I wake to rain pitter-pattering on the window pane, laying on my side, with Dash wrapped around me from behind. I have about thirty seconds to appreciate this cozy moment before I realize that the doorbell is ringing. “Dash?” I murmur. “Dash, the doorbell—”
“Ignore it.”
The prior night comes crashing back and I’m instantly thinking of Allison, Tyler, the police, and more. “What if it’s important?”
“It’s my sister, Allie. I’m not talking to her this morning.”
His cellphone starts ringing on the nightstand. He doesn’t move. And I can’t move because he’s holding onto me. Which isn’t going to work. I know he knows it’s not going to work.
“I don’t know Bella well yet, Dash, but I know her well enough to know she’s not going to go away.”
His cellphone goes silent and starts to ring again almost instantly. He curses and rolls away from me, planting himself on his back, his arms to his side. I shift to face him and gasp at the sight of his swollen eye. “Oh my God, Dash. Your eye. It’s so bad.”
“Which is why I can’t see my sister right now.”
“Right,” I say, realization and understanding overtaking me. I shift to my knees, one of Dash’s T-shirts covering my body, my mind kicking into problem-solving mode. “Okay. Let’s think this through. She’s here so we can’t leave her outside the door. I can go and talk to her.”
He sits up. “And tell her what? She’ll come up here to see me, Allie. And she’ll freak the fuck out.”
His phone is ringing again. Mine will be next. I know this. He has to know this, too, and my mind races with a way to get us out of this. “Did you have a breakfast date with her today?”
“No, but she randomly stops in.”
“We could tell her we’re at my parent’s place and your phone was in the car and now my mother won’t stop talking. You could text her.”
His jaw flexes. “I hate lying to her and she’ll just come by later.” He glances at me, and I can barely see his eye. “And this is going to take at least ten days to heal.”
“Then we take this head-on. You were with me last night. Tell her you got in a fight, which is not a lie. Outside the bar, which technically is also true as well. You weren’t in the bar. And she won’t believe you were at the underground ring when you were with me.”
“She’ll know, Allie. She knows enough to read between the lines and it won’t be okay to her.”
“You have me by your side on this, Dash.” His phone is ringing again. “Tell her to come in. We’ll be down in ten minutes.”
His lips press together but he grabs his phone and answers with, “Can’t a man sleep late?” Obviously, she says something in reply as he answers with, “Yeah, well, I’m feeling like shit. Let yourself in. We’ll be down in a minute.” He disconnects and looks at me. “I was going to have to deal with this with her, but leave it to my sister to make me do it now.” He throws away the blanket and stands up. “And without a damn shower. I’m going to brush my teeth and wash my face.”
His tone is cranky for sure, but I know he’s bruised, beaten, and hurting. And on some level, on perhaps a wildly evident level, I keep going back to Tyler being an asshole, but he wasn’t wrong when he said that Dash believes he deserves to be punished. Maybe this, what is happening this morning with his sister, is even a part of his punishment, something he feels he deserves, even if this part of the equation would be avoided if possible.
Interesting though, people with bad habits, know how to hide them. The very fact that he’s not prepared to hide this from her, has me wondering if he really hasn’t fought in years, or if he somehow avoids his sister by design, at designated times?
Dash stalks toward the bathroom. I’m still standing in the same spot when the alarm on the front door sounds, and Bella is officially in the apartment. This means I need to pull myself together and look presentable enough to be comfortable navigating a whole lot of potential sibling trouble. I rush after Dash, find him at the bathroom sink, and join him, to do exactly what he’s doing, brush my teeth.
Once we’re both holding brushes, this becomes a shared, intimate, domestic moment, that does funny things to my belly. When our eyes meet in the mirror, there’s a punch of awareness between us. But there’s also his damaged face and the dread that is not only his, but mine, over Bella’s reaction.
“She’s going to freak out,” I say softly.
“I know,” he replies. “Believe me, I know.” The grimness of his tone tells me that, yes, this is punishment. But not the kind he welcomes.
He pushes off the sink and exits to the hallway and the closets. I fight the urge to follow and press him to talk to me, recognizing that he’s a man of control that’s had control stripped away from him. We haven’t even faced this situation, and now, he’s facing me and Bella, in one swift hellish morning. He needs space to pull himself together. I grab one of my bags that’s thankfully already in the bathroom and start pulling out the items that I need to try to make my hair and face respectable. Since I cried hard last night, I’m all puffed up and I don’t want Bella to ask questions that only lead to lies. And my hair, my God my hair, is a mess. It dried naturally only a few hours ago, and it dried looking like I stuck my finger in a socket. It’s a disaster. Digging in to fix the mess I am, I grab my flat iron from my bag and plug it up. A few minutes later, I’ve tamed the mess on my head, used stringent pads, moisturizer, and applied a little makeup and lip gloss. At this point, I look tired, not hungover from tears. I think. I hope.
I hurry into the closet, pull on leggings, a sweater, and sneakers, eager to join Dash. I find him at the window, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with boots, his hand on the glass. As if he senses my presence, he turns to face me. And in the sunlight, that shiner is shining all right.
“I think I should go talk to Bella. Just wait here.” I round the coffee table and wrap my arms around him. “Really, Dash. It’s bad. Seeing her later, not sooner, when it’s not this dramatically horrid is a good idea.”
“You can’t save me from my sister, cupcake.”
“I don’t want to save you from Bella. I just want to soften the impact of her reaction. Don’t underestimate me. I can do more to help than you think I can.”
“I assure you, Allie, I do not underestimate you on this or anything else. But neither do I underestimate my sister’s reaction. Let her scream and shout because she will. And then let this be over.” He catches my arms and pulls me to him. “I know we have to talk, but when we get down there—”
“I’m with you, Dash,” I say, meaning it in every possible way. “I told you. I shouldn’t have left last night. Nothing that happened after I did changes that.”
“It depends on what changed your mind.”
“You,” I say. “You changed my mind.”
“I’m not good for you, Allie. I know that. And I know what the right thing to do is.”
“What does that mean, Dash?”
“It means, I know what I should do right now, but I’m just not going to do it.”