16. Kai #3
The rational part of me produces objection after objection with almost clinical precision. She believes she is alone. This is private. Watching her in ordinary moments was already a violation, but this is something else entirely.
Go.
Ghost ignores every fucking word. He watches the flush deepen across her face.
Watches the tension gathering in her body and the way her teeth briefly catch her lower lip.
Watches a woman who has spent weeks telling me how difficult it is to identify what she wants to give herself something without asking permission from anyone.
And all I can think about is how badly I want to be the one giving it to her.
That thought is dangerous enough. The next is worse.
Would she let me? Not Dr. Blackwood. Not the man sitting opposite her in a controlled office asking carefully phrased questions about boundaries and consent.
The man in the shadows. Ghost. The one who tells her what he wants without softening it into something easier to accept. My pulse pounds hard enough that I feel it beneath the strap of my helmet resting loose against one hand. Julia’s face tightens. Then everything in her releases.
I can’t look away. It’s way too late for the gesture of decency.
I fucked that up the moment I decided to stay and watch her the first night.
No matter how much I sugarcoat the reasons or try to rationalize.
Especially since I keep coming back. So yes, decency is not a word I can use at this moment.
Her hand is visible again above the blanket, resting against her stomach.
For one moment, I expect satisfaction. It sure as fuck satisfied me watching her this.
Instead, Julia stares at the television with an expression so empty of pleasure that something inside me goes still.
She doesn’t look upset, not ashamed. She look underwhelmed.
She looks like someone who scratched an itch because it was irritating her and discovered afterward that the relief lasted approximately three seconds.
Her mouth twists faintly. Then she exhales, reaches for the remote and changes whatever she was watching. I almost laugh. Not because anything about what I have just done is funny, because that expression is unmistakable.
Well. That was disappointing.
The thought comes in her voice. I know it would probably piss her off that I can imagine it so accurately.
My attention stays fixed on her while another idea begins forming.
Not sexual at first. Observational. She wanted something.
She gave it to herself. It wasn’t enough. The language arrives almost on its own.
I know the ache in your body when you press your hand against your core, wishing someone else would.
I close my eyes and there it is — the next letter.
The sentence should disgust me. Instead, I begin building everything around it before I have even left the woods.
What she wants, what she denies herself.
The difference between touching herself because desire demands some kind of answer and being touched by someone who has spent enough time watching to know exactly how she reacts.
Ghost takes the thought and runs with it.
He wants to tell her that he sawit. He wants her to understand that the privacy she believes surrounds her is thinner than she knows.
He wants to frighten her with that knowledge.
Worse, he wants to know whether frightening her will make her curious again.
I look toward the couch. Julia has moved on as though nothing happened, legs curled beneath the blanket while she watches something else and absently runs one hand through her hair. Normal. Unaware.
Mine, whispers the part of me I should have silenced weeks ago.
I think about Thursday. Her saying no. What it meant when someone ignored it.
Every rule I have built my adult life around because I know exactly what unchecked control becomes in the hands of a man who believes wanting something makes it his.
The contradiction is enormous. I see it clearly.
That may be the most damning part. I am not confused about what I’m doing, I am choosing it.
I stay another twenty minutes before forcing myself back toward the motorcycle.
The ride home does nothing to clear my head.
I barely walk through my own door, the second letter is already taking shape.
I don’t remove my jacket. I don’t turn on the television or pour a drink or pretend I’m going to spend the rest of the evening doing anything remotely normal.
I go directly to the desk. The black stationery waits in the drawer.
When I pull out a sheet of cream paper and set it beneath the lamp, my hand remains still for several seconds above the page. There are probably a hundred ways I could begin. Only one feels right. I lower the pen.
Little ember,
And beneath it, I write the thing I know will make her understand that Sunday night, she was never alone.