Chapter twenty-eight
Anchor
The water in the plunge pool was still, reflecting the dark Tulum sky above me. I was propped against the edge with my phone on a dry towel, scrolling TikTok looking for something specific. Eli had told me to plan a date night and I was taking it seriously. I wanted something that felt like Nique. Not a generic romantic dinner, something that would make her actually exhale for the first time since we landed.
I had just pulled up the Yellow Nest experience and hit confirm on the reservation when my screen switched to an incoming call.
Nique
“Hey beautiful,” I answered, but the smile dropped off my face the second I heard what came through the line.
It wasn’t a greeting. It was a broken hitching sob that hit me somewhere deep before I even understood what I was hearing.
“Dex,” she choked out.
I was already moving. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Where are you?” Her voice was so small it didn’t even sound like her. It sounded like someone much younger, someone who hadn’t learned yet how to hold themselves together.
“I’m at my villa.” I was out of the pool, water streaming off me, grabbing my towel without slowing down. “What happened, Nique? Talk to me.”
“I just need—” Another wave took over before she could finish.
“Where are you right now?”
“Just got back to my room.”
“Stay right there. I’m coming.”
I didn’t dry off. I pulled on a tee, stepped into my slides, and got moving. The path between our villas had never felt so long. Every rustle in the jungle around me made me pick up the pace until I was damn near running. When I reached her door I pounded on it with my fist.
“Nique. It’s me.”
The door swung open and the sight of her stopped me cold for half a second. She was still in that rhinestone dress from dinner, but her makeup was completely gone, mascara tracking down both cheeks in dark lines, her eyes red and swollen nearly shut. She looked like somebody died.
The second she saw me she came apart all over again. She collapsed forward and I caught her, my arms going around her before she could fall, her whole body shaking against my chest. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t ask who I needed to find or what had been said. I just held her and let her grieve whatever hadhappened in that restaurant, my hand moving slow over the back of her head, just keeping her anchored.
The last time I had seen her cry like this was at Grandma Anne’s funeral. She held everybody together that whole day and didn’t shed a single tear until it was just us. Then she collapsed. This was that same cry. Not surface pain. Something from the bottom of her.
I kicked the door shut behind us and just stood there in the entryway, one hand on her back, letting her get it out.
When the worst of it finally slowed down she pulled back enough to look at me. Her eyes were wrecked. She opened her mouth like she was going to try to explain and I shook my head.
“You don’t have to tell me anything tonight,” I said. “Whatever it is can wait.”
She nodded, her chin trembling.
“Let me help you get ready for bed.”
I led her to the edge of the bed and reached for the zipper of her dress, sliding it down slow and careful. I helped her step out of it and set it aside. Then I took her into the bathroom and reached for her Botanique products on the counter without having to ask which ones. I pumped the cleansing milk into my palms and started washing her face, my fingers moving in slow circles, careful around her eyes, working the ruined makeup away until her skin was clean and bare underneath.
I turned the shower on and tested the water until it was right. We stepped in together and I took the soap and worked it across her shoulders and down her back, slow and deliberate, trying to push the tension out of her muscles the way she had done for me in her lab back home. She pressed her forehead against my chest and I felt her breathing start to even out as the warm water moved over us both.
When we got out I wrapped her in a towel and patted her dry. I found her moisturizer and took my time working it into herskin, covering every inch of her with the same care I’d used in the shower. She stood still and let me and that alone told me how exhausted she was because Nique never just let anybody take care of her without putting up at least a small fight.
I didn’t look for pajamas. I pulled the covers back and watched her slide into the bed, then climbed in right behind her and pulled her back against my chest. Her body was still carrying the faint tremor of someone who had cried until they had nothing left, but I could feel it settling as I held her, her breathing getting heavier and slower.
I lay there in the dark with my chin resting on top of her head and listened to the sounds of the Tulum night outside the villa. Whatever had happened at that dinner had broken something open in her that was going to take time to process. I wasn’t going to push. I wasn’t going anywhere.