“Aight, let’s go,” he said, already moving.
“Where the hell y’all going?” Paris shouted over Nicole’s performance of Boo’d Up.
“To sleep. I’ll see y’all at breakfast,” I called back without turning around.
Dex took my hand, his grip firm and unhurried as he led me out of the neon light and onto the path toward the villas. The shift was immediate. One moment it was noise and laughter and the next it was just the sound of our footsteps on the stone.
"How you feeling?" he asked once we were alone on the path. "I know it was probably tough, seeing your mom."
That comment was like water to a flame. The sexual tension evaporated, replaced by a sudden, sharp ache in my chest I’d been shoving down since the appetizers.
"“I’m alright,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “I’ll grin and bear it. Once this trip is over she goes back to Atlanta and I go back to Mobile and it’ll probably be another five years before I see her again.”
“Is that how you want it?” he asked.
The question stripped me down to something raw.
Because no. That wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to ask her why Nel and I were never enough to stay for but Whitley and Deuce were worth everything. I usually had a PhD in hiding hurt behind anger but tonight the alcohol had gotten to it first.
I started crying before I could stop it. Ugly, loud, body shaking sobbing right there on the path. The kind of crying that doesn’t care where you are or who might hear.
“Come here baby,” Dex said. He didn’t hesitate. He used the key on his wrist to swipe into the villa we were standing in front of and I felt immediate relief when I realized it was his.
He pulled me inside and shut the door behind us. The room was dim and smelled like sea salt and his cologne. Before I could catch my breath he pulled me into his chest and held me there, letting me ruin his linen shirt with mascara and grief.
“Let it out,” he said, his hands moving in slow circles on my back. “I’ve got you.”
I stood there in his arms and tried to reconcile the man holding me with the one I had spent years keeping at a distance. This wasn’t the Dex I had built my walls against. That Dex was reckless and careless with the people who loved him. This one had shown up at a jail at two in the morning. This one had sat in a courtroom for me. This one was standing in Mexico holding me together while I fell apart over a woman who had nothing to do with him.
The line between gratitude and desire got very thin very fast.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, reached up, and kissed him. He kissed me back for one long unguarded second before his hands came down and gently caught my wrists.
“You gotta chill,” he said against my mouth.
“Why?” I tried to pull free.
He held my wrists against his chest, steady, so I could feel his heart knocking hard and fast under my palms.
“Because you’re drunk and you’re hurting,” he said, his voice dropping into that low protective register. “Both times we did this you woke up regretting it and I don’t want that for us anymore.”
I looked up at him, my eyes still blurry. “Who said I’d regret it?”
“You did. Every single time,” he said, his thumb tracing slow across the back of my hand. “I want you to want me Nique. Not just something to drown out the sound of Stella’s voice.”
Hearing her name snapped something shut in me. The vulnerability disappeared and the wall came up fast and familiar.
I stepped back. “Move so I can go to my room.”
“Why you always gotta be mean?” he asked, not moving an inch.
“You think I’m stupid?” I asked, the alcohol fueling a sudden, irrational fire. “You probably already fucked Amina and don’t have any stamina left for me.”
Dex let out a dry, dark laugh. He didn’t even bother arguing; he just looked down, pointedly indicating the hard, thick ridge straining against the fabric of his shorts.
“You don’t believe that bullshit at all,” he said, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying level of clarity. “Plus, if you even thought I touched Amina, you wouldn’t be trying to fuck me right now. I know you better than that.”
The truth of it stung. “Move, Dex,” I said, and the tears were back, hot and messy.