She kicked the covers off as she soaked in the reverie of having spent the very early morning with Kai. The daylight filling the room indicated that it was past dawn. When had she fallen asleep? When had he left? She smiled when she remembered his re-telling of his favorite concert as she studied his hardened fingertips, the sign of a veteran guitar player. Or when he traced the scar on the inside of her right knee from her adolescent tree climbing days. Dylan had always felt a kind of inner nakedness between them, and sometimes the exposure was too raw, but last night it had eased into a sense of comforting vulnerability. She was starting to recognize that maybe Kai was worth the risk. The risk of letting herself be happy again without guilt. She sighed into the pillow, loving that it smelled like him. She reflected on kissing him impetuously, and the feeling of that brief, relatively tame kiss was still lingering like the embers after a doused fire. Being with him like that again had churned up a lot of feelings that were buried shallowly inside her.
