Chapter 23
DENALI
BENEDICKHEAD ARNOLD
Zariah branded me with a kiss. I could still feel it on the ride back to Marrs, the imprint of her lips, the linger of the skin-to-skin contact, I could feel it. It didn’t matter that she yelled at me.
She kissed me.
She drank from the same bottle I did, her hand so close, I could’ve touched her fingers. I deliberately didn’t but I could’ve and that made all the difference.
Zariah, Elijah, and I stepped out to the seventh floor of Roman Villa and it was like when she returned to Marrs. I was stunned all over again.
“Oh, fuck me.” Zariah stopped outside her door. “There’s no red tag. They haven’t worked on my room.”
Elijah pushed open our door. “You didn’t think they’d be done anyway—”
“But that means they haven’t even started!” She whipped out her phone as the door shut behind me.
“That’s not a problem, right?” Elijah asked, tossing his bag in his room. “Is it cool if she stays longer?”
“Yeah,” I managed to say. “She can stay as long as she wants.”
“Not that far, dude,” he laughed.
Elijah took over our shared bathroom to shower, but that was fine. I had plans to head to the Colo for drills anyway. It was an off-practice day, but I’d get my hour in before Elijah and I played video games during Zariah’s overnight shift.
My phone lit up with messages from snapshot sluts!
NICKYK
Everybody at fridges dorm
Where can we go that elijahs not banned
ME
If anyone wants to join I’ll be running an optional practice in an hour
NICKYK
Captain be for real
FRIDGE19
What did I say? Denali and Elijah aren’t coming
NICKYK
They dont have a choice
I ran a hand over my face and knocked on the bathroom door. “Elijah, they want us to go out to celebrate.”
His voice was muffled over the water. “We went out last night.”
“They’re saying they don’t care if we don’t want to come.”
“Fuck. Are we hiding? What are we going to do?”
Elijah used to be the one to drag me to bars. But since the infamous party, we’d both become homebodies. Now, I didn’t know what to say to secure my extra practice.
Zariah walked back inside, heaving a hard sigh. She was on the phone with someone. Clearly, the conversation wasn’t going well.
I straightened up against the bathroom door. I could still feel the kiss.
“Where did Elijah put his bag?” Zariah asked softly. “He has my power bank.”
“In the—uh—his room,” I said.
I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what to say. The words wouldn’t come. I watched her dark curls sway in time with her steps towards Elijah’s room.
Elijah’s room.
Oh, shit.
I lurched forward as she opened the door. “Wait!”
“ELIJAH CONTRACTOR!” Zariah yelled, whirling around. “WHAT THE FUCK?!”
There was a crashing sound from the bathroom before Elijah hauled himself out with a towel around his waist and bubbles in his hair.
Zariah shouted at Elijah and his voice was shriller than I’d ever heard it. I honestly couldn’t pick out what the twins were screaming at each other, but it wasn’t hard to guess.
There wasn’t a rational explanation for the catastrophe.
I’d bunked with my fair share of hockey players. In Michigan, I’d rented a house with my teammates, and as much as I tried to implement my cleaning systems, that place was a mess. A health inspector should’ve condemned it, but that still couldn’t compare.
Elijah’s room was fucking disgusting.
His room was choked with dirty laundry, old bags of delivery food, and an incomprehensible amount of trash. His desk was covered in it. Most of his bed was overflowing with crap besides the small amount of space he allocated himself to sleep.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Elijah tried to argue. His argument was flimsy, I knew he didn’t believe it either.
“Not a big deal?! If Mom saw this—she’d take a wooden spoon to you!” Zariah kicked away dirty hoodies in her path. “This is fucking gross. You’re feeding the rat population of Marrs!”
“I don’t have rats—”
“How would you know?! I can’t see the fucking floor. They could have an intricate tunnel system; we’d have no idea!”
“I get up at five every day and I don’t get home until—”
Zariah put his face in her hands. “You’re depressed. If there was a king of denial, you’d have the biggest, shiniest crown.”
“Depressed?” Elijah glanced back at me. “Denali, I’m not depressed. Right? Tell her I’m not depressed.”
I blew out air for a moment, contemplating my words. “No, man. You’re in a slump. You’ll bounce back—”
“Denali.” Zariah’s dark eyes locked on mine. There was a subtle threat in her tone, an entire conversation passing between us.
Was I even on Elijah’s side? No. I’d been grinding my teeth over his room ever since we moved in together. When I tried to talk to him about it, he changed the topic, and I relented because I didn’t want to upset him.
I didn’t have to explain that; Zariah read me like a book. She always could. With a tilt of her head, I knew she understood what was happening, and she arched an eyebrow in my direction, prompting more questions.
Did I like this new direction she and I were embarking on? The one that involved cheek kisses and spending time together?
Of course, I did. Alright.
Then I had a choice to make.
Was appeasing Elijah worth fucking up my progress with Zariah?
Absolutely not.
I grimaced. “Elijah, you’re depressed and it’s gotten really bad.”
“What the fuck, Benedickhead Arnold?” Elijah demanded. “Huh, Brutus? You forgot your knife in my fucking back!” He gestured to Zariah. “How are you going to pick my sister over me?”
Zariah motioned me away. “Denali, get cleaning supplies.”
“He’s not your servant—” Elijah stopped when I left for the cabinet under the kitchen sink. “Denali! Where are you going?!”
I had the essentials, trash bags, all-purpose cleaner, disinfectant wipes, and everything else I liked using. Elijah kept complaining about betrayal, and honestly, I stopped paying attention. He was my best friend, but it wasn’t shocking who I was going to listen to.
I found Elijah still talking in his room. “We won a hockey game, how could I be depressed?”
“I’m not saying you’re sad and you need an ice cream cone.” Zariah took one of the garbage bags from me and fluffed it out. “It’s a mental illness and you need to talk to a professional. You need lifestyle changes. Beginning with this nasty room.”
“I’m not depressed,” Elijah reassured me. “She’s being dramatic.”
I tossed old take-out cartons into a trash bag. “Do you see this room?”
“Shut up, Denali.”
“My last dorm was disgusting,” Zariah said. “The only reason I lived there was because Roman Forest is cheap, all of my roommates except Kassie were gross as shit. Elijah, you know how I feel about this!”
“You weren’t supposed to see it.”
Zariah rolled her eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. “Girl.”
“Don’t ‘girl’ me,” Elijah scoffed. He dropped his voice to a mutter, dragging out his empty laundry hamper. “I’m not depressed.”
Zariah motioned for Elijah to finish up in the shower. “Go.”
“You’re shoving me out so you can throw my stuff away.”
“Yeah. If something has mold on it, it’s going in the garbage.”
Elijah swore but left to finish his shower and it was quiet again. I could feel Zariah’s eyes on me.
I nodded. “I know.”
“Denali, this isn’t okay.”
“I didn’t want to—you know—hurt him.”
“This is enabling…we’re both enabling him.” Zariah opened a container of disinfectant wipes. “I’ve been cleaning up his messes for years, I just…I’m so afraid if I let him swim, he’ll drown.”
I didn’t know what to say. We both wanted the best for Elijah, but I didn't want to see Zariah torn up about this too.
“It’s hard,” I said slowly, trying to figure out how to say everything. “Because with you here, Elijah’s so much better. Some days, I couldn’t convince him to get out of bed, and he wouldn’t listen to me about his room. You definitely have more sway than I do.”
“He listens to both of us—”
“No, it’s different. But I don’t want Elijah getting better to come at your expense. You take care of everyone, Zariah.”
“That’s how it’s always been,” she said quietly.
“It shouldn’t be like that. And I know I’m not the one who should say this because I’m the guy who didn’t take care of you how I was supposed to.”
Zariah watched me, her eyes soft. “Denali…”
“You took care of me in these deep, emotional ways that I never thanked you enough for. And I didn’t return the favor.”
“You were a kid—”
“No, I knew better. I saw how quiet you got when we discussed marriage, I knew you were uncomfortable, and I talked over you anyway. I didn’t care about how you felt.
I figured one day we’d be married and you’d just have to get used to it.
” I shook my head. “I was the one in denial—and so hurt when you left, I put all the blame on you. It was selfish. Fucked-up. And I’m so sorry.
I hate that I’m your bad memories, I’d give anything not to be your bad memories—”
Zariah moved along the mounds of trash, coming up to me so quickly, I froze at the closeness.
She gazed up at me. My heart lurched so fast, it hurt, but still I remained frozen. I was afraid to scare her off.
Seconds crawled by as Zariah reached up to touch me and I stopped breathing. Her fingertips trailed along my shirt before she cut the distance between us and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me in for a hug.
Zariah hugged me.
My eyes darted from her dark curls to the wall and back again. Hair, wall, hair, wall. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what I could do. So I remained standing, uncomfortably still while Zariah hugged me.
Zariah squeezed me, granting permission, and my muscles relaxed. I was still cautious, but she definitely wanted me to hug her back.
Ever so slowly, I put my arms around her.
She was warm and soft, tucked under my chin. It was familiar and unfamiliar how she felt pressed against my body. My hands skimmed her waist, her sides, tugging her closer to give her something I couldn’t give her five years ago.
Comfort. Maybe I couldn’t do those mind game conversations like she could, but I needed her to understand this—I wanted to be the one to take care of her. I could do it right this time.
A soft sigh escaped her, a sharp contrast to me, now breathing so heavily it was embarrassing. It was the loudest sound in the room by far.
“Am I interrupting something?” Elijah drawled.
Holy fuck. It was a cold bucket of water, and I untangled myself from her, wondering when the fuck he’d walked in, and how much he heard. His knowing grin was wide while my face flamed with embarrassment.
“You shouldn’t be interrupting anything because we have work to do,” Zariah retorted.
How was she so calm? I could barely grunt an agreement. The scent of her coconut lotion made me lightheaded, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Zariah’s boss arrived to talk about the piping situation and when she left, I could feel it, the fucking elephant in the room. Sitting on my chest, cutting off my words. I tensed, waiting for Elijah to grab me or drag me or start yelling.
Elijah came up to me. “Do you have a thing for my sister?”
“Do I…?” I repeated his words, trying to show the idea was ludicrous, insane, simply not possible, but my tone was completely fucked. “Does it matter?”
“Does it matter?”
“She’s your sister, we’re neighbors, she’s getting close to the team—it wouldn’t be—uh—ideal,” I quickly said, ignoring everything else.
“What, my sister isn’t good enough for you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t think she’s pretty?”
“That’s not what I said—”
“You think she’s ugly or something?”
“No! I’m really attracted to your sister—” Wrong answer, wrong answer!
My words stuttered to a stop as I tried to recover.
“Not that I think about her like that. About her body. Not that I don’t think about her body, I do, I mean I don’t think about only her body—I think about her mind and soul and heart and stuff—not that I’m constantly thinking about her, I—I—”
Elijah’s amused smile—eerily like Hersch’s—made it worse. My neck burned with the admission because Elijah didn’t understand. This wasn’t surface level. These weren’t sheets of floating ice in the ocean, the way I felt about Zariah was connected to an entire iceberg underneath us. It had history.
“What’s the problem, Denali?” Elijah asked, crossing his arms.
I stared, dumbfounded. “You don’t want to beat me up?”
“Nah. I like you a lot more than the dickheads she doesn’t want to introduce me to.” He shrugged, pleased. “Hockey player brother-in-law who doubles as my best friend? Could be worse.”
I thought Elijah finding out would be this end-all for our friendship. But the longer I gazed at him, the more I realized how wrong I’d been. That wasn’t the issue. The real problem was the iceberg itself.
If Elijah found out I was the boy from Zariah’s past…
Not if, when. Eventually, I had to tell him. I couldn’t hide something like that and didn’t want to. After the kiss on the cheek and the hug…I couldn’t stay away from Zariah anymore.
“I think you’d be good for her,” Elijah remarked, his tone thoughtful.
“Good for Zariah?”
“Yeah. She has all of these big dreams but not much experience. You’d give her something stable.” He chewed his lip. “I don’t know. I’ve always thought Zariah wanted to fly away but that wouldn’t happen with you. You’d hold her down.”
I watched him leave, my stomach clenching. I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I didn’t want to be what bolted Zariah to the floor. I didn’t want to be what held her down ever again.