But fuck, I needed to be more careful. What if he found all the notes I was keeping on him? What would he think?
“Because I’m not sorry,” he said, leaning closer to me. “I want to know everything about you, and if I have to stoop to shady ways of getting that information, I will, since you won’t tell me yourself. Besides,” he said, tilting his head and placing a finger over my mouth. “This mean little mouth just tells lies anyway.”
He slid his finger along my bottom lip, then let his hand fall away. He sat down next to me, and when he placed his hand over mine, almost hesitantly, I didn’t move. “What happened?”
I swallowed, then started tracing a finger along the vein on the back of his hand. “Car accident.”
I could feel the heat of his body as he pressed himself against me, one long line of warmth from my shoulder to my thigh.
“We were…” I swallowed and plucked at a blade of grass. “Me, my mom, and my sister were on our way to one of my music competitions.”
His fingers flexed on mine. “You were in the car?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Until I wasn’t.” I laughed despite there being nothing funny at all about it. I picked up a twig and scraped it into the dirt. “I went through the windshield and they went through the guardrail and over a cliff. They died instantly.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever told this to anyone before. Back in Boston, all the people in my life already knew. They knew to stay away from the boy with the smudge on his face because he’d bite your head off if you got too close. I’d never had to explain anything about my past, and the words were so strange to hear, the weight of them on my tongue crushing, the taste of them sickening, sour and curdled.
Ten years and it still felt like yesterday. Ten years and it felt like ten lifetimes.
“I’m sorry.” He brushed his thumb back and forth over my skin. “I’m so sorry you lost them, but I’m glad you’re stillhere. Really, really, glad, Reese.” Dakota smiled at me, and I unraveled completely.
I choked on a sob as the most appalling, horrifying, terrible, soul-consuming relief exploded through me, like something had ruptured in my chest. I threw my arms around his neck and shoved my face into his throat, inhaling his scent like a fucking psychopath as I tried to hold back the tears, and he wrapped his arms around me without hesitation.
Fuck, I needed to get my shit together, not fall apart in his arms because he’d said the one thing no one—not one single person—had ever said to me after the accident. The only thing I’d never known I needed to hear.
“It’s okay,” he murmured into my hair. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”
I believed him with every ounce of my being.
I trembled against him, and he let go when I pulled away. The cold slithered in between us again.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed now that the intense emotion had passed.
Dakota trailed a finger across my knuckles. “Don’t be sorry.” I twitched when he slid his index finger down my thumb. My heart stopped beating when he put his hand on top of mine and slotted his fingers into the gaps between mine and curled them inward.
He was holding my fucking hand, and I couldn’t move.
“What about your dad?”
“My dad…” I swallowed past the hurt that always came up when I thought of him. “He just kind of detached from reality in his grief. He pretty much forgot about me and started drinking a lot. Died a year later. Got drunk and drove his car off a bridge.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dakota said softly, squeezing my hand. There was a layer of anger in his voice, and when I glanced sidelong at him, he was frowning. But when he looked at me, hisfeatures softened. He reached toward my face and swept a finger across my birthmark. “That must’ve been really fucking hard. How old were you?”
I cleared my throat, trying to get oxygen past the lump in it, trying to hold myself together when all I wanted to do was fall apart. “Fifteen.”
“And you’re twenty-two now?”
“Twenty-three. I was held back a year.”
“Oh, you’re older than me. I like that.”
He smiled when I glared at him. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two. I was held back a year, too.”
That didn’t seem to bother him at all, though, because he kept grinning.
I looked down at our hands, at the long fingers that were still linked through mine. He had three freckles on his ring finger. I wondered which one of his parents he’d inherited his freckles from.
