Chapter 37 #2
Eventually, she showed me the guest room.
Another room with pleasantly dimmed lights; light cream-gray-brown bookshelves built into the wall, filled with romance, crime, and thriller novels; a large wooden bed in the same color with light brown bedding; and a large double window with a windowsill, through which I couldn't see due to the darkness outside.
Armchairs and a dresser with the same rustic brown candles that adorned the wooden bedside tables gave this room a coziness that reminded me very much of Lara.
She must have decorated this room, as well as her own, and the living room and dining room downstairs.
She left me with another mug of tea and some pajamas, wished me sweet dreams, and I thanked her.
I wanted nothing more than to fall into bed, close my eyes for a moment and forget everything, but I was wearing a tight evening dress, my hairline was starting to get greasy, ink was smeared across my face and décolletage, and that, combined with the blood on my fingers, was reason enough for me to head downstairs to the large bathroom.
It was only when I entered that I noticed someone was putting a toothbrush into a stone cup.
Someone To Stay
Vancouver Sleep Clinic
Startled, I stopped in front of Davian, who spotted me in the mirror and immediately turned to face me, dressed in khaki sweatpants and a white T-shirt.
“Sorry, I...”
“No.” He raised one hand and pointed to the bathroom with the other. “Come in. I'm done.”
Hesitantly, I entered the bathroom.
He let his examining gaze wander over me until his jaw began to work, and he eventually turned away to step past me and out of the bathroom.
However, he looked back at me, so that our eyes met in the mirror.
That was the moment when he could no longer hide all his emotions. Concern, despair, overwhelm, and something tortured slowly but surely took over his expression until he turned to me.
“Feather.”
It was just one word. And yet it had so much power over my tear ducts.
Davian came to me immediately and I turned away from the mirror, toward him, trying to ignore the traitorous pounding in my chest.
“I'm sorry.”
His voice was soft, hoarse.
His hand landed on my bare arm.
Until that moment, I hadn't even known how much I missed his warmth.
“There's nothing you need to be sorry for.” I slowly shook my head, looking down at my fingers, unable to meet his gaze. “I'm sorry. I let this mess come crashing down on you. And now I'm your burden.”
He reached for my hand with both of his, as if he didn't know what that gesture meant to me. That it reminded the moths in my stomach to breathe.
“If I had known from the beginning that Lara's best friend was living under such circumstances, I would have already taken you in here back then.”
Davian was a kind-hearted person. An even better father.
“The world doesn't deserve you, Davian.” I dared to look up, immediately losing myself in the tiny unevenness under his right eye, which saved me from drowning in a field of cornflowers. “I don't deserve any of this.”
Before I knew what was happening, he pulled me toward him. Not as desperately as two hours ago, no, deliberately, more intimately.
He placed both hands on my back, pulled me close, before carefully sliding one hand into my hair, sending an overwhelming tingling sensation across my scalp and through my stomach.
His scent was intoxicating and I inhaled it as quietly as possible, which sent the moths in my stomach into a frenzied flutter.
He rested his chin on my head so that I could feel his warm breath on my scalp as he began to speak.
“You deserve to feel wanted.”
No. Couldn't he say something like that? Couldn't he just let me crumble? Because whatever this was, it hurt.
“You deserve to have someone lay the world at your feet.”
Under pathetic tears, I pressed my head into his T-shirt as he tried with his warm words to penetrate the faintly pulsating lump in my chest and lay himself down in the form of bandages on wounds that had become afraid of bandages over the years.
Afraid that they would be violently torn off again in the next moment.
“God.” His voice, hoarse, desperate. Something dripped onto my head, ran down the side of my forehead. “What did he do to you...” Another tear landed on the tip of my nose. “What did he do...”
Davian pressed me tightly against him, as if, if he didn't, something could violently tear me away from him.
I wanted to be close to him. As close as possible.
A false, selfish thought that ignited heat between my thighs.
Through my blurred vision, I noticed the black stains on his T-shirt.
Shit.
Ouendake
Goldmund
I immediately stepped back, staring at his chest.
“Your T-shirt...”
Davian followed my gaze to the blue and black marks I had left behind.
He smiled gently, his eyes a watery battlefield.
“It needs washing anyway.”
He stepped back, pulled it over his head, and tossed it onto the edge of the laundry basket before striding through the bathroom to the washing machine, where a more or less neatly folded navy-blue T-shirt lay.
My concentration gave way to a rush of heat in my cheeks before completely disappearing, and I stared like a piece of toast at Davian's bare back.
He was in good shape, but that wasn't what paralyzed me.
A black tattoo adorned his upper back. Typewriter font.
Before I could read anything, he pulled on the T-shirt, grabbed a bottle of shampoo and a small graphite-brown towel, and placed both on the long natural stone countertop next to the sink.
Unable to move or even say anything, I watched as he plugged the silver plug into the sink before filling it with steaming water and adding some shampoo until a mountain of foam formed.
Immediately, a pleasant coconut-almond scent filled my nose.
Davian sought my gaze in the mirror before tapping the stone surface of the sink cabinet with his palm.
“Come here.”
Love is a Bitch - Slowedd
ImXgine, ONIBI
I obeyed, walked over to him, placed my hands behind me, and slowly pulled myself up onto the cabinet.
Davian turned off the tap, then dipped the towel in the water, lifted it up, and wrung it out lightly.