Experiment in Terror 06 Into the Hollow (7 page)

“Naturally,” I mused, looking down at the adoring dog who
was
looking a bit plumper. He obviously wasn’t on the same diet as Dex.

I walked tentatively toward him, peering at his apron.

“Kiss the cook,” I read it out loud. “Classic.”

He looked down at himself and grinned. “It’s more of a suggestion than a command.”

“That’s insinuating you can cook,” I told him as I looked into the pot.

“It’s mac and cheese with cut up hotdogs,” he said, wagging his eyebrow. “Another classic.”

“Huh,” I said and sat down at the barstool. “Is that your dinner?”

“This is
our
dinner, kiddo,” he said, flicking a pinch of salt into the pot and grabbing for a bottle of hot sauce. “I know you’re used to gourmet grub every night, but at Chez Derry, this is what you get.”

I raised my brow at the presumptuous “Chez Derry” comment but ignored it. “So, tell me, is this what you’ve been feeding yourself because judging from the way your chest is trying to break free of your apron, I’d say you’re used to eating raw eggs and power shakes.”

There was a hint of satisfaction as he smiled, as if he was waiting for me to comment on his newly buff body. I looked away, wishing I hadn’t brought it up. Still, I was far too curious and his shirt was far too tight.

“I mean,” I continued, studying the lines on the counter, pretending my ass hadn’t once been rammed up against it in a fit of passion, “what the hell have you been doing?”

He took a hard swallow and averted his eyes to the food. “Shall we eat first?”

I raised my chin. “Seriously, Dex. You never did explain any of this.”

He sighed and plopped the wooden spoon back in the pot, flicking off the burner. He leaned with his hands on the counter and looked me straight on.

“When you left,” he started, pausing to lick his lips, “I wasn’t in the best of circumstances. That’s sort of putting it mildly. To top it off, I hated myself for what I did to you. I mean, I really fucking loathed myself. Do you know what it’s like, to really loathe yourself? So that you can’t even look in the mirror?”

I kept my face impassive, but I knew exactly what he meant.

“And, after some time,” he continued, “I decided I didn’t want to be that person anymore. That person never got me anything but a fuckload of pain and did the same for a lot of other people. So I started with what was easiest first – my health. I started going to the gym. I started running. I quit smoking, re-did my whole diet…for the most part, anyway. I’ll never give up Mr. Daniels or the occasional mac, cheese and hotdog night.”

I sat there in silence, watching his face carefully. His eyes were darker than normal, and there was a grim twist to his mouth.

He lowered his head. “I was trying to be a better man, Perry. For you.”

I shifted in my seat. “Dex…”

“And I’ll keep trying,” he quickly said, voice low and somber. “Until I get it right.”

Oh God, it felt like my heart was shrinking. I tightened my hands into fists and quickly loosened them.

“Please don’t try,” I told him, even though saying those words made my stomach roll. “That’s in the past. It’s over. It’s done.”

He rubbed the heel of his palm against his chest. “But it’s not over. It’s not done. I can see it in your eyes.”

I let out a deep breath, nausea prickling at my core, and started focusing on my cuticles. He came around the counter and stood right beside me. I felt warm and heavy at the same time and fought with myself to stay strong.

“It’s not over until you forgive me,” he said, voice low and rough, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stiffen. “I know you need time…”

I avoided the eyes that were boring into the side of my head. “I don’t need time. I do…I do forgive you.”

Suddenly both his hands were on the sides of my face, a hot and firm grip. He brought my face towards his and forced me to look at him.

His eyes roamed deeply in mine, searching every crevice. “No you don’t. You say it, but you don’t mean it. I want you to mean it. I
need
you to mean it.”

Is that why I’m here?
I thought.
Is that why you asked me to move in with you? To win me over?

But I couldn’t say it. My mouth opened and closed and I was just so lost in his eyes, trapped in his hold.

“You’re losing your touch at lying, Perry,” he said.

Then he kissed me. The shock of his parted lips on mine rendered me helpless for a moment. The only thing I could do was kiss him back, because my brain wasn’t working and that’s what my body wanted. That’s what my body always wanted. Him.

He let out a low moan that was more felt than heard and one of his hands disappeared into the back of my hair, pressing me closer to him. He tasted like I remembered and the memory caused my legs to part, my muscles to go slack. Shivers passed over the small of my back. I wanted to run my fingers over his arms and chest, feel how hard he was, then go south and feel him even harder. Even though, just kissing him, feeling his tongue against mine, made me crave him like a junkie craved their next high.

And I was terrified of coming down.

I pulled back, maybe too hard. Dex flinched, but dropped his hands away from my face. He was so still, so close and breathing hard, his eyes glistening and pupils larger than life.

“I’m sorry,” I said, having difficulty forming the words. “This isn’t…this…”

He nodded and straightened up. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right…this isn’t…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence either. It wasn’t wrong and it wasn’t right either. God, we were fucked up.

I gave him a small smile and smoothed down my hair. “If we’re going to be roommates for the next while, we should probably avoid doing…
that
. You know, make some house rules.”

He breathed sharply out of his nose but I saw the acceptance in his face.

“Sort of like, you do the dishes on certain days, I do laundry on others, no smoking, no kissing, no sex?”

I felt my ears burn. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”

I shot him a killer look and he showed me his palms.

“Kidding,” he said. He cleared his throat and went back around to the stove. “So, hungry now?”

Actually, I wasn’t. All I could think about was how cold and empty my mouth felt without him there and food wouldn’t cut it. But I told him I was famished and we soon settled down on the couch to eat and watch mindless television. He sat in the middle, and I shrank up in the corner with the vague fear that if I touched him, I’d be straddling him in seconds.

I turned in early with bedding he had found. After texting back and forth with Ada, failing to ignore the huge mess I left behind, I was left in the dark room with only my thoughts.

Somehow, despite the fact that I had just left home for the first time, that I just hurt every member of my family, and that I had no clue what the hell I was doing, I could only think of Dex. Sleeping in the next room. Alone.

My insides swirled as I replayed the kiss in my mind. Moving out wasn’t a mistake. But moving in with Dex might have been. I didn’t know how long I could go with someone like him around me all the time. Scratch that, not someone
like
him. Him, period. No matter what happened, he was Dex and I was Perry and that combination only led to trouble.

With a sleepy head, I started plotting out my next plan: get a job, fast, and move out, even faster.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Shut your piehole, Fatty Rab!” Dex bellowed from the bathroom where I could hear his electric razor running.

There had just been a knock at the door, which got the mutt all excited and yappy, even though it was just Rebecca coming by to take me out for lunch.

“I’ll get it,” I told Dex, and wiped my hands on my jeans. I was a tiny bit nervous about seeing Rebecca again. The last time I had seen her, I wasn’t very cordial. She had come to Portland to try and convince me to give Dex another chance and I pretty much told her to fuck off. I cringed a bit, remembering my behavior. Perhaps I was already not in the right frame of mind at the time.

I took a quick breath and opened the door. Rebecca looked immaculate as always, dressed in a red shift dress under a grey tweed, funnel-necked coat, with spiderweb tights and platform booties. Her hair was still a shiny, raven bob and her face was bare except for red lipstick. Next to me in my ponytail, mutt-slobbered jeans and black-and-white striped sweater, she looked positively Hollywood.

She gently pushed away Fat Rabbit who was attempting to claw up her tights, and with a wide smile, embraced me in a hug. Whatever nerves I felt quickly dissolved.

She pulled away and held me in place, eyes warm and shining.

“I’m so sorry to be last minute. I know you only got here last night and I was texting you like a twit, forgetting that I don’t have your new number.”

“Yeah, thanks for phoning me at 7:00 AM,” Dex yelled from the bathroom. “It wasn’t like I planned on sleeping or anything.”

She rolled her eyes and then gave one quick last hug.

“So, how are you settling in here?” she asked.

I looked at the stack of boxes right beside us that still hadn’t made their way into the den.

“Well, I’m not quite there yet.”

She smiled sympathetically, taking note of my eyes that I knew were still puffy from yesterday. “You’ll get there. This must be all so overwhelming for you.”

I raised my brows wryly and lowered my voice. “You don’t even know.”

She patted my arm gently and yelled past me. “Hey, Dex, I’m going to be taking her out now. Will you be here later?”

“I’m taking the car to the shop,” he said and I felt a pang of guilt in my chest from the memory of trying to take his car off the road, the horror of the crash. I know it wasn’t me doing the actions, but still.

“But you can just give Perry your spare keys,” he continued and he stepped out of the bathroom. “They belong to her now anyway.”

I tried to not let my jaw hit the ground as he walked toward us. He had shaven, so he was less beardy and more stubbly, which showed off the strong lines of his jaw, the twinkle in his brown eyes. But that wasn’t what had me in lustful awe.

With only a white towel wrapped around his waist, Dex was looking…unbelievable. While he always had a nice and rather firm body, now he was definitely packing some serious muscle. His chest was hard and sculpted and I wouldn’t have recognized it had the words
And with madness comes the light
not been tattooed across it. Now, it was a lethal combination.

Below his chest, there was a genuine six-pack, precise squares etched on his tight stomach and his hips had those lines of perpendicular muscles leading in a V down into his towel. For a second, I was caught up in a whirl of desire and I mentally kicked myself for instigating a no kissing, no sex house rule.

“Oh, Dex,” Rebecca chided from beside me, bringing me back to reality. “Put your shirt back on. Are you trying to turn me straight or something?”

He grinned cheekily, dimples cutting in, and I then noticed he had his eyebrow ring back on. That, his smile, and his tattoo were the only things that reminded me that this was still Dex and he couldn’t be trusted. Especially now, especially with that body.

I was starting to be distracted by the round girth of his shoulders and upper arms, when I felt Rebecca tug at my arm.

“Come on, let’s let this show pony get back to his grooming,” she said. I let her lead me away to the door, walking backward.

Dex smiled at me, a smile I was unable to return, and he turned around to head back into the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of his smooth, wide back and something else. A new tattoo, words written across the back of his left shoulder. Before I had a chance to read it properly, he was gone.

“He got a new tattoo,” I commented to no one in particular as Rebecca pushed the dog away and opened the door.

She nodded. “Come on, we want to hit Icon before it gets too busy.”

I snatched up my purse and jacket and we left the apartment, Dex’s tattoo on my mind. I couldn’t even imagine what it could have said.

It turned out that the Icon restaurant was just down the street from the apartment, which was super handy, considering it was my new home, something I needed to keep reminding myself of. It was a weird feeling. The walk also gave me time to pepper Rebecca with questions. Surely, she knew this was coming.

“Thank you for taking me out for lunch,” I told her.

“No worries.”

“When did Dex get that tattoo?”

She smiled quickly to herself before answering. “A couple of weeks ago. I went with him.”

“What does it say?”

This time her smile was for me. “You’ll have to ask him that, Perry. It’s fairly personal to him.”

Personal? This was going to drive me nuts. What on earth could be personal to Dex?

The restaurant was a popular place for lunch thanks to an extensive unique menu and a detailed décor of pink walls, candy-shaped glass objects, marble-cracked tables and a million lamps. I was so tempted to launch into a discussion about Dex but I did that the last time Rebecca took me out for lunch. So I feigned ignorance and asked her how she and Emily were doing.

She pressed her lips together and looked down at her tea. “Not too well, actually.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded then raised her chin. “Thank you. It’s fine. It’s just a rough patch. We all get those.”

“I suppose so,” I mused, trying to remember the last time I was in a relationship. The whole thing with Mason in college was one giant rough patch.

“Em is just younger and that’s always been our problem. She’s…hard to keep down. Not that I demand anything of her.” She sighed and smoothed her hair back behind her ears. “But you know, I love her. I would like to make this official.”

“Official, like marriage? Can you get married in Washington State?”

“There are legal unions here, like you have in Oregon. But I want the real deal. We’d just go up to British Columbia and make a honeymoon out of it at the same time. Well, that’s what I proposed.”