After that night, he started to spent most nights or bedtimes with me. He was always innocent like a child with their teddy bear. The day started much like every one before it. We were upstairs making pancakes and watching TV. He excused himself to use the bathroom and I looked around. There was some mail and curiously I picked it up. It was addressed to a Mr. Roark. I swallowed hard. The head of the Basin City mafia, said to have his hand all the important decisions including politics, crime and drugs. However, no one could prove it. Charges never stuck and he owned the majority of all the important people there. People were paid off or they would disappear. You would fear them if you had any sense. You would leave Basin City if you knew what was good for you. But still people stayed. They didn't want to be run off from their home. Some had made good lives here. That's why they stayed I suppose. Heck, I even stayed and I had nothing. I regret that now. Kevin came in the room I saw him and dropped the letter.

"Kevin, who's house is this?" I asked dumbly wanting him to lie just to comfort me. I was shaking. Kevin saw the letter drop on the floor. He was silent. "Roark as in the Roark family," I squeaked. "The mafia family and I'm staying in his house, oh my god, oh my god," I repeated. Kevin neared me slowly and put his arms around me. I pushed him away but he came a me holding me tighter. "This is so much worse then I thought. I can't be here anymore. Can we go somewhere else, anywhere else? Please. I don't want-" I started to cry.

"He's not going to find you. You're mine. He's not going to find you, my own. He's not going to find you. Don't cry." His voice was so gentle, so comforting, like some relaxing spell, however disturbing the words were. He pulled away and looked in my face even though I covered half of it with my hands. "Shhh, he'll never know. All you have to do is be quiet." He put his finger to his lips. There was the crazy again, the crazy that almost disappeared during our time and our talks upstairs.

"No," I said.

"Yes," he countered. The need to escape was made anew.

"Kevin," I said again, tears streamed down my face.

"Shhhh,"

"If you care anything about me at all you'll-" He embraced me again.

"Just be quiet."

"Kevin please..."

"Be quiet." I wanted to push him away but only weakly put my hands on his chest.

"Why aren't you listening to me?" I asked knowing he'd ignore the question.

"He'll never know. You're my secret. Mine alone. He'll never know, never ever know," he chanted softly. If his father did find out about me, maybe Kevin wouldn't let him hurt me. As ludicrous as it was, I let myself be lulled into a sense of security. Subdued, by his kind tone that wrapped itself around my brain like his arms wrapped around my body. It was that or my mental and emotional state would collapse.

"Ok Kevin," I put my arms around him as well. "I'll be quiet," I said. He pulled back and looked at me bright eyed and gave me a long modest kiss on the lips.

We where upstairs and I was staring out the window. It was a warm sunny day. He was watching TV. "Can we go outside?" I asked. There was a long pause.

"That's not a good idea. You need to stay hidden," he replied.

"Why not? We spend so much more time upstairs then we used to. We have plenty of time." I said desperately. He looked to me.

"Doesn't knowing who's house this is make you want to stay hidden?"

"Hidden? I don't even want to be here," I said hastily. He stood. His brows knitted together.

"So you still want to leave? I thought you wanted this. You made me think you wanted this. Are you just pretending with me?" he asked distraughtly as if he was going to go over some invisible edge. I only rolled my eyes thinking, 'crazy, he's so crazy,' and sighed heavily.

"No, no. It's your father. It's not you. This is your fathers house. I don't feel safe here I-"

"Everything is fine," he cut me off walking up to me quickly and I flinched but he only urgently took my hands in his. "He's not a part of this."

"What do you mean? We're right under his nose," I pointed out.

"He's not looking for us," he continued annoyed this time. "Don't go looking for a reason to bring him into what we have. You know I don't want to loose this. Now, stop talking about it." It hurt me that he thought I wasn't sincere. It hurt me that he'd endanger my life while still saying he cares.

"I don't really want to leave," I tried to smooth it over. "I wish we could just meet a 24 hour diner, you know?" He turned me and took me by the back of my neck.

"Look around, This is what we have," he said getting annoyed, no longer the comforting voice he had been before. "It's every bit as good as anywhere else. We have everything we need here. Things would be the same if we were anywhere else. You're lucky I found you," he said scornfully. "There are worse criminals out there then me."

"I'm not so sure of that," I commented thoughtlessly. Suddenly, my back was shoved against a wall and pinned there with his arm and the murder in his eyes. He looked like he wanted to shatter me. I looked into his smoldering blue eyes and didn't say a word, not an apology, not a subject change, not even a plea. We just stared at each other. I wasn't totally convinced he'd hurt me. Did I think I knew him that well? He took his hands off me. After that tense moment we only communicated with looks until he ushered me back to my room and left me.

I asked myself over and over why I didn't ever leave Basin City. Why did I stay here so long after the shit hit the fan? I came to the conclusion, laziness. I wasn't in a hurry to hitchhike even from a city with crime as high as it was here.

I woke to find him staring at me. It was night time but the moon cast just enough light through the bars to see him. "I'm not angry at you," he said as he put a hand under my chin gently. "You know there's worse out there then me, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I know Kevin. I know you aren't the worst."

"This is the way it has to be, ok?" I was so tired and not in the mood to argue. I was defiantly not in the mood to argue with a person who's grip in reality was loose. What a thought to get woken up to, the assurance that things won't get better, I thought. I took his hand.

"I know, I shouldn't have suggested otherwise," I said in the vein of pleasing him. He maneuvered himself over me and cuddled up behind me, holding me tight.

"I missed you. I missed the scent of you and the feel of you." he said.

I stayed awake for a long time while he laid behind me. I thought many things. One thought was how he could've resorted to violence when I upset him earlier but that he didn't. Then right now, how he assured me he wasn't mad at me anymore. Those where small blessings in this situation and I felt perhaps I little more cared for and brought me more comfort then it should've.

A few days passed. "Come with me," he said and I followed him upstairs. I had been there once before when he showed me around the first time. There was a storage room, a full bathroom and his bedroom. His room was large and sparsely furnished. Everything immaculate like I expected. An ivory colored comforter sat atop of a full sized bed with a fancy looking wooden frame. I had not thought about till now. The kind of lifestyle and order a cannibal would have. I didn't think of a neat cultured monster like Hannibal Lector. I had thought them to be a dirty filthy un-kept ruthless people. He drew back the blanket and gestured for me to lie down. I noticed the sheen of the matching ivory colored sheets and smiled in spite of myself. Where they satin? Did he have satin sheets? "Why are you looking that way? What's so funny?" he half smiled.

"You have satin sheets." I said.

"I do," he said as if it was normal. "You look so surprised." He ushered me under the covers while he went to the other side and slipped in beside me and faced me with his innocent amused expression.

"I am, It's just nothing like what I expected. I haven't known many men to have satin sheets."

"But you haven't been in the beds of many men."

"Right, and it's not something you hear in mixed conversation, you know, a guy bragging about the new sheets he bought."

"I suppose not."

"None of this was at all what I was expecting," I added.

"What," he smiled. "Where you expecting, squalor, us living like animals?" I was glad that he had said it and not me.

"I was," I answered.

"Not all wrong doing is ugly on the surface."

"Are you admitting you…?"

"What? That I've done wrong? We all have at some point, but me, the past me, was wrong. I'm very close to certain of that now." I was overwhelmed by his revelation. I took his hand in both of mine and squeezed.

"I'm so glad that you feel that way, that you can be happy with out doing the things you've done in the past." He put his arm around me and moved closer.

"I've been happy in the past but nothing can be an adequate substitute for someone, something real that you can see. That you can talk to and talks back, not like unanswered prayers and my dad telling me things that I felt were not right. This is right." We lied there a while and spoke of random things.

After a while he heard a car outside. His eyes grew wide and he jumped up to look out the window. He took a deep breath and scowled. "Father's home."

"Will he come up here?" He bent down in front of me.

"No, listen, don't move, don't say anything. I'm going to go downstairs for a while and talk to the old man. He will probably go to bed around 9:00. Again, don't move. The floor boards creek." I was secretly and shamefully glad to be stuck somewhere else for a change. I stretched out on the bed and found it a little firmer then the one downstairs. I usually slept through most of the day so I didn't find it difficult to relax. The sheets and pillow smelled like him. It was a natural pleasant and calm scent, which was hard to admit. What was even harder to admit was how I found it pleasant. It wasn't a big deal right? It was just a smell. I woke to the sight of him sitting in a chair reading a book.