Chapter 27 #2
“Thank you, Rhys.” I’m getting off my chair, taking a step closer to him, and pressing a kiss on his cheek. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
That’s when I turn around. My intention was to find Dean, but he found me instead.
All of him hardens. His face, eyes, the contours of his shadow.
He stiffens under the colourful hues of the club.
His mask tightens around his fingers. Green eyes take turns looking at me and Rhys, but I’m certain he’s not staring at him but the stain on his cheek.
Explanation taunts my cheeks and tries to burst with thousands of reasons. It was a friendly kiss. A goodbye. But that’s not what it looks like to Dean.
His jaw ticks.
“ Oh my gosh! I love this song. Fuck it, we have to dance!” Kat’s off her seat. She shoves everyone aside, pulling us onto the dance floor.
I can’t get out of Kat’s strong grip. I need to tell him what he saw was nothing.
But then Hina and Kat are moving their bodies, keeping me with them, screaming at me to move.
One song.
The deep bass synth blends with piano chords and the light hum of drums settles into a rhythmic beat. He’s here, watching me. I shut my eyes.
How deep is your love?
Our bodies move to the beat slowly, quickly turning into nothing but fun movement as soon as the beat drops.
We shake our heads, screaming the lyrics at each other while laughing.
I close my eyes and let the music take over.
Thick hands curl around my waist, drawing me into his chest.
Open up my eyes and tell me who I am.
Backing my head into solid muscle, I look up at his possessive green eyes concealed with a silver mask.
Is it like the ocean?
I lean back and move against him. He doesn’t have the same slick moves as us, but he does what he can. Our bodies say what our words can’t. I drag my hand down, locking it with his. His hot breath grazes my ear. “I’m having a hard time believing you aren’t a figment of my imagination.”
And for some reason it’s those words that break our trance.
It doesn’t matter that I kissed Rhys on the cheek, all I can think about is his faults. “You didn’t think that way when you sat with Kat.”
Sweaty bodies become unbearable.
“Nova,” his voice comes out clipped.
Stepping away, “I don’t want an explanation.” Then I get off the dance floor.
“Can I get a bottle of water, please.” I tap along the bar, looking over my shoulder seeing him marching towards me.
I’m uncapping the bottled water when Dean stands behind me, his presence larger than life. I take slow sips, letting myself feel composed even though my heart is a stampeding mess.
“It’s my favourite movie,” I tell him. “Dirty Dancing.”
Gulping down the rest of the water. “But you knew that, didn’t you?” I swivel around to face him. His chest near my face.
He doesn’t spare face muscles to look down. Just his eyes.
“Was it to impress me, Dean?” I rest a hand on his obliques. “To see if I’d retract my decision?”
He swallows hard. “I didn’t know.”
“That I like the movie or that you shouldn’t have watched it with Kat?”
A dark edge takes over his greens. “I was giving you space.” Tell me the truth, Dean. Tell me you watched with her but talked about me.
Sarcastically scoffing, “What a respectful king.”
Dean takes my hand, placing it over his heart. “You’re allowed to be jealous, Nova. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no one for me but you. ”
Dean says it earnestly, my eyes water.
Fisting the material of his shirt, we stare. There’s a lot pricking the tip of my tongue.
Instead, I push him and get off the stool.
I’m not thinking when I head past everyone, wiping a desperate, angry tear away.
I’m not mad at him. Or I am. I don’t know.
This pressuring feeling inside of me grows with each passing second, what I feel for him is more than just human emotion.
It’s a deliberate waterfall with no ocean to meet.
It’s flowing everywhere all at once and there’s no tool to stop it.
Then he says whatever that was, and I can’t breathe.
When I’m with Dean, each second becomes the timeline of my existence.
I walk past the long line for the bathroom, turning a sharp right into a storage closet.
Just before it closes, tattooed vines thrust forward with a tight grip on the wooden door.
His imposing body steps inside, pushing me deeper into the room.
The door shuts behind him. His muscles constrain against his back. When Dean turns around to face me, his eyes darken with unyielded hunger.
My heartbeat pounds.
He takes a step forward while undoing the buttons on his wrist.
“ Don’t ,” I stop him with a hand.
Dean arches an unimpressed brow. Dragging his sleeves to his elbows, “I’ve been enough of a gentleman, don’t you think?”
He undoes his mask, letting it fall to the ground.
My mouth goes dry. In front of me is a version of Dean that’s full of frustration.
“You have oldest son syndrome. Being a gentleman is all you know.” It comes out challenging .
“Is that what you think?” He clenches hard enough for it to tick in his cheek. “Since I’ve been quiet and patient with you, I’m automatically a gentleman? Has no one told you to never trust a man, lovebird?”
“A man wouldn’t lie to his woman,” I retort. “A real man would tell me the truth.”
“The truth?” He moves forward. “The truth is you drive me insane .”
Dean’s there before I bang against a metal shelf. He cups the back of my head. Masculine scent sending me into the abyss.
He’s quick to pull the light string, illuminating us in orange.
Dean drops his forehead to mine. “I’ve been trying to keep my distance—to respect your space. But you punctured your way into my heart, Nova. How do you expect me to live after making it bleed?”
Too much.
I fist the material of his shirt and close my eyes.
“I can’t think when you’re close to me.”
“I can’t think when you’re far,” he truthfully says. “No amount of space can create distance between us, lovebird.”
We’re two people waiting for the other to spill our guts out.
But mine is full of tangled webs and undesirable intestines.
My truth isn’t pretty, but it isn’t deep.
What he doesn’t get is that my life has never seen distance.
I’ve always had people close to me. For a while, having space from everyone sounded like heaven.
But now, with Dean, I don’t know if that’s what I want at all.
I like people near me, in my space, trying to figure out what’s wrong so they can hold my hand and help me through it.
If we were meant to go through life alone, then why are there other people in the world?
I take the earplugs out. Dean concentrates on it.
“What did you put on your bucket list?” I tuck the hoops in my pocket.
Dean doesn’t answer, but his tightened lips do.
“Why didn’t you tell me you talked about me while watching Dirty Dancing?”
Again, no answer.
“Why make me a chocolate smoothie? Why take care of me? Why offer me your tattoos? Why haven’t you talked to any other girl here?
Why are your favourite flowers anemones?
Why, Dean?” I push harder and harder. He moves further and further away.
“Why did you come on Love? Check! ?” Taking a resigned breath, “Why are you even here if it isn't for reputation or money?”
One look from him. Deep, resounding, pained . “You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it,” I tell him.
Electric energy pulses with ravenous rage and unfiltered thoughts.
“They asked me to list five items I wanted to do in this lifetime.” The muscles in his throat bulge. “I gave them the one I want in every life.”
“Which was?” My voice breaks.
Dean takes a step forward.
With a look of deep-rooted viridescent fragility. “Wanting Nova Rivera to be mine .”
Whatever complicated variation of confusion keeps rewriting itself in my chest, vanishes into thin air with the single confirmation.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, desperately. “How long ?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he snaps. “You wouldn’t have wanted me if I told you.”
“That’s not what I asked.” I take a step. “How long, Dean?”
His lips curl with bitterness. “Two years.”
A sharp inhale. “You followed me onto a dating show, Dean.” I say. “There wouldn’t have been a single doubt in my head of you not liking me.”
“Don’t say that,” he scoffs under his breath.
“Say what?”
“That word,” his nostrils flare. “ Like . It’s not close to how I feel about you.”
“Then tell me,” my heels brush against his shoes.
He keeps his mouth shut, the edges twitching. Each unsaid word persists in the heated air.
“If you don’t tell me?—”
Dean teleports from miles away to his chest brushing mine with each tense heave.
“From the moment I met you, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you.
At first, I thought it was because you were beautiful, and I hadn’t felt a woman in six years.
But the more I saw you with your flowers and bright smiles, giving them to me when I didn’t deserve it, my body became a stranger to itself.
Every system, organ, and muscle only works when you’re near.
There’s no invisible string tying me to you.
Just a flawed man clutching his chest, praying for you to accept his love.
My salvation is an arrow aiming in your direction. ”
His words are rough. The prickles of a freshly shaved beard against my skin of my thoughts, but his hand is a gentle caress on my cheek. “I wanted to kill him the second your lips touched his cheeks,” his tone switches. Reverting back to unconcealed pain .
“I don’t feel anything for him,” I reply breathlessly.
He chuckles darkly. “Yet, you gave him your lips.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“But your red lipstick smeared on his cheek means everything to me,” his tone dips into uncharted territory.
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry?” My brain is still replaying his explanation from before.
I’m his salvation? Me ? He’s a full-blown romantic addicted to me and I’m feeding into it.
“But Dean, it’s you for me. Admitting it seems wrong because it’s a part of me.
We don’t tell people when we have a working heart or if our lungs are functioning, so I kept it inside.
Let these feelings fester and do their thing.
But it started growing and growing and I’m pretty sure my heart doesn’t exist. All that’s there is whatever you’re made of replicating whatever a heart should be.
Can’t you see?” I take his palm and press it to my chest. “This is more than like .”
My heart pounds beneath his hand.
Impossibly, his greens take on a darker tinge. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
“What will?”
A bright glare on a golden tube hits me in the eye.
My lipstick.
He undoes the cap, tucking it between his pinky and palm.
Dean grabs my chin, moving the lipstick closer to my face.
“These are my lips,” he says to himself. “ Mine to look at. Mine to touch. Mine to kiss.”
My lips part for him.
Carefully, Dean traces the shape of my lips with the tube.
His breath mingles with mine. A dance of sorts. No cameras. No microphones. Just two people who’ve been walking on tiptoes around each other using truth as foreplay.
I grab his forearm.
“Do you forgive?—”
“ Don’t move ,” he tsks .
He paints my lips in contradiction to how I coloured his tattoos.
With precision and patience.
Then leans his head back to look at it with a buzzing hum. He doesn’t smile, tucking my lipstick away. Dean unties my mask, letting it fall to the ground next to his.
Whispering, “This doesn’t feel like we’re respecting my space.” I lift my head with a surrendering smile.
Dean stares down at my lips, holding my chin up with a knuckle. His thumb brushes over my bottom lip when he looks up. Not a single hint of green remains.
“Fuck your space, Nova.” Dean smears the lipstick.
Then, he pushes me against a wall and kisses me.
And all I can say is that yes, I’m his.