27. Julia
Julia
For the next two weeks, my life settles into something that would sound completely insane if I ever tried to explain it to another human being, which is probably why I don’t.
During the day, nothing changes enough for anybody else to notice.
I go to work, answer emails, fix problems nobody realizes exist until I’ve already solved them, eat lunch with Daniel when our schedules cooperate and endure Tessa’s increasingly suspicious interest in why I have apparently become “annoyingly glowy.” I call Nanna, see Mom without allowing every sigh to become an emergency, and show up for therapy every Thursday at three with the same bag and the same preference for the chair angled toward the window.
At night, a man in a mask sometimes lets himself into my house.
Not every night, that would probably make this easier to define.
Ghost seems to understand anticipation far too well to give me anything predictable, so there are evenings when I find a black envelope waiting near the door and know before I finish reading it that he will be somewhere outside by the time darkness settles over the windows.
Other nights there is nothing at all, and I catch myself listening for the bike I have only heard from a distance or looking toward the trees while brushing my teeth, irritated by how quickly waiting for him has managed to become part of my routine.
Then there are nights when the front door opens quietly after I leave it unlocked.
Those are the ones I have stopped pretending I don’t look forward to.
Sometimes he comes upstairs almost immediately and the rest of the house barely matters.
Sometimes we stay downstairs, his hands roaming beneath whatever I wore for him while the television continues playing something neither of us is watching.
Once, he does nothing more than pull me onto the couch against his chest and sit there with me while rain taps against the windows, his mask still covering his face and his voice almost entirely absent.
That night bothers me more than the sex.
Not in a bad way. It simply refuses to fit neatly inside the version of him I had already constructed.
Ghost is easier when he is commanding, when a letter tells me where to put my hands or his roughened voice gives me one word and expects me to understand the rest. It is much harder to keep him contained inside the category of reckless sexual decision when he notices that I am tired, pulls a blanket over my legs and stays until I fall asleep without asking for anything.
He leaves before morning every time. Sometimes there is another note waiting in the kitchen, sometimes there isn’t.
The strange thing is that I don’t feel as though I am waiting for the relationship to become something else.
I don’t need a label, don’t need him to remove the mask tomorrow or suddenly appear at my door with flowers and an explanation for every bad decision that led him into the woods behind my house.
But funnily enough, somehow a bouquet of dark red tulips always finds its way onto my porch on the nights that he doesn’t show, a tiny admission on one of those softer nights when I told him about my favourite flowers.
For a little while, whatever this is feels enough.
Maybe because it belongs to a part of me I spent most of my life trying to make smaller.
Ghost doesn’t ask me to be nice about what I want.
He doesn’t need me to soften it first. If I want him rougher, I say so.
If I want him to stop, he stops. If I want him to stay, I ask him to stay, and if he can, he does.
There is something almost embarrassingly simple about being allowed to want and for once, I try not to overthink it.
For once, I’m surprisingly good at that.
Kai looks lighter the following Thursday.
I notice it almost immediately after I sit down, though I can’t point to anything specific that has changed.
He is dressed exactly as he usually is, dark three-piece suit sitting perfectly over the body I have only ever allowed myself to notice in the abstract, glasses low enough on the bridge of his nose that he adjusts them once while reading the final line of something on his notepad.
His sleeves are buttoned at the wrists, tie straight and his hair is annoyingly controlled.
Still, there is something easier in the way he settles back into his chair after greeting me, as though some piece of tension I had grown used to seeing around his shoulders has loosened.
Maybe he slept well. The thought nearly makes me laugh because apparently sleep has become the most exciting thing happening in my life that I’m legally allowed to discuss with him.
“How was your week?” he asks, his tone relaxed enough that the question doesn’t feel like an opening move toward something painful.
“Pretty normal.” I cross one ankle over the other and think through the days rather than reaching automatically for “fine”.
“Work was busy, Mom had one moment where she tried to make an issue out of me not answering my phone while I was in a meeting, but I didn’t take the bait, and Nanna has decided she hates her new pharmacist because he called her ‘young lady.’”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “That seems relatively harmless.”
“You don’t understand how deeply she despises being patronized. ‘I’m ninety-four, not stupid,‘” I imitate, and his smile finally appears.
“That sounds familiar.”
“She followed it with, ‘If one more twenty-year-old man calls me young lady, I’m going to make him explain my blood pressure medication to me until he cries.’”
Kai laughs softly, the sound escaping before he seems to decide whether it is professional enough to permit.
I like it, probably more than I should. We talk about Mom for a while, although there is nothing dramatic to unpack.
I tell him I had let a passive-aggressive comment pass without defending myself, and instead of making the entire session about it, he simply asks how that felt and seems genuinely pleased when I tell him it felt easier than the first time.
It is only later, when he asks about sleep, that something in him changes. Not enough that I would have noticed a few months ago, but now I do.
His voice remains even when he asks, “How have you been sleeping lately?” but his gaze drops briefly toward the notebook as though the question suddenly requires more concentration than it should.
“Pretty well.”
His pen moves once between his fingers. “No trouble falling asleep?”
“Not lately.”
“Nightmares?”
“Not really.”
His jaw shifts almost imperceptibly. Something about the question seems to take him farther away instead of bringing him into the answer, and curiosity flickers before I can stop it. I study him for a moment.
He catches me. “What?”
I blink. “Nothing.”
His eyebrows rise slightly behind the glasses.
“That looked like something.”
Apparently I taught him that line. I should probably be proud, instead, I keep looking at him.
There are very few things I know about Kai Blackwood that don’t come from Google, professional biographies or what he has allowed into conversation because it mattered to whatever I was discussing.
I know he grew up in South Dakota. I know he rides a motorcycle because Mara once made a comment about his helmet and because I have seen it in her office.
I know he works too much because that requires no investigative skill whatsoever.
Beyond that, he might simply cease to exist when I leave the building. It feels strange that I suddenly care.
“You know a ridiculous amount about me,” I say.
The pen stops moving.
Kai looks at me over the top edge of his notepad. “Occupational hazard.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I know, but…” I pause, already aware that I’m wandering into territory that might be inappropriate without understanding why it matters to me. “Do you ever talk about yourself?”
The question catches him completely off guard and the feeling is almost satisfying.
He leans back slightly, studying me. “In therapy?”
“That reaction tells me no.”
A small crease appears between his eyebrows. “There usually isn’t much reason to.”
“I know the point isn’t for us to trade childhood stories and become best friends.” I tuck one leg more comfortably beneath myself. “I just realized I have no idea what you actually do when you’re not sitting in that chair listening to other people’s problems.”
For a second, he says nothing. I almost retract it.
“Ignore me. That was probably weird.”
“No.” His answer comes before I can finish retreating, though his voice softens when he adds, “It’s not weird. I’m deciding how to answer without turning your session into mine.”
“That sounds very therapist of you.”
“It’s an unfortunate side effect of the degree.”
I smile. Kai glances briefly toward the window as though collecting something ordinary enough to share.
“My life isn’t particularly exciting.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” That earns me a look.
“Gym most mornings,” he says eventually. “Work. I ride when the weather allows it, usually at night if I’ve had a long day and need my head quiet for a while.”
My attention catches on that. “Night rides?”
“Yeah.”
Something warm sparks unexpectedly beneath my ribs. Not recognition. Just interest.
“What does that mean? You just ride around?”
“Sometimes.” His shoulders loosen a little as he answers, and there is something different about hearing him talk about something that isn’t connected to my trauma. “Sometimes I take the highway out far enough that traffic thins out, ride until I’m tired of being cold, then come back.”
“That sounds incredibly safe.”
His mouth tilts. “It is when you know what you’re doing.”
“Famous last words.”
“I’ve had worse.”