Chapter 47 Kit
Kit
Bowen didn’t wake up to me gone, but I woke up to him gone.
Still.
I paced the cabin. Cried over a plate of spaghetti when I realized he had plated two, even when he wouldn’t acknowledge me.
I blared his music, like it would be a calling beacon to lure the beast back home.
I smoked one of his cigarettes on the porch and damn near hacked up a lung. Wouldn’t recommend.
I stayed up on the couch until my eyelids drooped, and I couldn’t hold them open any longer.
He never came back home.
I know this because I’m looking at his empty bed right now.
His bedroom smells like him more than any other part of the place. His sheets are soft cotton, black like he pretends his soul is. I groan to the ceiling.
Kitten.
Kittenkittenkitten.
He bit it out like it was a curse, but he said it. It’s been on a constant loop since it left his lips. There has been a steady, aching hope filling me up from the hole in my chest out since he slammed the door.
Stupid and naive? Probably.
I can’t bring myself to stop it, though. A low, low thrum of anxious excitement is there, too, flowing from my heart to my limbs and sending out a sense of life I haven’t felt in years.
The smile on my face feels real, even if small. A secret smile between me and all the delusions I have ever harbored for Bowen. I may never be what I want to be to him, but I will take kitten. Maybe one day said in the way he used to say it. With adoring exasperation most days, but still.
Bowen is scared, I think. I need to prove to him that I’m not going anywhere. Fight for him like I decided to a few days ago. And now that I know he doesn’t want me to leave?
The smile on my face grows, and I slowly run my hands over the sheets next to me. That’s how he finds me.
Of course it is.
He stands, leaning against the door frame. Looking at me, lying by the end of his bed with a weirdo smile on my face.
“What are you doing?” He looks like he barely slept. I want to ask him where he was, but I’m willing to bet he was with Ian.
“Your bed is softer than the guest bed.” I say casually, flopping back down on my back. “You look like shit, by the way.”
He snorts but pushes off the door and moves into the room. I hear him pull out a drawer in his dresser. His closet door slides open, then slides closed a moment later.
“I brought your stuff inside.” He says it softly, nothing like the booming yell from the night before.
The thrum inside me intensifies.
“Okay. Can I wash my clothes?”
He hums a soft affirmative, then his bathroom door closes, and I hear the water turn on.
I find my bag of laundry and a duffel bag I had under one of my seats filled with some random other things. My toiletries are on the foot of the guest bed, and Red the Dragon is sitting up by the pillows.
The thrum is a live wire.
I take my dirty laundry to the washer and dryer stack hidden away behind a closet door next to the bathroom across the hall, and dump in a load. I wait to start it while Bowen is showering and check the dryer instead.
I fold all the towels, smiling that same secret smile when I place the black and white striped towel on top.
I still hear the shower going in Bowen’s bathroom, so I grab the stack of towels and hum to myself when I hip check his bedroom door open the rest of the way.
I was just going to drop a few on his bed, okay?
I did not, however, expect to be blindsided by a full, absolutely and gloriously indecent view of Bowen in the goddamn nude.
All that skin? Tan and wet?
My brain short-circuits.
His skin is flushed, and he’s walking out of the steamy bathroom dripping wet. And naked.
The water is running in slow rivers down the contours of his stomach. It's downright the most sinful thing I have ever been graced with.
That’s before my eyes track lower, and I see everything…
“Oh…my God,” I squeak. Squeak! And then I slap one hand over my eyes and thrust out the other hand still holding the towels. “What are you doing? What if I was in here?”
“You are in here,” he deadpans but takes the towels. I swear I hear a small, minuscule thread of amusement in his voice, and I can’t help but peek between my fingers. My ring and pinky keep his modesty, of course.
There’s a beat of silence. Then he mutters, “You screamed.”
“I did not scream.”
“Squealed.”
“You…you came at me dick first, Bowen! What was I supposed to do, bow in greeting?”
The laugh is short and rough, but it's there. It's there. “You saw my dick, didn’t you?”
“It was swinging at me—hard to miss,” I groan and snap my fingers closed when he looks at me.
“Get out, Kit.”
“Yep. Yeah, getting out.”
Kit.
Not kitten, but not Meyer.
The thrum is alive.