Take a Hint, Dani Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  He ran a fingertip over the curve of her ear, his smile tiny and teasing. “So. We broke a couple rules.”

  Don’t spend the night. Don’t catch feelings.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “We did. But, in my defense, Inez Holly told me to.”

  His fingertip’s journey stuttered to a stop, and he blinked. “What?”

  “Er . . .” Hmm. That might have been a weird thing to say, mightn’t it? But then, she was weird, and she’d always been weird with Zaf, and he didn’t seem to mind, so she cleared her throat and continued. “Yesterday in the bathroom Inez Holly told me a key part of success is remembering to chase joy, so. Here we are.”

  For a moment, Zaf looked so taken aback, she was worried she’d monumentally fucked up. Possibly by coming on way too strong. She’d been a little high on happiness yesterday, when she’d had her Zaf is joy moment, and now in the unforgiving morning light, it all seemed quite . . . embarrassing.

  But then he gave her a slight, crooked smile, and the tension in her chest eased. “That’s—sweet,” he said. Then a teasing light entered his eyes, and he murmured, “Joy, huh?”

  Dani blushed. “Whatever.” Definitely time to change the subject. Avoiding his gaze, she searched the room for another, safer topic and found one almost immediately.

  “Oh my God,” she said, leaning over him to reach for the bedside table. “The infamous romance novels.”

  Zaf snorted as she snatched up the book balanced next to his alarm clock. “I take it you didn’t notice the entire bookcase in my living room last night.”

  “I didn’t make it to your living room last night,” she reminded him. “You fucked me on the table, you fucked me in the bed, you produced cheese on toast from somewhere—”

  “The wonders of having a kitchen stocked with food instead of tea and plants,” he said dryly.

  “And then we fell asleep.” She sat up and studied the glossy little book in her hands. A pair of scandalously attractive black people in old-timey clothes graced the cover, each looking slightly pained by the intensity of their undying love. “Tempest,” she murmured, running her fingers over the title font. “Are you reading this right now?”

  “Almost done.”

  “What’s it about?”

  He lay back and gave her a lazy smile. “If you want to know, I’ll buy you a copy. No spoilers.”

  “Except for the happy ending.”

  He laughed. “That’s not a spoiler. That’s a safety net.”

  Dani paused, the words catching at something in her mind. “A safety net. You know, you never did tell me—why do you read these books, Zaf? How did you start?”

  His smile softened into something older, sadder. “Because after Dad and Zain died, I was clinically depressed for three years, and then my sister-in-law told me I was scaring her and threw a Harlequin Romance at my head. After she left, I wanted to find her and say sorry, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. So I picked up the book and started reading it. And . . .”

  He trailed off, and Dani’s heart stuttered, threatened to shatter. “Zaf,” she whispered. There was an ache to his words, old, but no less powerful for it. She set the book aside and lay back, rolling over to hold him whether he’d asked for it or not. Because she knew this man, and the look in his eyes told her that he had more to share, but couldn’t do it without a little help. When she rested her head on his chest, he relaxed as if he’d been waiting for her.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

  “You apologize unnecessarily,” she told him, and turned to meet his eyes. “I know you put a lot of stock in the fact that you’re ‘better’ now. That you handle things. That you cope. But coping takes a lot out of a person, too. And handling things doesn’t mean never struggling or slipping up. Life isn’t that black-and-white, not even close. So I want you to do or say or feel whatever the fuck you like, about everything, but especially about this. And I never want you to tell me you’re sorry for feeling things. Not ever again.”

  With every word she spoke—or rather, every word that some higher power tugged unwillingly from her mouth—Zaf’s gaze softened, and the tension she felt thrumming through his body trickled away. He looked at her with something tender in his eyes, and Dani knew she should regret the emotional honesty she’d just spewed all over him—but she didn’t. Not if it made him smile like that. Not if it made him breathe a little easier. She didn’t.

  Which was mildly terrifying.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, his hand moving to stroke her hair. For once, she couldn’t bring herself to push that quiet, meaningful thanks back in his face, so she closed her eyes and waited.

  Before long, he continued his story. “After the accident, I went a little bit off the rails. I think I already mentioned that. I’ve had anxiety ever since I can remember, but being without my dad and Zain—especially Zain . . .” Dani felt herself move with the rise and fall of Zaf’s chest as he took a deep breath. “There were seven years between us. My parents thought they couldn’t have another kid, but then I showed up. So he was kind of like a junior dad, you know what I mean? He was always there, and then he was gone, and I just couldn’t fucking breathe. People think anxiety makes you nervous all the time, and it can. But no one ever talks about how it makes you angry. Eventually the anger faded, though, and after that, I was . . . nothing. For a long, long time, I was nothing.”

  Dani felt the pain in his voice like a punch to the chest. “No, you weren’t. You’re always something, Zaf. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you don’t feel anything, you’re still kind, and smart, and thoughtful, and one grumpy motherfucker. You’re still you.”

  His smile was faint but real, and she was greedy for it. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.” He pulled her closer, kissed her cheek. “At the time, it was romance novels that reminded me. Since you’ve never read one, that probably sounds weird. But it’s all about emotion, Dan—the whole thing, the whole story, the whole point. Just book after book about people facing their issues head on, and handling it, and never, ever failing—at least, not for good. I felt like my world had already ended unhappily, but every book I read about someone who’d been through the worst and found happiness anyway seemed to say the opposite. Like my story didn’t need to be over if I didn’t want it to. Like, if I could just be strong enough to reclaim my emotions, and to work through them, maybe I’d be okay again. That’s kind of what inspired me to, er, keep going. To make good choices, even when feeling better seemed impossible.”

  There was a flood of something soft and all-consuming in Dani’s chest, and it was entirely for him. She didn’t know how to express something this big—couldn’t even give it a name. But she wanted him to feel it. So she pressed little kisses into his skin, every part of him that she could reach, and when he slowly started to relax beneath her, she knew he understood.

  She also knew now, really knew, why romance meant so much to him—not just the books, but that search for his own happily ever after. She’d thought he was just sweet, loving, maybe a little old-fashioned, but now she realized he was . . . inspired. That he was one of those people, one of many, whose lives had been forever changed by someone else’s words. And that wasn’t something Dani treated lightly. She made her living out of words. She knew very well that they could be everything.

  Which made this new information intimidating, to say the least.

  This fresh glimpse inside Zaf’s head made her lungs constrict, made her bones creak with the threat of extra weight, extra pressure. But she steeled her spine and tried to breathe through it, because now wasn’t the time to worry about all the ways she could disappoint him. And anyway, it wasn’t as if they were in love or something. They were just together, and trying. That was all. Baby steps.

  But a nervous little voice in the back of her mind whispered, You know where he wants those baby steps to take you.

  She pushed the voice away and focused on what mattered—on Zaf.

  “Will you tell me abou
t your family?”

  “Yeah.” He heaved a breath, and smiled. “You’ve met my niece. I know she acts like a normal human being in public, but don’t trust it; she’s feral.”

  “You must be very proud.”

  “Obviously. As for the rest of them . . . you’d like my sister—my sister-in-law, Kiran. She’s always in control. Thinks big. Focused. She runs a dress shop with my mum, and thousands of people follow her on Instagram to, er, look at her outfits.”

  “Really? Good Lord, she must dress well.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That explains why you have such firm opinions on clothing.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I only have firm opinions on your clothing. The opinions are that you look great in it and even better out of it.” He said these things with a matter-of-factness that had her grinning like a loon. “My mum,” he went on, “is bonkers, good at hiding it, and spends most of her life silently laughing at the rest of us while pretending to be calm and dignified.”

  “Oh, she sounds wonderful.”

  “She is,” Zaf said, with feeling. “And then, of course, there’s my dad and my brother. Dad was big into computers and had no idea why I hated school or why I liked running around on a pitch getting beat up, but he supported me anyway. He came to my games and cheered whenever I touched the ball, even when everyone else was silent.” He laughed at the memory, and the sound made Dani’s heart lift. “And Zain Bhai . . . Zain was my hero. He loved books and he loved rugby, almost as much as I did. He actually got up for dawn prayer every day, but he didn’t judge me if I overslept. When I started struggling with anxiety as a kid, he’s the one who noticed and figured out what was going on. He explained to my parents that it was serious and it was real, and he took me to the doctor. He was just . . .” Zaf’s voice cracked slightly before he recovered. “He was just special. And I miss him.”

  Dani bit her lip, because if she didn’t, a tsunami of emotion might spill out and drown them both. “Thank you,” she managed eventually, “for telling me.”

  “Thanks,” he said softly, “for being someone I can tell. I wish . . .”

  “What do you wish?”

  “That they could meet you.” He shrugged. “But at least Mum can.”

  The solemnity of the moment was cracked by the strained, wheezing noise Dani made as she choked on her tongue. “You . . . want me to meet your mother?” she squeaked.

  “Er . . .” He gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “You sound like you want to jump out of a window right now.”

  “No! No, nooo, no. It’s just . . .” She could count on one hand the number of family meetings she’d been involved in, post-Mateo. Actually, she could count on one finger, and that had been an unfortunate accident involving bad sex (there had been whipped cream, much to the dismay of both Dani and her vaginal pH), mind-blowingly poor timing, and a spare key under the doormat.

  “Relax,” Zaf snorted. “I’m not trying to wheel you out already. I’m just assuming it’ll happen eventually, unless you develop some seriously impressive avoidance skills.”

  Dani gave a nervous laugh and wondered just how serious those avoidance skills might have to be. Not that she’d ever avoid Zaf’s last remaining parent, whom he spoke about with such love in his voice, and with whom he was clearly quite close, and who might easily hate Dani’s guts or generally disapprove of her hair and her boobs and her witchcraft, not that Dani would care, but Zaf might care, and—

  “All right,” he said firmly, a slight smile curving his lips. “New subject, before your head explodes.”

  “My head’s not going to explode.”

  “No, it’s not, because we’re changing the subject.”

  She laughed. How could he always make her laugh? And why did he seem so much calmer about all this, as if things between them hadn’t transformed out of nowhere? Not that she was complaining, exactly. One of them needed to stay calm through all this new territory, and it made sense that Zaf would be that one. Even now, the way he touched her, the easy rhythm of his breaths and the warmth in his eyes, made her heart rate slow a little more.

  His thumb stroked her cheekbone, a soothing motion that went on for long moments before he spoke again. “I once asked you why you didn’t believe in relationships.”

  “I remember.”

  “You gave me an answer. But I’ve been wondering lately,” he said, his tone careful, “if you told me everything.”

  Dani swallowed. “No. I didn’t.”

  Beneath the sheets, his hands found her waist and held on tight. “Do you want to tell me now?”

  Not really. That was her gut instinct, anyway, but for once, she didn’t quite agree with it.

  She thought about all the things he’d told her, all the troubles he’d shared with her simply because she’d asked him to. The pain he’d endured, and fought, and beaten, and how honored she felt every time he gave her a glimpse of it. If he could tell her all that, surely she could tell him an embarrassing story or two, couldn’t she?

  Yes. Yes, she could.

  So Dani began. “I did fall in love once. During undergrad, I met a boy called Mateo. I’d never been in a relationship before him—I suppose I was a late bloomer. And a giant nerd.”

  Zaf squeezed her hip. “You’re still a giant nerd.”

  “This is true, but I was worse back then. Finding time to balance my giant nerdery with actual human interaction has never come naturally to me.”

  His lips twitched. “Really?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “I’m just saying, I hadn’t noticed.”

  She flicked him in the chest.

  He burst out laughing, and she bathed in the warmth of the sound. “Go on,” he managed eventually. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well. I realized I wasn’t as naturally emotive as other people. I knew I could be hyperfocused on my work, that I could be blunt and unsentimental. But I wanted to be a good girlfriend,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the memory. She’d been so young and so ridiculous, thinking she could fake certain qualities to make someone else happy. Thinking that she should. She’d never make that mistake again.

  Won’t you?

  She cleared her throat. “In the end, it didn’t matter. We were together for four years before I caught him fucking someone else. I mean, he was literally fucking someone else when I walked into the room. He didn’t know I was coming home. I was trying to surprise him. Because, you know. Romance.”

  Zaf growled. As in, that noise predatory animals make right before they eat someone. His expression was just as ferocious, too. “What an arsehole.”

  “Mmm,” Dani nodded. “That’s what I said. But then he told me that he’d been forced to begin an affair because I was so dull and inattentive and ice cold—that’s a direct quote, I suppose he was feeling poetic. Apparently, being with me left him lonely.”

  The hand on her hip tightened for a moment before relaxing finger by finger, as if by force. Zaf’s jaw was hard as he gritted out, “What?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Dani attempted a smile. It wasn’t her best. “The thing is, I’d been trying so hard—and I’d been so blissfully oblivious, certain I was getting it right—and the whole time, I was failing.”

  “Failing?” Zaf didn’t just scowl. He looked angrier than she’d ever seen him, practically bristling with it. Since he was bare-chested and dangerously handsome, Dani rather enjoyed it, but she tried not to look too thrilled, because he was clearly serious.

  Seriously pissed, that is.

  “You didn’t fail, Danika,” he snapped. “You loved someone, and you tried to make them happy. The fact you were incompatible isn’t a failure on anyone’s part. Failure is lying and cheating and blaming it on anything but your own sleazy, spineless bullshit. You know that, right?”

  “I—” She faltered, taken aback by the fire in his eyes. She’d been angry, too, of course she had. But maybe not quite this angry. Because, at the time, no—she hadn’t known that a
t all.

  “I know it now,” she said finally.

  “Good.” He held her tighter, pulled her closer, and looked even more murderous. “What a piece of shit. What did you say his last name was, again?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t.”

  Zaf grunted.

  “Anyway.” She swallowed. “After that, I refused to change myself for a relationship ever again. I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself by putting romance before my work, or bending over backward to make time for inane chats about how someone’s day was, or forcing myself to make grand gestures, or pretending to give a shit about anniversaries—”

  Zaf raised his head to squint at her. “You don’t give a shit about anniversaries?”

  She waved a hand. “Valentine’s Day exists for a reason. Marking the passage of time within your relationship as if it’s a prison sentence seems unnecessarily depressing.” She paused. “My point is, after I stopped compromising, every relationship I attempted went straight down the toilet. In the end, it seemed like a waste of everyone’s time and energy to keep trying. So I stopped.” And now she’d hopped back into the saddle by developing an attachment to the sweetest man on earth, who deserved the best relationship in the world and was smart enough to know it. Nice training wheels, Danika. Suddenly, her throat felt tight, her heart pounding against her ribs.

  “Hey,” Zaf said, squeezing her arm. “Listen. Not only was that guy a piece of shit, he had maggots for brains if he couldn’t see that you’re perfect. But I see it. And you do know how to make someone happy, Dan. Remember when I told you relationships shouldn’t feel like a drain? That, when it was worth it, and it was right, you’d want to compromise?”

  “I—yes?”

  “Well, maybe that’s where we’re at. Because all those things you think you can’t do, Danika, you already do them for me.” He paused. “Except for the anniversary thing. We’ll talk about that later.”