Chapter 29 Braedyn
brAEDYN
I leaned back, bracing my palms on my back deck, and tipped my face to the sky as my mind swirled around all the information I’d gathered tonight. It was one of those crystal-clear nights—the kind where you could trace every star in the sky.
I wondered if this corner of the world had a disproportionate number of those nights like they had a disproportionate number of missing people. People who had vanished, leaving their loved ones spinning, wondering what the hell had happened, never able to move on.
A flash sailed across the sky, making me suck in a breath. Shooting star. I closed my eyes and wished.
Please, let me find Nova. Please, let her be okay.
There were days I was so certain she’d walk through my door. Days where I was sure I’d get a call from law enforcement telling me they’d found her and that everything was okay.
But as the days passed, turning to months and then a year, those days of certainty came less often.
Kol’s words echoed in my head. “Before we go down this road, you need to make sure you want the answers. No matter what.”
Part of me didn’t want to walk the road, but I didn’t have a choice. I needed to. For Nova. And for me.
Grass rustled in the direction of Dex’s house, but I didn’t reach for my pepper spray. Somehow, I knew it was him. And that was seriously messed up. How did I know someone’s energy after knowing them for only a handful of weeks?
“You shouldn’t be sitting out here alone.” Dex’s voice rumbled through the dark like a pissed-off freight train.
“I heard you coming,” I said, not taking my eyes off the sky.
“I wanted you to hear me.”
“Stalker.”
“Hellion.”
My mouth curved. “I like looking up at the stars. Didn’t get this in Oakland. Not even in Rhode Island. It’s clearer here.”
Dex lowered himself onto the step next to me, so close his thigh brushed mine, making the material of my sundress skate across my skin. I had to fight not to lean into the sensation.
“It’s pretty damn gorgeous,” he said, the words almost a sigh. “Missed it when I was in DC.”
“I bet.” Now that I knew what it was like to be surrounded by this kind of beauty all the time, I wasn’t sure I could go back. “But it’s more than the stars’ beauty. It’s Nova. She’s somewhere out there. Under the same sky. Looking up makes me feel…not so far away from her.”
Even in moments when it felt like that comforting sky might vanish before my eyes like she had or when it felt like a chasm separated us, I still held tight.
I trusted that I would find her, even across a vanishing sky.
And somehow, having Dex next to me, looking up at the same sky helped me believe that all the more.
He was quiet for a moment, and then his hand covered mine. The move was the same as he’d done before, his palm pressing down, steady pressure and heat. But this time, he wove his fingers through mine. He created a tapestry that made me believe we were stronger together.
Panic flared somewhere deep, but I shoved it down and breathed. In and out. Over and over as I counted the stars until the panic ebbed.
“I used to think that about my mom,” Dex said softly. “Even when I thought she’d left us by choice. I’d think how she was out there, looking up at the same moon. How could we be that far apart when we were under the same moon?”
My fingers tightened around his. “That makes it so much harder. Not knowing if she chose to leave.”
Dex swallowed, his throat working before he spoke. “Exactly. Those what-ifs. Did she throw us all away, or was she ripped from us?”
I traced the length of his pinky finger as if all the ridges and lines could tell me the story of his life. “I hate that for you.”
He stared out at the shadowy horizon. “She wouldn’t even know me now. And that kills. Either way, I would be a stranger to her.”
God, did I ever understand that, how the mind twisted stolen time and molded us into something we’d never been before.
“Sometimes, I wonder if Nova would even recognize me walking down the street. It’s like I’m two entirely different people.
The one who ended up frozen in time when she disappeared and the one irrevocably changed by her disappearance.
And that last one…that one is so night and day from who I used to be. ”
Dex squeezed my fingers, his callused skin skating over mine. “She’d know you. There’s no way she wouldn’t. I’d recognize you blindfolded and in the dark. Because you glow, Hellion.”
His words were a brand—pleasure and pain because they were a claiming. One that terrified me to want so badly.
“I want to believe that. That she could see me in the dark.”
“She can,” Dex rasped. “You’re a goddamned miracle. Pain changes us. Grief. Trauma. It’s all a sculptor’s knife. But you let it change you for the better.”
I looked at him through the darkness, the starlight and faint glow of the kitchen lights illuminating his face: the hard angle of his jaw covered in scruff, the way the green in his eyes seemed like endless pools I could get lost in. “You didn’t know me before.”
“Don’t have to. I know that losing your friend—your family—could’ve turned you bitter. Instead, it had you looking for the good, claiming it. Just like you keep looking for those stars you share with her.” Dex’s gaze held mine captive. “You’re not like me. You didn’t stop living.”
“You live,” I argued.
He shrugged. “A half-life. Never putting myself in a position where someone could pull the rug out.”
I could see what he meant. He had friends but no one truly close other than his brothers. He didn’t talk about what he was feeling. This might’ve been the most he’d ever shared in that respect. Which only made it more of a gift.
Gripping Dex’s hand, I stood.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his brows pulling together.
“We’re living.” I tugged Dex to his feet and pulled out my phone, hitting my music app and letting the soft instrumentals fill the air around us.
Dex’s mouth pursed. “Not much of a dancer, Hellion.”
I tugged him toward me. “Then I’ll lead.”
My arms looped around his neck, and I started to sway. Dex frowned, but his arms finally came around me, his hands resting low on my back. “Why do I feel like I’m at a fifth-grade dance right now?” he grumbled.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Live a little, Buttercup. We’ve got stars and music, and we’re alive.”
The last was the greatest gift of all.
Dex pulled me closer. Everything about him had a slightly deceptive air—not in a bad way, a surprising one.
Like how that tall body was finely honed muscle beneath humorous hacker shirts and tortoiseshell glasses.
How beneath that sometimes scowly mask was a depth of emotion.
But most of all, how every contact lit a buzz in me I’d never experienced before.
His thumb swept back and forth over the cotton of my sundress. I swore I could feel the texture of his fingertips, the swirls of calluses and life.
Then he shocked me with that same deceptive nature, grabbing my arm and spinning me out, then back again. I hit his chest with a certain power, the kind that had the air leaving my lungs and my gaze snapping up to his face. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
Dex’s mouth twisted into a beautiful grin full of mischief. “You said we should live.”
“We should.” My heart hammered, giving me away as it beat against his chest.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, stilling there as if he were memorizing every line and curve. And I swore I could taste him, even now, as his face hovered above mine. Mint and a bite of something. Chocolate from dessert, maybe?
I leaned harder against him, tempting fate, ignoring every warning sign. Because I wanted to know that potent combination. Wanted to burn everything about Dex into all my senses.
He lifted a hand between us, his thumb tracing my bottom lip and then skating over my cheek to the column of my neck, stopping on my pulse point. “Feel that life here. Like butterfly wings. Wonder if that butterfly would take flight if I kissed you.”
My lips parted as I sucked in a breath, and I knew my pulse gave away my answer.
“You want me to kiss you, Hellion? Want me to drown in your taste? You want to live?”
I didn’t answer with words. Instead, I lived. I pushed up on my tiptoes, closing the distance between us. The moment my mouth connected with Dex’s, he lost any questions and took.
His hand stayed at my throat while the other sank into my hair. His fingers fisted, asking me to open for him, to give more. I did. And I’d been right about the mint and chocolate. But there was also something more.
Dex’s tongue stroked in, and as cedar and sandalwood swirled around me, I swore I could taste them, too, in the best ways. It was as if everything about Dex was bleeding into me.
I stretched up, pressing myself harder against him, searching for more. That buzz was back. Stronger than before. Dex Archer was the most potent kind of drug, and after one kiss, I knew I’d be addicted.
And then the latch of the door sounded.
Dex moved so fast he resembled one of the heroes in Owen’s favorite cartoons, shoving me back and stepping between me and the noise.
“Moooom,” Owen muttered sleepily through the dark. “Yeti puked, and it made me puke, too.”
Like a bucket of ice water, his words crashed over me as Dex’s stance changed. A different sort of tension slid through him. I braced for him to run. To text me later and tell me the kiss was a mistake. Instead, he surprised me.
“Good thing you’ve got me,” Dex said, stepping forward to ruffle Owen’s hair as Yeti wandered out the back door. She looked completely unconcerned about the pukefest she’d instigated, which I was sure was courtesy of the extra three treats I’d caught Owen feeding her.
“I am an excellent puke cleaner-upper,” Dex continued. “One time, Mav had the stomach flu so bad I swear I could catch it on the fly.”
“Gross,” Owen muttered. “But awesome.”
Dex laughed, his gaze finding me. “I’ll handle cleanup. You get the kiddo.”
I struggled to get my mouth to obey because it suddenly wasn’t just me. I didn’t have to balance getting ginger ale and Pepto into Owen while attempting to clean the mess at the same time. I had help. That panic was back, but I shoved it down.
“Ginger ale for the puke king?” I asked.
Owen sent me a wan smile. “Just none of the pink stuff.”
I chuckled. “Let’s take it a little at a time.”
And I told myself to do the same thing.