CHAPTER NINE
ZINZI
“It can come off.” The doctor freed Dex’s hand from the blue cast with a flourish. “You’re cleared. But if I see you again, I’ll inject something illegal into you.” The joking look in the medical practitioner’s eyes was only slightly humorous.
Somehow, I felt like he knew more about this situation than I did.
Dex flexed his hand and shook it out. Fresh new dark lines of ink I didn't remember being on that hand decorated his wrist. Not that fresh, because his flesh didn’t bear the telltale tinge of red that his other tattoos had when he got those fresh or kept them under plastic wrap. I frowned, but he shifted before I could make out the image on his skin.
“Thanks, Doc. Appreciate your work.”
“Hmm.” The doctor grunted and cleared him with a slip for college. “That should cover you for any assignments for another two weeks. Not that you'll need it with that brain of yours. But just in case.”
“Extra appreciation.” Dex winked, grabbed my hand with his now good one, and squeezed. “Ready to go home?”
My stomach tumble turned. “Uh?—”
He grinned and leaned in. “This is the part where you say yes .”
But yes had never been a big part of my repertoire. Ask his roommates who were currently butting heads with me over the branding group project. Mind, they had Shanghaied me into their little soiree trio, so they also got to wear the consequences.
“Alright?” I smiled weakly and waved to the doctor who watched us leave with no small amount of concern on his lined face.
I was certain Dex had added several of those lines himself. I knew I had an extra something from him. Stress. Panic. Fear.
Orgasms.
I was still in recovery mode from our last session in his bedroom where I had actually fallen asleep on his chest, even if asleep counted as a doze of about ten minutes. When I crept out and Dex still snored on, Falcon and his entourage were still hard at it in his room while a sweaty and disheveled looking Nelson stared fixedly at his phone in the living room.
I didn’t see his hands, and I didn’t dare ask where they were as I slipped out of their door and shut it quietly behind me, though I doubted my exit went entirely unnoticed.
Certainly not by Dex, who messaged me less than an hour later, begging me to come back.
And I nearly—so freaking close—had.
But I didn't. I held to my resolve and stayed clear of his toxic little household and my toxic more-than-a-fuck-buddy who was becoming way too close for comfort.
Or maybe just too close all over, because those orgasms felt so damn fine. My legs trembled all the way back across campus.
And now I knew what it was like to be the one doing the walk of shame. Not that it was the walk that bothered me so much, but who was watching. And during daylight hours, that seemed to be…everyone.
Now, taking Dex back to his dorm in my tiny car that seemed even smaller with him inside it, I had no idea what to say. Six weeks into our new found friendship and I was still at a loss for words beside him unless we were in the bedroom or the sun had set.
Because preferences.
“You know you don’t have to run off on me. We could have lunch,” Dex suggested, sliding his good arm across my shoulders as I drove.
I twitched. “Uh, distraction, much. You.” I shot him a glance and looked back at the road. “And I have a ton of work to catch up on because I’ve been playing nurses and doctors with someone.”
“Now there’s a fantasy I could get into. We could buy outfits.”
I groaned. “Of course that’s where you go with it. I don’t do skirts, Dex.”
He snorted. “Always with the assumptions. What if I wanted to wear the nurse's outfit, huh? I’ve got a good chest, pecs and all.” He emphasized his barrel chest, pushing it out and wiggling suggestively in my passenger seat.
I burst into giggles. “You’re madness.”
He put on a puppy face, fluttering his lashes for me. “You know it.”
“And we’re here.” Thankfully, because I couldn't do any more of this easy chat stuff. My heart was pounding in my chest and I needed a breather. Which couldn’t happen with Dex in the car, him being the sole reason for my inability to gain a lung full of fresh air. “Is this how you felt when you had cracked ribs?” I pressed a hand to my side and squeezed.
Rather than evict him from my undersized car, the motion only brought him closer. “Zin? What happened?” His arms folded around me in an unbreakable circle.
I shook my head, but he refused to back off, insisting on turning my face toward him. “Stop, please,” I whispered, but he was right there, and too close.
Way too close.
“Talk to me,” he insisted. “Are you having a panic attack? What do you need?”
“Air. I need air?—”
“Sweetness,” he murmured, releasing my seatbelt and yanking up my parking brake in one go—the pros of two working hands, look he could use them both at once to my supposed benefit again for me—and cupped my face, stealing more of my air. Again. ” Talk to me?”
I shoved at his chest with both hands, and some of the breath burst out of him. “It’s you,” I yelled, needing the space. “Just back off , Dex!” I ran my hands through my hair, pushing loose strands off my face, the ends intent on itching everything, everywhere .
Hurt rippled over his face. “Okay,” he said slowly, leaning back in the passenger seat, his hands raised. “I’m back here. Wanna tell me what that was?” He spoke low and slow, like I was some dangerous animal he wasn’t sure he should be worried about or not.
Maybe he should avoid me. Maybe that had been the problem all along.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered. “All the, the domestication. Sitting with your friends. Playing happy families. It’s not like I have one.”
“I know,” Zin,” he said quietly.
The single topic we both shied away from, because we matched in that respect. I didn’t have a family to claim me, period, hence the poor girl in a rich boy world problem. His remaining family passed away in his first year before we bonded enough that he could share his grief with me. My throat still closed on the thought of him going through that without anyone at all. Because I didn’t know how to deal with it, never having anyone.
So I guessed that was a good reason that I found out months later, through a rumor on campus. And then…I still didn’t talk to him about it, because back then that’s not who we were. And my rules kept that relationship in place.
I shook my head, throwing off the broken memory. “It’s too much, Dex. This…Us. It’s killing me. Please.” One hot tear dropped onto my cheek but I was too lost in my head to care that he watched me cry.
Not a damn thing changed on his face as one tear fell after another. Not a single thing. It was like he was made of concrete. A brick wall.
“Okay.” He rolled his lips inward and nodded. “Why don’t you stop the car, and come in? We can have something to eat.”
“I’m not eating with you, Dex, and I’m not coming inside,” I forced the words out through clenched teeth.
“Alright. A walk?” His eyes hooded, his whole body stilled.
I wondered if this was what he was like right before a fight when he shut down everything that mattered and only left the necessary bits running.
“Please get out.” I kept my tone polite by some miracle. “I need to go home and just be?—”
“Be what?” His voice came out harsh, showing emotion for the first time.
“Just be , Dex. Me. You're suffocating me.”
If the hurt that rippled over his face before sank my stomach, it was nothing to what I saw on his face now. The man who moved before me might as well never have had cracked ribs, and if the ones in his body offered any residual pain at all he ignored it right now, sliding out of my car and slamming the door.
Before I exhaled my next breath he was gone, striding into his dorm building. That door slammed behind him, too. I fumbled my phone, my fingers dancing over the keys on a single sentence that I deleted six times before I finally sent anything at all.
ZINZI: See you next Friday.
I waited for a long moment, too long a moment before the three dots appeared as he read the words that hadn’t been my first choice but turned out to be the only choice I could send to him.
Then the dots disappeared and were replaced by his message that I didn’t want to read at all.
DEX: Don’t worry about it.
I fumbled to open my calendar, but by the time I found the app, every Friday night block that had Dex’s name on it right through to graduation and beyond was cleared.
Damnit, I should have just gone with I’m sorry.
But I hadn’t, and so I drove home with eyes full of tears, realizing that I hadn’t asked about the new ink etched along his arm beneath the cast I’d spotted when the doctor took it off that shouldn't have been able to be there at all.