“Get your fucking face between her legs. Don’t make me ask you twice.” The man’s hand on my neck released me, but it was replaced with the knife blade.
Kane knelt at my feet, and his eyes met mine for a moment. A tear ran down his cheek, and he brushed it away. His lips were trembling, and he shook his head as he closed his eyes for a moment. When they opened, he met my eyes again. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
And then he leaned forward and put his mouth on me.
Chapter Six
Helene
“Why so gloomy?” Hilde asked me as I sat at her kitchen island.
Hilde was busily rinsing vegetables in the sink as Sienna and Brody made a mess of the living room. Sienna was three and had Hilde’s, mine too for that matter, auburn hair and blue eyes. But her cheeks were speckled with freckles, and she was the very epitome of a toddler. She could get in trouble faster than I could change my shoes, and I often questioned whether I would ever want to have children after spending a mere thirty minutes with her.
Brody, on the other hand, was the most laid-back five year old I’d ever met. His hair was redder like his father’s. Mark was Hilde’s high school sweetheart, and he was tall with reddish hair. Brody took after him in appearance and demeanor, and Brody was the only thing that actually saved my desire to have children someday after the thirty minutes with Sienna wrecked it.
“Mom, Sienna just put a fish stick in the register again,” came Brody’s tattling voice from the living room.
Hilde ignored it. “You going to answer me?” she asked me.
“Class tonight. I’m just…” Dreading seeing Kane again. “…too tired to deal with college students.” I hadn’t told Hilde anything about seeing Kane yet, much less that he’d decided to enroll in my class. But even if I were too, Hilde wouldn’t truly appreciate the impact it had on me. She’d never understood our friendship, and by the time things got … complicated when we were seniors in high school, Hilde was already two states away in college, busy living a life apart from Hazleton.
“Pretty sure you’re the one who accepted the job, honey. How’s the dissertation going?”
I groaned, lifting my coffee cup to my mouth. “Okay, I guess. I spend nearly all day working on the damn thing, and I’m never sure I’m on the right track. I mean, I’ve written over a hundred pages so far, and the last conversation I had with my DD she suggested I narrow my scope. Now, I’m searching for a way to not lose all the work I’ve already done but incorporate this narrower scope.”
“What does that mean?” Hilde asked as she lifted her handful of carrots from the colander and placed them on a cutting board.
“So, justice is a broad topic in philosophy. You can drill down to politics, to human rights, to theology, to law, to psychology even. And don’t get me started on the sub categories within each of those. My approach was too high level apparently, and I now have to decide what path to choose. And I don’t honestly know what path I want to choose.”
Hilde looked up from her chopping and gave me a sympathetic smile. “You’ll figure it out, sis. You always do.”
“Sure,” I said.
“What about your personal life? You figuring that out?” she asked. She always asked. Hilde didn’t like that I preferred to focus on my professional life more than my personal life, because she was the polar opposite. In fact, it was safer to say, Hilde thought my life was severely lacking because of this fact.
“I’m busy,” I replied, my eyebrows shooting up challengingly.
“Well what about that guy you were seeing in Philadelphia?”
I’d been avoiding this conversation for a reason. Shit. “He … broke up with me a month or so ago.”
Hilde stared wide eyed back at me. When she sighed, her shoulders slumped too. “Oh… Well, what happened?”
That was my limit. I might be willing to fess up about the break up, but rehashing the truth of why my relationship with Brian fell apart was simply not something I was willing to do thirty minutes before I needed to be in class. Hilde liked to fix things, including me. It was a trait she’d picked up from our mother, who lived far enough away now in Chicago that the meddling was tolerable. Didn’t mean my mother and Hilde didn’t spend exorbitant amounts of time on the phone analyzing why I was single. I could only imagine what would happen if I told Hilde that Brian had left me because I didn’t like to be touched. The amount of non-professional, completely untrained and untried psychology that would spew from her mouth after that would be enough to twist me up in my head for years. And don’t get me started on the emails and phone calls that would ensue from my mother—my father too once she twisted his arm into doing her dirty work for her. No thank you.
I stood from my chair, and I drained the last of my coffee. “Long distance relationships can be difficult.” I offered nothing more.
“Philly’s not that far away,” she muttered. “Well … that’s too bad. Mom will be sorry to hear that. She liked him.”