When I Say Yes (Necklace Trilogy 3)

I’m draped forward, over his shoulder, when time comes back to me. Dash grabs a tissue from the bedside. We end up on our backs, naked and staring up at the ceiling. The implications of all that just happened, of what I somehow confessed without confessing, come back to me. “How did you know?” I ask softly, turning my head to look at him.

I find that he’s already looking at me. “I saw it in your eyes. What did he do to you, Allie?”

My gaze returns to the ceiling and I decide that I was wrong. I wasn’t vulnerable when I leaned over the bed, naked. That wasn’t the test. This is the test, my willingness to bear my soul.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

What did he do to you?

Dash’s question hangs in the air, deserving of an answer.

Fighting for words—no, fighting my embarrassment—I sit up and scoot to the edge of the mattress. Dash grabs the blanket at the end of the bed and pulls it around my shoulders, as if he understands that naked is really naked right now. He stands and grabs his pants, pulling them on, leaving them low-slung and unzipped as we both sit on the side of the bed.

When I still haven’t spoken, Dash glances over at me. “Do you know why I fight?”

“Tell me,” I urge, eager for this look into Dash’s mind, eager for an escape from my own.

“I give the other guy control. Then, I take it back. I make sure he knows I always had control.”

“What are you saying?”

He strokes the hair from my face and tilts my face to his. “You always have control with me, baby. You say no. You say yes. Remember that.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have gone to fight tonight.”

“Did I fight?”

“No. No, you didn’t fight. Well, except with me.”

“And I didn’t win, nor did I want to win. Submission isn’t weakness, Allie,” he says, and suddenly I don’t believe we’re talking about his fight tonight. “It’s a choice. What we just did, that was about—”

“Trust,” I supply. “I do trust you, Dash.”

“I didn’t do much to deserve it tonight.”

“Yes, you did. You walked away from the fight.”

“Well, that was my point I was getting to. That was me submitting to you.”

I laugh. “You did not submit. You never submit.”

His lips curve. “No?”

“No,” I say, but my mood shifts back to serious. “And I don’t want you to, either.” I twist around to face him. “Don’t stop fighting for me. Stop for you. It’s destructive. I know you know that.”

His jaw sets hard and he closes his hand over mine, a sign he is present and with me, but his gaze shifts forward. “It was never my intent to fight again.”

“But your father triggered you.”

“My father will always trigger me.” He glances over at me. “The good news is our exposure to him will be rare.”

Our exposure. I like this phrase, but I focus on the content. I want to ask questions. For instance, why does his father blame him for his brother’s death? But asking too much and giving too little doesn’t seem fair or right. He gave this information to me, to ease me into a conversation about me, not him. And so, I say, “You’re nothing like Brandon, Dash. And please don’t misread what happened tonight. I would do anything with you.”

“That’s just it, Allie. You don’t need to. We just need to do us. There’s no such thing as too little or too much with me. Not with you. You’re the only person who could step into hell with me and pull me out. You need to know that. And if you need me to pull you out, I will.” He pauses for obvious emphasis and adds, “When you’re ready.”

“I am ready. I think seeing him, having him come at you like he did, just made him more present.”

“Brandon,” he says.

“Yes. Brandon. He triggered me. Your dad triggered you. All of this is a bad combination.”

“Tell me all the reasons I want to beat his ass.”

“You can’t beat his ass or he wins.”

“Not with my fists. I’m smarter than that, baby. That’s why I keep the fighting underground. Tell me. What did he do to you?”

I turn away from him and when I would stand, Dash catches the blanket on either side of me and turns me to face him. “There is nothing you can’t say to me,” he says.

I could tell him the same applies to me, but that feels like me pushing him, and my gut says that’s not what he needs right now. Give trust. Get trust, I think. I’ve kept too much from him, and if I hadn’t, Brandon would never have become a problem. “All right. I’ll tell you.” I swallow hard and launch into my story. “My father had just come back into my life. I’d hungered for a relationship with him in ways I didn’t realize until he showed up at my door. And Brandon is close to him, or was close to him. He introduced us. I think I fell for the idea of Brandon, and the new little family I’d have with him and my father, rather than actually for him.”