Chapter Seven #2
Spotting me, he gives me a slight jerk of his head in acknowledgment before approaching the register.
My chest pangs unexpectedly, the greeting so different to how his mask used to melt into something softer for me, his gaze always finding mine backstage, whether to roll his eyes or share in a secret smile from across the room.
After ordering, he weaves between the haphazardly placed tables and chairs to my spot against the far wall, balling up his receipt and dropping it on the table with his phone and a blueberry muffin.
“No, I didn’t want anything, thanks for asking,” I say with heavy sarcasm, fixing him with a look.
I swear the corner of his mouth twitches, but his resting bitch face refuses to crack. He wanders over to the pickup counter and grabs the cup the barista just set down. Returning to the table, he places one hand on the back of my chair, hovering over me as he sets the insulated cup in front of me.
“You were saying?” he says with an arch of his brow, close enough that his words coast over my cheekbone.
My breath hitches, and I wrench my gaze from his, staring down at the cup as he goes back to grab the iced coffee now waiting for him.
Trepidatiously, I bring the coffee to my lips, blowing on the inky-black contents before taking a sip. The sweet, warm liquid slides down my throat, and my muscles relax.
Three years later, and he still remembers my coffee order.
Granted, I’ve only ever drunk my coffee one very simple way.
With five kids to wrangle, my dad’s quiet morning routine was sacred, a moment of peace before the chaos of Nate, stop locking your sister out of the bathroom and Bryce, Austin, no soccer in the house and Gray, if you’re not out of bed in the next three minutes—I was a part of the chaos until one morning I discovered how nice it was to start my day in silence with my dad.
He made me hot chocolate until he decided I was old enough to try coffee.
I hated the bitter taste, adding sugar to it so it still looked like his black coffee.
Dax sinks into the chair opposite me, clinking his plastic cup against my insulated one. “What’s so important you had to call me seventeen times before noon?” he asks around his straw before taking a long pull.
My face screws up in disbelief. “It wasn’t seventeen,” I protest.
He gives me a disbelieving glance, flipping his phone over and unlocking it before flashing me his call log.
My throat goes tight, not at the embarrassing number of times I called him in my rage, but at the name he still has for me in his phone:
sloane <3
The phantom limb of what we were aches. I read once that stabbing a phantom limb reminds your body that it’s not really there. The only reason the heart is still by my name is because he hasn’t used my contact info in three years. The ache subsides to nothingness.
I clear my throat. “I only count seven, not seventeen.”
His jaw wiggles as he fights a smile. In the end, something soft wins out. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely, and every bratty fiber in my body dissipates. “I asked our manager to let me talk to you before he went to AP, but I think he wanted to lock it in before I could change my mind.”
His gaze roves over me, to my crossed arms and the grip on my coffee that I’ve been taking tiny sips of. “How pissed are you? Should I grovel?” The corners of his mouth turn up slightly, and I hate that I’m not immune to being charmed by him.
Reaching between us, he methodically peels the paper from the muffin, his fingertips digging into the squishy bread, tearing it in half and sliding the larger half over to me.
Dax knows how to get his way with me—feed me—and I should have known reaching out to him would only end one way, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make him work for it, at least. My mind was made up as soon as I read the Mike Song article, but if we’re going to do this, we have to address the elephant in the room.
I’ve given Dax so many pieces of myself, and I don’t regret any of it, no matter how it hurt once it ended.
But tying my career to him… I rub the scar on my ring finger as a reminder to myself to tread carefully.
“As much as I’d love to see you grovel…” I’m going for wistful, but the words ring a little too true, sticking to my ribs and scraping my throat raw on the way out.
Thankfully, my voice has been five-packs-a-day raspy since forever, so I don’t think he can tell.
It’s too little, too late for him to give me the grovel I wanted three years ago and never got.
I shake my head to clear it. “I called you because I need to know this can work, that we can work together.”
Dax nods slowly, picking a blueberry out of his half of the muffin and rolling it between his fingers like a magician with a coin. I throw all my life plans and goals out the window. All I want in this moment is to be that blueberry. Move over, Violet Beauregarde.
“Are you interviewing me to interview me?” His dimple winks at me before he stifles the smile.
“Yes,” I say simply.
He makes a noise of intrigue. “How am I doing?”
“Not great.”
A full grin breaks across his face for half a moment. “I’m rusty,” he says, pouting attractively.
I take a slow sip of my coffee, studying him over the cup.
He’s still in Stage Dax mode, which is precisely why I’m unsure if we can do this.
But it is easier being around him when he’s Stage Dax.
It allows me to be Reporter Sloane. In this context, we know what we are to each other.
But if he can’t be real with me, I’ll never get anything out of him worthwhile.
Sure, I could write some surface-level shit, and readers would guzzle it down, grateful for a drop after an eight-year drought.
But I could write that article without Dax.
I don’t want to write that article. Not only is this my chance at a full-time job offer, health insurance, benefits, but also at making a name for myself in this industry, catapulting my career plan forward.
This is my golden ticket to any job I want.
I can’t fuck this up or I may as well quit now.
“I can handle rusty,” I say, carefully placing my cup down, studying it instead of him. “I’m not worried about that.”
“What are you worried about?”
I meet his gaze, a glimmer of Real Dax peeking through.
Something inside me cracks, all the sugarcoating falling away from my words.
“That Robb should be the one writing this. That someone who’s not your ex would be able to get a better interview out of you.
If you can’t be open with me, then it should be her, not me. ”
His expression shifts into something unreadable, like he’s thrown everything he’s feeling at the wall like spaghetti, and what stuck is impossible for me to disentangle.
He stares off into the middle distance for a moment before speaking.
I’d hoped when he looked at me again, it would be as himself, but there’s still that sparkle of Stage Dax mischief.
“Remember when we dated?”
“We dated?!” I ask in disbelief, half-heartedly playing along. I do my best to hide my disappointment that we’re still playing games when I desperately need him to be sincere, to prove that he still can be with me.
“I know,” he stage-whispers. “Don’t tell anyone or I’ll never live down biffing it when I was majorly outkicking my coverage, but—” He waves this off like me being out of his league isn’t backward, but I’m glad we’re on the same page about our history needing to remain secret for this to work.
“You kept trying to break up with me before we were even together, and then the next day you’d come back like”—he bats his eyelashes and pitches his voice into something softly feminine—“Hey.”
I scoff. “That is not what I sound like.”
Undeterred, he continues. “You wanted me.” I make a show of clutching my throat like I can’t breathe, and he fixes me with a frown. “My ego is suffocating?”
Flashing a smile in confirmation, I take a satisfied sip of my coffee.
“As I was saying,” he continues with a prim purse of his lips that’s so comical I have to stifle my laugh. “You wanted it—us—but you were scared because it was new, and you needed me to meet you where you were.”
My eyes flutter shut as I realize where this is going. Lurching forward in my chair, I lean across the tiny table. My voice is half admonishment, half laughter. “You are not seriously trying to compare me giving you my virginity to you giving me an interview.”
“Virginity is a patriarchal construct,” he says, quoting me from three years ago.
I work my jaw back and forth to keep from smiling before caving to the laugh I’ve been repressing. “This is not even close to the same!”
“My body is a temple, Sloane.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I say around a laugh.
He grins. “Go easy on me, babe. I’m a born-again interview virgin.”
I throw his balled-up receipt at him, and he swats it away. It flies across the room, and we both duck our faces because if we make eye contact, it’s over. I shake my head at the ground, ignoring the way I can see him shaking with barely suppressed laughter out of the corner of my vision.
Dax slips out of his seat, scooping up the receipt and recycling it.
Once we’re both certain we won’t burst into hysterics, our gazes lock from across the table.
It’s not Stage Dax looking at me now, but the real him.
My heart squeezes in recognition. Ah, there he is, it seems to say.
This version of him, without the mask he wears for everyone else, is the version I fell in love with—even if we never said that four-letter word.
“Jokes aside,” he says, softly serious. “Sometimes you want something, but you’re scared of doing it because you’ve been burned before, and you just need the other person to be patient with you until you can open up again.”