“Life's two main ingredients.”
After they brushed the crumbs from their bodies and dressed, she sat at the table and watched him scramble eggs and fry bacon. She and food had a hate-hate relationship, so she'd never bothered to learn how to cook. He didn't seem to mind, seeing how he'd told her to sit and rest.
The smell of grease filled her nose and roused her hunger. By the time he brought the plate and two glasses of milk to the table, a rumble had gripped her stomach.
One plate. One fork. He perched before her, his thighs on the outside of hers, lifted a forkful of eggs, and held it to her lips. She accepted willingly, wantonly.
He broke off a piece of bacon. “You didn't look at the mess on the floor while I cooked.”
It wasn't a question. He knew she hadn't. She chewed, swallowed, and opened her mouth for the bacon bite. When her lips wrapped around his fingers, he drew them out slowly and stroked a knuckle across her cheek.
“What does the anxiety feel like?” he asked, softly.
She sipped the milk to clear her throat. “When it's bad, I don't have control of my body. It feels like something huge and chaotic is wearing my skin, thrashing around in it, stretching it, and I'm stuck in there with it, helpless.”
He fed her another bite, thoughtful, listening. Maybe he didn't understand, but he seemed to be trying.
“Sometimes it's subtle, just there beneath the surface. If I'm distracted, I won't identify it until it's passed. I've tried to study it as it happens, to better understand it. If I lay still and really focus, I can almost grab hold of it. It's as if my brain has its very own body and something is brushing up against it, something that shouldn't be there.”
“Do you feel it right now?” He watched her with those perceptive eyes that could reach deeper inside her than any other part of his body.
“I feel...” Panicked? No. Troubled? Not exactly. “Out of alignment.”
His eyes glimmered. He liked that answer, and it made her insides flutter.
As he finished off the breakfast, she realized she'd stopped counting the bites when he prompted her to talk. Probably his intention. He didn't seem to do anything without an agenda.
There were still a few bites left, but her stomach hardened, way too bloated. She shook her head at the next forkful. “Tell me something about you. Something that's hard for you to talk about.”
The fork paused then lowered to the table. He glanced at the mudroom and back at her, his thumb moving restlessly along the edge of the plate. Then it stilled. “I'll show you.”
He stood, and without waiting for her, strode to the mudroom, opened the garage door, and stared into the dark hush, his features empty and distinct.
His expressions would never expose who he was, but judging by his sudden remoteness, whatever waited in the garage would.
A cold sweat broke out over her skin, but she rose to follow him, determined to know him. As she walked right through the middle of the smashed cereal without looking at it, her head tilted back, her arms relaxed at her sides, and her strides carried her to him with grace.
He glanced at her with cool, unreadable eyes, and she curled her fingers around his limp hand. Then she followed him through the door.
The fluorescents overhead buzzed in the darkness a half second before the garage flooded with light. Amber blinked rapidly, her lungs tightened, and her hand released Van's fingers with a jerk.
Where she expected chains, whips, torture equipment, and hell, maybe a car was something much more startling.
Dolls and mannequins in every size and state of repair lined workbenches and shelves, hung from walls, and overflowed crates and boxes. Detached arms and legs scattered the floor. Headless bodies slumped in piles with limbs tangled together, the hinged eyes and painted faces frozen in apathy.
The humidity in the two-bay garage stifled her breath, and a chill settled into her bones as she took in the largest collection of mannequins she'd ever seen. There was something very sad about their condition, the way they were tossed aside, neglected...yet kept all the same. A graveyard for broken dolls? Or some kind of a sick tribute?
He left her side and strode toward a large table in the center of the garage, its surface cluttered with paints and tiny tools and doll parts.
She didn't follow but instead walked a wide circuit around him on shaky legs, hands at her sides, her attention imprisoned by the horde of soulless faces. What would a man as virile and rugged and manly as Van want with dolls?