, I’d imagine up a new life. Me as the only daughter of a lonely widower who doted on me as the last living love of his life. As one of six kids in a chaotic brood where I always had someone to play with. Me as an Olympic equestrian, looking out at adoring parents from the podium as the national anthem played in the background. It was one of my favorite things about camp, that they trusted us to go out alone.
Thirty minutes into the ride, something spooked Echo—a speedy rodent or snake that rustled through the brush and across our path. She bucked. I fell backward as she spun, hitting the side of my face on the dirt, a tree root protruding just enough to split the skin of the right side of my forehead, just below the hairline.
Echo calmed fairly quickly, though I was too afraid to climb back on. I took hold of her reins and limped back to camp (over an hour on foot), all the while dizzy from the pain in my head and worried about the amount of blood still dripping from my forehead. I grew fully terrified only when I arrived back at camp and one of the counselors ran to me, eyes wide and panic-stricken.
“She’s lucky she didn’t pass out,” I overheard that counselor say to another. “Or worse,” the other said back. They called my parents, and two hours later, I sat with a stitched forehead from the called-in doctor and an ice pack pressed to it as I watched my mom’s burgundy Corolla pull up from the office window. Something explosive happened inside me when I saw Damon bound out of the back seat toward the office before my mom had even turned off the engine.
He came.
Even at eleven, I knew how monumental it was that he showed up for me. That this was and would continue to be something rare.
“We were chatting at the mailbox when the call came,” my mom said as she stepped in. “He insisted on coming.” She said this before even asking if I was okay or evaluating my head. I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or impressed with Damon, but either way, I immediately knew I needed him there, perhaps more than her. That I needed him in a way I didn’t yet know to be scared of.
I only cried for the first time with the good side of my face burrowed into his neck.
I didn’t quite understand it yet, but I loved him then. I loved who he was to me, what he gave me. I loved that he knew me. At eleven years old, having someone know me was like being chosen by the sun.
Standing in front of him now, watching his chest slowly rise and fall, his eyes invading mine, I know for certain that I loved him at eleven. Before I knew what it meant.
I don’t know that I ever stopped.
I need to sit. I take my seat on the edge of the bed once more. He sits beside me. My body is on fire as I watch him raise his hand to my face, cup it. It takes great effort not to nuzzle into it like a cat arching into a back scratch. I stop breathing when he gently rubs his thumb along the scar at my hairline and I know he’s back in that memory with me. “Do you still ride?” he whispers, and it sounds like Do you still love me? as if he’s just seen my thoughts.
I look to the carpet. “No.”
He releases his hand back to his lap. “Why?”
Why.
I could say it’s because my parents wouldn’t take me any longer or because I lost interest after I was thrown. But I know these aren’t the real reasons. I now know it’s because the last day I rode was the day I knew I loved him, and I can’t untangle the two.
Since he’s come back into my life, I’ve tried so hard to suppress not only the bad at the end but also the good. The parts that were too good to ever fully get over.
I watch as his free hand swipes forward and back three times along his jeans, over his thigh. Damon is grainy and textured, making me want to run my hand across him just to see what his coarseness feels like against my skin. I try desperately to shake the thought.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks, his voice huskier than usual.
I nod.
“I don’t know how to act around you. I don’t want to get you—us—in trouble. And I get it, it’s serious trouble. We could be held in contempt. I want to respect your dedication to this case. I want to respect our complicated past. I don’t want to promise things I can’t give. Like right now, I want to kiss you. But is that okay?”
My heart thumps against my sweatshirt—the same one I was wearing when we kissed in the presidential suite. I think of the rooftop again, sitting in his lap and pressing my lips to his, my hand against his groin. Most kisses I’ve had in my life have felt like a means to an end. The way Damon kisses, though, is deliberate. His lips move with intention and purpose, as though the kiss itself is an exploration of sense. A kiss with him is like sitting side by side, placing the pieces of an elaborate puzzle, each slow movement another found piece. I just don’t yet know what the finished picture is.
I inhale. He smells like sexual attraction feels.
Unable to resist, I lean in and kiss him.
I feel his breath catch and then release heavily into me. His hand goes immediately to the back of my head, under my hair, and presses firmly. I tug at the front of his T-shirt, collecting a small mound of fabric in my palm. He pulls away softly and leans his forehead against mine. “You deserve it all,” he murmurs. I lean back in, seeing him—us—clearly for perhaps the first time.
His other hand curves around my face, under my chin. He presses his tongue against mine and it is firm and searching. I wish in this moment I could bottle the comfort of him to uncork when emptiness sometimes takes me over.
He leans into me, his chest firm and drumming against my palm. He moves his lips from my mouth to my neck, grazing the skin of my cheek, then chin, as he goes. I close my eyes and tilt my head back. I inhale, intoxicated by how comforting his smell is. How everything about him is so good. I grasp for him—my fingertips pressing against his back, his biceps, his neck. He lets out a low sort of growl, and the hunger of it sends an electric shock out from my base in all directions.
I find it hard to think as he plants his lips on my neck, his teeth grazing the curve to my shoulder. Despite the bliss of it, doubt creeps in. We’ve tiptoed around our past, never addressing what happened. Perhaps we don’t need to, I think, as his tongue gently traces up the length of my neck to my ear, sending my body into an outbreak of goose bumps. It was ten years ago, after all. So much has happened since. Perhaps the past is gone and we don’t have to revisit any of it. I’d accept just about anything I told myself right now, just to keep his tongue on my skin.
He takes my earlobe between his teeth and tugs, the action forcing my eyes to roll back. I lean into him, desperate for more of him, for all of him.
Just as I’m about to give in fully, I pull away sharply, startled by a noise from the hallway. We sit, listening—his hand still pressed against the back of my head, mine still pressed against his neck. I place the noise quickly—the distinct, muffled clang of Raphael’s key chain jumping forward and back against its clasp. It reaches its height as he walks by Damon’s door, the shadow of his feet carving into the dark brown carpeting of the room. Damon and I watch each other as the sound dissipates down the hall, eventually disappearing where he would have turned the corner to the second wing.
Damon’s eyes don’t leave mine. They ask if I’m okay. They ask what happens next. They beg for permission to keep going.
“I better go while I have the chance,” I say, barely able to get the words out over my escalated breath. I tell myself it’s not a test. I’m not saying it so he’ll counter. I say it because I know I need to.
“Or... you could stay?” He cups the back of his neck with his palm and looks through his lashes at me, the peacock-feather blue of his eyes searing me like a laser.
I stare back at him, intensity corking my airway and desire drumming between my legs.
Or, I could stay.