Chapter 25 – Reese
TELL ME THIS IS REAL, OR ELSE I’LL JUST PRETEND
REESE
Iwasn’t sure how long I’d been in the bathroom, but it was long enough that I’d gone through the full range of emotions and then done it again.
I felt like laughing and crying and raging all at once.
I’d woken up with Dakota wrapped around me, sound asleep. At first, I’d just snuggled closer to his warmth, but after a few moments, bits and pieces of last night had started to infiltrate the lazy peace I was drifting in, and an intense panic had zapped through my body.
I’d fallen out of bed and then locked myself in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror only confirmed that the past few days hadn’t been a dream.
I’d thrown up, then brushed my teeth and taken a shower, but none of that had helped calm the anxiety racing through my veins.
It didn’t help that I could only remember vague snippets of yesterday. I’d gone out walking, that was clear in my memory. I’d walked all the way to a frat house that was having a party, went inside and drank a lot…
But the night got hazy around the third or fourth drink. I remembered laughing with someone, people cheering, someone shouting.
I remembered Dakota. Sort of. Everything was just a flurry of images that didn’t make sense. Had there been a fight? Why was Dakota at that party? Had he really been there? When did we come back here?
Fuck.
I scrubbed my hands down my face and groaned, then jumped when there was a knock at the door.
“Reese?”
I gripped the edge of the counter, heart pounding.
“Are you okay? Do you need help?”
He sounded so sleepy and sincere, so sweetly him, that I couldn’t stop the tidal wave of affection that crashed through me. I squeezed my eyes shut as my lip trembled, and I picked up the hoodie I’d thrown on the floor since I was buck naked.
Another knock came, harder this time. “Reese? I’m busting the goddamn door down if you don’t answer me.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Can you just…can you not lock the door? Please?”
His soft request made my chest ache, and with a trembling hand, I reached out and twisted the door knob until the lock popped open.
I expected him to come barreling into the room, but the door stayed shut.
Disappointment snaked through me, and then I remembered I was supposed to be mad at him, that he’d said horrible things to me and why wasn’t that the first thing that had surfaced into my mind today? Why was I only remembering now?
But no, he hadn’t said those things, I didn’t believe that. Not for a second. The person on the other side of that door was not the same person who had sent me those texts, and I knew that in my soul.
I jerked the door open, prepared to ask him about last night, but when I saw him standing there with his hands resting on the molding above us, those dark eyes boring into mine with a concern I knew was genuine, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Hey,” he said softly. “How you feeling?”
“Like crap.” I lowered my gaze and tried to move past him, but he kept blocking the door. When I looked up at him again, raising my brows in question, he leaned in close and kissed my cheek.
“Want me to bring you something to eat? Something greasy and loaded with carbs?”
I raised my hand and pressed my fingers to the cheek he’d just kissed—right over my birthmark—and stared up at him in stunned silence.
“I’m okay.” My voice was a rasp, and I hated that my throat was getting thick.
His brows scrunched together. “Are you? Do you remember what we talked about last night?”
Fuck. What had we talked about? What had I said to him?
“No, I don’t remember anything. Can you please move? I wanna go back to bed.”
He shook his head. “Nope. We’re gonna talk about what happened.”
All I wanted to do was wrap my arms around him and sob into his chest, to feel him and know he was real, that he was really here, that he’d come back.
He was paler than usual, his freckles standing out more, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
Eyes that were shining with a restrained anger and resolve that sparked a maelstrom of panic in my system. There was a storm brewing in those eyes, and nowhere for me to take shelter from it.
I didn’t even want to.
I wanted him to hit me full blast with everything he had. Wanted him to decimate me with the force of his feelings.
If they were his, I didn’t care how much they destroyed me—I’d take everything he wanted to throw at me.
The only time I’d ever really seen Dakota get angry was when something bad happened to me, when I’d been careless with my own well-being.
And that…
A warmth started spreading across my chest, seeping into my skin and burning through my entire body.
It was because he cared. He truly cared about me, and there was no denying that. There was no pretending it wasn’t true. The evidence was right there, in his eyes, his voice, his face. In everything he did and said.
Dakota was the most transparent person I’d ever met, and I never knew I needed that as much as I did.
“Tell me what you remember from last night, and I’ll fill in the blanks for you.”
The hardness in his tone made me want to fall into his arms and meld myself against him. That way he could never be free of me; I’d always have him right there. He’d be forced to keep caring about me, forced to keep holding onto me, forced to keep me—period.
“Can we not do it in the bathroom?” I asked.
His lips twitched, and I wanted to kiss them.
He took one hand off the door and moved to the side, but not enough that I could get past him without touching him.
And as I brushed by him, he ran his fingers through my pathetic little mohawk.
“Kinda suits you,” he murmured. “I kinda like it. Don’t like why you did it, but it’s cute.”
Heat spread across my face, and I rubbed at my cheeks, making my way to my bed.
I hadn’t noticed before, but the room had been picked up. Guilt slithered through me, and when I saw that he’d even made my bed, it intensified.
I sank down onto my mattress and watched him cross the room to his own bed, where he sat with spread legs, leaning forward as he rested his elbows on his knees and watched me with keen eyes.
“Why’d you go to that party?”
Just jumping right into it, then.
I shrugged. “I was out walking and saw it and…I just went.”
“Because…?”
“Because of the texts. Because I was upset. Because I didn’t know where you were or if it was you sending those messages.”
He shook his head. “I told you last night, I didn’t say those things to you.
I left my phone at the manor because I had to take Val to the hospital in a hurry.
I didn’t have my phone until last night.
I’m pretty sure that Everett wrote those messages.
You know I’d never say those things to you, right?
You know that’s not how I feel, don’t you? ”
I knew in my heart of hearts that he would never say those things to me. I knew he wouldn’t play me like that, or throw me away like yesterday’s news. Scrape me off his shoe like annoying gum. And to have it confirmed—by him—soothed every last bit of my aching soul.
“Then how do you feel?” I whispered the question, like I didn’t actually want him to hear it, didn’t want him to answer it, didn’t want to talk about any of it—while desperately needing to know at the same time.
Wait, Val had been in the hospital? “What happened to Val? Is he okay?”
Dakota had been by his brother’s side in the hospital this entire time while I was here having a breakdown.
Guilt crowded my mind as I thought about the moments I’d doubted him.
I was disgusted with myself, that I’d let myself believe, for even a fraction of a second, that he would ever send me messages like that.
Fuck, I was the worst.
“Yeah, he’s okay. He has a really weak immune system so he gets sick a lot, but he’s okay.”
I knew Dakota loved Val more than anyone in the entire world, had seen it with my own eyes—had been shamefully, bitterly envious of that love, if I was being honest—and to know that he’d probably spent the past few days a worried mess while I spiraled and blamed him…
All of a sudden Dakota was right in front of me, pushing me down onto my back, climbing on top of me and pinning my hands to the bed above my head.
“Stop it,” he said, pushing my wrists down into the bed for emphasis. “Stop thinking that shit.”
“You don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
He leaned down and rubbed his cheek against mine, then murmured in my ear. “Course I do. You can lie pretty good with that mean little mouth, but your eyes can’t hide a thing.”
“Oh yeah? Then tell me what I was thinking.”
He bit down on my jaw, making me gasp at the sudden sting, and when I realized I was pushing my hips up so I could chase the heady sensations that were sliding through me, I tried really, really hard to stop moving.
So he started moving instead.
He rolled his hips slowly, sending a burst of pleasure through me. “That while I was at the hospital, you were here by yourself, cursing me for leaving without a word and losing your mind because you couldn’t touch me for days.”
I was absolutely losing my mind right now as his raspy voice slid under my skin, making me shudder beneath him. He’d started sucking down the column of my throat, nipping at the skin and then sliding his tongue over every bite until I was making embarrassing little noises under him.
“You were missing me because you can’t handle being away from me for so long.
You realized that you just can’t live without me, not even for a second, and got mad at me for leaving you all alone.
You wrecked our room to get back at me, then thought you could go get wasted to forget about me. But you couldn’t, could you?”
He’d let go of my wrists at some point, and one of his hands was in my hair while the other one slipped under my hoodie.
He stilled when he realized I wasn’t wearing anything at all under there, then laughed, pressed his face into my throat, and groaned.
“Fuck, Reese, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?”