Page 42 of Whirlwind
“Deal. And I’ll try not to evade every tough topic.”
“Take your time with it,” he says, pulling the blanket up from where it’s slipped off my shoulder. “Are you comfortable?”
“Yes, you make a cozy chair.” He’s warm, too—his body heat seeping through my thin pajamas. I like it more than I can say, his strong frame pressing against me. He makes a humming sound, but I suspect there are a lot of thoughts running through his head.
“You can ask me things. I might not answer everything, but I’ll try. It may be easier than spilling my story, anyway.”
My toes twitch; I curl and uncurl them. It’s a weird nervous habit. I clench my fists, too, but my toes are easier to hide from other people. Not that I’m trying to hide from Tyson right now—it’s just that I’m not in the practice of talking about my life in Maine.
“Did it happen more than once?”
“Yes. There were two other times,” I say, the words coming easier than I expected. Usually, when I think about it, I feel ashamed. Somehow, that’s not what I’m feeling right now.
“I’m trying really hard to keep levelheaded, right now. You be sure to let me know if my tension gets to be too much for you,” he says, and I nod for him to continue. “You hadn’t been with anyone before?”
“Never even been kissed,” I say with a sigh. “Boys I went to school with were either scared of me, or I feared them. I was too awkward for the jocks, too smart for the stoners, too cute for the brainiacs.”
“And those three times?”
“No. I was already skittish around men—my situation with Derik only made it worse.”
“Hey.” He turns my face toward his with a finger under my chin. “Your situation was rape. If you didn’t want it, it was forced.”
“I know,” I say. “I didn’t for a long time. Because I didn’t struggle or scream, I thought it was my fault it happened. Orthat by not saying no, I was somehow asking for it. It took me a long time to understand that I was coerced into doing something I absolutely didn’t want to do. But sometimes it’s still hard to forgive myself.”
“There’s nothing for you to be forgiven for, Kit. It’s not rape because a woman struggles—or because she screams. It’s because she didn’t want it.”
“I know. I do, I promise I do. But intrusive thoughts are hard to battle, you know?”
He makes the same humming noise as before. It rumbles through his chest, against my cheek.
“You smell good. How do you smell good after being on a plane all day? I swear I smell like French onion soup after every flight.”
“The planes we fly are a lot cleaner, I guess,” he says with a laugh.
“Must be nice.”
“It doesn’t suck,” he says. “Have you ever…and tell me if this is out of bounds, I don’t want to make this weird, but since you’ve never dated…do you feel…”
“Do I desire,” I interrupt. “Do I have a sex drive?”
“Yeah. It feels like important information to have. I don’t want to assume or rush. Or worse.”
“I like sex, Tyson,” I say, my toes clenched so tightly. “I’ve just only ever had it with myself. Not because I haven’t found men attractive over the years. But because I’ve never felt at ease enough with any of the ones I did.”
One of my former coworkers used to ask me out on a semi-regular basis. He was good-looking but too nice. Almostfakenice, like he was trying to cover a personality flaw. It was probably just my overactive imagination, but I’d rather trustmy instincts to a fault than be horribly wrong about someone. Again.
That’s what’s been starkly different with Tyson. My creep radar hasn’t gone off with him—not once.
I believe you meet certain people in life and instantly connect in some way. It happened with Willa. When we both reached for the same tea at the coffee shop, I knew by her easy laugh that she was someone I could feel lighter around after a stressful day. You could call it soulmates or kindred spirits, though I don’t know how much I believe in that sort of thing.
With Tyson, I think I knew the day he helped me install my security system—when he spent the entire day with me and didn’t balk at my sudden subject changes or erratic habits.
“Noted,” he says. “Does your father know what happened?”
“He does. And that’s something I want to be able to share with you,” I say. “Not tonight, though. That story needs to wait for a day when I’m not feeling so worn out.”
“Okay,” he says. “Where’s Nightmare?”
