Chapter Four #2
I glance at him sidelong as he tugs the zipper of his hoodie higher, and I shiver as we pass out of the warmth of the streetlamp.
I’m beginning to wonder if he’s really going to ignore me the entire way to my car when he speaks.
“I didn’t know you were freelance.” Three years of no communication, and those are his first words to me? Saying hi doesn’t count. But this? This question was premeditated, intentional. I just don’t know why he cares. It’s such an odd thing to comment on after everything.
“Yeah,” I say simply. If he wants to talk to me, he’s going to have to talk.
It takes him a moment to extrapolate, each slow step like he’s buying time. “So, will you leave—if they don’t hire you full-time?”
“Don’t sound so hopeful,” I grouse.
He barks out a laugh, the sound short and sharp, swallowed instantly by the night.
Does he hope I leave? I don’t know how to interpret his laugh.
I can’t help but search for clues that this is as weird for him as it is for me.
Just a hint, and then I’ll let this go. I need some hair of the dog for this heart hangover I didn’t know I had.
I have no interest in rekindling anything.
The part of me that loved him feels like an entirely separate person, a side of me that bloomed for him and only him and hasn’t reared its head since. And yet…
I wrap my arms around myself, thinking longingly of the jacket I forgot in the back seat of my Jeep.
Somehow, without looking at me, Dax registers my chill, shrugging out of his jacket and holding it out to me.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“California spoiled you.”
I purse my lips stubbornly. It’s barely cold and yet I’m shaking like a leaf. It’s embarrassing how quickly San Francisco stole my Boston-born imperviousness to cold.
“Take the jacket, Donavan. You’re fucking shivering.”
The wind picks up, rushing along the sidewalk and stealing the last of my warmth. I grit my teeth together before sliding my arms through the proffered jacket and zipping it all the way up.
“Thank you,” I say stiffly, melting into his warmth still clinging to the jacket. I should be relieved things are becoming marginally less awkward with us, but I don’t feel relief at all. I feel undone, the ghost of what we had like a phantom limb.
We walk in silence for a bit, resuming our pace that is far more leisurely than is natural for two tall people. I don’t know who set the pace this time—him or me.
“Do you miss it—California?” Dax says unexpectedly, cutting through my gross overanalysis of our gait.
I shrug. “I miss the sunshine, but I missed being somewhere with seasons more.”
I’m trying and failing to follow his train of thought. At least we’re talking this time—even if it is painfully contrived, a stark contrast to our easy conversations three years ago.
Realization dawns on me. This is exactly like three years ago.
When we first met, our stilted conversations were so at odds with our complete inability to stay away from each other.
Brooklyn said we were like alley cats, circling each other, sizing each other up.
I have no idea what we’re dancing around this time, but I know this game.
Pulling each other closer with one hand while pushing each other away with the other.
Dax ignoring me at Battle of the Bands. Push.
Dax walking with me to my car. Pull. The guarded questions. Push. Giving me his jacket. Pull.
“Did I accidentally interrupt back there—with Hudson?”
I snort. “No. Well, yes.” I time my words to land as we pass beneath another circle of light to catch his reaction. “He asked me out.”
The timing was unnecessary because Dax doesn’t react at all, his face completely blank. This Dax is so unlike the Dax I fell in love with three years ago, the man whose expressions I knew like a well-loved book, with pages dog-eared for my favorite ones.
“I said no,” I tell him.
He turns to me as we slow to a stop at the crosswalk, still looking around me and not really at me. “You should, if you want.”
Push.
He’s so goddamned neutral about it that I want to shake him. How is he so nonchalant when I’m all chalant?
“I wasn’t asking your permission.”
The corners of his mouth turn up slightly at the annoyance in my tone. I don’t know what it says about us that we always revert back to this needling, that we enjoy it. “Hudson did—ask for permission.” His voice is raw, like every word he gives me is half-thawed, wrecking him on the way out.
My brows shoot up toward my hairline in surprise. “And you gave it?” It’s the wrong question to ask. I don’t belong to Dax. No one has to get his damned blessing, but it blurts out of me anyway.
For the second time today, he looks at me.
It’s dark, so I can’t wholly make out his eyes beneath the shadow of his brow, but that magnetic pull is back.
I can feel his attention as it slides from my head to my toes and back up, goose bumps following in the wake of his gaze.
“What else was I supposed to say?” he asks softly, his voice like smoke.
“That you’re mine, and no one else can touch you? ”
It should sound possessive and have me rolling my eyes, but the way he says it is like silk, wrapping around me and melting the tension from my limbs. It’s everything I wanted him to say three years ago, to fight for me, for us, because I was too damn scared to.
His eyes trace every curve of my face, memorizing every lash, every freckle. The way he’s drinking me in with this tortured expression is making it hard for me to breathe.
Pull.
I wish I were wearing something better than yesterday’s skinny jeans, [redacted] days ago’s hair, last night’s mascara, and my high school Chucks that can no longer be called white.
I can’t tear my gaze from his, fearing that once I do, that wall of his will go back up. I’m equal parts desperate for it to go back up and ready to shred it to pieces. I refuse to break our stare-down—not even when the wind picks up a strand of my hair and swats me in the eye with it.
Before I can react, Dax is there, his fingers brushing my brow, guiding the lock of hair out of my face and gently tucking it behind my ear.
His knuckle ghosts along my jawline in a gesture that I’m not sure was intentional.
For a moment, I’m hurtled backward through time, to when that searing touch would have ended with my chin pinched between his thumb and forefinger, guiding my mouth to his.
I swear his gaze drops to my lips for a fraction of a second, as if he’s remembering, too.
Pull, pull, pull.
The crosswalk beeps in warning as the signal turns to a flashing red hand.
I jump, crossing the street quickly, chastising myself for nearly missing the chance because I was getting moon-eyed over my ex giving me an iota of attention.
With a heavy exhale, I let it go. I’ve spent enough time overanalyzing this man.
It would’ve been nice to have some indication about how he feels—felt?
—but for what? Dax is a part of my past, and now my present, but I have no delusions about a future with him.
My thumb rubs absentmindedly over the smooth scar on my ring finger.
I will not, under any circumstances, catch feelings for Dax Nakamura. Again.
Despite our hurried crossing of the street, our pace slows once we’re on the other side. Any slower and we’d literally be dragging our feet.
Pull.
I stuff my hands into the jacket’s pockets, and a whiff of Dax’s piney scent wafts up to me on the chilly October air. I definitely don’t take a second hit of it off my shoulder on the pretext of brushing away a stray hair. “So, you’re recording again?” I ask to break the silence.
“That’s off the record.” He doesn’t say it unkindly; he just says it like fact.
Push.
“Fine,” I huff, not bothering to hide my disappointment. Breaking that news would’ve been a massive get for me. I knew it was a long shot, so I shouldn’t be disappointed, and yet… “But if you ever wanted to go on the record—”
He glances at me sidelong, giving me a nearly imperceptible noncommittal shake of the head. He’s so Dax in this moment that I nearly laugh. Not my Dax, but the one everyone knows. He’s such a little shit when he doesn’t want you to get too close.
I nudge his side with my elbow, and the gesture is both overly familiar and foreign all at once, like a memory passed down from a previous life.
He elbows me back with a barely repressed grin. I prod him again, and he feigns falling like I’ve shoved him. I scoff under my breath. Drama king, that one. He snaps back to my side like a magnet, the shadow of his dimple winking at me.
I sigh wistfully, letting the exclusive go for now, changing tactics. “The mentoring, like with Hollow Graves—do you do that a lot?”
“We try to,” he says. “Mentor,” he adds, like he’s weighing every word on his tongue slowly before voicing it.
For someone who screams into a microphone for a living, he’s incredibly soft-spoken.
But it’s all there if you know how to listen for it.
Even after all this time, I’m still dialed in to him like a favorite radio station.
“We wouldn’t be where we are if other bands hadn’t helped us.
It seems like the least we can do to pay it forward. ”
“That was a lot of words all at once. Are you okay?”
Dax snorts, his eyes cutting to me again. Even in the dark, I can feel the warmth in his wry gaze. This is our game, an old dance we never forgot the steps to. We poke, we prod, we push each other.
He opens his mouth to speak, and I cut him off. “Off the record, I know.”
The corner of his mouth pinches, his cheek dimpling. “You can use me.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, but he’s not looking at me, his attention fixed straight ahead.
“Yeah?” I ask in disbelief.
“Yeah.” He says the word like it carries the weight of the universe.