Darker: The Inquirer

by M. S. Parker

  The only fairytales that happened in real life were the ones that resembled the original versions rather than the Disney ones.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Should I be?”

  She was trying to make light of it, but I could see the caution under the good humor. She wasn’t sure where things were going to go from here, wasn’t sure what either of us wanted. I wouldn’t put that on her. It was time to put myself out there.

  “If you don’t want me around, I’ll go,” I said. “But I need to say something first.”

  I sat up, letting the sheet keep me covered from the waist down. This wasn’t a conversation I really wanted to have naked, but I supposed the lack of clothes would keep Nyx from running out before I was done.

  “All right.” She seemed to be steeling herself.

  “I told you before that I didn’t just want to fuck you, and I meant it, but it’s more than that.” I wanted to take her hand but decided it’d be better if I didn’t touch her while I was telling her that sex wasn’t all I wanted. “I care about you, Nyx. A lot.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I’m not asking you to say anything like that back to me,” I added quickly. “But you deserve to know how I feel. Especially since I’m also saying that I want us to spend time together for as long as you’re here in Savannah.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly, “but I’d like to find out if we have something between us. Something that could be real. More than just sex.”

  She looked away, fingers moving to twist in her hair. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea…”

  “I’m not going to make demands or set rules or anything like that. I want to get to know you. Spend time with you. But I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me. You’re in charge.”

  Silence settled between us, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break it. She had to decide what she wanted, and I would live with her decision, even if I didn’t like it.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “This is…new territory for me.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “But I think new territory means we get to be the ones to set the rules.”

  She gave me a half-smile. “I like the sound of that.”

  “But you’re still not sure.” I made it a statement. “That’s okay. I meant what I said. I’m not going to push.”

  “Thank you.”

  She got out of bed, and I grabbed a pillow as the sheet went with her. I wasn’t embarrassed by nudity, but I didn’t want her to feel awkward. Sitting on my bed with my dick out while she picked up her clothes was probably an NC-17 definition of awkward.

  I couldn’t figure out what to do with my eyes. Watch her get dressed? Stare at a wall or something? Get dressed myself?

  “I can’t make any promises,” she said.

  At least I felt like I could look at her now. It was only polite since she was talking to me.

  “I understand.”

  Her eyes met mine. “But I’ll think about it.”

  Hope flared bright inside me before I could tamp it down. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. If she said she’d think about it, then she would. I had to trust that if she felt this connection as strongly as I did, she’d want to see where things went too.

  Until then, I’d be waiting.

  Fourteen

  Nyx

  What had I done?

  I closed my eyes and stepped under the warm spray of water to rinse the conditioner from my hair. I’d gone straight from Bradyn’s cabin to my shower, wanting to get the smell of sex and him off me as soon as possible. Not because I regretted what we’d done, but because I needed to be able to think, and I couldn’t do that if everything I could smell made me remember our time together.

  I didn’t intend to figure everything out on my own, though. No, this was the sort of thing that I needed to talk out, and that meant a call to Kaimi.

  Shower. Dress. Dinner. Phone call.

  In that order.

  And no lingering in the shower, thinking about how many times he’d made me come. Not that I really needed to do anything in particular to call up memories. My entire body still throbbed from how rough we’d both been. I’d found hickeys all over, and the mirror had shown me ones I couldn’t have seen otherwise. There were bruises too, from where his fingers had tightened down on me, and pretty much everything between my legs felt thoroughly used.

  I had a feeling I’d be feeling those aftereffects for a while, and the idea didn’t bother me at all.

  I exhaled slowly and tried to empty my mind. A trick I’d learned when I needed to stop circling thoughts – or at least get a break from them – was to focus on some other noise, something repetitive that didn’t require any thought. Basically, white noise.

  I actually had an app on my phone that played different types of white noise. Running water had always been my favorite, maybe because we’d used it in juvie when we wanted to have private conversations. Sinks. Showers. That sort of thing.

  So, I listened to the water and let its noise fill my head.

  When I finally stepped out of the bathroom, I didn’t feel clear-headed, but I did feel like I could talk to Kaimi without my thoughts being all jumbled. I made myself my go-to easy meal of two grilled cheese sandwiches, then took them and a beer over to the sofa. After I settled in, I placed the call to Kaimi and waited for her to pick up.

  “Aunt Nyx!” Rose squealed as she answered the phone.

  I smiled at the pleasant surprise. “Hey, little bee. Didn’t expect to hear your voice.”

  “Mom’s in the bathroom,” Rose said. “And before you tell me I shouldn’t have answered her phone, I only picked up because it’s you.”

  My heart squeezed. “I miss you too. Anything exciting happen since I left?”

  “Not really. School’s pretty boring right now, but it’ll get better because we’re having a Halloween dance on the thirtieth even though that’s not actually Halloween.”

  “Are you going with anyone?”

  “A bunch of us are going together so no one feels left out. My friends and I promised that we’d never let dating come between us. We made a pact.”

  “That’s good.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her that dating screwed up a lot of friendships. On the off chance she and her friends would actually manage to make it through school without a guy or girl coming between them, I wouldn’t ruin it by giving her a harsh view of the truth. Besides, it wasn’t like I was some expert on what would or wouldn’t break a friendship.

  I’d had friends when I was a kid, but when Art started messing with me, I’d closed myself off, and they’d disappeared. By the time I got locked up, I hadn’t talked to a single one of them in more than a year. Since then, I’d kept everyone but Kaimi and Rose at arm’s length. Sitara would get there eventually. But I’d never experienced what Rose had, and I’d be damned if I burst her bubble because I was jaded as fuck.

  “How’s Bradyn?”

  I could hear the smirk in her voice and rolled my eyes. “He’s fine, thank you very much.”

  “Oh, he definitely is fine.”

  “Rose!” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Way too old for you.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t look.”

  “Who are you, and what have you done with the little girl who thought Aladdin and Jasmine kissing was gross?”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, Aunt Nyx. I’m not turning into one of those boy-crazy teenagers who doodles hearts on her notebooks.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said wryly.

  “So am I.” Kaimi’s voice came from the background. “Rose, take Nyx off speaker and give me my phone.”

  “Bye, Aunt Nyx! Love you!”

  “I love you too, little bee.”

  A few moments of silence while the phone changed hands, and then it was only Kaimi’s voice on the other end.

  “I swear, that girl.” Kaimi sighed. “Hey, Nyx.�
�

  “Hey.” I paused, regathering the thoughts that’d scattered when Rose had answered the phone, and Kaimi waited. “Do you have time to talk?”

  “One second.”

  I heard her say something to Rose about being on the phone for a while, and then a door closed.

  “All right. Sitara’s at work ‘til midnight, and Rose just finished her homework, so she’s binging Riverdale until she goes to bed. I’m all yours.”

  “I’m drowning here, Kaimi.” My voice shook, and I closed my eyes, the sudden burn of tears surprising me.

  “What happened?” The words had an edge to them. “Did Bradyn hurt you?”

  “No. No, that’s not…I mean…fuck.” I took a deep breath and tried again. “I didn’t tell you when you and Sitara got back because I refused to ruin your homecoming, but Bradyn and I had a huge fight when he was in New York.”

  “I’m gonna castrate him.”

  “You’ll want to hear the whole thing before you decide to assault him,” I said.

  Kaimi had known most of what’d happened between Bradyn and me before she called to ask him to come to New York. Without going into the details, I told her about finding a connection to Bradyn’s family and the investigation I was doing as well as the argument he and I’d had when he’d overheard me on the phone. She started muttering curses under her breath at that point, and they became threats when I told her about Antoinette answering his door naked. She didn’t actually interrupt, though, which made it easier.

  Then I got to today.

  “So, I remembered that probate records could help me find out what type of estate the Traylors had left from one generation to the next. From there I realized it could give me the name of their attorney, or at least the law firm they work at.”

  If Kaimi thought I’d changed topics, she didn’t mention it. One of the things that made her such a great friend was that she would listen to everything before she started asking questions.

  “Turns out, the Traylors use Check & Sons.”

  “Shit.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

  “Does Bradyn know?”

  “No. At least, I didn’t tell him. Not about Art’s family being from Savannah or his last name or his being a lawyer. I guess he could’ve found out if he really wanted to put in the time or money, but I don’t think he did. He has a decent poker face, but he wouldn’t have kept quiet if he knew his family’s lawyer was connected to me.”

  “Are you sure? Kinda seems like he’s been an ass.”

  “Yeah, well, this is where things get really interesting.”

  “You fucked him again, didn’t you?”

  Heat flooded my cheeks. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay, it wasn’t completely like that,” I corrected myself. “I saw the law firm’s name and had a flashback. The kind that put me on the floor and made me want to throw up.”

  “Oh, hon.” Kaimi never pitied me, but she also never hid how seeing me hurt made her hurt too. “I wish I could’ve been there.”

  “When I came out of it, all I could think about was getting to Bradyn. Even with everything, he makes me feel safe.”

  “And he makes you forget.”

  “That too.” I rubbed my forehead. “One look, and he knew I’d had a panic attack. He didn’t ask me what it was about, just what he could do.”

  “And that’s when you had sex with him.”

  “Yes.” I sighed. “But that’s not all. I mean, afterward, he apologized for how he’d behaved. For all of it.”

  “I suppose that’s good.” Kaimi’s tone said she didn’t entirely agree with the words.

  “I think he meant it. I mean, he jumped to some conclusions, but it wasn’t like he’s lied about anything. Not any more than I did. He’d told me his last name before. I just didn’t know how it connected.”

  “But you’re hiding the law firm stuff from him.”

  “Yeah, for now anyway.”

  Kaimi was silent for a moment, and then said, “If he’s just a one-off, then it doesn’t matter, but you’re calling me, which means there’s more to it than that.”

  “There is.”

  “Then spill it.”

  This was why I’d called my best friend in the first place. She spoke her mind about everything, but she didn’t judge or look down on me, no matter what her opinion was.

  “He told me that he cares about me.” Saying it out loud sent a shiver through me, and I could almost feel his hands on my body, the heat and weight of him. “He called me my little firebird.”

  Silence.

  I waited, letting her figure out what she wanted to say. It couldn’t be easy, dealing with my shit all the time.

  “Did he say what he wanted? With you? From you?”

  “Um…he, uh, said he wanted us to spend time together while I was in Savannah.”

  “Is that ‘spend time together’ as in go to dinner and talk or more like a ‘hooking up whenever you get the urge’ thing?”

  “He said he wants us to get to know each other, to see if there could be something more than sex between us.” I tucked my feet underneath me. “But he didn’t take sex off the table.”

  “Does that mean you’ve had it on the table already?” Kaimi teased.

  I laughed. “Not yet, but I won’t say never.”

  “Damn. Sounds like he really rocked your world.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered. “I’ll be feeling him for days.”

  “Shit,” Kaimi whispered, then lowered her voice even more. “Did you just come from fucking him?”

  She spoke so low that I barely heard the question. She didn’t shelter Rose, and she swore around the kid from time to time, but when it came to talking about sex, she tried to keep it matter-of-fact, sometimes cliché, but rarely vulgar slang.

  “About an hour ago,” I said. “The whole Check & Sons thing happened earlier today.”

  “How much earlier?”

  I placed my hands over my eyes. “Are you asking about my schedule for the day or wondering about how long he lasted?”

  “Both?”

  I laughed. “You’re a married woman, and you want all the dirty details from my sex life?”

  “I’d share mine if you wanted to hear them.”

  This banter between Kaimi and me, mixing the serious with our brand of humor, helped me relax better than anything else could.

  I shifted in my seat, and my body gave a painfully pleasant throb.

  Well, almost anything else.

  “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, Kaimi,” I said, my mind turning back to one of the reasons why I’d called. “I mean, I’ve never wanted a relationship. That’s why I only hooked up with guys at Club Privé. I could tell them I only wanted sex, and they’d get it. I mean, I rarely fucked a guy more than once.”

  “Is this thing with Bradyn the same, though?” Kaimi asked. “I mean, you’ve had sex with Bradyn more than once and not at a club.”

  “Does that really mean anything? There’s a club down here that’s sort of like Club Privé, but he lives right here on the ranch so it just made sense to keep using him.” I winced. “No. No, not using. That’s not the right word.”

  “You care about him, Nyx.” Kaimi’s voice softened. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be calling me. Hell, you wouldn’t have gone to him after seeing that name if you didn’t feel something for him.”

  Dammit.

  “Maybe I just wanted to be distracted,” I suggested. “Trust me. Sex with Bradyn is very distracting.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Kaimi said. “But forgive me going a little psychologist here, but I doubt you’d go to someone you don’t trust when you’re emotionally vulnerable.”

  I scowled. “‘Emotionally vulnerable’?”

  “I know you don’t like that phrase, but even big-bad you can have emotions and be vulnerable.”

  “Come on.”

  I could hear the s
mile in Kaimi’s voice. “I love you, Nyx, but you’ve got issues when it comes to people.”

  I snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “All right,” she said. “You called me because you wanted me to tell you that you shouldn’t trust Bradyn or that it was pointless to start anything with a guy when he lived hundreds of miles away.”

  “I didn’t do–”

  “Let me talk now.” Kaimi rarely cut people off, and it surprised me enough that the words stopped in their tracks. “That might not have been exactly what you were thinking, but I know you, Nyx. Better than you know yourself most times.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “You don’t let people close, and you wanted me to give you an excuse to push Bradyn away, so you didn’t have to face the fact that you have feelings for him. Feelings that are more than wanting him to fuck you senseless.”

  “Dammit, Kaimi.” I leaned my head on the back of the couch.

  “I know you don’t like hearing any of this, but you and I promised we’d never lie to each other. Not about the important shit.”

  When I didn’t respond, she didn’t keep talking. Instead, she let me think. She really did know me, because if she’d tried to push or even tried to keep explaining the same thing over and over, I would’ve gotten pissed and just ignored everything she’d said.

  I didn’t know if it was a personality trait I would’ve ended up with if I’d had a normal childhood, or if it’d just come from spending so many years having people tell me what to think and believe, but when people got too pushy, it made me want to push back.

  Push back like Kaimi said I was doing with Bradyn because he was already too close to me, and I didn’t want him to get any closer. Even if that was true, though, I wasn’t sure it made a difference. Maybe if we lived near each other, I would have a ready answer, but that wasn’t how this went. I could use distance as an excuse, but if Kaimi was right, this wasn’t the sort of thing that’d just go away.