Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
THEN
Off-Season Three
Stacey
P acing outside Dash’s door does shit to calm me down. Do I even want to be calmed down? Yeah, I do. I do. Every bone in my body wants him, especially one in particular, but I won’t reduce us down to sex. I won’t let the thoughtless animal within me make my decisions.
But he threw himself at me.
It’s hard enough when he’s hanging around. Worse when he steals my damn clothes—or I give them to him.
Last night, though. We were alone. We journaled as we do. It’s a quiet activity, but only if we don’t count the little things that make it loud. Things like our smiles when we look up at the same time. His toes pressing into my fingers when they stop massaging them. The way he yawns and stretches every so often, punctuated by the sweetest of sighs.
Sometimes I cheat and pay extra attention to the relaxed way he lies across the couch or the tiniest microscopic things like his biceps flexing when he writes. They’re moments, Dash moments, finite ones. Someday he’ll find someone to do this with, and it won’t be me, so I drink them in and hold them on my tongue for a while.
But when I looked up, it was a frown. My internal alarm bells went off. I joined him in bed that night and I had to stare into hopeful brown eyes that may someday be the death of me, but I finally got it out of him.
“I love you, Stacey.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’m in love with you, Stacey.”
“We talked about this before,” I said in a cold voice that was unlike anything he’s ever heard from me. He flinched because of that voice. I wasn’t icy because I was mad at him, it was because I knew rejecting him this time was going to be worse—so much worse—but it had to be done.
The “I should go,” almost fell out of my mouth, but I remembered what he told me about his mom.
I tried to hug her so many times, and she pushed me off the couch. She stopped me from climbing her lap. She told me to go away.
He’d just told me he loved me, if I did anything other than hold him as tightly as I always did, he’d feel the same sting of abandonment. So, I stayed.
“It’s normal to develop those kinds of feelings for a mentor,” I added.
“You’re my friend, Stacey.” Beautiful anger marred with hurt lit up his face, twisting my insides. Pain bled from his voice, tearing into me
“I’ve helped you through grief, trauma, and loss.” I tried to make my tone as neutral as possible, but my insides were screaming. Dying. Why was he making me reject him again? “I love you, Dash, and I’ll love you forever.”
“You’re saying we can never be a thing just because you were there for me? That’s fucking stupid, Stace.”
“That’s what I’m saying, Dash.”
I scrambled, desperate to stop the avalanche of rejection for him. Hoping to prevent the inevitable awkwardness. The fall on your face embarrassment. “You’re gonna make someone so happy one day.”
Yeah. I said that. You don’t fucking say shit like that, but as much as I’d rehearsed for that moment, when I got there, I fucked it up. The right words didn’t exist. The crushing pain was beyond prediction.
And I kinda get why people say stupid shit like that. It’s what I imagine it’s like to be in quicksand. The advice is to stay still, but I bet the itch to move, to dig yourself out, is too hard to ignore. I wanted nothing more than to pull him from the quicksand of unpleasantness we were drowning in.
He didn’t say anything, and I finally realized I’d said enough. “Do you want me to go?”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then no,” he said.
I stayed, but I couldn’t fall asleep.
He didn’t want to journal with me tonight. He wanted to hang with Dirk and then head to bed on his own.
I journaled, but it was less journal, more letter to him.
Entry 88
Fucking hell, Dash.
Of course, I want you. I do little else but want you. I live for you. I’d die for you. My heart won’t ever belong to anyone but you.
I know this, but how will others know this? A specific other—his dad. It would kill me to be seen as the icky guy taking advantage of Dash so soon after a grooming incident. Fucksakes. The monster was only just locked away. That makes us even more of a “no”. There aren’t enough signs to say that he’s not simply latching onto me because he can trust me. Him saying so isn’t enough. I need to experience the proof.
Maybe I could poke around his dad. See what he thinks.
The door swings open. I jump.
“Are you gonna prowl around outside my door all night, Alderchuck?”
I look into his big brown doe eyes. I mentally walk into a wall. A goofy smile splits my face despite everything, and I don’t know how. The very air around us is filled with devastation and heartbreak, but the sight of him illuminates my world.
Dash’s gaze drops to the floor, my smile evaporates. A helpless sort of ache begins in my stomach.
“I don’t want you here tonight,” he admits. “But I can’t sleep without you. I’m worried you’re gonna vanish. That all the love we have for each other’s gonna vanish.”
A dark voice curls into my spine, whispering about how wrong that is. He should be able to sleep without me. That he can’t means he’s too dependent.
But, fuck, I like when he depends on me. When I can be his big bad hero.
His thinking my love for him would ever go away’s gotta stem from what he went through with his mom. Robin isn’t the only thing twisting the thoughts in Dash’s mind.
Mom wouldn’t hug me. I just wanted her to hug me. I wished I had known the last hug I ever got from her was the last hug I’d ever get. I woulda held on just a bit longer.
Becoming his partner at a time like this, when he’s already so codependent, would make me the monster.
It’s a fucking pickle, though. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
There’s only one thing I can think of that would make this remotely right. I tug his wrist. “C’mon.”
He doesn’t argue, his bare feet padding over the wood floors. I bring him to my bedroom. One thing I saved my ass off for recently, was a king-sized bed. I pull out my phone and send a text to the group chat. While we wait for them, I open the covers and gesture for him to get in.
Before long, the feet of three heavy hockey players pound their way up the stairs. They burst into my room, arguing over who gets to sleep where. Jack pushes Casey, and Dirk glares at me. Guess he already knows what happened, but as always, we’re gonna have to form a silent truce for Dash’s sake.
“It’s a big bed, but are we all gonna fit?” Casey says, tugging on Jack.
“None of you motherfuckers can tell Rhett. You know what he gets like,” Jack says. “He doesn’t believe in platonic cuddling.”
“You don’t have to, Jack,” I say.
“No. I do.” He slides in behind Dash while Dirk wraps around the front of him.
“Love you, bro,” Casey says in my direction. “But I’m not cuddling you.”
“I’m sleeping at the end,” I tell him. He climbs in behind Jack, and I lie down with just enough room between the end of the bed and everyone’s warped hockey feet. But I get to lay a hand on Dash’s ankle.
For the second night in a row, I don’t get a wink of sleep, but Dash knows he’s got a gang of forever family who’ll never turn away his hugs, who’ll always let him climb into bed with them, and that’s all that fucking matters.