Chapter Twenty
TV detectives have nothing on my murder board.
After playing Nixed multiple times through, I text Dax to let him know I’ve listened to it. While I wait for him to respond, I decide to go back to the beginning.
Hearing Dax tell his own story—through our interview and through the Nixed album—I decide to do the same for all the guys. I throw out all my notes, every outline Robb and I ever made, save for my interview transcripts.
I feel lighter just being rid of it all, too many voices in my head to hear my own. More than that, it was the guys’ voices who were being drowned out, and wasn’t that the whole point of this anyway?
Settling down on the couch with a mug of tea and a granola bar, I pull Barrett’s transcript into my lap.
By the time I finish, his pages are flecked with tea from all my spit takes.
As I pick up Marcus’s pages, an idea begins to take root.
I don’t even finish the first page before I’m reaching for Cain’s and Jonah’s pages, cross-referencing.
I catch my hip on the kitchen counter in my haste to grab my scissors from the junk drawer. I check my phone, opening the missed text from Dax.
with the fam for my birthday.
Under the text is a selfie, Dax’s face squeezed between his parents, his three sisters making silly expressions behind them.
Then another text: my dad said to stop distracting you. call you tomorrow?
I stare softly at the photo, how casually he sent it, the affection in their identical smiles. For most people, it would mean nothing, but I know for Dax, it’s everything. He may have reconciled with his parents years ago, but this ease is something new, something precious.
I text back in the affirmative, before tossing my phone on the TV stand.
Picking back up my interview pages, I sloppily highlight each guy in a different color and begin cutting, weaving an oral timeline of their history.
I don’t totally know what I’m going to do with it, other than it feels right—more right than anything I’ve tried so far.
By the time I get to the end, it’s the next morning.
I got a few hours of sleep before waking up energized, ecstatic about this new direction and eager to get back to it.
After rereading the whole thing, I rearrange the final quotes for maximum impact.
I’m breathing heavily like I ran a marathon—which, by journalistic standards, I have, this article coming together in one all-nighter.
Pushing off the floor, I step back to take in my handiwork.
I quickly ran out of room on the coffee table, and now both it and the couch have been pushed out of the way, my floor now covered in the timeline of Final Revelations, as told by Final Revelations.
I’m lightheaded, either high on my own brilliance or low on blood sugar, yesterday’s granola bar opened but uneaten. My stomach growls threateningly.
A knock at the door startles me, and I jump. I have to walk along my couch to get to the front door without stepping on the chaotic genius papering my floor.
I can’t take my eyes off of it, fearing if I look away, the spark will disappear, the angle I’ve been chasing under my nose the whole time.
Opening the door, I do a double take.
“Dax!” I exclaim. Did I manifest him by thinking about him too hard?
His gaze drags over me from head to toe and back up, from my threadbare T-shirt that’s more holey than Swiss cheese, my high school gym shorts that I should’ve stopped wearing years ago, to the haphazard bun I’d thrown my hair into so I could concentrate better.
Dax makes a noise of intrigue, like I’m wearing a tantalizing outfit and not my ratty pajamas.
“Oh, shut up,” I grumble. “I’m working.”
His attention sweeps over my destroyed living room, his eyes going wide before flitting back to mine. “Are you… okay?”
“I think I figured it out,” I whisper, afraid to curse it.
He smiles back. “That’s my girl.”
My whole body flushes, and I step back to let him in. Maybe he should stay. Celebrate.
No, Sloane.
“Not that I don’t love your recent habit of showing up at my door unannounced—” It’s only then I notice the paper bag in his hands. My stomach growls loudly. “You can’t stay,” I say regretfully, needing to establish that right out of the gate, knowing how quickly I’ll crumble in his presence.
“I did try to call first,” he says, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, holding the paper bag in front of him like a shield.
“I didn’t hear—” Fuck. I hopscotch over my scattered papers, slipping into my bedroom to grab my phone from my nightstand, where I’d left it to charge when I woke up to a dead battery.
On the lock screen, there’s a handful of missed texts and a call from Dax.
“I forgot I put it on silent,” I call out, disappointed in myself.
As quickly and carefully as I can, I pick my way back across the living room, arms extended toward him.
He laughs at the spectacle, and I’m sure I deserve it. “You fucking weirdo,” he says affectionately.
I make my movements more exaggerated as I near him, and he laughs harder, turning his back to me. Undeterred, I wrap my arms around him from behind. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice muffled as I press my face between his shoulder blades.
“It’s okay,” he rumbles. He guides me around to his front, staring at me for a long moment. “So… you liked it?”
The way he says it, it’s like he expected me to run for the hills. There was nothing on Nixed that he hadn’t told me already. Expressed in a much rawer way than he usually allows, sure, but it was all him.
I place my hands on either side of his face, and he leans into the touch.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Thank you so much for sharing it with me. It’s…
It’s fantastic. It’s unflinching and honest and it’s really brave.
It’s you.” I shrug. “Of course I love it. You should be really proud.” He drops his gaze, and I duck my head to keep it.
“I’m so proud of you. If you want to talk about it in detail, we can, now or later or never—I’m not going anywhere. ”
I watch as the worry melts from his features, the line between his brows disappearing, his eyes softening as the corners of his mouth turn upward.
For a moment, he looks like he’s going to say something, but then he leans in, peppering rapid-fire kisses to my cheek and neck until I’m laughing and squirming out of reach.
He nudges the couch an inch to the right to get into the kitchen, and I cry out in alarm, but the pages on the floor remain undisturbed. He holds his free hand up defensively. “Is that our article?” he asks, eyeing the taped-together scraps with a bemused smile as he unpacks the paper bag.
“Yes,” I say defensively, crossing my arms. “I’ll show you later.
” Fetching a clean fork from the dish rack I haven’t emptied, I open one of the containers and stare down at the contents, mouth watering at the yakisoba noodles and thinly sliced beef.
He didn’t just bring me enough food to feed me for days. “You cooked for me?”
He opens the door to the fridge, surveying the nearly empty shelves with a dissatisfied purse of his lips before loading them up. “Technically, my dad did.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
“He’s very excited about the article and wanted to help.”
My chest aches. It’s not lost on me how much this gesture encapsulates, the work they’ve put in to fix their relationship, for this man I’ve never met to be looking after me from afar, all to ensure his son’s legacy is penned correctly. “Tell him thank you for me,” I say softly.
“Thank him yourself when you come over for dinner after the article’s done. Mom insisted she gets to take care of you, too,” he hedges.
I blink, not fighting the smile that stretches across my face, not overthinking what this means for us, only about what it means to Dax. “Okay.”
His eyes light up. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeat, nodding.
He ducks his head to hide his own smile, his gaze straying to the chaos on my floor. “My dad also reiterated that I not distract you, so I’m not staying. I just came to bring you fuel.”
“Fuel?”
“Mm-hmm.” He gestures to my now-stocked fridge. “And motivation.”
“Motivation?” My exhaustion must be catching up to me—I’m incapable of making sentences, only echoes.
Dax eases the Tupperware from my hands, setting it on the counter beside me. I whimper in protest, the sound getting caught in my throat when I meet his gaze. I’m not the only hungry one in this kitchen.
Dax’s hands go to my waist, hoisting me onto the counter.
My arms and legs wrap around him automatically.
He grips my chin between his thumb and forefinger, halting me from leaning in.
He nudges his nose against mine, a relieved exhale sighing out of him before he slots his mouth against my own in a languid kiss.
I try to behave. I do. But our kiss quickly turns heated, hands roaming, his dropping from my face to palm my breast. I know the exact moment when he clocks it, his thumb brushing over my nipple once, twice, confirming what he felt. He pulls back, bracing both hands on the edge of the counter.
“Sloane,” he breathes. “Did you…?”
He doesn’t need to finish the question, his gaze bouncing back and forth, my threadbare T-shirt unable to conceal the hard press of my nipples—or the piercings there.
A groan tears out of Dax, and he has to walk away for a second, hands dragging down his face. “When?” he asks from across the kitchen, before biting down on his knuckle.
“Two years ago.” We’d been broken up for a year and I hoped having some part of me that he hadn’t touched would make moving on easier. (It didn’t, but it did make me love my tiny tits more.) I brace my hands on the counter behind me, arching my back in invitation.