Dominic

The sky overhead is slate gray greased with black splotches. Storm clouds are rolling in. The air has an electric charge to it. “We should hurry,” I say, noting the clouds.

She's ahead of me by a few feet—has been since we left the ballroom. It's the most polite running away anyone has ever performed. “This shouldn't take long,” she says as we approach the tall fence.

“How do you normally get in?” I ask, watching her as she hands the plastic garbage bag to me.

“Normally? Wyatt just lets me in. But I have an old shortcut that will work.” To my amazement, she grips the chain-link fence and begins to climb in her sneakers. I've seen her sprint like a pro, but she's just as good at climbing.

The tights clinging to her long legs leave nothing to the imagination. I'm grateful for my angle, I'm able to watch her muscles flex; her perfect, round ass looks amazing in those tights. She ascends the fence in seconds, her braid spinning behind her. When she crests the top she crouches, and my heart drops as she jumps to the grass below. She rolls gracefully, coming up like a circus performer. There's pride in her eyes and her smile when she looks at me through the metal wires.

I'm incredibly turned on by her athleticism. She opens the fence, letting me through. “That was amazing,” I say, and I mean it.

She smiles shyly, tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ear. “It's nothing. When I was little, my sister and I used to race to see who could climb trees the fastest.”

We walk through the preserve with Laiken leading the way. “It's only my second time ever being inside. The first time was because I'd been tossing a ball around by myself. It ended up getting over the fence. I met Wyatt that day, and he'd kindly let me inside, handed me the ball, and allowed me to look around.

I'd wanted to return after that. But then my mother had seen me leaving through the fence, meeting me in the front room of the house. She'd warned me to never dirty the preserve with my presence again. I'd taken her words to heart and kept my distance. Though she was never violent to me, Annie has always been intimidating.

Laiken scoops up a fat pinecone, tossing it to me. I catch it and put it in the bag. Mellie was right, there are tons of pinecones all over the ground. It doesn't take us long to fill the bag halfway. As we work, Laiken's long hair brushes over bushes, rubbing through patches of moss on rocks. She has to pick leaves out of it every time she bends down.

“Doesn't that bother you?” I ask. “It's got to get in the way constantly. I've never seen someone let their hair grow as long as you have. Especially someone who likes to spend so much time in the middle of a forest.”

She avoids my eyes, scooping up another pinecone. Turning it in her hand, she traces the gaps between the hard brown knobs. “On the day that I was taken away, I promised my sister I wouldn't cut my hair until we met again.”

I'm taken aback by her honest answer.

Laiken smiles fondly at the pinecone. “You must be thinking how ridiculous a promise that is. Well, even if it sounds silly, it means the world to me. Picturing Kara all grown up like me, as we stand head-to-head to see whose braid is longer? It keeps me going.”

The plastic bag crinkles as I crush it in my hand. The promise was surprising, but my reaction is more than that. What she's told me makes me understand something about the seed of our beginning; the day when I first met her and saved her from the maids with their pair of scissors.

I'd made my oath to her, that no one would touch her hair, because of a childish sense of heroism. I didn't know that I was helping her keep a promise - especially one to her sister.

Black guilt makes my bones heavy. The bag of pinecones pulls my arm towards the ground. Overhead, the clouds rumble. A gust of wind comes, bringing the smell of rain a split second before the leaves on the trees above start to rattle. “We finished just in time,” Laiken says. “We should head back.”

“Wait,” I say, and the word has a thousand meanings behind it. “How can you do it? How is it possible to keep your promise to someone for so long, with nothing to show for it? If anything, your promise is making your life harder. That hair of yours would be easier to deal with if you just cut it. So why? How can you be so fucking strong?” I furrow my eyebrows, my forehead joining it. Every part of me wants to fold in on itself. “You don't even know if your sister is alive.”

The words come out all wrong. I realize it, and so does she.

Raindrops make their way through the branches, slowed by the foliage, but still connecting with us. The water comes quicker and before she answers me, both of us are soaked. “Being strong is all I have,” she whispers. “I have to trust that this is all going to pay off. If I don't, what do I have left?”

“It doesn't scare you?” I ask, and there's a part of me that's upset that she can be so confident. “For all your hope, what if you're wrong? What if you never see her again, won't you feel awful? Like everything you did wasn't worth it?”

“Of course it's worth it!” She whips her head side to side. Water flings off of her hair from the motion. “Maybe you don't know me the way I thought you did. But you definitely don't know my mom, or my sister, or my dad. If you did, you'd realize that all of us are strong. Not just me. None of us give up. When we make a promise, we keep it.”

“Your father isn't good at keeping promises,” I say. My skull throbs. “He's happy to say whatever he has to, to get people to do what he wants.”

“Like I said, you don't know him!” she snaps.

I hesitate, torn between letting her win this argument and wanting her to understand my side of things. I wait too long, and my long stretch of silence exposes me to her. She reads between the lines, scanning my face, my uneasy frown, and her eyebrows arch upwards.

“Dominic, what aren't you telling me?” she asks warily.

I drop the bag of pinecone on the ground. I can't hold them anymore. “I'm not making wild guesses. I'm speaking from experience. Laiken, I've met your father. We worked together.”

The rain is coming down hard. It's soaked into her hair, made it look like black seaweed. Laiken could be created from nature, a dryad hiding among the plants and animals,  beautiful spirit designed to judge my every flaw.

She stares at me accusingly. “How could you wait so long to tell me that you worked with my dad?”

I shake my head as I approach her. The ground is soft and slippery. “I didn't think it mattered. My work with him had nothing to do with you.”

“Everything that has to do with my father has something to do with me!” she yells. “Dominic, this is what I'm talking about. These casual lies, this information that you hide from me, they're why I can't let you get close to me.”

“I wasn't trying to hide it,” I say, but as it comes out of my mouth it rings false.

She takes a step back, and I get the idea that she's about to flee. I don't blame her.

I'd run from me, too.

“Laiken, just listen.”

“Why, so you can tell me more lies? You'll manipulate me anyway you can to get what you want. Does it feel good to trick me into falling into your arms?”

“No,” I cringe.

“Then why didn't you tell me? What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

“It has nothing to do with you!” I yell back. Overhead the thunder booms, a flash of lightning turning her skin white. I'm breathing heavy, fingers flexing at my sides. “I didn't tell you... because I was ashamed. Telling you that I worked with your father would involve telling you that his escape was my fault. My fucking mistake.”

“What?” she whispers, the rain's constant rattle drowning her out.

“I was working with him on a project. I wanted to show my dad that I could be useful at the company. All the programming I learned, and I still wasn't anywhere as talented as your father. But I wanted to be. I thought if I worked with him, I could learn.” A bitter smile clings to my lips. “Instead, he pulled the wool over my eyes. He made me comfortable until I trusted him.” My attention shifts to her stunned face. “Just like he did to you.”

Laiken's head gives a single shake. “How did it happen?”

“He told me that he was coming back to the house for his monthly meeting with you. He told everybody else that I was in charge of escorting him. But I wasn't. I didn't know I was supposed to be. He got away, and now, I'll never be able to convince my parents I'm not worthless.”

There's water on her face and I don't know if it's rain or tears. “You hid this from me, because you thought I'd hate you for making a single mistake? Do you really think so little of me?” I stare at her, ingesting her words like a man starving.

“There's very little I think about more than you,” I admit solemnly.

Her lower lip trembles. A raindrop catches there, then dives to its death. “Dominic, I don't care what your parents think about you. They're flat out wrong. You're not worthless. Especially not to me.”

Her feet move forward; she sinks on a patch of mud. Her legs go out from under her. She's about to hit the ground and the damp thorny branches, but I'm faster than gravity.

I jump forward, grabbing her forearms, keeping her upright. The rain makes her skin wet, and everything smells like fresh cut grass, like the world has been sliced open and all the green has poured out right here into our private clearing.

A flame of desire lights inside of me. It had dimmed during our fight, but the acceptance in her eyes pours on the gasoline. “Tell me,” I demand. “Tell me all the reasons that you want me.” Her eyebrows fly upwards. I watch her neck flex as she swallows nervously. “If you can't tell me why,” I whisper, “then let me tell you why I want you.”

I watch how her mouth puckers. She's thinking about kissing me and it drives me fucking mad.

“I want you because of the way you move,” I say. “I want you because of how your hair feels in my fingers. I want you because you're my light in the darkness, strength where there is none. Because you're the only person in this broken world that cares about their promises.”

Her pupils are round, undeniably shining with overwhelmed tears. “Dominic.” My name catches in her throat.

“I'm not done,” I whisper hotly. The world around us is gray, but Laiken makes the colors saturated where we stand. “I want to see you smile, I want to see how gentle your face is while you sleep. I want to see every kind of face you're capable of making. I want you for so many reasons but right now, right this second? I've never ached so badly to see the way someone looks while I'm fucking them.”

She lets out a desperate moan. I move my grip to her neck, sliding up and feeling her pulse flickering beneath me. Her hair is heavy with water, her braid a mess, and I make it worse when I tangle my fingers in it. “I know you said nothing was going to happen between us,” I whisper. “You said that after our first kiss, you said it while wishing I would kiss you again in the kitchen, and you said it while I pet your beautiful pussy as I made you come in that ballgown. Are you going to say it now, here, when I can smell your juices even through the scent of the rain around us?”

“No,” she breathes out the word. “Dominic, I do want you. I've always wanted you, even before I knew what that word meant. I just didn't want the secrets.”

“Well right now, we have one less between us. Isn't that worth something?”

She focuses on my eyes, looking into them so hard, like she can read small words written on my irises. Water drops from her eyelashes careen down her round cheek. Standing on tiptoe, she presses herself on my chest, fingers wrapping in my soaked shirt, and she kisses me so hard that I feel our teeth come together.

“God, Laiken,” I mumble against her mouth. My tongue darts in a circle, chasing hers, pursuing it the way a hunter chases its prey. I want to kiss her and explore every crevice of her mouth. I want to count her teeth and her heart beats.

My arms wrap around her body, holding her to me like I can crush away all the mistakes I've already made.

I don't want to make anymore.

I know I still will.