“I wondered how it was you came to be in this field of work.” His comment seemed abrupt, picking up the topic I’d avoided before dinner.
It wasn’t a surprise though. Fabian was serious about us communicating. He was always the one pushing for us to talk things through, while I was the one running from every conversation that made me have to vocalize the thing I most feared. I hated that I was like that. Couldn’t stand that my first line of defense, even after all this time, was to retreat withinmyself. I was convinced that since it didn’t constitute physically running from my problems, that it didn’t mean I was somehow dysfunctional.
“I told you that biology and chemistry were my favorite subjects since middle school. Then in college, I got really interested in forensic science.” It seemed like a safe answer, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not this time.
There was something different about him tonight, about us. Honestly, I’d felt it the moment he showed up at the B&B like a stalker. His appearance instead of a call or text was the first change. His unrelenting tone when he told me the secrecy was over was the next. Tonight, there was another layer of confidence around him. And for a man like Fabian, who commanded every room he entered, that was saying something. It was saying that he was over all the bullshit.
“Yeah, I know you’re my little STEM geek.” Chuckling, he rubbed his hand up and down my arm.
Our positions were switched tonight. He was usually laying in my lap because he loved when I rubbed his head. Tonight, he’d wanted me here, and I didn’t care as long as we were together.
“But there’s something you’re not telling me. You’re brilliant, Dakota. You could’ve done so many things with your dual degree. Could’ve started some sort of foundation for Black girls interested in STEM. Opened a consulting firm for government agencies to pay you to figure out, I don’t know, shit like chemical warfare or something.”
I laughed. “Now you sound like Cade telling me about all the help I could be to the FBI.”
“He’s not wrong. And they’d let you write your own check I’m sure, because I know they don’t have anyone on their payroll as smart as you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe not, but I don’t want to work for anybody else. I want the freedom to do my own thing.”
“And that thing is cleaning up crime scenes? It’s like you’re drawn to violence for some reason.”
I didn’t respond.
He turned me so that I was facing him. I kept my eyes trained on his abdomen, taking a ridiculous interest in the buttons on his shirt.
“Look at me,” he implored in a softer tone.
I did as he asked.
“Did something happen? Did somebody hurt you?”
Seeing his eyes darken at that last question, I moved until I was sitting up beside him. Grabbing his hand in mine, I said, “No. No. It’s nothing like that, baby. I promise you it’s not.”
“Don’t lie to me, Dakota. You know I would burn this entire city down after you. So if something happened that changed your view of the world or your career trajectory, I want to know about it.” His nostrils flared and he gripped my hand tightly.
“I know,” I said, rubbing my free hand up his arm. “I know and I would tell you.” Although the last thing I wanted was for Fabian to ever get into legal trouble behind something I did or that was done to me. I knew all too well about protective men, had grown up in the house with two of them. Keeping things like that from them only made matters worse. But that truly wasn’t the case here, at least not in the way he was thinking.
I didn’t know how to say that to him without saying too much. Without putting myself in a position to be chastised or judged. “Nobody did anything to me, baby,” I quietly reassured him then looked down at our joined hands.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes to the rawness of his tone. It was no longer the irritated Fabian, the one that was about to reach for his gun and make good on his threat to tearthis city apart searching for whoever had wronged me. Nor was it the businessman whose less than ten-year-old corporation had already, repeatedly, appeared on the most influential Black-owned corporations’ list. This was the voice of the man, the husband who desperately wanted to know what was going on inside of his wife’s head.
He moved, and I thought he was about to use his free hand to grab me by the chin and force me to look at him, to spill my soul to him. But his fingers whispered over my neck as he pushed my hair back. They stayed in my hair as he raised his hand to gently massage my scalp. It seemed like the oddest gesture for this moment, but at the same time, the scrape of his blunt-tipped nails over my scalp sent the most amazing calming tendrils down the back of my neck to my shoulders, then my spine. I couldn’t help but sigh.
“I love you. You know that, right?” he whispered, and I barely heard the words over the sound of talking coming from the TV. “There’s nothing you can say to me that will change that. You have my heart, love. Now and forever.”
I blinked back tears, then leaned to my right to rest my head against his shoulder. He had to drop his hand from my hair at that point, but he took that moment to adjust himself so that he could wrap an arm around me. Tucked even closer to him now, I clasped my hands and prayed the words that fell from my mouth would be accepted and that his feelings for me wouldn’t change after hearing them.
“I saw my first dead body when I was thirteen.” I cleared my throat. “My daddy said I was an inquisitive child while Mama pinched me more times than enough for being nosy in church. But I stood firm in my defense that those old biddies at church talked loud on purpose because they wanted everyone to know who deacon so-and-so was sleeping with besides his wife.”
His chest rumbled with a slight chuckle, and I relaxed just a little.
“Mama wasn’t really wrong though. I was nosy. It was that nosiness that landed me in the back of Cade’s Navigator on a Saturday night. I loved and admired my big brother. I wanted to do everything he did, to someday be his second in command.” That last part was spoken a little softer. It occurred to me in that moment that KC hadn’t been the next in line to take over the Ryders when Fabian stepped aside. His cousin, Zayn, was in that position now, but I never asked Fabian why.
“At nineteen, Cade commanded everything around him. He was so much like Daddy, but still different. Like, he had his own mind and his own rules. Nobody messed with him, and when they did, they regretted that decision immediately. I wanted that same respect.”
“You didn’t get it?” he asked. “Were you bullied?”
