CHAPTER SEVEN
ZINZI
I perched on the edge of Dex’s sofa for the second week in a row, no more comfortable in his friend’s space than I had been on my first day there, and pretended to smile. Nelson flicked at his bow tie and scrolled on his phone, while Falcon made out with his new girlfriend and returned the same assessing glance I’d been giving him for the last weeks.
None of us had made ground in the last fourteen days while Dex did the same thing he’d done the whole time I’d been in visiting mode.
He slept.
Finally, the silence of the room and Dex’s snores, not that they weren’t cute, exactly, I just had nothing to do while he snoozed with his head on my lap, ate at me.
“Okay,” I said too loudly for the cramped space filled with five of us, standing up. Thankfully, the boys let me keep my boots on. Dex’s head dropped back to the sofa, his snores continuing unhindered. “I don’t think I can do much more here.” My fingers twitched at my sides. I held them still with effort.
“Your company helps.” Nelson offered me a small smile, toying with his bowtie and his phone at once.
That was quite a skill considering that the only other garment he wore was a towel that didn't quite disguise the long, pink scar that crept up from his midsection. There was a story in that, and I wanted to pry, but kept my mouth shut.
Falcon withdrew from kissing his girlfriend who seemed at least as shy as me and hid in his shoulder. The mafia prince, from all accounts, wasn’t. He studied me baldly, his brand of silence both confident and unnerving.
“I don’t really think I'm doing anything.” I gestured to the sleeping Dex, who cuddled into the side of the couch.
“He doesn’t sleep when you’re not here,” Nelson added softly, pausing in his bowtie torture.
“And he drinks all my whiskey.” Falcon grimaced, breaking his silence to speak up for the first time in a day.
But the death knell came from the man I’d left snoozing on the sofa.
“Stay.” Dex cracked one eye open and held out his injured hand which was, in fact, broken.
Everything with him was on a six to eight week repair schedule, minimum, and we were two weeks in. Nelson typed up his assignments as Dex dictated off the top of his head, both working at a speed that blew me away. Falcon knocked around business negotiations and tactics that taught everyone in the room more than we ever needed to know about legal loopholes. That, at least, seemed to keep Dex’s mind active and stopped him from being self-destructive.
And me…
I got to play nursemaid. What I had accused Nelson of being back on that first day when I brought Dex home from the hospital all filthy and bandaged up. Which meant I was the only one in the room who was kind of useless.
“I’m not really sure why I’m here,” I whispered helplessly, letting Dex take my hand.
He switched it out for his good one when his bandaged hand grew clumsy. “You’re here because I need you.” He drew me back to the sofa, wrapping a log-like arm around my waist.
Warmth from him sank into me, removing some of my discomfort. My period had hit yesterday and the heat of his touch eased some of the pain that assaulted my lower back like I’d been stabbed. I refused to acknowledge the other cramps, preferring to pretend they didn’t exist.
I sat reluctantly, locked in a flesh and material cage of my own making. On the first day I’d refused flat out to let Dex draw me into his bedroom, knowing that we’d just end up tangled in each other’s arms. That door had remained off limits since. And though screwing around seemed like our regular fun activity, it wouldn’t help his ribs or his hand to heal—or my heart. Because that’s who we were. We weren’t this coupledom pigeon pair who he tried to meld us into.
No matter how much it hurt my heart to see him struggle with both the pain and the heartache or whatever ate him inside. Because we all sure as fuck knew that nothing laid out Dex Breaker by choice.
Not even cracked ribs and a fractured finger.
“Stay, Zin,” he murmured again, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb.
I noted the deep circles under his eyes, the redness at the edges as he looked up at me beseechingly. Nelson nodded his encouragement when I glanced his way. Predictably, Falcon said nothing.
Letting out a sigh, I slid beneath Dex’s raised head, and planted my ass. “I’ve got two hours til class. If you let me work here, okay?’ I muttered, extracting my laptop from my bag. “Can I plug in somewhere?” I swung the end of my charge cable in a slow circle.
Nelson’s face lit up, and the tension in the room broke. Even Falcon’s slow growing smile took on an approving glow as he went back to making out with Bella.
“Feeling like a fifth wheel, anyone?” muttered Nelson.
I giggled, and clamped my hand over my mouth at the sound that shattered the silence in the room.
The Lord of Nothingness sent me a knowing look. “It’s okay to be human and feel, Zin. We don’t all have to lock our hearts away.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should go for Casanova of the Week. isn’t Opal doing a stack of those for Valentine’s Day this year at the campus paper?” I yawned into the back of my hand.
He shrugged. “Something like that. But who wants a displaced lord with no land, a title and some spare change?” he said lightly.
“If you consider a billion plus in the bank to be spare change ,” Falcon snorted.
“A bil—” I gaped at the Lord of Apparently Freaking Everything who crouched before me on his knees like any average pleb, plugging in my laptop charger. “Why aren’t you in the Kingsman frat, and why aren't you being eccentric and getting laid?” I blurted.
Falcon laughed, long and loud. Bella, giggled into his chest.
Nelson perched on the arm of the sofa and patted my head sweetly and pointed to his bow tie. “Eccentric. And because the Kingsman frat is full of assholes. I like pussy, darling. And money isn’t everything.”
“Says the man with a happy nine figures in his bank account,” Dex mumbled into my thigh.
I nodded, absently swiping at a collection of saliva pooling at the corner of his mouth. “My household can’t make it to ten thousand,” I informed Nelson. “You’ve outclassed us all, Lord of Bow Ties.”
He grinned, flicking said bowtie in a strangling motion that apparently still let him breathe. “That’s a good title.”
I grinned, and suddenly, I didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I had when I walked in on my fourteenth day of nurse maiding Dex, stuffed between his mafia prince and billionaire Lordling roommates.
“Group project. What could be more fun.” Nelson plopped into the seat beside me in my third year marketing class and twirled his bowtie.
I stared at him. “I didn’t realize you were in this class.” A class I'd been taking for the better part of a month, and I hadn’t seen him in a single session.
Not once.
“I wasn’t. Watching you talk about marketing and…things…encouraged my love of the art.” Nelson mixed his metaphors, probably threw in an acronym while I wasn't paying attention, and waved his fingers in a completely lord-like motion I thought was meant to convey the magic of…something.
I snorted. “You’re also full of shit.”
Apparently billionaire lordlings could do what they liked on campus, all his previous declarations to the contrary.
“That I am.”
“So, why are you really here?” I peeked at the semester’s project outline, and groaned. “We are so not sleeping.”
“Definitely not sleeping.” Falcon slipped into the seat on my other side as the lecturer walked past and tapped our heads in a display that broke all campus rules, not that he cared in the least.
“And that’s your three.” He moved on to the next trio seated beside us, already scribbling our names down on his sheet. “And your three?—”
“—Wait,” I called, but he had already moved further along the row.
My protest was lost in the hubbub that arose from the plethora of chattering students suddenly keen on their project for one day before their collective interest waned.
Margot stopped before us, her mouth hanging open as she waved a finger in our direction, encircling all of us seated guiltily together. “What is happening here?”
I shrugged through my semi-discomfort at being encompassed by Dex’s friends and sank deep in my seat, stuffed between the lordling and Mister Mafia. “Fucked if I know. They just turned up.”
Margot huffed. “So much for dorm solidarity.” She turned on her heel and flounced off to the lower rows the lecturer hadn’t made it to yet in search of group mates.
I spotted one of her prior one night stands that she linked her arms around and kissed on both cheeks. The poor dude threw his dreads over his shoulder in fright at the unexpected contact. I didn’t blame him; she did kind of blindside the poor man. He seemed welcoming after his initial scare, and my guilt over not being able to work with her on this project eased a fraction.
I sighed, resolving myself to the conundrum of Dex’s housemates apparently attaching themselves to my course and to me for the remainder of the semester. At least they seemed not to be too grumpy and were decent eye candy. And Dex would kick their respective asses if they got out of line. Bonus .
“Alright. I have ideas.” I glanced at both of the boys, and bit my lip as my brain kicked into gear. “Do… either of you want to go first?”
Falcon watched me with his mouth shut tight. Nelson’s eyes glittered.
This isn’t freaking weird at all.
I let out a breath and went for it. “We rebrand the oldest fraternity on campus.” I nibbled my lip, knowing Dex would hate my plan, mostly because I was about to do what I'd told him not to do when realistically I had no right to tell him not to do anything at all.
I was going to poke the bear.
“We’re going to rebrand the Kingsman House.”
And we were going to make it stick.