Page 102 of On the Ropes
Tabitha
Afew minutes later and I was still collapsed on Dean’s chest, content to listen to the sound of his heart as my own finally slowed. He gently rolled onto his side and tucked me against him so we were facing each other on the narrow couch, in his living room starting to fill with dim morning light. That hushed witching hour had come and gone, and I now had a flight to catch tomorrow.
I stroked the soft skin at his temples. “How’s your head?”
He kissed the inside of my wrist. “Much, much better thanks to you.”
My cheeks got hot. He chuckled. “Not because of the sex. Though I’m sure levitating during an orgasm is good for your overall health.”
I hummed. “That good?”
He brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead. We inhaled together. Exhaled. “Yes. Always. But mostly I feel better because you took care of me. Thank you.”
“No thanking necessary,” I said firmly. “You would have done the same thing for me. Will you feel any leftover effects today?”
He paused. “Hard to say. That migraine broke fast. I’ll still be foggy today though. Exhausted by tonight. When they last longer, if they last for days, I feel tired and shaky for a long time after. Like my brain gets replaced with cotton balls.”
I scratched his scalp in gentle circles. I’d done this last night right before he’d drifted off to sleep, and he’d seemed to like it through the haze of pain. His eyes closed with a grateful-sounding sigh. “Does this help?”
“So much.”
We lay there together without speaking as I tended to him, so comfortable I was tempted to drift off asleep again. But then Dean murmured words I didn’t catch.
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
His eyes opened, lips rounding up. “You called me that last night.”
My face heated with another blush. “Well, you’re very…very sweet. I was merely stating a fact.”
Dean smirked. “Mm-hmm.”
I laughed. “Was that your question?”
“I asked if you had any more secrets. Now that you know how I felt about you in school.”
Curled into Dean’s body, soothed by his solid weight, it was harder to indulge my duck-and-weave style of answering vulnerable questions. Life, for me, had always been about moving forward. Dean talked about his tendency to overthink, but maybe my lightly packed way of life was a sneaky way not to think at all. My preference for leaping without looking didn’t end at silly dates or travel adventures. It also included never confronting my fears and guilt so I could jam my wrinkled clothing into a pack and board a plane.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, and his expression shifted at the tremble in my voice. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before?”
He nodded, passing his hand over my hair. “Of course.”
“When I was eleven years old, I came home early from school without calling first. My dad was at the diner. Alexis was staying late for some extracurricular thing. When I walked in, my mom was standing in our kitchen with a man I didn’t know.”
Dean’s entire body went tense against mine.
“His name was Roger. Now he’s my stepfather but my family doesn’t have a relationship with them at all. And if my mom was always dismissive of my bisexuality, Roger was—and is—worse.”
Dean kissed my palm.
“At the time I was only a kid. I didn’t know this was the man my mom was having an affair with. She told me he was a friend, but a secret one. She asked me not to tell Dad or Alexis or any of my friends. I didn’t. Sometimes I covered for her, though I wasn’t sure what that meant. When she was fighting with my dad or being awful to Alexis, I protected her. During the Bad Year, when she and my dad fought nonstop, I never spilled my secret. And when they announced their divorce, I already knew the reason was Roger.”
He lifted his head and stared at me intently. “Tabitha. You were just a little kid.”
I blinked rapidly so I wouldn’t cry. “She didn’t show us a lot of love. You know that. She was—is—very critical. And controlling. Then suddenly I was sharing this secret with her and I got all this special attention. Like she loved me, you know?”
The real devastating secret buried within my mother’s story was the one Alexis and I often danced around, too scared to really touch it. Did our mother love us at all?
“That would be confusing for anyone, at any age,” Dean said gently.
