55. Kit
Kit
I fell asleep to the sound of the storm, the crackle of the fire burning in the hearth, and the weight of my truth in the air.
Now I'm under the weight of a blanket that still smells like cedar and smoke that I know I didn't put there, breathing in the thick air swollen with all the things the night bore witness to, and dawn has yet to chase away.
Bowen isn't here.
I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and pad over to the window. The rain stopped, and dawn is just starting to realize it's her time to shine. The lake is a sleek sheet of glass, catching the first soft threads of pink and gold in the sky.
My chest aches, sharp and familiar, because last night felt like a dream. One that was held in the shadows and that I'll lose as soon as the sun comes up.
“Bowen?” My voice cracks, rough from sleep.
No answer.
His bedroom door is open, bed untouched.
Bathroom, empty. Every space echoes my hollow breath back to me, making sure I feel just how alone I am here.
I pull the blanket around myself tighter, my skin prickling.
When you know the pain of being left behind, it's a feeling that lingers around every fight.
Every hard truth and shortcoming. It's a burning sort of loneliness when all you're left with is the understanding that you weren't enough.
The porch is wet under my bare feet, and the air smells like damp earth and that distinct smell of the woods.
My legs itch to move. To run. To chase the feeling just on the other side of exhaustion.
To go until my muscles protest and my lungs burn and my head enters that space between reality and peace.
“Bowen?”
No answer.
A bird sings. The sun is breaking the night sky open in streaks of blue and orange, brighter than just a few minutes ago. How quickly things can change. I can't escape the feeling crawling up my throat.
It's not until my toes sink into the wet grass that I hear it.
Music.
It's dark and low and coming from around the back.
I barely notice the mud seeping between my toes as I follow the thread of sound. I know where it's coming from before I get there.
The small cabin.
“Bowen?” I call out, stopping outside the door.
I can't say how many times I was in and out of this cabin.
Hundreds. Every summer after my parents set it up with bunk beds.
It was ours. Our hideout. Our place where we whispered until our eyes couldn't stay open any longer.
Nights spent squeezing into one bed just because.
Waking up with elbows in ribs and toes digging into sides and stomachs still sore from laughing the night before.
It feels strange to knock. But I give the wood two sharp and swift knocks that leave my knuckles stinging.
No answer.
The last time I tried the handle, it was locked. The metal knob is cool against my clammy palm, and I frown at the way my heart kicks in my chest.
I expect it to be locked again. So, when I turn it, and the door opens with zero resistance, I freeze. I can't help but flush from feeling like I'm trespassing. I'm about ready to pull the door closed and hustle back to the cabin, but the smell of something burning keeps me in place.
“Bowen?” Did he fall asleep with something burning? The thought of him being out cold and a fire starting propels me forward, pushing the door open further and stepping inside.
I stop dead not even two steps in.
Bowen is hunched over on a stool, clad in the same clothes as yesterday. Curls have come loose all around his head, and he's… He's…
The walls of the cabin are a patchwork of memories. Snippets of our lives. Burned into the wood.
Intricate, beautiful detail.
The woods. Brett with his arms stretched out to the sky. Four boys sitting at the edge of the lake. Brett sticking his tongue out. Brett lying on the grass. The cabin. Sheila's smile. Sheila wrapped up in a goofy hug from Brett. A motorcycle. Every inch.
That's not what stops my heart.
It's the scattered pieces of wood on every surface. Leaned up against every wall. I take them in with wide, glassy eyes.
Me.
Everywhere.
Young me, gap toothed and freckled. Preteen me with wild hair and a bad attitude.
Teenage me with a scrunched nose and bitten off smile.
Me with downcast eyes. Me, curled up in bed.
My mouth. My hands. Fingers covered in rings pushed into wavy hair, gripping at the root. Burned into wood like scars.
I can't fucking breathe. The smell of burnt wood fills my lungs. It fills my head. I can't think around the smoke.
“What is this?” The words tumble from my lips just as the music pauses between songs.
Bowen's head snaps over to look at me. All the color drains from his face, and his shoulders go tight with the shock of seeing me here.
I once stood on a path looking out at the most beautiful, ethereal scene and felt like I was standing in the heart of Brett's soul. Welcoming and sharp in his beauty.
Now I feel like I'm standing in the depths of Bowen's, and I'm seconds away from being consumed by it.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” he says after cutting off the music.
The stool screeches against the floor when he stands abruptly.
He tosses the burning tool he was using on the worktable, and I watch a thin line of smoke trail into the air from the hot end pressing into the center of a face I would know anywhere.
“What is this?” I ask again, but it's all around me. It's burned into every surface. Detailed from hands that spent hours crafting each one. I stumble back a step, and Bowen laughs.
He laughs. Low and dangerous. A laugh I have never once heard from him. “Open your pretty fucking eyes, kitten. Look around.” His chest is rising and falling with frantic breaths, eyes wild.
I'm standing with my toes on the edge of a cliff, pebbles coming loose and falling into a shadowed abyss below. My hair tickles my skin with my swiftly shaking head.
“Bowen…”
He squints his eyes at me, and the floor creaks with his steps forward. I shake my head harder.
“No. No, Bowen. You left me.” The feeling that was clawing up my throat tears free. Bowen halts, leaving only half the space between us.
It's not big enough to hold it all. This whole cabin isn't big enough to hold it all, not with what's already been packed away in these walls.
“You left me when I needed you. I needed you, Bowen… I need…” I scream out in frustration, the blanket I had wrapped around my shoulders fluttering around me, pooling at my muddy feet. Like the last shield falling.
“You almost left me!” His yell bounces off the walls, and Bowen cracks open right in front of me.
“I was at the hospital, Kit. I saw you…” His voice splinters off, deep diving into a heartbreak I never had to endure.
“You almost killed yourself. You almost fucking killed yourself, Kit.
Do you have any idea what that would have done to everyone?
To me? I begged you. Didn't I? I kissed my tears into your fucking skin, and I begged while I was still inside you.”
“A pity fuck…” I'm still shaking my head, holding my stomach to keep my insides from spilling out onto the floor.
“Don't you dare take that memory and twist it,” he cuts, desperate. “Why won't you see it, Kit? Open your eyes, baby, and look at me. Look at me!” His roar is loud enough to shake the foundation of everything I thought I knew.
He throws his arms out wide, showing the details of his bleeding heart all around us.
“I can't…” I choke on a sob.
“You can,” he rasps. Then he's on me. Cutting off any space left with sure steps until his hands are slipping up into the hair at my nape, and his lips are crushed to mine.
It's agony.
It's bliss.
I cry out from the devastation I can taste in the tears on my lips. From the onslaught of everything. The weight of it all crushes me, and my hands turn from clutching to thrashing. I push at him until our mouths separate.
His eyes are blue flames, and there are so many things waiting there to burn me alive.
I run.
It feels like every memory, every scarred image in that cabin, claws at my heels with every step I take. The ground squelches under my feet, and I run like the hounds of hell are after me.
The bright morning sun feels like a spotlight on my undoing. Every wall. Every brick I placed comes crumbling down. All I can do is run before I'm buried in the aftermath.
I don't stop. Not when Bowen calls my name. Not when my feet slip in the damp grass or when I wheeze to get air in my lungs.
The dock groans under my hard footfalls, and I suck in a breath and close my eyes.
The truth hits me right before I break the surface.
The water that's held me countless times takes the tears from my skin. Unburdens me from feeling their weight. Mutes the scream that tears from deep inside my gut where my sorrow and fear live.
It exacerbates the pounding in my head and chest until I'm sure the whole lake is pulsing with it. The truth is guilt.
Guilt for a fight caused by me. Guilt for being responsible for Brett getting in his Jeep that night. Guilt for not being strong enough. How could Bowen want me? How could he look at me? How long will it take for him to realize it's my fault? How would I survive having him, and losing him? Again.
How could I have what I want when Brett can't?
Brick after brick turns to dust in the water.
I thought I was safe at the lake. To get away. To hide.
He's at the end of the dock when I come up for air. He looks just as wild as I feel. He toes off his boots at the same time he whips the shirt over his head.
I feel dizzy.
“You've got three seconds to tell me to walk away, kitten.” His raspy, deep voice floats over the water's surface to me.
“One.”
My breath hitches. The trees rustle, waiting anxiously around us.
“Two.” Bowen tosses his phone on the dock.
My lips part.
“Three,” he whispers. Bowen looks at me, nothing but eyes and nose above the surface.
And he dives.
I don't think I will ever forget these seconds.
The last heartbeats of who I was when I woke up this morning.
Of closing my eyes, toes barely skimming through the loose pebbles and grit at the bottom of the lake where I hover in the shallow waters.
Waiting. Or the way my entire body breaks out in goosebumps when the water ripples and splashes in front of me.
I'll never forget the feeling of Bowen grasping my face with his hands to bring my forehead to his. Our panted exhales on each other's lips. Opening my eyes and falling into his.
A tender moment held in a watery breath of silence, before it all crashes down.
I gasp with the first touch of his lips. A soft, gentle press. My hands find his shoulders, palms against burning flesh. I don't push this time but pull him closer. Our eyes wide open.
I kiss him back.
And my world flips upside down.
The second I crack, Bowen groans into my mouth, and the tender moment breaks way for the onslaught of everything we've never been able to say. Everything I never dared to want. I close my eyes again and fall into it. Into him.
His mouth is demanding as he holds my head the way he wants it, deepening the kiss. He tastes like smoke and raw promise as his tongue glides against mine. I whimper, and if it wasn't for his hands on me, I would melt back into the water.
Gravel-soaked need whispers against my mouth. “kitten.”
We're all teeth and tongue. My fingers dig into his back, and Bowen's hands are everywhere.
My face. My back. My hair. Gripping my sides and holding me as close as two bodies can be.
He grips the backs of my thighs and hoists me up, and my legs wrap around his waist like they've been doing it for years.
I feel him everywhere. But it's not nearly enough.
Bowen seems to think the same thing because he peels my wet t-shirt up, only pulling his mouth from mine long enough to get it off. It plops in the water when he blindly tosses it to the side. Then he's back at my mouth, and I'm drowning.
“Boe…” I gasp, his mouth trailing kisses across my jaw, and I squeeze my eyes closed to block out the bright morning sun when those kisses move down the side of my neck. His beard is biting and rough against my skin. I want to feel it everywhere.
I don't notice he's moving under the water pulls on my wet shorts, trying and failing to keep me under. I can feel the muscles of his abdomen flexing against my own with every step. Somehow, he manages to climb out the small incline with me still clinging to his front.
Teeth nip at my chin, and two big hands grab onto my ass and press me back up where I was. Then he's moving.
“Take me home,” I pant. But he's already on his way down the path.