Chapter 43 Kit #2
He made another sound. Like he couldn’t outrun his monsters in his sleep. Like they followed him to his dreams, just like they followed me. My hand shook when I lifted it to his cheek, softly grazing my knuckles over the scruff on his jaw. He sounded wounded. Shattered.
It was at that moment that it all crashed in on me.
I did that. I put those shadows under his eyes.
I caused it. Caused him to cry out in his sleep.
He was holding onto me like I was a buoy in a thrashing sea, yet I was the sea.
I was the dark waters. I was the crashing waves trying to pull him under, to hold him inside me where he couldn’t escape.
“It’s okay, Kit. It’s okay for it to be difficult. Bowen and Brett are identical twins. Of course it will be hard.”
I couldn’t find even a crack between my tears to try to explain what I knew all along. It was never about them looking alike, not really.
Another ragged breath, and I stand. My hazel eyes shine with even more tears. I look like a child wearing his clothes, and I don’t deserve how safe I feel drowning in them. I don’t deserve to stand here in his space. Not after everything.
I find him in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter. He has a mug in his hands, and another sitting on the counter next to him. He flicks his blue eyes up to me, and he pauses with the mug close to his mouth.
“My dad said he could get me and the van after he gets home. I guess they’re in Florida for the week.
” I sniff and look down at the mug. Tiny marshmallows float on top of the brown liquid.
He made hot chocolate. “I really had no clue you lived here. I’m…
I apologize for showing up the way I did.
If you want… If you wouldn’t mind taking me… home…or-or I could call Tucker.”
I haven’t talked to Tucker in…months. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know if he would answer if I called. Or better yet, if he wouldn’t laugh and hang up if I asked him to come get me. But I would try.
The silence is pulsing with all the things left unsaid between us.
When I finally pull my eyes back to his, he’s already looking at me.
Dull, shuttered. None of the intensity from earlier is left in their depths.
He’s got it all locked up where I can’t see it.
But he swallows once, and his jaw flexes with gritted teeth.
I can’t help but wonder what words he’s biting back. And is he holding back for my sake, or his? I want to tell him to just spit it out, but he lets go of his mug with one hand to push the other on the counter closer to me.
He takes a sip and looks away from me, towards the living room. The window that shows the rain is still going strong outside. I can hear it pinging off the windows.
“What do you want?” he finally asks. It's not sharp. It’s quiet. Careful, even. Like he doesn’t know if he really wants to hear my answer.
You.
“I don’t think what I want really matters in this situation, does it?” I rub the back of my neck, then reach for the mug with clammy hands. Brett used to say there was nothing a mug of hot chocolate couldn’t fix.
I think you were wrong about that, Brett-man.
Bowen levels me with an unimpressed glare. Now is not the time for me to be difficult.
I take a sip of the hot chocolate but barely taste it.
The mug makes a soft thunk when I set it back down.
I shrug. “I don’t think I can… I don’t know that I want to go back to that house if no one else is there.
I don’t…” My eyes slide off him and around the kitchen.
It's hard to admit my demons out loud, even if this man knows every one of them personally.
Most of them, anyway. It's one thing for someone to know your weaknesses, and another to admit them out loud.
To feel the words on your tongue and feel the way they sound in the air.
Verbalizing things makes them real. Not just unspoken truths.
My eyes land on four bottles. All lined up against the back of the counter under the cupboards.
They’re varying levels of full. A pit of want and shame and that ever present regret shoot through my system.
My face heats, just looking at them. I’m not so much of a fiend that I want to run across the short space and take a bottle to the face…
But I remember the numbness. The way all my worries would float away, just out of reach.
If our strength can be measured by those bottles, he wins every time.
It probably says something about us as people.
The fact that he can seek pockets of escape while I flung myself full force into the blissful detachment for years.
Even to the detriment of every relationship in my life.
The pain I self-inflicted is a pain I don’t know will ever go away.
I don’t know if time will dull the sharp edges that cut, or even if I want it to.
I can’t forget. I can’t ever allow myself to become complacent in healing.
I can’t forget the comforts that overtook my life and tore down the pillars of my morals and beliefs and fucking love.
I cannot ever allow myself to forget the poison that allowed me to hurt the people who care.
I take the mug back in my hands and look out the small kitchen window over the sink. I can just make out the rain hitting the surface of the lake in the distance. The worst of the storm seems to have passed, just a steady rain left behind.
Bowen tips back the rest of his drink and steps over to place the mug in the sink.
He braces his hands on the edge of the counter for a second, rolls his head between his shoulders like he’s trying to loosen tense muscles.
Then he pushes off the counter and turns, and when his blue eyes meet mine, something that’s been on the cusp of panic settles. Just enough.
“Then I’ll see you in the morning.”
He leaves me in the kitchen. I stare at the four bottles until my hot chocolate goes cold.