Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I wasn’t sleeping.
For the first time in six days, however, it was a choice.
Tonight, I chose to lie awake and watch her sleep, focusing on the tranquility of her breathing.
There was beauty in her vulnerability, in the unspoken declaration of trust with her ability to fall asleep in this house—the most dangerous place for her to be.
A sound like a whine came out of her unexpectedly, and she stirred uncomfortably. Her hands stretched out, feeling for me before finally settling on my chest. Calming down, her breathing slowed and she inched in closer, allowing her forehead to sink into the fabric of my shirt.
“Was that a nightmare?” I checked to see if she was awake.
No more than four hours ago, she’d watched me kill two people without hesitation.
Nightmares were to be expected. If I was being completely honest with myself, the opportunity to watch Lauren sleep wasn’t the only thing keeping me awake.
I wasn’t ready for whatever my subconscious mind was cooking up for me in my dreams.
And so I stayed awake.
“I’m okay,” she replied tiredly against my shirt, taking me by surprise. Her voice was still unconvincing when she repeated, “I’m okay.”
A nightmare for sure.
“Go back to sleep, Lauren.” My arm wrapped around her protectively, holding her against the steady beating of my heart. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Lauren shook herself loose from my embrace, creating some distance so that she could get a look at me. In the dawn’s dim lighting, I could only just make out her face.
“Kain,” she said my name with caution. Just a slight deviation from her usual tone, and she could send my pulse racing with anxiety. I hated that so much. “About that night…”
Ah, fuck…
“Lauren, I don’t want to talk about that night.”
“Even—”
“Whatever you’re about to say—yes. Even that. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But…”
I think I was more so begging, instead of asking, when I said, “Please.”
Lauren, it seemed, simply couldn’t help it. Her voice was sympathetic when she whispered, “You have to talk about it.”
“Not with you,” I hit back, knowing it would hurt her feelings. But it was true. Lauren was the last person I wanted to talk about this with.
Amir always used to say that messing around with her was gonna get me killed. Ironically, messing around with Lauren saved my fucking life.
And every time I looked at her, a little part of me was all too aware that she was the reason I was here, and Amir was dead.
Of course I didn’t blame her for Amir’s death (that was all on me), but it was impossible to not acknowledge what happened.
Amir was only at Poseidon that night because I would’ve rather been with her.
It was supposed to be me.
But I knew I couldn’t tell Lauren that. Lauren loved me, and because she loved me, she would never see the reality of Amir dying in my place as a bad thing.
And I just… I couldn’t talk to her about his death, knowing full well that deep down some part of her was grateful for the outcome. Facing that would just piss me off.
The silence of the room was uncomfortable now. Lauren lied awake, eyes wide open, but, heeding my request, she was no longer talking.
I couldn’t be sure what I wanted anymore.
I didn’t want Lauren to talk about that night, but feeling like I’d silenced her didn’t feel too good either.
“Are we… Are we still together?” she asked suddenly.
Something in my stomach twisted, and shit, it seriously hurt. Lauren didn’t pose the question in the form of a threat, like most women I’d known. It wasn’t her roundabout way of letting me know she was thinking about dropping me. She asked because she really didn’t know.
And that made me feel guilty as fuck.
It was a totally valid question coming from her. I hadn’t exactly been a shining example of a man in a relationship for the past few days. I was doing a piss poor job of making her feel secure and wanted.
Hell, Lauren told me she loved me, and I told her I didn’t care. I couldn’t even lie and say that was a mistake, because at the time—I really didn’t care. I knew it must’ve broken her heart, but I had more pressing shit to attend to.
Real life ain’t a movie. The world don’t stop just because you love somebody.
On top of dismissing her love for me, I also allowed Lauren to think I was dead for six days.
Now that was fucked up. I didn’t have to do that.
However, after everything that went down with Poseidon and in Memphis, I was having a strange battle of emotions.
I wanted to be alone, and I needed her—both at the same time.
The feeling of needing someone was so foreign to me.
And so I ran from it, isolating myself right up until she showed up at my doorstep.
Growing uncomfortable in my silence, and suspecting the worse, Lauren began to put some more distance between us. Without words I reached out and stopped her as she moved, setting my hand at her waist before quietly pulling her in closer.
“Don’t do that,” I whispered, creating less and less space between us. How do you even begin to tell someone that you need them? Without sounding like you’re trying to guilt them into never leaving. I kept it short and simple. “Stay.”
“Stay in what? This spot, or in…this?” she questioned, this meaning us.
“Both,” I said quietly as I touched my forehead to hers. Against her lips, I whispered, “Stay in both.”
She laid there, in one of my shirts that was big enough to be a short dress on her, and eyed me with apprehension. For the first time in my life, I was the one playing games in my own relationship. This push-pull bullshit had to be annoying for her. Or, at least, frustrating.
“I’m sorry. For everything.” Apologizing doesn’t come easy for me, but when the words were for Lauren, they came out all too easy and all too often.
“I know I’m being shifty, and I know it’s probably got you feeling insecure as hell, but…
I still want this. I still want you. I just—could we just erase the last seven days, and pick up where we left off before this mess started? ”
That was asking for a lot.
I could tell she was thinking about me, and not her own feelings, when she nodded. “Okay.”
***
I woke up to the sound of vacuuming downstairs.
Beside me, Lauren slept peacefully, her dark brown skin reflecting the sunlight that streamed in from outside, almost glittering.
It’s crazy how much you notice normally mundane shit when you’re really feeling someone.
Like the way sunlight turns gold against brown skin, or how hypnotizing the rise and fall of your girl’s body is as she breathes.
I think I finally understand why niggas write poetry.
She didn’t wake as I got out of bed, for which I was thankful. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I slipped out of my room, following the sounds coming up from down below.
Vance was in the living room, vacuum on loud, when I walked in.
The red splotches on the carpet had turned a pale pink, meaning the Resolve powder had done its job overnight.
There was an unpleasant rusty iron scent in the air, but with a little bleach, both the smell and the leftover pink stains would be gone.
“You didn’t have to clean up my mess,” I spoke over the loud whirring of the Hoover. Vance glanced at me, and waited until he was finished before acknowledging me again.
“It is almost eight o’clock in the morning,” Vance informed, switching the machine off finally.
“And I don’t know how you like to eat your breakfast, but I can’t work up an appetite in the middle of a crime scene.
If you want to help, then help.” He nodded towards two buckets left the base of the kitchen island for me to grab.
The plastic containers were warm to the touch, smelling strongly of Clorox, and inside one was about a half-dozen soaking rags.
If I hadn’t woken up, my uncle really would have cleaned up this entire mess for me, I realized.
This was something I should’ve thanked him for, but instead, I was…
pissed. There was something about his behavior that made me feel like my competence was being challenged.
It was insulting.
My uncle was locked up for twelve years. When he went away, I was eight years old. Evidently, he didn’t seem to think I’d aged at all while he was gone.
“I can do this myself.” Ironically, I could hear myself sounding like some kid as I tried to be a man. “I don’t need your help, Vance.”
“I didn’t say you did.” He shrugged, grabbing the bucket’s handle. “But like I said, the sooner this is cleaned up, the sooner I can have breakfast. If you wanna help, then we can get this done faster. Grab a rag.”
Vance and I had a lot in common, with one similarity being in our stubbornness.
I could stand here and start a futile argument about cleaning blood out of the living room carpet because my ego was wounded, or I could grab a rag, clean up this mess with his help, and put this shit behind me once and for all.
“So, how’d you meet the girl?” Vance asked as we went to work on the biggest pink spot on the carpet. A part of me knew a conversation was coming. Vance wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity.
People fresh out of prison are always trying to have long ass conversations about nothing. With so little outside experience to speak of, my guess was that they lived vicariously through the experiences of others.
I’d never given it much thought, but that might’ve been why I hated being around people who had recently got out. Talking just to talk had never really been my thing. But this wasn’t people—this was Vance.
“I met her at a party,” I replied vaguely. He didn’t need to know everything.
“And when did you find out she was Caplan’s kid?”
“Same night.” I wrung out the rag into the second bucket, putting it back to soak in the bleach as I reached for another cloth. “It’s complicated.”
“I can keep up,” Vance encouraged.
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“Because…?”