“You don’t have a favorite place, do you?” He smiles, but more out of curiosity than amusement.
“Sure I do. I just need to think—”
His smile fades. “Do you not like sex?”
“What? Of course I do.” I move my eyes away and reach for the soap. “Everyone likes sex.”
At least everyone is supposed to like sex.
He’s quiet for a minute glancing over my face and body in a way that’s more clinical than sexual.
“What?” I snap.
He spies a stroke of mud still on my forearm, and gently takes my arm in his hand.
“I’m just trying to figure out why a girl like you wouldn’t like having sex. Trade places with me again.” He places his hands on my shoulders and we switch places so I’m now standing under the warmth of the shower and he’s in the decidedly colder side.
I huff in offense. “Just because I didn’t have a particular sexing spot at the tip of my tongue when you asked doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy sex.” I pause. “And what do you mean A GIRL LIKE ME?”
He slips the bar of soap out of my hand and slowly lathers it up against my arm. “A girl who clearly has a lot of passion in her soul and loves with her whole heart. A girl who has a lot to give but gives it with discretion. A girl who knows herself better than most and trusts herself even more.” He slips the soap back into my hand and proceeds to gently caress my arm, and then my shoulder, with both of his hands gliding the foamy soap over my skin. “A girl who cares for others deeply and finds value in the most rejected things.” He flicks his eyes to mine, stroking my skin as the hot spray runs the soap off my arm and shoulder. “A girl like you.”
The sound of the falling water fills the space between us as my head goes hazy with the gentle touches of his hands, washing me. I want to say something, respond in some way, but just like earlier in his room, I’m lost for words. All I feel and see is Daren and his deep brown eyes, caring.
“I like sex,” I say lamely.
He nods and takes the soap from my hands where my fingers have started to wrinkle from clutching so long. “You know what I think? I think sex is difficult for you to enjoy because you’re so pretty. I think having sex makes you feel used by guys—even the good ones—because they can’t see the real you.”
I say nothing, my eyes trapped in his words.
“Kayla,” he says, running his hands up my arms and to my neck where he cradles my face. “I’m not like those other guys.” The water continues to fall around us. “I do see you. The real you.”
He leans forward and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead, he reaches behind me and turns the shower knob off. The spray stops falling, leaving the bathroom silent but for the dripping faucet at my back and my pounding heart.
24
Daren
After our shower, we towel off and I yank on a pair of shorts to sleep in as Kayla turns away. She dresses in a pair of tiny gym shorts and a strapless shirt before cutting her bra off her shoulders. Then she rubs coconut-scented lotion on her arms and legs and the movement puts me in a trance until she catches my eyes and I look elsewhere.
I’ve been trying so. Damn. Hard not to ogle her gorgeous, perfect body and it’s killing me. But I know she has issues with guys caring too much about her appearance and I want to be different. I want her to trust me. Even if that means depriving myself to the point of pain, which is exactly what I’ve been doing.
We don’t speak for several long minutes. When I looked in Kayla’s eyes and saw all those fears and walls she had up between herself and not just sex, but guys in general, I was desperate to assure her in some way.
And I didn’t want her to think of me as just another guy. I wanted to be more. And when I told her I was nothing like the guys she’s known in the past, I was telling the truth. I don’t know those other guys, but I know me. And I care about Kayla Turner with a fierceness I didn’t know I was capable of.
I just need to figure out what to do with it.
“Wow. I know celebrities who would envy a wardrobe like yours,” she says, walking over to my closet.
I follow her and pick out a clean shirt. “Yeah. It’s ridiculous, but aside from my mom’s necklace it’s the only piece of my old life that I still have.”
“And you have attachment issues.”
“Precisely.”
She takes the shirt and looks at the rest of my closet. “What’s with the shirts hanging off to the side? Are they for special occasions or something?”
“Uh, no.” I smile. “They have tears in them.” I pull a sleeve out from one of the shirts and show her a small rip in it. “I don’t have the money to take them to a tailor, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away because I know how much they cost.”
She shrugs. “I can fix them after I sew this shirt on you.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Sewing is, like, my thing. I always carry around a little sewing kit.” She points to her suitcase beside the wall.
“That’s awesome.”
She takes my ripped clothes out of the closet and sits cross-legged on the floor beside the suitcase. I sit across from her. Rummaging through her bag, she finds her sewing kit and carefully cuts along the sleeve before tucking the shirt around my body and stitching it up. I watch her hands as they move over my body, small and precise with each pull of the needle, until she’s finished.
“Wow. It looks perfect,” I say, staring at the seam. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” She pulls the first of my torn shirts onto her lap. “Because my mom and I were always low on cash, buying clothes was a rare occasion. So when I did buy clothes, I tried to buy items that would last a long time. But even nice clothes don’t last forever.” She carefully rethreads the needle and goes to work on the first torn shirt. “So I’ve gotten used to sewing up my clothes so they’ll last longer.”
“Smart,” I say, watching her work. “You seem to be really good at it too.”
She shrugs. “I’m okay. My mom was better, though. She taught me everything I know about sewing before she died.” Her eyes storm over.
I quietly ask, “How did she pass away?”
She inhales deeply. “My mom had a drug problem for a long time, but I didn’t find out about it until a few years ago. I should have known earlier that she had a drug problem. In a way, I think I did. The day she pawned her wedding ring and didn’t even get emotional made me suspicious, but I shrugged it off because she was my mother. And when I found out she sold my My Little Pony collection online and claimed that it had been stolen, I was heartbroken, but I let it go because she was my mom, you know?” She shakes her head. “But a real mother, a sober mother, wouldn’t be so heartless or deceitful. The signs were there all along, but I ignored them all—because she was my mother.
“We always lived paycheck to paycheck, but last year she told me we were completely broke. I had just started nursing school at college, but had to quit and get a job to help out with the bills. I worked full-time at Big Joe’s diner and made pitiful wages, while my mother worked as a maid at a hotel. But then she got caught stealing money from the hotel and was fired from her job. After that, she didn’t bother looking for more work. She’d just lie on the couch all day, popping pills. A few times I found her unconscious and had to call 911 to get her stomach pumped. It was terrifying. But worse, it was like she didn’t want to be alive anymore.
“I tried to get her help. I tried to cut her off and take care of her, but she always found a way to get more drugs. She’d steal from her friends or sell our things until a few years ago. Which, now that I know about the trust fund, makes total sense because the trust fund became accessible three years ago when I turned eighteen. So of course she stole from that. No wonder she was able to use for so long. Her habit—and her personality—spiraled, until she wasn’t the woman who raised me anymore. She was just a selfish, vacant look-alike. And so sick. Then one day I came home and she…” Kayla pauses with the needle in the air and swallows. “I was too late that time.”
The air leaves my lungs as I think about the terror she must have felt, losing her mother that way. “Kayla, I’m so sorry.”
She lifts and lowers a shoulder. “I saw it coming. Anyone who knew her could have seen it coming. It was hard, especially because I’d been in nursing school and kept thinking that maybe if I’d been more stern, or seen the signs sooner, I could have saved her. But I eventually came to terms with her death and I’m okay now.”
She goes back to sewing and my throat goes dry. I can’t imagine the horror of that experience for her.
I say, “Is that what you want to do? Be a nurse?”
She smiles at the shirt. “Yeah. I want to finish nursing school but I can’t afford it right now. What about you?” She holds the needle in her mouth while she readjusts the material in her hands.
“I don’t have money for college either,” I say. “I’m just sort of bouncing around from job to job. Two of them, actually.”
She nods. “That’s right. What do you do again?”
“I work at the cell phone store in town so I can afford my phone bill.”
“Brilliant.”
“And at Willow Inn out by the lavender ranch, where I run supplies to and from town. And sometimes as a dishwasher at Latecomers when I’m low on cash and want a hot meal.”