Chapter 25 – Reese #3
I wanted to do anything he asked of me. Anything at all.
There had never been a reason before for me to try and control the violent urges that exploded through me at times; after losing my family, there was no one left whose judgment I cared about.
No one I had to be good for, no one who cared if I got hurt or in trouble or… stopped existing.
But now there was someone who cared, someone who was asking me to curb my impulsive inclination to go on the offensive when I felt attacked in some way.
Because it hurt him to watch me lose control like that, and I didn’t want to hurt him.
But what had I done last night?
Fragments of memories and vague bits of things people had said swam in my mind, muddied and almost totally incoherent—but there was one thing that seemed to have stuck with me.
“Did someone say you broke someone’s arm?”
He pursed his lips. “I thought you didn’t remember last night. And, also, that’s what you remember? Nothing else?” He looked mildly annoyed, not like someone whose deepest, darkest secret had been uncovered.
“Yeah, well, I can’t control what my brain chooses to remember,” I grumbled.
“Well, I didn’t. Break someone’s arm, I mean.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he just kept brushing his thumb back and forth across my birthmark.
“Okay…” I said slowly. “Then why did they say that?”
“Oh, you mean the person you attacked? The person whose ear you tried to bite off? Why would they accuse me of breaking someone’s arm?”
I wanted to bite that amused little smile right off his face. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. You jumped on his back like a tiny demon and tried to bite his ear off. Which, by the way, I’m also not happy about. You’re only allowed to bite my ears. Not off, that doesn’t sound like fun, just normal biting. You don’t need to apply much force with those sharp little teeth of yours.”
I knew he wasn’t lying—and not just because Dakota didn’t lie, but because I was a horrible person that resorted to violence rather than using words.
So he was just making my case as to why I was no good. For him, for the world. In general.
“So…I attacked this guy because he accused you of breaking someone’s arm?”
“No, you attacked him because he shoved me.”
Anger barreled through me. Someone had shoved him? What else had they done? Was that it or had something else happened?
I searched his face, his neck, every bit of him I could see for any sign that he’d been hurt. “Who was it? Are you okay? What else did he do, tell me what happened.” I’d fucking go find him again and finish the job. An ear wasn’t enough for touching Dakota like that.
“Oh, so when I get hurt, you’re willing to burn the world down, but you have zero care when it comes to putting yourself in danger?”
He’d raised his voice a little, and the intense seriousness in his expression made my cock twitch.
“How did I put myself in danger?” I argued, blood pumping hard through my veins.
He raised his brows. “The fact that you even need to ask is a huge problem, darling. Let me count the ways.” He sat up until he was just straddling me, resting his ass on my stomach but keeping most of his weight off me.
He started counting on his fingers while looking down at me with a reproachful expression.
“One, you destroyed this room, cut your hair, threw shit around, got razors out that you shouldn’t even have,” he said.
“I got rid of them, by the way. You told me you’d let me help you, and I’m fucking helping you.
Two,” he continued. “You went out to some frat party where you don’t know a single person and drank until you were piss drunk, took your fucking shirt off, and you were about to take your goddamn pants off, too. ”
That seemed to have really ticked him off. His mouth was turned down in a frown.
“Three, you jumped on the back of a guy who’s twice your size and built like a beef brickhouse and tried to bite his ear off. Four, you lost your shoes. So now you’re down to one pair. Five—”
I covered my face with my hands. “How is there more.”
“Five, you tried to eat my face on the walk back—”
I moved my hands away and glared up at him. “What.”
“Yeah, you—”
“How is that putting myself in danger?” I pushed up onto my hands, reached up and fisted his shirt, pulling him down to me. “How about you, Dakota? One, you followed me to a fucking frat party where some asshole shoved you. Who was it?”
“He did more than shove me,” he said.
“Excuse me?” There was a potent fury swelling in my chest; I wanted to find this person and hurt them.
“He punched me, too. That was number six. Because it was you he was aiming for.”
The fury tangled with nausea and guilt, and god I hated myself for going out at all last night. For being such an impulsive asshole.
“Who was it,” I asked softly. I tried to sit up more, but he had me pinned.
“Nah, I’m not telling you. You have no idea how angry I was when I found you last night, Reese. No idea. And I don’t get mad.”
I didn’t have a clue. I kind of wished I did, though, because if it was anything like the look he was giving me now, I’d jump his bones.
“Who the fuck was it, Dakota? If someone put their dirty, disgusting hands on you, I want to know who it was. No one ever gets to hurt you, okay? Not anymore.”
Dakota laughed as he stared down at me, the sound vibrating deliciously through my entire body. “Fuck, don’t do that, it just turns me on when you get pissed off and protective of me. Or did you forget that too?”
“Stop fucking around and tell me who put their fucking hands on you,” I growled.
He glanced down at my hands, his smile growing. “You’re gonna rip my shirt again, and that also turns me on. You’re just getting me riled up every which way this morning, darling.”
“Goddammit, Dakota, just tell me who it was!”
He gently pressed me back into the bed and kissed the corner of my mouth. “No, I don’t want you to get arrested for murder. With that temper, expulsion is the least of your worries, I think. Did you know that your accent gets thicker the angrier you get? It’s fucking hot.”
I heaved an enormous frustrated sigh and let go of his shirt. “You’re so annoying. And don’t change the subject.”
“Damn, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.
” He brushed his nose against mine. “But just so you know, it was Everett who spread that lie. Well, actually, it was Everett and Jared who spread the lie. No one ever broke the guy’s arm in the first place, he just wore a fake cast for a month.
Everett probably blackmailed Jared into lying for him because everyone is afraid of Everett way more than me, so the whole world thinks I actually broke his fucking arm.
Just Everett doing what he does best—trying to destroy my life because he can’t stand me. ”
What the fuck…
I thought I’d been angry before, but that information, combined with the horribly resigned expression on Dakota’s face and the flat tone of his voice, brought my blood to a boiling point.
I knew Everett was a slimy, conniving piece of shit, but the lengths he was willing to go to were disturbing and appalling. And the fact that Dakota’s parents didn’t care and believed their sociopath of a son over his victim was disgusting.
I wanted to bury them all. I wanted to expose Everett for the manipulative fraud he was and give him what he deserved.
I really wanted to hurt him, but Dakota had asked me not to resort to violence anymore.
If I could find another way to hurt him…
Yeah. He valued his reputation above all else, as did the dean.
Was this why the dean had asked me to keep an eye on Dakota? Because of a fucking lie his son had propagated since last year?
And on top of that, Everett had severely maimed and disfigured Dakota when they were teenagers—then convinced everyone it had been Dakota who’d done it to himself, which earned him a year-long stay in a behavioral health facility.
The treatment he’d faced from his own family unearthed a volatile rage that made me want to destroy them all.
But I wasn’t any better than them. I’d played into their machinations, agreed to be the dean’s eyes and ears.
And while at the time it had felt like I had no choice in the matter, the truth was there was always a choice.
I could have walked away, could have abandoned my studies, abandoned my promise to my mom, but instead I’d chosen to abandon my morals for the sake of a promise to a woman who’d been gone for a long time now.
Dakota was still here, still able to be hurt. Was still being hurt—and I was one of the perpetrators of that pain.
I had to end this. I had to make it right. And I would. I vowed to take down everyone who’d hurt him, starting with Everett.
And then…I would leave.
My stomach growled, making the weirdest sound, and I flushed. Dakota just laughed and spread his palm over my belly beneath the hoodie.
“Good timing, I’m hungry too. Starving, actually. Wanna get something to eat? I can go get it or we can go together.”
I wanted to go with him for once. He didn’t need to be my food courier all the time, no matter how much I liked that he wanted to feed me. Truthfully, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight for a single second.
“I want to go with you,” I said, watching the gorgeous smile that spread across his face.
I did that. I’d made him smile like that. At me.
I pushed at his chest. “You have to get off me.”
“Hold on a second, I think you’ve got something on your face here.”
He curved his hands over my cheeks, slid them higher to my hair, and lowered his lips to mine.
It was a slow kiss. Just like the one he’d given me the other morning, the one that made my toes curl and my stomach flip and my chest feel too tight. The one that felt like a mouthful of words filled with adoration and…love.
It was in that moment that I knew I would never be good enough for him. I had lied to him for months now, and whether I’d actually been telling Dean Voss incriminating information or not, it didn’t change the fact that I’d lied to Dakota.
I had betrayed him.
Every single day.
For months.
He deserved someone so much better than me, someone who would always put him first. Someone who wasn’t a coward, who wasn’t an impulsive good-for-nothing.
He deserved someone who wasn’t afraid to love him with their whole heart. Who wouldn’t hesitate to love him or accept his love. Someone who would put that love before everything else.
He said that I was the most precious thing in the world, but it was only because he thought I was precious that made it true.
Without Dakota, I was nothing.
I didn’t want to live in a reality where I meant nothing to anyone. I’d already been living in that for so long, and to finally have this—to have him...
It was liberating and uplifting in a way nothing ever had been in my life. It was special and beautiful and precious, and I never, ever, wanted to forget it or lose it.
So maybe I could pretend, for a little while longer, that we could have this.
Yeah.
Just a little while longer.