Page 19 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

SHANA

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO

W hat are you doing here?” Dustin paces the corner of the courthouse, next to the preproom. I slipped from it when I saw his head through the slit-glass window. “I told you not to come.”

“I had a summons.”

He growls, digging his hands through his hair and fisting it at the roots. I worry it might split his scalp. I grab his arm before I know what I’m doing and bring it back to his side, holding his hand in mine.

It feels like it was made to fit there.

“You know we can’t…” He holds up our joined hands, gently prying my fingers free. “We can’t do this.”

I shake my head. “I’m so tired of this, Dustin. It’s bullshit!”

I rarely curse, but to hell with it all! I will curse from the mountain tops if he’ll finally hear me.

“You saved me.” I meet his widened eyes, tears welling in my own, and I catch the way his brow furrows. I couldn’t miss it.

Why won’t you let yourself love me?

Thomas’ aunt and cousins stride past us, glowering. The youngest Remington child stares the longest. His eyes are the same pale blue I watched turn black beneath the fists of the man I love.

I slam my eyes closed and turn into his arms before I can stop myself.

“Dustin, I thought he would…that I’d be—” My voice cracks as the tears fall over my vision, down my cheeks, across my skin like fingers, digging my flesh, lifting my skirt, the fear surging through me as Thomas’ hands slid down my front and almost took from me what I’ve been saving for the very man in front of me.

I break like a dam, tears flowing faster than ever before.

“Fuck, Shay.” He scoops me in his arms until we’re sitting by the large, stained windows, hearts and daggers, ironically painted over broken glass.

“I will never let anyone hurt you. Do you hear me? I will fight them all to keep you smiling. But I don’t want you here for this.

Being around that fucker has you in tears. You shouldn’t have to see his face.”

“I’m the only witness who was named, Dustin.

That’s why your lawyer called my dad, and why he agreed to let me be here in the first place.

I’m your only option unless you want to be locked up for another six months, or worse, tried as an adult, because they can do that, Dustin.

You know that? I ingested like six books on it this week alone. I’m not letting them do that to you.”

I wipe my face on the back of my sleeves and sit up, scooting a few inches away when the opposing counsel walks in and sees us cozy.

I want no reason for them to see a conflict of interest with me as witness, I watch far too much Law and Order to be duped by a technicality like that.

I shouldn’t even be talking to Dustin at all.

He should be in his prep room, and I should be in mine.

“I’m a fuckup, Shay.” Dustin raises his head to look at me, arms resting atop his knees.

“You’re not.”

“Yes, Shana I am. My dad thinks it, the judge thinks it. Even my own mother’s stopped fighting for me, drinking anything and everything so she can’t hear the things her friends at the club whisper about her once prized champion of a son.

I’m not on the rodeo team anymore. I have no plans for college.

I’m not even sure any of them would take me with my record.

Hell, half the entry level internships for architectural assistants won’t even consider me with the stain on my application.

Do you want that life, Shana? Do you want a fuckup who can’t control his anger and makes milkshakes for the rest of his life? ”

Tears shine in his eyes, and I think he might cry. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. The most brilliant creatures on earth can’t escape emotion.

“Did you know an octopus can remember individual faces? And how they felt with each person?” I ask him, my body humming with something I can’t place.

Encouragement, maybe.

Hope.

Salvation.

“When my mom died…” I fiddle with my cuticles. “When she passed, I spent every second I wasn’t dancing at the aquarium.”

A crinkle forms between his eyes as he listens to my story, and I settle back into the bench, closing mine as I picture her. Beautiful black hair, waves and waves of it, just like mine. It flowed down her back and shined in the light. I used to hold it to soothe my tears.

What would she say if she were here today?

She’d take one look at this boy, fighting my monsters and banishing my demons… fighting for my honor.

And she would thank him. She would wrap him up and rock him in her arms, praising everything he stood for.

Because he stands for everything I stand for, if only he could see.

I see you, a secret note once said. I see the way you dance through tears.

“She loved the octopus tank. If you don’t remember, she was a volunteer.

She’d take me there as a child. Dev came a few times, and the other kids whose moms worked there, my friend Lucy and her brother—I can’t remember his name—but we had so much fun exploring that place.

We’d sneak into the break room and use the sugar packets to build little houses for the hermit crabs, go to the cephalopod tanks and watch them swim around.

Got to hold them a few times, too. They feel different than you’d imagine. Tentacles are strong .”

I smile, explaining the time one of them swiped mom’s ring from her finger. I laughed and laughed, following him around the glass walls as he swam it to his garden at the very bottom. “The staff had a good laugh about it too, after they swam in for the retrieval that is.”

Dustin’s mouth tilts, and that fills me with purpose. I want to soothe his pain, to slay his dragons right back, even if they are only in his mind.

“Humans aren’t the only animals to feel anger and hopelessness, you know. Truman the octopus—”

“Wait, Truman? Really?” He forces back a smile.

“Yes, Truman! What else would you call him?”

“I don’t know, Squidward , or something.”

“ Squidward is a squid,” I deadpan, holding his gaze in an unspoken staring contest. His eyes narrow. He wants me to laugh first, but I won’t.

I will hold onto this moment where only he and I exist, debating reasonable invertebrate names forever, if it means I’ll see his eyes this way.

Smiling.

But he knows how to bend me. Dustin flicks his tongue between his lips and drags it across the bottom until it snags on his piercing.

He sucks it in and lets it pop free from his teeth with a tug I feel on every inch of my body, and he can tell.

His eyes flare a dark, envious green that I want to brand over my skin.

“Okay, you win!” I sputter, laughter finally falling out of me.

He laughs too, the first one I’ve heard from him since he found those girls in the woods.

“Truman the octopus didn’t like one of his handlers.

He formed a bit of a grudge against her.

He’d ink her path whenever she entered his space.

Then one day, she left for college and didn’t return for a long time.

His inking miraculously stopped.” I wiggle my eyebrows, loving this part of the story just like I did as a child.

“But, when she came back, all it took was one step back into his tank and Truman blasted her with an ink stream, like she’d never left.

He remembered her. And how he felt. His emotions took over and his grudge was unleashed. Splat !”

“Thanks for making me laugh.” Dustin takes my hand and squeezes it. “I should have just punched him once.”

“But then we wouldn’t have known you can count to five.” I point out, tongue in cheek.

“Ha-ha.” He tugs my hair. “You know what I mean. I could have taken you away and he’d be fine. We wouldn’t be in this courthouse waiting for—”

“Aren’t you listening? I don’t care if you ink up my waters, Dustin.

I’ll swim in the darkness for the rest of my life it means we’re together.

” I lean in, and I press a soft kiss to his cheek.

“You are a hero, no matter what it says on paper. No matter who got messed up because of it. Don’t let this cloud you.

You are strength and you are hope. And if I’m your moon, you’re my octopus. ”

PRESENT DAY

Haans has a Dutch accent. He has appeared in three seasons of Blinded by Love, RealTea’s hottest ‘authentic’ dating show. Apparently, those authentic people are all paid actors and it’s heavily scripted.

I must say, even for a fake date, this conversation is worlds more interesting than my last date with the letchy lawyer.

But I still find myself wishing I were surrounded by waffle cones, coffee pots, and the brooding set of dark green eyes that haven’t stopped looking this way since Haans fit his hand around mine.

What are you gonna do about it?

My breath catches in my chest at that thought. It feels wrong, this taunting. I want him to want me for the sheer fact that he does, not by manipulation.

“I can’t do this,” I tell Haans.

I don’t want to make him jealous or angry.

“I love him. Even when I wish I didn’t.” Even as I’m practically begging him to love me back. “What is wrong with me?”

He drags our hands under the table and winks with a head nod toward my watcher. “People only see what they think. You don’t want to make him jealous? I like that about you.”

I cock my head to the side. “You do?”

“It takes courage. I think you should ditch Lemon’s plan and just tell him.”

“Said by the actor who already got paid.”

He winks, and we both laugh. It’s affectionless, platonic , but it’s the cherry on top for my stalker.

And just like with his previous messages, my heart does a timestep for his ping.

Watcher: What is your hand doing under the table?

His blatant jealousy and brooding possession fires something up inside me. I wish I could say it was feminism, instead it’s a flirty, wanton, lust-filled Shana that wishes he’d stalk his way over here and do all the things from my dreams.

That’s the Shana that replies to his ping.

DancerBaby69: You like to watch.

DancerBaby69: Dustin.

My cheeks heat, I feel the tingle spreading across my face as it glows with pride. I didn’t know I could be that forward, but there’s a whole new tenacity, clawing its way free with each text.

Ping.

Watcher: You know very well I don’t want to watch this.

“Ask if he wants to do more than watch,” Haans suggests. My mouth drops at the dirtiness of that, but it is what I want, and Haans is right. The whole point of this is to tempt Dustin to stop hiding behind his phone.

I clink my ice around in my water cup, forcing my gaze forward, despite my instincts. I want to turn. To check Dustin’s face and read the lines etched across it, scripts to reveal how he feels since he only seems to communicate in secret text and purple prose.

And it works.

Haans’ eyes widen as Dustin strides across the restaurant, his boots thudding against the tile floors.

“You should probably run.” I wince, but Dustin just stops beside the table, nodding politely.

Not breaking his hands.

I release a relieved breath into the space between the two men.

“Can we talk, Shay?”

Haans stands and nods. “Good luck, Licht.”

“Licht?” I ask him, but he just winks.

“Don’t forget how bright you shine, even in total darkness.” He makes it out the door just before the familiar Nautica permeates my senses.

Dustin watches Haans leave the bar, cursing beneath his breath.

I roll my eyes. Doesn’t this emotional oaf know who I love by now? He’s incredulous.

I don’t have to see the wild storm in Dustin’s eyes to know it’s there. I feel every spark of his energy charge my soul like a circuit, and my hand curls around my phone as I smirk down at the ping that brought him standing here.

DancerBaby69: Then touch me.