Page 58 of Encounter

His palm still rested on my stomach, pulling all the heat in my body into my cheeks and—if he wasn’t going to move away quickly—down between my legs. He was close. Really, really close to places where he shouldn’t touch me like that.

That isn’t why I came, right?

When Chast noticed my shaky breath and tensed up posture, he smiled mischievously and moved his hand away. “Come on, drink,” he said, lowering his voice into a more relaxed, casual tone and started paying attention to the TV again like nothing happened. Without any further arguing, I took the bottle’s neck between my lips and gulped the stinging, gross liquid a few times, in an attempt to prevent my body from doing anything unexpected.

Maybe Chast was right. I was too nervous, too tense—all the time. It was tiring.

“Tell me—do you really not have any friends to spend time with on a Sunday evening?” Chast asked after a few minutes of silence.

“I... have some friends, it’s just—”Shit, what am I supposed to say?That I had only one actual friend whom I still couldn’t be a good friend to? That at the moment,hewas probably the closest person to me in a way?

“Hmmm.” Snorting, Chast pensively sipped from his bottle and looked ahead, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on the TV. “I guess it’s pretty normal for people like you to find it hard to connect with others, or somethin’. I dunno, I’m not a psychologist.”

He shrugged, glancing at me briefly, but when he noticed I paused, he must have realized he said something he shouldn’t have—his eyes went wide and shoulders visibly tensed.

“What do you mean,people like me?”

“Well...” It was probably the first time I saw him so flustered, but I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was freaking out about what exactly he was alluding to. “Your um— Your mother.” His eyes softened, and so did his voice. “It was in your file. Gregory always puts all the accessible information about the target—or client—and their immediate surrounding family. All the details that could be important in some way...”

Cold shivers ran down my spine like a point of a knife grazing my skin. Feeling my throat close up, I quickly drank more of the cider, trying not to think about it too much or freak out in front of him.

I didn’t expect him to know. This entire time, he saw me differently because of it. Was he pitying me? Wasthatthe reason he took me on and kept going?

I couldn’t bring myself to face him, to meet his eyes.

As if the cat sensed the emotional storm raging inside me, she got up and moved to rest beside me. Her body, though frail and thin, emitted comforting warmth. “God. I umm— Sorry,” Chast mumbled, straightening up on the couch. “I shouldn't've brought it up. Not really the idea of a great time I promised, huh?” With a nervous chuckle, I snapped myself out of that weird place in my head and blinked.

“No it’s— It’s fine,” I blurted out.

Don’t be like this, Galen. Not now.

His gaze still weighed on me. “Listen, since I’m stoked up on meds and in pain, and the mood’s already weird enough, I’ve got to say my... sorry for snappin’ at you last time.” Drawn by the genuine tone to his unusually soft voice, I watched Chast’s hands holding the bottle, and then looked up to meet his eyes. He didn’t seem as intimidating now. “It was nothin’ you did, only me. I don’t really have an excuse—was a dick move.”

“You have a... pretty emotionally demanding job, so—”

“No.” His interruption was calm. He didn’t even move from his spot, but it felt as if he did—like he reached out and shook me, forcing me to look at him. “You don’t have to make excuses for me. Just take what I said.”

I stared at him and quickly became powerless to getting lost in his deep, dark eyes. I was so fascinated by the sheer magnitude of the divide between parts of him. It wasn’t like Chast was the only person in the world to have a complex character—to have duality to him—but with him, it was so much more striking. How could someone be so strong, so intimidating and scary... yet so kind and soft?

“I can be a real dick. Set in my old, shitty ways.” Sighing, he leaned back and started petting Kitty while she still laid next to me.

What was all this vulnerability about? Was he out of his mind because of the pills?

“It’s okay,” I assured him again, feeling more and more weird about the intimate mood his honesty created between us. I didn’t want to ruin it by seeing things in the wrong light. By overthinking like I always do. “The painkillers are really strong, huh?” I chucked awkwardly.

Moving his lazy gaze across me, Chast shrugged. “Eh. I guess I’m feelin’ a little sentimental or somethin’.”

Sentimental?Did he feel that comfortable with me? I think I did, too, even if my anxiety tried to make me believe otherwise.

The sounds coming out of the TV seemed to have subsided into the background. All my mind focused on was Kitty, the vibrations of her purrs, and the pulsing sensation coming over me every time Chast moved his hand to pet her from the head to rear, like my body expected him to place it on me instead. Gulping, I looked down and sipped the rest of the cider.

Wish he had given me something stronger.

“I was a bit of a cunt the day we went to the Nest, too,” he brought up out of nowhere. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Vixen’s Nest he was talking about—the strip club. Not exactly wanting to remember that freaky evening, I pressed my lips together and anxiously tapped my fingers against the glass, hoping to get past it.

“You already apologized for that.” Did he mean the fight I was forced to witness, having to be completely embarrassed with the stripper, or calling mea queerafterwards? I quickly shook my head, stopping the emotions from filling my chest—I was fine with all of it. I was over it—wasn’t important.

Sighing pensively, even at the cost of the visible pain, Chast smacked his lips and looked at me. “I know but— Well, I suppose any apology don’t seem too genuine when I jerk you off andstillact like findin’ men attractive is somehow below me.”

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