Chapter 14 #3
It was delicate and unassuming, but despite that, or maybe because of that, Denny’s brain short-circuited.
Spurred by blind desire, she grabbed Eris’ neck and deepened the kiss until their tongues found each other.
The heat between Denny’s legs turned to fire the moment Eris’ hands greedily took possession of her hips.
The friction riled a moan out of her; Eris swallowed it with an eager swipe of her tongue.
Denny clung to her like her life depended on it, fingers tangling in her hair, not even sure what she was feeling.
Everything was too much and simultaneously not enough.
“Wait, wait.” Gasping for air, she held Eris back as gently as she could in a desultory attempt to regain some self-control. Not a single cell in her body wanted to stop, but anyone could walk in any moment.
“Sorry,” panted Eris, still lingering dangerously close, partly because Denny was refusing to let go of her. If they’d been upstairs instead of in the shop, things might have gone very differently.
“No.” Denny stole one last fleeting peck before finally allowing Eris to stand back. “That was… Wow.”
She was dizzy, intimately unsatisfied and discombobulated by it. That wasn’t a kind of hunger she was accustomed to. It made her feel like she had no control over herself.
The entrance door burst open. Rocco sauntered in, swirling the van keys around a finger. He halted, sniffing the air suspiciously.
“Smells like bitch in here.”
“Blake paid a visit,” Denny informed him.
The keys nearly bolted off Rocco’s finger. “Shut the front door! Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I handled her.”
Rocco turned to Eris. “You weren’t here?” She shook her head, so he turned back to Denny. “You shouldn’t be alone in the shop.”
“It’s—”
“I really hate to agree with him,” Eris cut in, sullen but firm.
Rocco triumphantly stretched a hand out in her direction. “I bet Blake would think twice before bothering you with her around.”
“I can get rid of her for good. I know how to dismember a corpse and cover it up.”
“She listens to true crime podcasts,” Denny explained, seeing Rocco goggle at Eris with a mix of awe and alarm. “None of that will be necessary, though.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“We have video surveillance.”
“That might deter robbers, but not crazy ex-girlfriends.”
“Unless the crazy ex-girlfriend has a history of harassment complaints.”
Rocco gaped. “Are you for real?”
Denny nodded. Her parents had seen right through Blake’s facade right off the bat and had done everything in their power to expose her deceptions, but Denny’s infatuation with Blake’s charming ways had overshadowed even the most blatant red flags.
“My mum had her lawyer check Blake’s records when things got nasty between us.”
“Yeah, cool, whatever. I’ll still notify your girlfriend every time I’m leaving for deliveries.”
“Fine!” Denny threw her hands up in surrender, but froze mid-act when something clicked. “Wait—”
“What? Don’t tell me you thought you were being subtle?” Rocco snickered, glancing back and forth between her and Eris. “Ladies, please!” He tossed the van keys to Denny, then slinked up to Eris, towering over her. “Se la fai soffrire ti ammazzo.”
For some reason the mysterious line painted a grin across Eris’ mouth. She held Rocco’s gaze, cocked her head, and gave his cheek a friendly pat. “Sì, per favore.”
All colour drained from Rocco’s face. “Aspetta, ma parli Italiano?!”
“Poco. Ma capisco bene abbastanza.”
Denny balked. She couldn’t decide if she felt more betrayed or impressed.
“What do you mean you speak Italian?!”
* * *
The book was open, the bookmark jammed between the pages. After one hour of going over the same few lines, Denny was coming to accept that it just wasn’t the right night for a bedtime read. Too much had happened and her head was whirring from an overload of delayed processing.
Eris was demoralised because of the interview fiasco.
Blake was back.
Rocco knew about her and Eris.
Eris spoke Italian.
There was no room for concentrating on a book in all this mayhem.
Which was a pity, because she really was enjoying this story: she identified so much with Jade and her bubbly personality and it was a funny coincidence that her love interest Vera, with her ostensible stand-offishness and hidden gentleness, happened to be so similar to a certain someone.
“Hey.”
Her head whipped up: in the doorway stood her own personal Vera with crossed arms. The stern poise was compromised by the cuteness of the Moomin pyjamas that now tacitly belonged to her.
“I know, I know.” Denny had to conceal a yawn behind the back of her hand. “Go to sleep, Denny.”
Eris propped a shoulder against the doorframe. “You’re not even reading.”
“I was!”
“The audacity…”
Something landed in Denny’s lap: her glasses.
“Oh.” She knew something was off.
There was no point in persisting: she wasn’t going to find out what Vera’s ringtone was and why Jade had called her smooth for choosing it.
Not tonight. “I’m knackered but don’t really feel sleepy.
” She almost ended it there, but her entire being was thrumming with longing. “Wanna join me for a while?”
She did her best to contain her disappointment when Eris, rolling her eyes, leaned away from the door and left.
It might have been too bold a request. Too soon, too sudden. Not direct enough, perhaps.
They’d never slept together in either sense.
The need for a deeper connection was building fast in Denny, causing her to think back with a sting of nostalgia to the morning she’d woken up on the lab couch in Eris’ arms. She didn’t want to impose if Eris didn’t feel like sharing that kind of intimacy yet.
On the other hand, they’d promised each other they’d be honest about their wants and needs, and what Denny needed now, desperately, was a shred of that perfect peace that only Eris could give her.
Reassurance, solace. The miraculous grounding effect of that solid frame filling her arms. To feel loved.
She knew Eris would’ve resented her if she’d found out Denny was afraid to ask for her company. Maybe she should have been more explicit, should have gone for a request rather than a question.
She’ll get you the moon, if you ask for it, her conscience whispered, and the truth of it was both moving and terrifying.
Having someone who cared so much about her was a privilege and a responsibility she didn’t take lightly, particularly when that someone came from a background as troubled as Eris’.
She had just closed the book when she caught movement in the doorway: Eris had returned with a cup of chamomile and a bottle of beer.
When she climbed on the bed next to Denny and handed her the steamy cup, Denny gawked at it with a moved throb in her chest. Crying over a cup of chamomile would’ve been over the top even for her, but she was strongly tempted, especially when Eris dropped the ‘love and cuddles’ flashcard with the hugging lovebirds on her lap.
I already have the moon, it seems.
Doing her best to keep herself together, she pulled the duvet back and Eris wiggled underneath it, propping up the pillow to sit back against it with a content sigh.
“Rough day if it requires booze.”
Eris huffed. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
The long hair was a dark cloak down her torso, stark against the pastel pyjamas. Denny ran a hand through it, wishing she could keep going the whole night.
“Want me to redo the braids?”
“God, yes, please.”
It had started out as an experiment but it had quickly become Eris’ obsession, and Denny was more than happy to be of service.
Brushing and braiding Eris’ hair had this magical soothing effect on her: it turned off the cacophony of voices and noises in her head and left her basking in absolute, wonderful silence.
After a couple of swigs of beer, Eris let her head fall back to the wall and prodded Denny with a knee. “Wanna talk about her?”
Her.
She who needn’t be named.
They were meant to get there, sooner or later. Eris’ interview had hijacked the conversation earlier, but the Blake talk couldn’t be helped—shouldn’t, if Denny wanted Eris to be prepared in case Blake came back to stir the pot.
She blew on the chamomile and slowly washed down the knot in her throat.
She hated that her body and her subconscious still hadn’t completely shaken off the memory of what being with Blake had been like—the never-ending chase for approval, feeding off scraps of affection thrown at her feet in measured morsels just to keep her tethered in that sick balance between hope and sorrow.
And the reward of those twisted kisses that were always deeper if they tasted like salt, and Blake getting high on her anguish, her anger, tearing Denny’s clothes off and begging her to fuck her when Denny was at her lowest, at her rawest.
“We were together for about a year,” she said, feeling the weight of every day of that year on her back. “She was everything I’d always dreamed of, kind and caring…” Fun, witty, thoughtful, charming… “Until she wasn’t.”
To this day, after all the therapy, after all the healing, Denny still had no clue how the woman she had loved so much had turned out to be such a monster, nor when it had happened.
Out of nowhere, or that was what it’d felt like, the illusion had crashed and she had found herself knee-deep in a living nightmare that she couldn’t escape.
If there was something Blake was good at, it was having her own way.
“Nothing I did was right. I was too distracted, too forgetful, too inconsiderate.” The grains at the bottom of the cup floated helplessly in the swirling infusion, just like Denny had done in the coils of Blake’s wiles.
“If I was happy, I was annoying. If I was sad, I was just baiting for attention.” At the periphery of her vision, Eris’ knuckles turned white around the bottle.
“Everyone kept telling me she was a fraud, but I just… couldn’t see it. I feel so stupid now.”