FORTY #2
“You’re doing the thing again,” she tells me, her voice toeing the edge of sharpness.
“What thing?” I push.
“Making me feel like I’m literally one hiccup away from being handled.”
That cuts a little cleaner than I expect it to, but I nod once.
Then I remove the knife from my belt. Dakota’s entire body grows still as she watches me place the knife on the floor between us.
The second knife from my boot joins the first, and then the gun from the back of my waistband.
Then the spare magazine. And then the thin wire loop I keep hidden up my sleeve.
Her eyes track every movement before she finally asks, “What are you doing?”
“Giving you proof.”
“Of…?”
“That if you’re waiting for me to treat you like a threat, I can at least do it honestly,” I tell her.
She looks down at the weapons on the floor, and then at me. “That’s genuinely the least comforting sentence anyone has ever said to me.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yup.”
“You’re supposed to comfort me,” she mutters.
“I’m supposed to be telling you the truth, remember?” I counter.
Her laugh cracks out of her. “Great.”
I take one step back from the weapons laid bare between us. Then another. Then I say, “Look, here’s the truth. You are dangerous.”
Her face shuts down and I hate it instantly. Hate it with a fucking passion.
So I say the rest before she can run away with only the worst piece of it. “But so am I.”
She doesn’t move.
“That doesn’t make us unsafe.”
The word sits there between us, right there next to the weapons on the mat.
Plain.
Ugly.
And true.
Dakota looks down at the weapons again. “You think that makes sense?”
“I kind of think you know it does.”
“I killed three men in that hallway,” she reminds me, as if I could forget.
I shrug. “They cornered you, they hurt Ewan, and they tried to put a collar on you.”
Her jaw tightens. “And that should make me feel better? Because they deserved it?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I just think you should stop looking for the right amount of guilt when you’re still covered in their blood,” I tell her a little bluntly, and her breath catches. I point at the sink, and ask, “You want it off?”
“Yeah.”
“Then go ahead. Take it off,” I say.
Her eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“Take off what has blood on it. Rinse what you want rinsed. Keep what you want kept. I won’t do it for you, not unless you ask,” I tell her.
“You’re really bad at comfort.”
“Yup.” I nod solemnly, and for a second, her mouth curves.
Then she practically tears her shirt over her head.
It’s not sexy, not at first. It’s angry and fast, like the fabric itself has personally offended her.
She throws it on the floor and it lands in a wet heap.
Her undershirt follows. Then her hat. Then the bandana.
Her hair falls loose, pale and tangled, and streaked with dried blood close to the ends.
I turn away.
“Don’t.”
The word crackles across the room and I stop.
“Look at me,” she demands.
I turn back.
She stands in the middle of the training room in just a bra and blood-stained pants, shoulders tight and chin lifted like she’s daring me to flinch.
There’s blood on her stomach, her arms, her throat, but not all of it belongs to the dead men.
Some of it’s from the wound on her arm and some of it’s from her hands and knee.
Her vitiligo cuts through all of the mess in pretty pale patches that I’ve only spotted a few times, through holes in her jacket or when her sleeve raised too far and revealed too much back when she was Stranger and I was the annoying pest she couldn’t get rid of.
Her body is shaking, but her eyes aren’t, and she repeats, “Look.”
“I’m looking,” I assure her.
“Not like you’re checking for injuries.”
“That’s generally considered a part of looking, though,” I say, trying to elevate her mood.
“Kaito.”
Right. Got it. I finally understand. She doesn’t want softness and she doesn’t want me to turn this thing into some kind of medical assessment or rescue. She just wants a witness. She wants to know if I can look at her, see everything she is right now, and still not turn away.
So, I look. Fully.
At the blood.
At the bruises.
At her bare skin.
At the bite Ewan left, angry and fresh on her throat.
At the dark fear under her eyes.
And at the girl who killed three guys and came back terrified because her body did it a little too well.
“I see you,” I tell her honestly.
Her mouth trembles only once. “What do you see?”
I don’t dare dress up my answer, so I give it to her with the brutal honesty she deserves. The honesty I’ve always given her. “Someone who survived a trap. Someone who killed because they didn’t give her any other option. Someone who is scared out of her mind because it felt too easy.”
She swallows hard.
“Someone who thinks wanting anything right now might mean that thing inside her is still sitting in the driver’s seat.”
Her breath leaves her in a rush.
“And someone I want anyway.”
Silence after that.
Her eyes burn as she looks at me, and her voice is almost small when she asks, “Even like this?”
“Yup,” I tell her with a nod.
“That’s kind of stupid.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Also very concerning.”
“Oh, it’s been concerning for a while now,” I confess, sighing like it’s a problem when it’s really not. At least, not to me.
A rough laugh bursts out of her, small and cracked but hers, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard.
There she is.
Under the blood, under NOVAC, and under every gross thing that tried to stamp its name on her. She’s still right there.
I point to the sink. “Wash up, Dakota.”
She glares at me, but she goes to the sink. The water runs red first and she scrubs hard at her skin. Too hard. For ten whole seconds, I let her.
Then I blurt, “Please stop trying to take your skin off.”
She freezes.
“I’m not coming over there unless you ask me to,” I add. “But stop.”
Her fingers loosen and the water keeps running. She looks down into the sink, then quietly admits, “I keep thinking I’ll see it.”
“What?”
“The switch.” Her voice has grown quieter now. “Like there’ll be some kind of mark, something under my skin. Proof that it’s still there.”
“It’s still there.”
She looks at me through the mirror above the sink, and I don’t soften my words for her.
“That’s not the same as it being in control, though.”
Her eyes close then and, for a heavy moment, she just breathes. Then she turns off the water. Her hands are cleaner now. Not fully clean, but cleaner.
She turns back to me. “What if it wants?”
I go very still at that.
“What if it isn’t just killing?” she asks. “What if wanting feels the same? What if I touch you and it opens that door again?”
“Then I’ll close the door,” I promise.
“You think you can?” she wonders, eyeing me closely.
“Yup,” I answer with a shrug and a small twitch of my lips.
Her eyes narrow. “That’s arrogant.”
“I like to call it experienced,” I argue calmly, and it makes her pause.
I don’t talk about my father often. I don’t like giving him space in rooms he has no right to even linger in. But he’s already here. He always is when instinct starts wearing a fucking crown.
“My father liked to believe wanting something made it his,” I tell her.
Dakota’s eyes sharpen.
“If he wanted obedience, he took it. If he wanted silence, he’d force it. If he wanted fear, then he would go out of his way to build a house out of it and make us live there.”
Her face changes.
Anger. For me.
I don’t let that touch me yet.
“He called that instinct. Nature. Truth.”
“Sounds like a major dick.”
The corner of my mouth shifts despite myself, and I nod. “Oh, yeah, he was.”
She nods slowly, and I hold her gaze when I say, “He was also incredibly wrong.”
Her jaw tightens then.
“Wanting isn’t the problem,” I tell her. “What you do with it is.”
She looks down at the weapons on the floor again, and then back at me. “So you think if you can stand there wanting me and not taking, then I can want you and not lose myself?”
“Yup.”
Her breathing changes again, growing slower and deeper. Like the idea is niggling its way through her body one stubborn inch at a time.
“And if I do?” she eventually asks.
“Lose yourself?”
She only nods.
“Then I’ll bring you right back,” I promise.
“How?”
“In whatever way you’ll let me.”
Her eyes drop to my mouth, and the vibe in the room changes so suddenly my stomach clenches.
It’s not soft.
It’s definitely not sweet.
It’s something tighter.
It’s something that bleeds honesty as well as she bleeds pain, fear, and distrust.