“What? What’s happened?”
Then we heard a sob from inside Kayley’s room. I pushed past him and opened the door.
Kayley was sitting up in bed, her eyes red and her lip trembling. She must have been crying continuously, all the time the hospital was summoning me and all the time I was racing across the city. I could actually see the wet patch down the front of her nightshirt where the tears had soaked through. And she was surrounded by—
Oh Jesus.
I ran to her and pulled her into my arms. Little locks of blonde hair bounced off the bed and onto the floor.
“I look—” She was too upset to get a sentence out. She had to force the words out between big, gulping sobs. “I look like afreak!And—And the rest’s—It’s all going to fall out—”
I shushed her and pulled her even tighter against me. What could I tell her? That it wasn’t so bad? That it was temporary? “We’ll figure something out,” I told her.
“Awig?I don’t want a wig!”
I hugged her close. “I know. I know you don’t.” I patted her back. “We’ll get through this. We’ll get you through this and go to Switzerland and everything will be okay.”
But I kept thinking of the plants, still just fragile seedlings. Kayley’s entire future was locked up in those slender stems. One mistake, one disaster: a fire, someone robbing us, the cops—hell, even if I just got the fertilizer a little off. That was all it would take.
I’d do everything I could. I’d spend every waking hour at the grow house.
But that brought a new problem: the more I was at the grow house, the more I was around Sean.
22
LOUISE
May
Sean stoppedby every few days. Even though it was me looking after the plants, there was always something that needed doing: a leak in the roof or a faulty light, a sack of fertilizer that needed carrying in from the car. He kept to our unspoken agreement: he didn’t try to kiss me again.
But that didn’t stop him looking.
I’d hear the low throb of the Mustang in the street outside and my heart would beat faster. Then the heavy thud of his boots on the sidewalk and the creak of the door. If I was busy checking plants, I wouldn’t even look up at first, but I was aware of every little thing he did. I could feel him staring at the tight denim stretched over my ass if I was bending over. I’d feel his gaze slowly stripping me, layer by layer, melting my clothes away and caressing my body in languorous sweeps. By then, I’d be so hot and jumpy that Icouldn’tlook at him, so I’d keep my eyes on my work, walking around the tables and checking plant after plant as his eyes ate me up.
I knew he was thinking about what he wanted to do to me and I was imagining, too. Whenever I had my back to him, I thought ofsuddenly feeling his hands on my waist, skimming up the sides of my top, lifting it a little and then darting underneath and squeezing my breasts. He’d pull me back against him and I’d feel the hard outline of his cock between the cheeks of my ass, grinding against me as I writhed in his grip. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he’d shove me forward against the table, the wood digging into the front of my hips. A hand would press into the middle of my back, bending me over it, and then he’d yank my jeans down hard, ripping the buttons from their stitching. I’d have just a few seconds to process what was happening as I lay gasping and panting with my cheek pressed to the wood. I’d feel the cool air of the room on the damp folds of my sex and then the hot, weighty pressure of his cock and—
Sometimes I’d whip around to face him, right at that moment in my fantasy. I’d look him in the eye as he penetrated me in my mind and I knew,knewhe was imagining the same thing. We barely spoke, hours and sometimes whole afternoons passing without a word. But in my head he was growling and panting and finally gasping, my earlobe between his teeth, as he finished inside me.
I thought it would get easier but it got harder instead. Every day he was there turned into a marathon of self control. He was watching me...but I was watching him, too. I’d drink in the hard muscles of his legs and ass wheneverhisback was turned, or peek between the leaves of the plants as I was working and lose myself in the smooth swells of his pecs under his t-shirt, tracing their curves with my eyes the way I wanted to with my fingers. I imagined Sean on top of me, underneath me, behind me, up against the wall. I day-dreamed about his lips on my body so vividly that I swore I could feel them, working their way millimeter by millimeter across my chest, my nipples growing hard under my top as his tongue lathed each one.
I knew things were going in a dangerous direction. After a week, we were like two caged animals. I felt like we needed to be separated for our own safety.
I tried to defuse things by talking to him, but that made things worse.
At first it was innocent enough—the same sort of conversationyou’d have with anyone if you spent enough time with them. Movies and food and safe subjects like that. He’d become even gruffer, since we nearly kissed, so it was me doing most of the talking. One day I told him about the candy I used to eat as a kid, stuff like Pixie Sticks. “I love those things,” I told him. We were just chatting. It was fine.
Except, the next morning when I visited Kayley, she was running a fever. She’d picked up an infection, something that would have been no big deal normally, but the medication she was on had left her vulnerable. I stayed with her as much as possible over the next few days, falling asleep by her bedside until the nurses chased me away. I barely ate. Sean told me he could look after the plants, but I stumbled bleary-eyed to the grow house every day anyway, because it was better than sitting worrying in my apartment alone. And just as I was losing it, just as I was at my lowest point, I came in to find a clumsily-wrapped package sitting on one of the tables.
Sean was across the room, messing with the hinges on one of the security doors. He didn’t say anything or even look up as I opened the package. But inside was a whole box of Pixie Sticks. I looked at him, but he kept his eyes on his work.
The next day, Kayley’s fever broke and everything went back to normal. But little things like that kept happening: like I noticed my wreck of a car was running better and realized that, while I’d been looking after the plants in the house, he’d sometimes been out in the garage, swapping out a filter or changing the oil. Or I’d pull a double shift and get to the grow house late, having not eaten, and he’d grunt that there was an extra turkey and cheese sandwich if I wanted it. Or once, when I was so caught up in the plants and the hospital and my job that I barely went home for a week, I suddenly realized I hadn’t watered my plants on the rooftop. I ran up there, expecting to find them all dead...and found someone had done it for me.
He never acknowledged any of it and that made it even harder. When I was around him, the fantasies wouldn’t stop: those big hands tangled in my hair or the press of his chest against my breasts. But now, when I was alone, I started to miss him. The days when he didn’t visit felt lonely. And at night, after I’d tossed and turned and finallyrun out of willpower, after I’d played with myself to visions of him thrusting deep inside me, I lay there and imagined him spooning me from behind.
He was changing, in my mind, from some dark, bad boy lover I fantasized about to a real person—just as dark and just as dangerous but someone who’dbewith you for more than just one night. Which was insane, because a guy like Sean didn’t do relationships. And I knew that. But I’d still wake on a morning in the empty apartment and look down to the floor, imagining him in his apartment downstairs, and have a crazy, momentary wish that he was there beside me. I wondered who he was sleeping with, down there. I suspected he’d started going to the homes of the women he picked up, because I hadn’t heard him bring anyone back recently.
At the end of May, Doctor Huxler said Kayley could come home. The initial round of treatment was finished and he told me quietly that she’d feel better for a while. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking she’s cured,” he warned me. “Remember, this is only a holding action. Soon, she’s going to start going downhill. Slow at first, then fast. Four months and she’ll need the Swiss treatment.”
