After a while, I tried to sit up but the heavy hand on the middle of my back kept me down.
"You feel better now?" Dex whispered.
I sniffled. "I guess."
"You better, babe." His fingers inched down like he was acting out the Itsy-Bitsy Spider on me. "I know you’re hurtin' but that's enough."
Who the hell was this guy to tell me I'd cried enough or not? I tried to push back again but he wasn't having it. Dex made a tisking sound.
"No, no, no. You're gonna listen to me, Ritz. And you listen good."
Holy crap, this was going to be just like yia-yia's lectures.
"That fuck is not worth your tears. He is not worth the love you've given him. He doesn't deserve it and he never will. I'm sure you needed your dad as a kiddo, honey, but you got a shitty one. And that shitty one is not gonna define you. He is not gonna be the reason you cry or don't trust people ever again.
"You're beautiful, and you're so fuckin' sweet, and you're smart, Ritz. You have to get that from your ma because you definitely don't get that shit from your pa. Knowin' Son and how much he feels for you, I know your ma wouldn't want you to suffer like you are."
His fingers tightened on my nape. "You are never gonna cry over that asshole again. I don't even want you to get mad when you think of him. He doesn't exist anymore. His shit will never hurt you again. Do you hear me?"
I hiccupped into the pillow, nodding just barely. I felt so overwhelmed, so raw, it was draining. I'd think about him again, there was no way I couldn't but at the moment, it was nice to believe that I could wash myself of Curt Taylor.
Dex's fingers extended to where the palm covered all of the back of my neck and his fingers wrapped around most of my throat. "My ma used to tell me you have to fight through some shitty ass days to get to the best days of your life. So I’m tellin’ you now, that you gotta hang in there. I swear to you, after this shit is over, you’re not gonna have to worry about him ever again.” His thumb dug deep into my flesh.
I made a noise that sounded like I was dying. “Oh Dex.”
“Babe, you’re the sweetest little girl I’ve ever met. You deserve better than this broken heart bullshit.” His fingers kneaded the muscles on my neck. “If I ever see that beautiful face cryin’ again over somethin’ that worthless sack of shit did, I’m gonna make your daddy regret ever meetin’ your ma, you got it?”
A different kind of emotion overwhelmed me, temporarily blinding all the anger and resentment that had pierced my body. It made my insides clench and want to cry all over again. Because here was this man who had just called me a dumb little shit earlier, rubbing my back and promising things that were like some kind of super salve.
The words meant more because they came from Dex. Dex who wouldn’t spout crap for the sake of being nice.
So when I sat up abruptly a minute later, letting his hand drop back to his lap, I inhaled this suffering, shuddering breath. I curled my lips behind my teeth and took in the dark scruff lining his jaw, the hard clench of his mouth, and I gulped.
“Would you mind giving me a hug?”
His mouth opened for a split second and his eyes flashed to mine, a trace of something in them. He was silent though, unmoving. I noticed a nerve under his eye twitching.
Dex’s pause had me feeling like a jackass for a minute. If I really thought about it, he didn’t strike me as the hugging type. Plus, I mean, who asks for a hug? Who—
“C’mere,” he urged in his low voice.
I looked at him for a heartbeat, still feeling a little pathetic, but when he shifted onto his hip and lowered his chin to give me this look...I stopped caring. I shuffled forward and just went for it. Arms around his ribs, my forehead to his cheek.
It took a second but his arms wound their way around me. One band over my shoulders, the other around the middle of my back. And he squeezed. Dex held me to him, the faint smell of laundry detergent and Dex filling my nostrils. Warm skin, warm body, warm, warm, warm. So much warmth, this wild choke lodged in my throat.
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes.
He didn’t say anything either, but I felt the deep breath that inflated his chest before he let it out over my ear.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Would you quit looking at me like that?"
For the last five minutes, Dex had been sitting across the counter from me, staring. With his coffee cup raised just over his mouth, those dark blue eyes had been locked in my direction. At first I'd thought that there may have been maple syrup smothered somewhere on me but I'd touched all over and there was nothing there.