Page 101 of Everything You Hate
“Also yep.”
“Jasper threatened me in a town square full of witnesses.”
“I’m aware.” He lifts his head, and his eyes find mine. They are soft in a way I’ve never seen them, the gray gone almost silver in the afternoon light. “We’ll handle it.”
“We?”
“You and me.” He kisses my chin, my nose, and then finally my lips. “Two stubborn assholes, well matched.”
“Your family hates me,” I remind him.
“Shea doesn’t hate you. She’s hurt. There’s a difference.”
I think of her in the ruined garden, cradling a tulip bulb like a wounded bird. “She looked at me like I burned her house down.”
“She’s the most reasonable person in this family.” His thumb traces under my breast, over the ridge of my scar. “Give her time.”
“And Piper?”
“Piper already invited you to book club. That’s Piper-speak forI approve of you.”
“Bodhi?”
He snorts softly and opens his mouth over my breast. I don’t have as much feeling as I did before the surgery, but the warmth of his mouth still sends a shiver through me.
“Bodhi will come around,” he says against my skin. “He’s protective. That’s his job. He’ll grumble, and he’ll glare, and then he’ll accept it because he’s not actually an asshole, no matter how hard he tries to be.”
I laugh. The sound comes out watery, half-laugh, half-sob, and Dean lifts his head to look at me.
“Hey.” His thumb wipes under my eye. “None of that. You’re in, Hollywood. Whether you like it or not.”
“Sorry. I’m—” I gesture at my face, at the mess of tears and mascara and whatever else is happening between my nose and my chin. “I’m a disaster.”
“You’re beautiful.” He says it like he’s stating a fact about the tide. The water is eight fathoms deep. The channel runs east. You are beautiful. “You’ve always been beautiful. Even when you were being a pain in my ass on my ferry.”
I swipe at my eyes. “You hated me on that ferry.”
“God, I hated you.” His grin is crooked. “You were so put together. So polished. That smile. I wanted to push you overboard.”
“I wanted to push you overboard when you called me Hollywood.”
“Fair.” He kisses my forehead. My temple. The corner of my mouth. “Stay.”
“I said I would.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m staying, Dean.”
He exhales. The breath comes out of him like he’s been holding it for weeks.
Downstairs, a cupboard closes.
Shea’s still there.
I press my face into Dean’s chest one more time, then make myself sit up. “I have to go talk to her.”
His hand tightens. “You don’t have to do it now.”
