Page 27 of Riot Rules
Dashiell lets out a steady, audible breath, and the warmth of it skates over the skin at the base of my neck—air that’s been inside ofhim, touching and caressingme. Holy fucking Christ, I am so doomed. “I wasn’t aware that you were a psychologist-in-training,” he murmurs.
“I’m not.”
He smiles to such a degree that a single dimple forms in his right cheek, shocking the hell out of me. Dashiell Lovett has a dimple. A saints-be-blesseddimple? How can fate bethiscruel? “You seem to know a lot about my motivations for someone whoisn’ta psychologist-in-training.” He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, then slowly releases it. I catch the flash of his tongue, and I’m dragged back to the hood of Pax’s Charger, to his lips crashing down on mine, and his tongue probing my mouth, his hands in my hair and my heart pounding out a demented rhythm against my ribcage.
He's just like Jason. Just like Kevin. He’s using. He can never mean anything to you.
The warning voice in my head is right. If Dash puts that poison in his body, then heispoison. I dig my fingernails into the doorframe, fighting to imbue my voice with some sense of authority. “You need to go home, Dash.”
“What if Iwasangry at you because I felt stupid?” he rushes out. “Look, I know what you’re thinking.”
This should be good. “And what’s that exactly?”
“That I’m an addict.” He says it easily, as ifaddictisn’t a problematic word, while I shudder against it.
“You’re saying you aren’t?”
He blinks. Rests his hip against the doorframe, shifting his weight. He looks into my eyes,reallylooking into them, so the two of us are fixed and aligned. And then he says, “Not the kind you’re thinking. I never touch the really hard stuff. I have plenty of vices, but nothing major. I don’t fuck with shit that’ll end up fucking me back.”
“So you lied?”
“I embellished the truth,” he says. “I was pissed.”
Am I supposed to believe him? Addicts have a tendency of lying. They’re really good at it, too. Jason could have convinced my mother the sky was green most days of the week. Standing there in front of those tombstones, I believed Dash earlier. If I were to spend any significant amount of time adding up all of the reasons Ishouldn’tbelieve him now, I’ll still be standing in my doorway at dawn. But…resentment fills my veins as I take a step back, opening the door to my room a little wider. Dashiell’s eyes widen a fraction—clearly, he wasn’t expecting me to take him at his word.
I arch an eyebrow at him. “What? You want me to tell you to go home for a fourth time?” In a perfect world, he’d turn around, walk back down the hallway and out of the academy. He’d leave, and he wouldn’t look back.
“I can come in?”
Alderman will have my hide for this if he finds out. “Yes. You can come in.For a minute.” I stress the last part.
Dash doesn’t acknowledge the time constraint I’ve put on our midnight meeting. He strolls into my tiny little box room like he’s entering the ballroom of a grand estate, head held high, jaw arrogantly set, like he’s ready to face down the East Coast elite.
The entitled, monied, self-assured energy rolling off him as he surveys my humble, kind of pathetic bedroom makes me want to dive under my bed covers and disappear. He doesn’t seem to notice just how awkward I am, though. He points at the end of my single bed, both eyebrows raised. His hair’s still soaking wet, swept back out of his face, but now a couple of long, dirty blond strands have fallen forward into his face. “Mind if I…?”
So polite. Hah! What a joke.
He does what he wants. Says what he wants. Takes what he wants. What would it matter if I refused his request? He’d do it anyway with a rogue smirk on his face, because no isn’t a word Dashiell Lovett has heard often during his lifetime.
I give him a tight smile, trying to get a handle on my emotions. One moment, I’m reeling at the fact that the guy I’ve been so obsessed with since I showed up in Mountain Lakes is sitting on the end of my bed. The next I’m wishing with every ounce of strength I possess that he will get up and leave. I’ve never been this conflicted. Not even when Alderman told me Jason had died of an overdose, and my mother was finally free of that sick fucker. My rescuer had come to me with the information gingerly, wondering if I’d want to go back to Grove Hill, posing the question with tense shoulders, afraid of what my response would be. I admit that giving him an answer caused me trouble.
Not because I wanted to go back to my mother. Being picked up by Alderman was the best thing that ever happened to me. But there was the guilt. Survivor’s guilt, Alderman calls it. I got the hell out of Grove Hill and I never looked back. My mother wasn’t so lucky. While I was becoming a new person with a promising, bright new future, my mom was stuck there in that house with Jason, being beaten black and blue, working her fingers to the bone to feed her piece of shit boyfriend’s many addictions. She left me with him, though. She knew what he wanted to do to me, and still she left me with him every night, when she could have taken me with her to work. She always used to, before Jason came along.
Dashiell plants himself on top of my duvet, leaning back against the wall, looking around the room, and I resist the urge to laugh out loud. He’s so out of place here. He takes in all of my books and the clothes that I neglected to fold before bed, slung over the back of the chair at my desk, my telescope on its stand in the corner and the polaroid pictures, tacked to the wall next to my star charts…
“You have a lot of stuff for such a small space.”
“Sorry. Should I throw out a few things? Make room for your ego?”
He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just an observation. No need to snap. We’ll never conduct a civil conversation if you verbally assault me every time you open your mouth.”
“And why are we trying to conduct a civil conversation again? Because I think I made myself perfectly clear earlier this afternoon. I don’t want anything to do with a guy who—uh, whoa, whoa,WHOA!”I nearly drop down dead when Dash takes hold of the bottom of his damp t-shirt and tugs it over his head. I sure as hell lose my train of thought. “Uh…excuse…what…haha! Um.No. No, put that back on. Put that back on this instant.”
Wolf Hall’s very lax when it comes to dress code, but the academy administration insists that its studentsdowear clothes at all times. I saw Dash in his boxers at the hospital, but I was too stunned by all of the blood to check him out. Now, I’m paying attention. His chest is packed with muscle, his skin a warm golden color. I try not to let my eyes roam downwards, but soon my gaze is shifting from his collar bones, over his pecs, slipping helplessly over his abs, directly toward—
Oh my god. Oh my good fucking god, I just looked directly at his dick.
Laughter fills my little bedroom. “Everything okay, Mendoza? You seem a little flustered.”
