Chambers of Desire: Opus 1 (32 page)

I felt so liberated around Calvin. Funny, how being constricted and treated as property could do that. But domination was only a road to the freedom we both craved, not the freedom of being able to hurt and be hurt, or fuck and be fucked; we both craved togetherness with someone who fit us. I needed his strength, and I believed he required me there to be strong. I was his motivation, and he was mine. Somewhere in that relationship, I began to feel emotions I hadn’t dared to ask of myself.

I shook my head. I couldn’t fall into that trap. He liked me for sex and as a friend, for sure. Lovers we were but more? I knew that to delve too far down that road was to ask for ruin. I took a deep breath and nuzzled against his warmth, keeping my feelings to myself.

Chapter 19

A pinkish hue filled the bedroom, the morning light pouring through the window. From the way the shadows bounced off the furniture, I guessed it wasn’t much past six, but I was wide-awake. My legs were entwined with Calvin’s, and my head rested in the nook under his arm. My head rose and fell with his breath, like a sailboat rocking on a breezeless ocean. In the golden haze, his skin was a deep bronze, smooth and velvety, and I ran my finger lightly across his bare chest.

He sighed and turned toward me, nestling his head more deeply into the pillow. His eyelids fluttered, then relaxed, easing back into a dream. His full lips were slightly parted, and for a split second, I could see him as a boy. Then, a shadow crossed his face, and he was Calvin again, strong jaw, deep-set eyes, dominant and indestructible.

Would I ever tire of looking at his face? Somehow, I didn’t think so. I wondered whether I ever felt this way about Brandon. I must have, at some point, but I couldn’t remember when or what it was like. They were so different, Brandon and Calvin, like black and white, light and dark. Brandon would be the light, translucent, with his heart on his sleeve. Always smiling, he’d never known heartache or a moment of uncertainty. Calvin, he was the darkness, unreachable and secluded, an island tucked away off an isolated coast. But in that darkness, he felt things, really
felt
things, experienced them fully, excruciating as they might be. I loved him for his shadows and his complexity, cloaked myself in his intensity, comforted by the obscurity.

Tomorrow would have been my wedding day, I suddenly realized. I tried to envision myself walking down the aisle in my full-skirted lace gown. I couldn’t. I was so far from that girl in the cake shop tasting chocolate ganache with buttercream or the bride inhaling the sweet smell of peonies, picking out her bouquet. Was I happy then? Not really. I was playing a part, filling a role—the dutiful daughter, future daughter-in-law, giddy fiancée. I was doing such a good job; I almost had myself convinced that I was leading the life I’d always wanted.
Almost
. Maybe part of me really did want it. The part of me that crumbled that night I discovered Brandon had been unfaithful. But now? Now, I wasn’t even disappointed that it wasn’t happening.

Why had he gone to Caitlin’s room that night instead of coming to mine? I thought of Brandon as the boy he was, a lusty fog clouding his thinking. Had he been as afraid of marriage as I was? We were so young; deep down, did he think we weren’t ready, either? What would have happened if we’d talked about it, shared our feelings instead of shoving them down, pretending they didn’t exist? What if we’d listened to ourselves, to each other, instead of our parents? Would we still be together? Maybe I was giving him too much credit; maybe, just maybe, after a night of Jack and Cokes, he just couldn’t say no to the temptation of a woman offering his body to him.

How ironic that his cheating didn’t ruin just our relationship, but also my relationship with my parents. His infidelity was devastating, but theirs was the ultimate betrayal. I could see now that his was a stupid mistake… heartbreaking, yes. But theirs was something else altogether. I was their
daughter.
I’d done
nothing
wrong. Yet, they took his side, made me feel worthless. When would that pain subside?

But in the end, how angry could I be? Brandon’s choices, my parents’ choices, they forced me to make a choice, and my choice led me to Calvin. I looked at his peaceful face and gently fingered his dark hair. He was so beautiful. How was it even possible for me to feel this much for someone so soon?

I started to get up, leave him to sleep in, but as I disentangled myself from his limbs, I saw something that made me pause. The white long scar across his knuckles was no longer white, but red and raw, fresh as if it had just been reopened. It stretched the length of his hand, swollen, jagged.
How strange.
I moved my hand to touch it, but drew away, worried I’d wake him. Had he cut it on something in the middle of the night after I was asleep? Surely, I would have heard a glass breaking or a yelp of pain. When had this happened?

Carefully, I slid my legs from beneath the comforter and placed them lightly on the floor, never taking my eyes off Calvin. He didn’t stir. I padded into the bathroom, looking for shards of glass, a broken mug, anything that would explain where the cut had come from, but the room was undisturbed; no droplets of blood to be found. Even the trashcan was empty, free of any stained towels or bandage wrappings. When I opened the medicine cabinet, I inhaled sharply, eyes stuck to the razor blade sitting on the second ledge.
No
, I thought,
not possible
. It had to have been an accident. But if so, why had he taken such pains to ensure there was no evidence of how this had happened? Another secret, more questions.

I left the bathroom no closer to an answer than when I’d started my search and slipped out of the bedroom quietly, closing the door gently behind me. I didn’t have the heart to wake Calvin, wanted to let him sleep in peace. Whatever had happened last night, he needed his rest.

The house was empty, no bustle of maids, no snarling pit bull. I curled in the living room on Calvin’s large sofa, tucking my legs under a thick afghan, flicking on the TV. I settled on an old movie channel playing an Audrey Hepburn marathon, snuggling into the warmth of the couch.

A wet tickling on my toes jolted me up; I must have dozed during the ending of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. Princess the Devil Dog was licking my feet, suddenly on the prowl for some love and affection. “Hey, girl,” I said gently, sitting up and reaching out my hand.
Please don’t bite my face off.
She sniffed my fingers before continuing to lick happily.

“Well, aren’t you fickle,” I said, amused at how quickly her hatred for me had dissipated. “Are you hungry? C’mon, let’s go find something to eat.”

Princess clicked after me into the kitchen, where I found her big bag of dog food in a cabinet above her food bowl. After filling it to the brim—didn’t
want her to get hungry and decide to make a snack out of me—I opened the refrigerator looking for something to whip up for Calvin. Something easy such as…  yup, there it was—bacon and eggs.

Before long, the kitchen filled with the tantalizing aroma of sizzling bacon, faintly charred and saliva-inducing. Proudly, I piled my creation onto two plates and shuffled back up the stairs, Princess trailing me, deciding that I’d let Calvin sleep long enough.

As I pushed the door open, Calvin shifted in the bed, slowly opening his eyes. “What time is it?” he asked, voice husky from sleep.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I answered. “It’s almost ten. I thought you might sleep all day.”

He stretched his arms above his head. “You should have woken me.”

“Not a chance. You looked like you were in the middle of a good dream.”

Shaking his head, “I don’t remember.”

“Are you hungry? I made us some eggs.” I crossed the room, set the plates on his nightstand, and crawled back under the covers, curling around his warm body. Outside, the sun had been swallowed by a mass of gray clouds, covering the house with a heavy shadow.

“Thanks,” he said, grabbing a piece of bacon off the plate. “Delicious.”

I kissed his salty lips, tasting the bacon’s smoky flavor. “Looks like rain today,” I said, pointing out the window.

“Does that mean you want to stay in bed all day?” he asked with a grin. I shrieked as he pulled me on top of him, entangling me in the soft sheets.

“No!” I yelled, laughing. “Well, maybe we’ll need a long
nap
this afternoon, but I was hoping we could go for a walk this morning.”

“In the rain?”

“It’s not raining yet,” I protested, sitting up under the sheets. “It’s my favorite weather, right before a storm. Everything seems to crackle, you know. As if the Earth knows something’s about to happen.”

A smile crept over Calvin’s face. “You’re a loon. But you’re in luck; I love the rain too. I could be talked into a walk.”

When we’d finished breakfast, Calvin emerged from his closet in a down coat over a red flannel button-up, looking woodsy and warm. His hair was still mussed from sleep, stubble shading his jaw, rugged, wild, and manly. “You need a coat,” he said to me when he saw the long-sleeved T-shirt I’d thrown on.

“Nah, I’ll be OK,” I said smiling. “I like the cold. It’s not often you get to feel the rain on your face in Dallas.”

He didn’t argue; instead, rolled his eyes affectionately and slipped his arm over my shoulder. The air outside was crisp, and it smelled like rain. We meandered through the garden, chatting idly about the change in weather, how fresh everything felt after a storm.

As we rounded a large pond centered in his backyard, I was reminded of the fountain in his office. “Hey, I have a question.”

“Shoot,” Calvin said, pulling his jacket closer around him.

“What’s with the black swans?” I asked with a smile. “Are you trying to scare off your clients? They’re so fierce looking! I think they hate me.”

Calvin laughed. He stopped at a bench at the edge of the pond, taking a seat. “I think they’re beautiful. I love seeing them in the morning. They remind me that beauty is unpredictable.”

I sat next to him, inhaling the damp air, heavy with moisture. “You’re right about that,” I thought, thinking that Calvin was a little like those black swans himself.

The clouds hung low in the sky, plump with humidity, dark, and gloomy. They moved quickly from the east, settling above us, threatening to overflow at any moment. A cold mist dusted across the pond, sending chills up my spine. I moved closer to Calvin as the wind whipped through my T-shirt, goose bumps pimpling on my arm. He folded me into his body, barricading me from the chill. In front of us, the pond was dark, an opaque black, rippling in the wind. A few tiny raindrops bounced off the surface, springing back up as if hitting a trampoline.

“It’s so dreary,” I commented, seeing my breath in front of my face. “Thanks for keeping me warm.” I nuzzled closer, enjoying the contrast of the cool air against his fleecy down jacket. In Dallas, you never felt your hair stand up on your neck or the wind move through you like an icy knife, reminding you you’re alive.

He didn’t answer, lost in an unreachable stare. Despite how close we’d grown over the last couple of weeks, there was still this distance, this secluded part of him that I couldn’t penetrate.

“Hey,” I said, yanking him from his trance. He looked toward me as if surprised to see me there, blue eyes an ocean of solitude. “Where did you go?”

Calvin pulled me closer, kissing me softly on the forehead. “What do you mean?”

“Just now, when you were thinking, where did you go?”

He shrugged, looking back toward the murky pond. His eyes clouded over again.

“Calvin,” I tried again. “I don’t want to pry, but I feel like there’s so much you aren’t telling me. I know that you’re holding back.” My voice was barely above a whisper, carried away by the cold wind across the pond.

“There’s not much you don’t know,” he said. “The rest, you don’t
want
to know.”

“But I do,” I said urgently, turning to face him. A shadow covered his face, darkening his already stoic features. “Calvin, look at me.”

He was still for a moment, then licked his lips and sighed. He finally turned toward me. When I didn’t speak, he went on. “My childhood was really fucked up, Sabrina. Disturbing shit that no one wants to hear.”

“Remember when you told me there wasn’t anything that I could say that would scare you off?” I furrowed my brow, forcing him to look me in the eye. “I feel the same way,” I continued when he didn’t respond. “There’s nothing I don’t want to know, nothing you can say that could change the way I feel about you.”

He let out another long sigh, looking pained.

“You know everything there is to know about me because I trust you, Calvin. The stealing, the bingeing, I shared all that with you. You need to trust me too. I’ve earned that.” I hated that he locked me out, buried his secrets deep within.

“It’s bad,” he whispered, jaw clenched.

I reached up to smooth his dark hair. “I don’t care.”

He nodded in resignation as if to say,
OK, you win. What do you want to know?

Slipping my hand through his, I turned his palm down. “Like this? What’s it from? I know it wasn’t from a fight, Calvin. It’s fresh. It was just reopened.”