Chapter 36
chapter
thirty-six
SHAY
As if I could move.
Calder left and I closed my eyes, sinking into the bed, in the afterglow of the best sex of my life. The soft whir of heating hummed and what sounded like water running—maybe he was taking a shower?
A few minutes later, Calder returned, picking me up. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he carried me to the bathroom.
A massive copper tub sat against a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the snowy Rocky Mountains. Calder placed me inside, and velvet-soft bubbles spilled over the copper edge. Then he dropped to his knees beside the tub.
I eyed the sweatpants he’d acquired. “You’re not getting in?”
“Let me take care of you.” He rubbed my back, digging into the muscles at my upper shoulder. I melted into him, disappearing into sensation. The tub smelled earthy and floral, like lavender and eucalyptus. The water was slick, as if filled with some kind of oil.
My mind drifted, overwhelmed by how much had changed since we’d first messaged each other. When he was Void and I was certain that was all he would be. When I spilled my guts to him and he—
My eyes popped open.
“What did you mean when you said you were a criminal?”
He paused, thumbs digging into my upper shoulders.
I suppose I should have thought of this earlier. But like Void, it never seemed real. And then Void became Calder, and it all got…fuzzy.
I glanced around at the huge bathroom. A copper tub, a red rock sink. Expensive. “Wait,” I said. “You’re not, like, a billionaire, right? Like the kind of criminal that guy Beryl Crowne was?”
Beryl Crowne was an infamous member of the billionaire Crowne family. As far as I was concerned, all billionaires were criminals, but he specifically went to jail.
When Calder spoke, there was something off about it. Guarded. “I stalked you. That’s breaking the law.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“I think it’s my turn for a question.” A fizzy warmth filled my chest at the reference to the game we’d played. “Why do you want something casual?”
It was my turn to go quiet.
I played with the soapy bubbles.
“It’s not that I’m afraid to get hurt again,” I said. “I can get hurt. I’m used to pain. That’s…kind of all I knew for years.”
“Shay—”
“I don’t want to lose myself again. Now, my turn,” I said before he could comment on what I’d just said. “Why one night only, no names, no faces?”
He was quiet a moment, rubbing circles into my neck.
“It’s easier. My job moves me around.” Calder’s touch left me. I heard him reach for something, the clattering of maybe a bottle, and then his hands returned, rubbing a sweet-smelling oil into my neck and shoulders.
I closed my eyes.
“What do you mean you don’t want to lose yourself?” he asked.
I opened my eyes.
Fuck.
No getting away from the question, I guess.
I sat up and away from him, needing space as I answered. My arms hung over the opposite side of the tub, and I stared out at the snowy trees.
“I didn’t realize how bad things were with Graham until after,” I said.
“When I ordered myself lunch and didn’t have to justify the expense.
When I left the laundry for an extra day and no one yelled at me and called me worthless.
I’m terrified of waking up one day and having that happen again.
Where I’ve made a beautiful fantasy about you to justify the bruises. ”
I thought back to the quiz I’d taken. I was still uncovering things from that relationship.
The silence was stiff and static. Poking. Buzzing. I could feel it at my back.
I refused to turn around.
Calder spoke, voice edged. “Is that what you meant when you said your ex wasn’t a nice person, or is there more?”
“It’s my turn,” I said. “Why the name Void?” I looked over my shoulder at him. Calder had leaned into the space I’d left, arms in the water, covered in bubbles up to his forearms.
“I didn’t choose it,” he said. “It’s because I’m so good at my job, documents disappear into a void. Come back.” He raised a wet hand out of the water, gesturing for me. I came to him, sinking back against the tub, caged between his arms. “Is that what you meant, Shay?”
“He never hit me,” I said.
Calder’s arms were still under the water. They snaked around my waist, dragging me tighter against the edge. His head resting on top of mine.
“I didn’t ask if he did.”
His voice had a controlled edge, a tension, as if he already knew what I was going to say. I felt the need to correct him.
“You don’t know him.”
“I do know him,” Calder said. “I know those types of men very well.” A bitterness edged his words.
“You don’t know what he had to put up with because I was sick,” I said, a panicky, tight sensation racing up my chest.
“You were sick, Shay.” His hands tightened around me. “You were vulnerable, probably the most vulnerable you’ve ever been and will be, and instead of protecting you, he hurt you. I’m willing to bet you were sicker with him because of him. Because he fucked up your nervous system.”
I inhaled a sharp breath.
The sicker I’d been with Graham, the meaner he got.
I knew the way Graham treated me wasn’t right, but that truth lived in my brain, and some other belief lived in my body.
For years, it felt like my body and I were at war. There could be no trust. I had to be constantly vigilant because I didn’t know what new, fresh hell my body was going to give me. If I exercised, I got sick. If I did everything right, I got sick.
So Graham became my compass.
If I couldn’t trust myself, I could trust him.
“He’s not a good guy for staying with you while you were sick,” Calder continued, voice soft. “He’s a predator.”
I swallowed something thick and sticky, tears burning my lids, grateful he couldn’t see my face.
Slowly, Calder untangled himself from me, hands resuming their massage. We were like that for a few minutes. Staring into the blue-dark night. Only the sound of water and breathing.
“Will you tell me about your illness?” he asked.
“It’s my turn,” I said.
“I know.”
There was a lack of urgency or demand in his words. Instead, there was something soft in them, like he was asking something he knew he had no right to ask.
I took a breath. “I was diagnosed as a teenager with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. My tachycardia is mostly under control now, but I have chronic fatigue. It comes in waves. Flare-ups. It’s harder when I’m stressed.”
The words came out robotic, a phrase I’d rehearsed.
And I guess I had rehearsed the words, having told them to enough people over the years. That was usually enough. There were no follow-ups.
But of course Calder was different.
“Is that the worst part?” he asked. “The not knowing?”
He refocused his attention to the muscles along my spine, working away tension that I hadn’t known existed, but felt primordial. I closed my eyes, getting lost in it.
“Being alone is the worst part,” I said.
“It’s not like a flu, where my mom could take time off for a day or my friends can drop soup off on occasion.
Eventually she had to work, and I was alone for hours.
Now anytime I get a flare-up, I become that little girl on the couch.
” Silence fell. I searched for something to fill it.
To squash the needling vulnerability. “My turn. How did you learn to bake?”
“My mother taught me,” he said, voice distant.
The message Void had sent me a while ago came tumbling back.
My mother died because of me. My brother went to jail for me. I’ve done much worse things than stalking. I’m not a good person.
“What did you mean?” I asked, voice quiet. I didn’t have to elaborate, because Calder knew.
His grip tightened on my shoulders. “I should have protected her better.”
Silence fell.
The bubbles had all but dissipated.
Then Calder reached into the bath, testing the temperature. “I think I left you in here too long.” His touch ghosted along my thigh underwater. “Are you sore?” he asked, sliding between my thighs, probing my pussy.
I gasped.
The way he touched me was decidedly intimate. Naughty. Like I was his to do whatever he wanted with. Maybe that was what was so hot about him taking care of me. I was his to take care of in every way, from my orgasms to my bruises to my soul.
I arched into him and he froze.
“Tell the truth.”
“A-a little.”
He pulled out, and before I could miss the emptiness, he lifted me out of the tub. He wrapped a towel around me, closing it together like he’d done with my coat on our date.
“Do you know how many spoons your fantasies will take?”
I blinked at his question. Spoon theory, a metaphor for living with a chronic illness, used imaginary spoons to describe energy limits. If I start the day with eight spoons, sometimes it takes four just to get out of bed.
Graham had been engaged to me and didn’t know half of what my illness entailed, let alone spoons.
A weird warmth spread through me.
A kind of safety I hadn’t ever experienced.
How many spoons would it take? In my ideal fantasy, I’m being chased, hunted down. But I’d never thought to use them sexually.
“Like…kinky spoons?” I asked. “Like chasing me through the graveyard requires a lot of spoons, but you fucking me in public requires less?”
He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Something like that.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never done this, so I don’t know how many spoons things will require.”
He stroked up and down my arms, rubbing the towel along my skin, almost absently.
“How many do you have on your best day?” he asked. “For normal things, like work and friends.”
I thought about it. “Ten.”
He nodded to himself, still rubbing the soft fibers into my flesh. “You’ll tell me how you’re feeling every day with your normal spoons, and we’ll go from there.”
“Go from there?” I felt the wrinkle in my brow. Go where? This was our only night together.
Calder paused, dark-blue gaze locked on mine. He fidgeted with the fibers of the towel, as if uncertain about his next words.
“I want to be the one you go through your list with, Shay. But—” He lifted my chin with his pointer. “I need to trust you to tell me your limits. So, tell me, if I wanted to fuck you right now?”
God I wanted that.
But…
“I’m low on spoons,” I admitted.
He smiled. “Good girl.”
I nearly melted into the low, vibrating praise and the pleased smile on his face. Then it hit me. “But you only do one night.”
Calder inhaled through his nostrils, jaw tight, and raked his gaze unabashedly up and down my naked body. Goose bumps fluttered in the wake of his stare.
“I’ll make an exception,” he said, gaze still on my body.
“It’s a long list,” I said.
His stare flashed back to mine. Hungry. “I know.”