Chapter 58 Kit
Kit
It's another hot day. If we hadn't just taken a shower, I would be dragging Bowen back down to the lake. But I think if I see him wet one more time today, my brain will completely fry. Then I'll just be a mumbling weirdo that whispers “abs,” and “happy trails” every ten seconds.
Instead, we're sitting on the hammock like a swing, and I'm perched back against his chest. Bowen's fingers have made their way up under my shirt, and he's caressing me in tantalizing sweeps that I'm sure are meant to be calming, but I'm a fucking fiend, apparently.
I'm also sore. And in a fuzzy headspace. Maybe my brain is already fried. He scrambled my brain cells and made me think like a sex-starved man. Ew. God.
“Tell me about the cabin,” I blurt. His fingers stop their movement for a long moment of silence, and I wait for the shutdown I expect to happen. I'm about to tell him never mind, but I relax when the touch starts up again.
“Which cabin?” He mumbles, nuzzling into the side of my head.
“Well…both?” I ask sheepishly. “But…but I meant in general.
If you haven't noticed, I didn't do the best job at keeping in touch.” My laugh is dripping in self-depreciation.
“It was too hard. My parents called to make sure I was alive. Most times, I sent them pictures of where I was instead of calling back.” I shrug.
“I didn't even know they wanted to sell the property.”
“I don't think it was in their plans.” Bowen sighs, splaying his fingers out on my stomach.
The porch creaks under his foot as he uses it to sway us back and forth.
“I didn't ask if I could come here. I just…” He clears his throat and takes a deep breath.
“I drove here from the hospital. I never left.”
He doesn't have to spell out what day he's talking about. I know, because it was me in the hospital bed. What he's saying makes my ears ring. “You came here?”
It's his turn to laugh, belittling and raw around the edges still. Even after years. “It didn't feel like a choice. I got in my truck and drove. This is where I ended up, and then I refused to leave. Your Dad offered me the property for a laughable amount and a promise a year ago. I accepted.”
“What promise?” I ask, my eyes burning. It's hard not to let guilt seep in and smother me. Not when I can picture Bowen here, alone. Suffering, just like I was. I could have been here for him, had I been stronger. Fought harder. Not been the boy who turned to alcohol to cope.
We ended up on different isolated paths, and it took two years for them to merge again. I place my hand over his and close my eyes. “Tell me.”
“He made me promise not to give up. On myself.” His hold tightens, and he murmurs, “on you,” into my hair. The implication that Bowen could have ever reached a low that deep makes me breathless. I scramble off of him and suck in a deep breath. He's watching me with careful eyes.
I hate that look. I don't want to be looked at like he's waiting for me to bolt again. Like me leaving is inevitable. “Show me,” I say, turning and moving towards the stairs of the porch. “I want you to show me this time.”
I walk into the small cabin with my heart lodged in my throat. Even though I know what to expect, it's still jarring to walk into a space I spent years seeing and have it be completely different.
The space smells like burned wood, cigarette smoke, and Bowen.
It's such an intense scent, and I suck it in through my nose, moving into the room.
The bunk beds are pushed together, stuck in the far corner.
There's a few metal shelving units by the tall work table Bowen had been hunched over earlier.
Besides that, there's not much left in here. Just…wood.
Everywhere.
The walls of the cabin themselves are what I saw first earlier, and I'm pulled to them now.
Starting right next to the door. My brows pull together, looking at it.
The lines are deep and dark. Jagged where the others I saw were more precise.
I can still make out the dock, trees, and a massive bird over what would be the lake. It's beautiful in a haunting way.
“Was this your first one?” I ask quietly, looking over to see Bowen tense by the door. His hands are tucked in his pockets, and his jaw is locked. He's not looking at me, but he gives his downturned head a nod.
I graze my fingers over the burned ridges of scene after scene. Each gets more detailed, sharper lines and better skill. The number of hours he had to have spent here. Burning his memories into the walls that saw us grow up.
Brett is everywhere. Smiling, hugging, making silly faces, being alive. Alive and perfect. Bowen captured him perfectly. I sniff, trying to keep the dam up when I stop in front of one of the three of us. I'm smiling, Bowen is looking at me, and Brett is laughing. I can almost hear the belly laugh.
By the time I get to the last burned wall, my heart is in fiery little pieces.
“These are incredible, Bowen. Like pictures.”
He doesn't respond, but he's watching me now through his lashes.
“Can I…look at the rest?” I ask softly. My fingers itch to snatch up one of the pieces I glimpsed earlier. I can see them in my periphery. They're all over the fucking place.
Bowen snorts. “You mean the ones of you?”
“I'm sure they're not all…”
“Every single one,” he says, cutting me off. His gravelly voice makes my stomach swoop. I look away and walk to the nearest one.
I feel like the vulnerable one when I pick up the first piece. I'm not even the one who made it, but it's…a lot. To see how someone else sees you.
Bowen didn't miss anything. The three freckles on my nose that are bigger than the rest. The shallow dimple in my right cheek, or the swoop of my hair. The scar on my chin from falling on my bike, or the way that my left eye is slightly darker than my right.
It's agonizing to know that I spent years wishing Bowen saw me, and he did see me. Every detail. He saw me with such clarity that he was able to burn me from memory.
“Why?” I ask, setting down a long hunk that has my hands burned into it. My hands. I'm still blushing over an outline of my back and shoulder. From the vantage point of someone behind me. My head is turned deep into the black shadows of the burned background.
“It was the only thing that made my mind quiet for a little while.” Bowen looks like a caged beast, standing there watching me pick up each piece of his heart and inspect it.
There's an entire stack of flat wooden pieces with my eyes on them. The eyes I didn't look at him with for years.
I wipe the tears on my cheeks, looking all around. “When did you figure it out?” I ask, so quiet I'm not sure he hears me.
“I don't think you want the answer to that, kitten.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Always. I always fucking knew.”
Bowen takes a step towards me and halts.
“The first time I walked in your room and saw you curled up in bed. It felt like the first real breath I had taken since the night he died.”
“Boe…”
“When it broke my goddamn heart every night you got drunk, even though you knew if you did, I wouldn't come.”
The tears are rolling hot trails down my cheeks. But I refuse to look away. Not anymore.
“When, sometimes, I would still show up, even if Tucker told me you were wasted. I'd sleep against your bedroom door, just to be close.”
I step closer to him but stop when he continues, “I knew for sure when I just wanted to fucking kiss you. I wanted to kiss you until you stopped crying. I wanted to kiss you until you remembered that you are still alive. That I am still alive.”
“So, what are you waiting for?” I breathe.
We crash into each other in the middle of the cabin. Surrounded by the scars left inside him, I jump, and he catches me.
“I'm sorry,” I say between kisses. But he just grips onto my hair and kisses me harder.
His lips don't just touch, they consume.
They're demanding and unyielding, and I fall into it.
Into him. We don't break apart when something crashes against the floor.
I barely even register the hard surface under me, not when he's pulling me roughly against his length, and I'm surviving on the air he breathes into me.
I could easily spend entire days with Bowen Briggs kissing me and come out of it feeling like it wasn't long enough. His beard burns just enough to make me feel exactly the way he wanted me to. Alive.
I haven't felt this alive in years. I moan into him when he sucks on my tongue, and my insides clench when he groans at my teeth sinking into his lip. We're mouths and hands touching and gripping, and I never want it to end.
We don't stop when his phone rings the first time. But by the third time, I'm groaning and pulling back. Bowen isn't deterred, just latches onto my throat instead.
“Boe, answer. Third call,” I mumble. To my dismay, Bowen actually listens. He rips the phone out of his pocket, honest to God growls, and swipes to answer.
“The woods better be on fire,” he snaps. Then, after a beat where all I hear from the other end is “dinner” and “fuck with Mom,” Bowen tilts his head back like he's begging the heavens for the call to end. When it finally does, his nostrils are flared, and he's taking slow, steadying breaths.
His pupils are still shot to hell when he looks at me. His jaw flexes when I attempt to adjust myself in my pants. “What is it?”
“Ian,” he grumbles, swiping his thumb over my wet lip. He tugs on it gently, transfixed.
“What did he want?” I look down when the rest of my senses make it through the thick fog of desire, and I feel something poking into my butt. I pull out a sharp scalpel thing and cringe. That could have been bad.
“Sunday Bennet dinner. I missed last week.
He threatened the whole pack on my doorstep if I don't show up.” He scrubs his hands over his face before looking at me again and groaning low in his throat.
Those hands land on my upper thighs and tug me closer.
“Fuck it. We can stay in here and lock the door.”
“I feel like a flimsy old lock doesn't stand a chance against Ian, Boe.” I pat his cheek and pretend that I'm not thoroughly disappointed about not being ravished right here. It would have totally been worth the splinters.
“Ian? It would be Warren barreling in here with Emery egging him on, claiming he definitely wasn't strong enough.” Bowen rolls his eyes, but I can see the humor in them.
I blink.
“Warren? Emery?”
He barks a laugh. “Don't you remember any of Ian's brothers? He has at least twelve different obnoxious ones.”
“Twelve?” I balk. I remember a few other boys now that he mentions it, but they were never at the lake as much as Ian was.
“Feels like it sometimes. There are five Bennet boys, and Jo and Clint, their parents.” Bowen pushes my hair back and smirks. “Jo will love you.”
I don't miss the fondness in his voice, or the way his lips quirk in a genuine tilt that I don't see often.
“I wasn't invited.”
“Uh, I think Ian's exact words were, ‘Mom already set Kit a plate. Don't break her heart; she's got really good aim and a hundred wooden spoons.’”
I guess I'm going to meet the Bennets.