Page 36 of Dash

Until he pulls back and I lose his lips.

His breath tears out of him, his hand on my neck grounding. “Babe… no. You don’t have to do this.”

What is he talking about? “I don’t have to kiss you?” I’m confused and ready for the rejection I know is coming. “You don’t want me?”

Rejection coils in my belly, ugly and putrid.

“I want you,” he assures me. “Fuck, baby, I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you, but you don’t have to prove anything to me. You don’t have to give me yourself because you think that’s what I’m owed.”

I swallow and then do it again because I can’t make my throat work. “I don’t understand.”

He kisses me again, this time soft and reverent. “I know. But you will.” His hand drops from my neck, and he offers me a fork. “We’re gonna eat and hang out. Drooling on me is optional. But that’s it. You don’t owe me anything more than just your presence.”

That settles over me like a weighted blanket. He sees too much. Knows too much and yet he’s still here.

“I don’t feel like I owe you,” I say quietly. “I like being with you.”

Because when I’m with you, I don’t hate myself so much.

And that’s why I let my walls down and give him that moment of raw vulnerability.

“Good,” he murmurs, “because I like being with you too. Even if you have shitty taste in films and snore like a sixty-year-old man.”

I glare. “I don’t snore.”

“Babe, you sound like a chainsaw.”

“You little liar. I don’t?—”

He silences me with a kiss, and I shut up complaining, melting into him. His tongue is divine, and my body is singing by the time he pulls back.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he murmurs.

“Ask my mother and she’ll tell you differently.” I speak before I think, whilst in the fog of postcoital ecstasy.

He stiffens. I feel it immediately, and panic seizes my chest. I shouldn’t have said that. He doesn’t need to hear my shit.

“Your mum says you’re not perfect?”

Shit. I wave it. “She’s says a lot of things.”

I try to pull him in for a kiss, to distract, to deflect, but he doesn’t let me. His expression is granite as he peers down at me.

“Well, she’s wrong.” The conviction in his tone surprises me.

“Maybe,” I say, soft as a whisper. “She knows me better than you, though.”

He kisses the side of my mouth, trailing along my cheekbone and down my neck. “Then she doesn’t see you. You’re not broken, Dayna. You just shine too bright in a world full of boring fucks.” My world tilts. Did he really just say that? “Eat,” he adds, as if he hasn’t just turned my life on its head.

I don’t reply. I can’t. My throat feels like there’s a hand around it. No one has ever told me I shine—other than Katie and Ivy, but they’re morally obligated as my friends to say that shit.

Dash isn’t.

He could have walked away after the other night, never speak to me again. I wouldn’t have blamed him, and yet he just gave me the most dangerous gift—hope.

I shine.

For someone who has always felt like a stone among diamonds, I can’t stop the warmth spreading through me.

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