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.”

She shakes her head. “Wow. I had no idea you worked so much.” Finishing with the first shirt, she moves on to the second.

I watch her set the needle between her lips and wish I was that needle. She pulls it from her mouth and goes back to hemming the shirt. Her blonde hair falls across her face, stroking her pink cheeks as she tucks it back. And her blue eyes narrow in concentration as her delicate fingers carefully weave the thread through the shirt.

I watch her in amazement.

“What about you?” she asks, her voice bringing me back to reality. “If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do?”

“Honestly?” I hesitate. “I would go to culinary school and learn to cook.”

She looks up. “You like cooking?”

“I love it,” I say, pointing to the stack of cookbooks on the table across the room. “Remember I told you about our housekeeper, Marcella? Well growing up, she let me help her out in the kitchen, and she taught me all sorts of things about food and cooking. That’s when my love for all things culinary began, with Marcella.”