Chapter 6 – Davis
CHAPTER SIX
DAVIS
The night was beautiful. Cool but not cold, and the wind had changed direction, blowing the lingering forest fire smoke south, leaving the sky crisp and clear. It was quiet out here too, so quiet she could hear the pine needles snapping under her feet.
She used to take walks like this all the time with her grandpa. They were both night owls, and sometimes, when everyone else had gone to sleep, they’d find each other in the dining hall and sneak out to walk the cross-country trails. She’d hold on to the middle finger of his left hand, the one he’d lost the tip of in a lawn mowing accident, the one he’d called his nubbin . When she was young, he’d tell her stories about pirates and giants and mermaids. She’d tell him about whatever video game she’d been playing or book she’d been reading for school. He’d pretend to care about the games and care almost too much about the books.
When she got older, their conversations shifted, deeper questions requiring longer walks: Why was there so much pain in the world? Was life designed or a string of cosmic good luck? Did aliens exist, and if so, what would they think of humanity?
No matter what they talked about, no matter if she’d been eight or eighteen, they’d always ended their walks the same way. They’d stare up at the speckled darkness, make a wish on a certain star, then hurl pinecones high enough to try and knock it out of the sky. Which, of course, they never did. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to not let the walk end, to delay it as long as possible, so they could keep talking and laughing until there were no pinecones left.
She missed her grandpa, so much sometimes it made her want to believe in ghosts. Made her wish he was one just so she could talk to him again. Just so she could have one more story. Ask one more question. Throw one more pinecone.
“Davis?”
It was a phantom whisper through the trees. “Who’s there?” she shouted, spinning around, fumbling with her phone to turn on the flashlight, half expecting to see her grandpa standing right in front of her. Shit , maybe she was losing her mind.
When her flashlight finally flared to life, her heart gave a brutal kick, rebounding so violently from fear to relief to pain she wondered if it would ever beat normally again.
Standing a few feet away, his hands in the air, his fingers splayed wide, Kev squinted at her, one eye closed against the light blazing from her phone. His hair was mussed, wet, like he’d just showered. He was wearing a white long-sleeve T-shirt that hugged his chest and navy sweatpants that hung low on his hips, and his bare toes stuck out from a pair of flip-flops.
“Don’t scream,” he said. “Don’t bust me. I’m out past curfew.”
“I see that,” she snapped for some reason, clearly a symptom of complete neurological collapse. “Why are you out past curfew?”
When he quirked an amused brow at her tone, she bit down, shooting him a don’t look at me like that. You actually did run away in the middle of the night, or have you already forgotten kind of expression.
Lowering his hands to his sides, his amusement vanishing, he said, “I couldn’t sleep.” While he cleared a soft scratchiness from his throat, she turned off her flashlight, thrusting them into darkness until her eyes adjusted to the moonlight again.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t even know you’d be out here. Why…are you out here?”
“What? I can’t go for a walk on my own property now?” She didn’t mean to give the words such sharp edges. But there they were, jagged and cutting.
“Of course you can. That’s not what I meant.” His chin drop was subtle, easily missed. But she’d studied his subtleties the way explorers studied their maps. Charting the tightness in the corners of his mouth. The furrow that sank between his brows. The way he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first two fingers. The way he rolled his right shoulder, only once and always the right. The way he’d told her in hundreds of tiny gestures that he was struggling. The way she’d been unable to do a single fucking thing about any of them.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said. Then he glanced through the trees, frowning at the cabin lights in the distance, that furrow sinking between his brows again, his expression trying to tell her even now that he was struggling, that those cabins were somewhere he didn’t want to be. “But I’ll head back. Get out of your way.”
“No, wait.” She stepped toward him, then halted, pulling the hand trying to reach for him back to her side. Because she didn’t step toward him anymore. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t tell him things like no, wait . Only she did, because that was her voice. Those were her words. “I mean, you don’t have to go back just because I’m out here.” Planting her feet into the ground, she pinned her hands at her sides. No longer trusting a single booze-soaked cell in her body. “This is a big resort. Lots of trails. Plenty of room for the both of us.”
Slowly, pointedly, he raised a brow. “You sure about that, Davis?”
There was a lot left unsaid in his question. A lot he didn’t need to say. She knew how large his presence loomed in her world. He was everywhere. Always. And she was doing everything she could to avoid him .
“Yes,” she insisted. “Mostly.”
A thick, sticky silence wedged itself between them. She didn’t know how long they stood inside it, watching each other. But it felt like an eternity.
“Davis,” he eventually said. “Can we please talk?”
He took a step toward her, and she flinched, panicked, stumbling back and tripping over a tree root. And then he was there, his hands big and warm and impossibly on her. One curled around her arm, the other behind her back, pulling her close, keeping her from falling. Keeping her from breathing.
He was so strong, his grip on her so firm, his clean, soapy scent almost unbearable in its familiarity. All she could see were his eyes shining in the moonlight. All she could hear was her heart beating, her blood rushing wild in her ears. All she could feel was the heat from his body warming hers, the ragged bursts of his breath against her lips.
“I’ve got you,” he said. It was only a whisper. It was the loudest thing she’d ever heard.
With every breath, his body pressed more tightly against hers, intensity rippling off his shoulders. Shoulders she’d grabbed at some point. Shoulders she was clinging to like a lifeline. Shoulders she needed to let go of. Let go, Davis. Let him go.
“Sorry,” she said, still clinging. “I-I tripped. I’m so”—she gasped when his hand fisted in her sweatshirt, tightening against her back—“clumsy.”
His eyes narrowed, a bit of the haze over them clearing while his nostrils flared. “Davis?” he asked, a corner of his mouth hitching. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” she replied, the lie catching in her throat. “Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know.”
It could have been a trick of the moonlight, the smile that seemed to spread across his face. Even if it was only a trick, she had to look away from this person she hadn’t seen in so long. This man with Kev’s dimple, his smell. This man who held her like Kev used to hold her, before he’d stopped touching her.
She’d thought his silence had been cruel. His slow disappearance had nearly cracked her in half. But these were nothing compared to the sharp torment of Kev’s old smile shining down on her now.
“I’m okay,” she lied, easing out of his grip while he released her arm and unclenched his fist at her back.
Still so close, not stepping away, he wrapped his fingers around her hoodie’s drawstrings. “This is Cole’s?” he asked, voice low. “Isn’t it?”
She glanced down at the Seattle Mariners logo on her chest. “Yeah. He drove me home. Let me borrow it because I was cold.”
“That’s good.” He tugged on one of the drawstrings. And even though it was gentle, she felt that tug in every single one of her erogenous zones. Maybe even a few new ones. Inner ankles, anyone? “You shouldn’t drink and drive.”
A fragile laugh slipped out of her. “You’re really giving me a lecture on responsibility?”
Huffing through his nose, he tugged on the other drawstring, pulling her closer. And she went to him. It was just that easy. He pulled, she followed, the tug drawing her toward him as irresistible as gravity. But where had following that tug gotten them? Where had it gotten her? Ignored? Abandoned? Betrayed?
She couldn’t go to him. She shouldn’t even be talking to him. She definitely shouldn’t be alone with him. They were over, and this would only make everything hurt so much worse.
“Kev, you can’t do this,” she whispered, trying to pull away, to step back, to leave. Not moving a single muscle.
“Can’t do what?” He didn’t pull her closer, but he didn’t let her go either. He only stood there, staring at her, focusing all his attention on her. Subsuming her in a way nothing in her life ever had before she met him. In a way he hadn’t done for so long the feeling of it now was like sticking her frozen hands into a bonfire.
“You can’t just touch me or look at me the way you’re looking at me,” she said, staying cold, staying frozen, because at least she wouldn’t get burned. At least this moment wouldn’t leave more scars. “You’ve been gone for so long. Even before you left, you were gone. Just…gone. And I know some of it was my fault.”
He reeled back. “You what? No?—”
“But you can’t just suddenly be here now. You can’t just suddenly be you again. Too much has happened. It’s all too much.” It hurts too much, she thought. I can’t hurt like this anymore.
Releasing her strings, stepping back, he said, “I know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know I can’t. I know I shouldn’t. I know I should stay away from you. I know if you hadn’t been drinking tonight, you wouldn’t even be standing here with me. You wouldn’t be speaking to me. I know I should turn around right now.” His exhale was a self-deprecating puh . “But I’m weak, Davis. I’m so fucking weak. And I know I can’t touch you. I know I can’t look at you. But, god , I wish I could. I wish we could talk, because the silence…” He closed his eyes, a second too long to be a blink. “It’s destroying me. I wish you’d just let me talk to you. I wish you’d let me tell you?—”
“ You wish?” she asked harshly. “You?” Her anger was unexpected. A meteoric flash, a fire roaring to life behind her sternum, stinging her eyes. Maybe there was no way out of this conversation without some burns, some scars. “You don’t think I’ve wished?” Visions assaulted her, limbs tangled together, his arm hanging off the side of the mattress, another woman’s arm draped over his waist. Images she would sell her soul to have wiped from her memory. “You don’t think I’ve wished every single night since you—” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. “No, Kev. You can’t do this. You can’t…wish.”
“Whoa. Okay.” His hands flew back into the air, his eyes wide, rounded with fear. “Okay, you’re right. I know.”
“But you don’t know,” she said, her voice breaking as the alcohol and the night air and the nearness of him pressed in on her. Grinding her palm into her chest, she pushed against a pain so intense it made her eyes water. “Kev, you do not know.” Because he didn’t. And not just about Thom’s sister—whose name she’d never learned. He didn’t know the other things she’d seen either. How terrified she’d been. He didn’t know what she’d had to watch Madigan do to him to wake him up. He didn’t even know she’d been there at all.
A part of her was dimly aware she should just tell him what happened while he’d been unconscious, so high on heroin his eyes never once opened, not even when Madigan and Cole carried him down the stairs, loaded him into Madigan’s truck, and took him to the hospital. She should tell him what she’d seen, let him deal with it so she didn’t have to anymore. But that would mean finding out for sure. Because even though it sure as shit looked like it, she still didn’t know if he’d been unfaithful to her. And maybe it made her a coward, maybe it made her weak too, but she was fine going to her grave never finding out.
“You’re right,” he said, running his trembling hands through his damp hair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. He looked up at the sky, his expression raw and pleading, before he released a jagged breath, lowered his hands back to his sides, and met her stare. “You’re right,” he repeated, his voice edging back toward calm. “I don’t know. But I want to. What can I do? Please tell me what I can do to fix this. I’ll do anything. I’ll work harder. I’ll participate in every group. I’ll read every book. I’ll journal until my fingers bleed. I’ll do everything Madigan says. I’ll crawl on my hands and knees. Please let me fix this. You have to know how sorry I?—”
“Stop.” Hot tears filled her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “Kev, you can’t.”
“I can’t what?” There was so much desperation in his voice, the moonlight turning his haunted face pale.
Say it, Davis. Just fucking say it. “You can’t fix this. You can’t fix us .”
His eyes shone, refusing to leave hers. “Davis, please.”
“I thought I could handle you coming back here,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle, trying to physically hold herself together, to keep herself from shattering. Because she would not shatter. Not again. “I thought I could be strong and handle it, because this is where you need to be. Here with Madigan and the men, it’s where you need to be. I know that. But it’s so hard. It’s so much harder than I thought it was going to be.” Even now, with anger and hurt churning inside her, all she wanted was to crawl into his arms so he could hold her, kiss her, tell her everything would be all right. She wasn’t strong enough for this. She wasn’t strong enough to keep her distance while he was so close.
“Do you want me to leave?” He blinked a single tear free. A tear that found every crack in her resolve, exploiting every weakness in the wall she was trying to build between them. A tear she wanted to brush dry with her thumb, kiss away until she tasted the salt of it on her lips. “I’ll leave,” he said. “I can find another home. I can leave the entire state if you need me to. I’ll do anything for a chance. Let me prove it to you that I can get better. That I can be better. I know I don’t deserve one. I know I don’t deserve— Fuck .” He swiped at his cheek when the tear tried to roll. “I know I don’t deserve you. I never did. But I’ll do anything, Davis. Anything. Just tell me what to do.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady, fighting to keep her heart steady when the thought of him leaving her again shook the ground beneath her feet. She didn’t want him to leave. But she’d never wanted him to leave. She’d never wanted to lose him. And even though she wished more than anything that she hadn’t, she had lost him. Then she’d almost lost herself.
She’d spent the last eight months loving him, then worrying about him, being terrified for him, then being devastated by him. She wasn’t even sure who she was anymore, if not in relation to him. Now that he was here, now that he was safe, she needed to find out. She needed to focus on herself. And he needed to focus on himself too.
“I need time,” she told him while another tear rolled down his cheek. “I need space to get used to having you here again. Because I can feel you wanting to talk to me. Every time I see you, I can feel it.” She brought her hand up to cover the penetrating pang in her chest. “ Right here. And it’s like I’m going to have a heart attack. Like it’s all going to cave in.”
He nodded fiercely. Like he knew. Like he felt it too.
“I need to not feel this way anymore,” she said. “I need to be able to walk by you without worrying that this”—she motioned between them, her hand passing through the sea of tension, an ocean of want and need and regret that stretched to the horizon—“is going to happen. I need to be able to breathe again.”
“Okay,” he said. “I can do that. I’ll give you all the space I can. All the time you need. I promise.” His throat bobbed, his chin dropping toward his chest. “Just don’t give up on me.”
Giving in to that tug between them one last time, and because she couldn’t stop herself even if she wanted to, she stepped to him, reached out, and took his face between her hands. The warmth of his skin sent a lightning bolt of need surging down her spine. She wanted so much more already. So much more than this little touch. She wanted to smooth her thumb over the furrow between his brows. To brush his bangs back off his forehead. To beg the sun to rise so she could see him more clearly, lose herself in the blue of his eyes, study the golden glint of his stubble, memorize the curve of his lips, knowing this might be the last time she’d ever see him so close.
Grasping her hand, he interlaced his fingers through hers. “I would never ask you to promise me back, because you don’t owe me anything. But please, Davis.” He turned his head, pressing his lips into her palm, making her close her eyes to hold back the tears burning behind her lids. Tears that pushed through to wet her lashes when he said, “Please don’t need forever.”
And with one final kiss to her palm, he let go of her hand, turned around, and walked away.