Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Forty-Two

Ife showed me the way to Damon's room and when I knocked on the door I heard him say, "Come in."

Here goes nothing, I thought, pushing aside the turmoil that was bubbling in my stomach. My first impression was that this room certainly belonged to Damon. A large bookshelf was up against one wall, organized in no particular order with various subjects that I could see. A large, king-sized bed rested against the corner, a large flat screen TV was mounted on the wall and next to the bookshelf was a desk where Damon sat, scribbling at a mountain of papers.

My fingers twitched at the sight and I had to refrain from marching over to his desk and start organizing the mess. "You wanted to see me?"

Damon turned around and I stifled a laugh. I wasn't sure how it had happened, but his face was dotted with ink! I was instantly reminded of the scene in 101 Dalmatians were Cruella spattered her pen all over Pongo and his owner. "Something funny?" he asked.

"No," I lied trying to keep a straight face. With Damon, it was easy to relax and laugh a little more. It opened me up to make more mistakes, like the one I almost made last night. I'd let myself act so foolishly. I'd let myself think that maybe we might be able to be something more than, well whatever we were right now. "What's going on? Did something happen with Richard?"

"No, not Richard," Damon said, sitting inverted on his chair so he could face me without craning his neck. "I asked you here for two reasons. Neither are bad, at least I don't think they are so please don't panic."

"Who's panicking?" I asked. Quite honestly it took alot more to set me off these days, if this meeting wasn't about the latest attempt on my life I could and would deal with it.

"No one, I just didn't want you to start because you jumped to every possible terrible situation."

"I don't do that." Damon raised an eyebrow at me. "I don't!" I said defensively. "I'm a little pessimistic but I don't automatically assume everything is going to hell."

"I'll give you that," Damon agreed. "Anyways, about why I brought you here. I wanted to talk about yesterday," his words were slow and I watched as his eyes slid away from my face and to the soft white carpet. "And that day in the closet."

Oh great. I'd been analyzing those events all night and now I was here to discuss them. Just great. I sank onto the mattress and took a deep breath. "Okay, what do we need to talk about?"

"Well for starters," Damon's hands moved towards his hair and stopped halfway. He'd realized his tick and was trying to get rid of it. Good for him. I realized how problematic it would be with his job. If there was a clear way to mark when he was under pressure I had no doubt Richard would use it against him. "Did you tell anyone about it?"

I took "it" to mean our first kiss. "No," I shook my head. "Didn't seem important considering everything that happened before and after."

Damon gave me a wry smile."What about after the chaos died down?"

"No, didn't seem like a good idea then either." I had thought about telling Ife once, it would have been great to have a girlfriend to talk to about this thing with Damon, but I knew better. As much as I liked Ife, hell, I'd go as far to say that in the month she'd been with me I'd grown to love her, but I couldn't let that take away caution. There was a mole somewhere in Robur and I couldn't take the chance that Ife might know them and let something slip whether she knew it or not.

Damon breathed a sigh of relief. "Great, I don't even know why I was worried. You're too smart to make mistakes that stupid."

"Um, thank you?" I wasn't sure if he meant that as a compliment or not, but I was going to take it as one.