Chapter 32 Jonah - Past
thirty-two
Jonah - Past
BOOTS.
I woke up with Dex still inside me. He was wrapped around me as if he was shielding my body from some unknown thing.
His cock was hard, and so was mine. I considered whether it would be acceptable for me to rock myself back into him and fuck myself on his dick until he woke up and fucked me again properly.
Before I could reach a decision, a small noise left him as his body tensed behind me.
“Are you awake?” I whispered.
He didn’t respond.
“Dex?”
I wondered whether he was dreaming, and if so, was it a sex dream? Was it about me?
He made another sound—quiet, choked, pained.
“Dex?” I asked again, a little louder this time. I winced as I peeled his arm off me and rolled to face him, his cock slipping out of me. It was still dark, and I could hardly see his features.
He mumbled something in response I couldn’t quite make out.
“Devil?” My hand smoothed over the skin of his shoulder, finding it heated and damp with sweat. Any remaining tiredness evaporated in an instant, concern taking its place. I rocked him gently.
“No,” he choked out.
“Dex, what’s wrong? Talk to me, please.”
“No! Stop it!”
“It’s a dream,” I told him, shaking him harder. “It’s just a bad dream, baby, wake up.”
He sobbed, his body trying to twist away from me, but I didn’t let him, determined to wake him up from his nightmare. Then he gasped sharply, his breathing coming in short and sharp and far too fast.
“Are you awake?” I asked again, my hands still rubbing his arms in an attempt to soothe him.
He sobbed and flinched again in response.
“I’m here. I have you.”
“—oots.”
“What?”
“Boots.”
Boots means no. I pulled back, taking my hands off him even though all my instincts screamed at me to hold him together while he was breaking apart.
Heat prickled behind my eyes. I didn’t understand was happening, why he’d used our safeword for something as simple as my hands on his shoulders.
But he didn’t want me to touch him right now, so I wouldn’t, despite how badly I wanted to. What did I do wrong?
“L-lamp,” he choked out, and I scrambled to the nightstand to switch it on for him.
Warm light flooded the room, and I took him in. He wasn’t looking at me, his head tilted back to look at the bedroom wall.
“Baby, please look at me.”
He didn’t. His face was wet, tears streaming steadily from the corners of his eyes as he kept them focused on the wall.
What was happening? What did I do? How do I help?
Without thinking, my hand rested over his, but he pulled it back as if I’d burned him.
“I’m sorry!” Emotions swirled around inside me in a panicked and confused storm. I wanted to touch him again, to comfort him, but that seemed to be the problem. “Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me what you need. I’m sorry!”
He let out a broken sob, and I shuffled closer without touching him.
When he still wouldn’t look at me, I followed his gaze, finding the childish dinosaur stickers on his bedroom wall.
Their exaggerated smiling faces blurred as I looked at them, becoming a smear of color.
A truth I didn’t want to know became clearer as they distorted.
It wasn’t a nightmare at all. It was a memory. Here, in this bed, someone had hurt him.
I stayed where I was, trying to think of something I could do that wouldn’t make things worse for him, but I felt completely useless.
When his breathing finally evened out again, he turned to look at me, and I’d never seen so much pain in his eyes. I sobbed.
“Come here,” he whispered, his hand finding mine.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to make it worse. I’m sorry.”
“I’m okay now, baby. I need you to hold me.”
I fell into him, wrapping my arms around him, and he held me just as tight.
“I’m sorry,” I said again into his shoulder.
“I know, Rabbit. It’s not your fault.”
Maybe he was right, but I still felt like I’d made it worse for him.
I needed to apologize for not being able to fix it, and I didn’t want him to comfort me.
He was the one who was hurting. I needed to just be here for him now, without him feeling like he needed to take care of me as well as himself.
We lay in silence, holding each other until his breathing was slow and deep and calm once more. Until I might have thought he was asleep if I weren’t paying quite such close attention.
“Who was it?” I asked eventually. Dex was silent for too long for him not to know what I meant, for it not to be a confirmation of my fears. “Give me a name.” My voice sounded way more affected than I wanted it to. “Or… names?”
“Just one.”
“Where are they?” Something dark and ugly bubbled inside me, something I didn’t know how to deal with. But I couldn’t shove it back down. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with the information I was asking for, but I already knew I had to do something. I’d hurt whoever had hurt him. I was sure of it.
The pillow we were sharing shifted as he turned to look at me, and I pulled back to look at him better.
I expected to see… something, some emotion he was choking back.
Instead, I just saw a crushing amount of nothing.
Whatever panic and fear he’d felt earlier was now absent, like just thinking about who this person was had scooped the emotions out of him.
No, that wasn’t it. They were still there, shielded behind a wall to keep him safe from them.
He searched my eyes for something, and I didn’t know what it was, but he must have found it because after a long moment he spoke again. “I’ll take you to him.”
That wasn’t the response I was expecting.
“When?”
“Now,” he said, surprising me again, but I didn’t have time to question it, because Dex was already pulling away from me and rolling out of bed. I scrambled to follow him.
I didn’t know what was going on, but as he pulled the drawers of his dresser open, yanking out the first items of clothing he found, I rushed to get dressed as well.
Once we were clothed, I was running to catch up to him as he charged down the stairs and out the front door without a backward glance. Wherever he wanted to take me was his only mission, and it was urgent enough to him that he didn’t even spare the time to lock the door.
When he reached his bike, he took the helmet and thrust it wordlessly in my direction.
“You wear it,” I said, not taking it.
“Just put it on,” he sighed.
“No, you put it on.”
This time, instead of speaking, he stepped in closer and shoved it into my chest with enough force that I grunted. I pushed it back at him. “You wear it, Dex.”
I was expecting him to fight me more on it, but he just snatched the helmet and flung it to the side where it crashed into a pile of junk. Neither of us was wearing it then.
“Wh—”
“If you won’t take it, then we’ll both risk dying from grievous yet preventable head wounds.”
“If you’re dying, then I’m dying. You don’t get to leave me,” I told him, my words teasing softly, trying to coax out his regular self. Because he was being too serious, and I didn’t know where he was taking me, and I didn’t want to ask because I wasn’t sure I’d like the answer.
The ghost of a smile pulled at his lips, his eyes softening just slightly as he swung his leg over the bike. “You saying I’m your ‘ride or die,’ Rabbit?”
There it was. My lips pulled into a slight smile as I stepped forward, resting my hand on his shoulder as I pulled my leg over the back of the bike and settled into him.
Delilah’s engine roared to life, and a few minutes later we were tearing down the highway.
By the time we arrived at what was apparently our destination, we were a long way out of Port Skelton. I couldn’t ask Dex questions while we were riding; the wind was far too loud to compete with. My face stung from the cold of it, my hair no doubt a tangled mess just like his.
He stared at the forest as if he were mentally preparing himself to enter it. Like it was a danger to him. Given that we were allegedly here so he could take me to the person who’d hurt him, I was starting to feel the same.
“Why are we here, baby?” I asked cautiously.
The wind rustled through the trees in the early-morning light.
This place felt foreign. Undisturbed. Unwelcoming.
Foreboding. Like something big and heavy waited here to be discovered, and yet something inside me was reaching out to meet it.
Some unspoken knowledge seeped into me that I should have been afraid of, but I wasn’t, because I was with him.
Whatever secrets and terrible things undoubtedly waited for us, I didn’t fear him.
I didn’t fear what I’d learn beyond the veil of the trees. Not if he was the one to lead me there.
“This way.” He spoke softly, like he didn’t want to disturb this place any more than we already had. Then he was following a path I couldn’t see, and I was right there behind him.
My leg ached from the uneven terrain, but I kept up with him, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot as he led me through the dense foliage.
The forest opened up again into a clearing, shielded by a wall of trees. There was a slight ditch in the center where maybe a river had once carved out a path through it, but all that remained in it now was dirt and leaves and the burned-out shell of a car.
Dex stared at it for a moment before continuing onward.
“Here,” he said, staring at the ground.
I followed his gaze, but all I saw was dirt and the remnants of cigarettes. Some that looked recent.
“What’s here?” I asked him, but I already knew.
“The body.”