Makenna didn’t respond right away. Caden wished he could see the look on her face, the set of her eyes. “What color are your eyes?” he whispered, once again losing the filter between his brain and mouth.
“Blue,” she whispered back. “And, yes.”
“Yes, what?” Caden asked, distracted by the desire to reach out and touch her face. The whispering made their conversation feel intense, intimate. And all of a sudden his body roared to life. This time, though, his racing pulse and pounding heart were a result of arousal rather than panic.
“Yes, I’ll have pizza with you. If you’ll see a movie with me.”
Caden imagined her words slipping over his body. He wished it was her small, soft hands instead. But he was happy she’d agreed to go out with him, and that she’d turned it into a full-on date. “Yeah. Pizza and a movie, then.” He rubbed his hand over his hair as the dark concealed the smile reshaping his face.
“My first time was with Shane Cafferty,” Makenna started, still whispering. “I was eighteen. It was two weeks after prom. We sorta dated all summer before we went off to different colleges. But, that night, we took a blanket out and laid it in front of the pitcher’s mound on the high school baseball diamond. Oh, God, this is so embarrassing,” she groaned.
“It is not, out with it.” He was surprised she’d finally relented, but her opening up made him feel hopeful.
“He’d been on the high school baseball team. He was good—at baseball, I mean, God—anyway, taking a blanket out there at night was kind of our thing. The first time was sweet. Short”—she laughed—“but sweet. It got better, though.”
“That’s a good story. Much better than mine. Thanks for sharing. See, that wasn’t hard.”
She sighed. “No, I guess it wasn’t.” She paused for a few moments and then said, “You know, you have an unfair advantage over me. You saw me when I came into the elevator, but I was too distracted to see you.”
“Yes.” He smirked at her through the darkness. “I remember. But I didn’t see your face either because your hair was in the way.”
“What color are your hair and eyes?” She shifted while she spoke and her voice got a little closer.
Caden itched to reach a hand out and measure just how close she was. His senses told him she was within reach. The thought made his arm ache for the feel of her. “Both brown, although I don’t have much hair to speak of.”
“Wh…why?”
Laughter spilled out of him. It broke the quiet between them, but not the intensity. “I keep my head shaved.”
“Why?”
“I like it that way.” He wasn’t ready to reveal all his oddities to her just yet, because he didn’t want to scare her away. He was half contemplating taking out his facial piercings before she could see them, but decided, somehow, that felt dishonest.
“Like buzz-cut shaved or like baby’s-bottom-soft bald?”
“Give me your hand,” Caden offered. “You can feel for yourself.”
Makenna gulped down her excitement at finally getting to do what she’d been dying to do most of the night. Her sight gone, she longed for another way to make a more tangible connection to Caden. And between the sex talk—G-rated though it might’ve been, and the plans for a date, and the whispering, and the feeling his body was close to hers, Makenna’s body was starting to vibrate with a heady sense of anticipation that made her stomach flutter and her breath come a little faster.
Still lying flat on her back, Makenna gingerly reached out her hands. “Where are you?”
“Right here.” Caden caught her right hand in his, and Makenna gasped at the contact. His hand engulfed hers as he pulled it up to his head.
Makenna’s pulse raced as she smoothed her hand over Caden’s head. His hair was shaved so close it felt soft and ticklish as she rubbed her fingers over it. Long after it was necessary, Makenna continued to stroke his hair. She didn’t want to stop touching him. And when he scooted his body a little closer so she didn’t have to extend her arm so far, she smiled, thinking he liked it, too.
“Tell me something else,” Makenna said in a low voice, no longer whispering, but speaking soft enough she didn’t chase away whatever magic was working between them.
“Like what?”
“Like…why a dragon?”
“Hmm.” He leaned his head into her hand. She smiled. When he finally started speaking, his words came in an unbroken stream. “The dragon’s my fear. I put it on my arm to remind myself I’ve tamed it. We, uh, we were driving home from a vacation at the beach. It was a little two-lane country road, and it was late at night because me and Sean had bugged our parents to let us have all day Sunday on the beach.”
Makenna sucked in a breath at the gravity of what he was sharing with her. Her hand paused against his head as she wondered if she should say something, or if she should just let him talk. She was surprised to feel his big warm palm press her hand against his head, and took that as a sign he wanted her to keep rubbing him. So she did.
“My father was a stickler for going the speed limit. He never cared if twenty cars lined up behind him, blowing their horns and flashing their lights. You could pass on these back roads on the straightaways. People did it all the time. By the time we were about an hour away from the beach, it was all the way dark. I didn’t see what happened at the time, but I found out later that a tractor trailer passed us, but moved back in his lane too soon. My father swerved to avoid getting hit.”
Makenna’s eyes welled with tears in anticipation of where the story was headed.
“The next thing I knew, the car was upside down. Wedged in a big irrigation ditch at the edge of a field. The passenger side took the worst damage when the car rolled, the side Sean and my mom were sitting on. I was the only one still conscious after the accident. But I couldn’t move because a lot of our stuff from the back of the car—it was a station wagon, of all things—had tumbled forward into the back seat and buried me. My shoulder was dislocated, and I couldn’t manage the leverage to dig myself out. I kept calling their names. But none of them would wake up. I passed in and out of consciousness a few times. Every time I woke up, it was dark and I was still trapped. We were there for about four hours before another passing tractor trailer finally spotted the car top-down in the ditch and called for help. By the time they got us out, Mom and Sean were gone.”
“Oh, my God, Caden.” Makenna willed him to feel the comfort and peace she so badly wanted him to have. From what he’d said earlier, she hadn’t realized he’d lost his mother, too. She truly wished that wasn’t something else they had in common. “I’m so sorry. No wonder…”
He gently grabbed her hand and slid it around to his cheek. Makenna whimpered when she felt him press his face into her palm. To her, his gesture seemed brave. She admired his ability to ask for what he needed. His cheekbone felt prominent under her fingers and a light stubble pricked against her palm. She rubbed her thumb gently back and forth.
“When I finally got over the worst of the claustrophobia, I got the dragon. I wanted to be strong for Sean. And I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to live my life in fear, when he couldn’t live his at all.”