Chapter33
Ten Minutes
Dash’s POV
I could see Zinnie thinking over my words and my promises before she responded.
“It’s more than you losing sight of my happiness, Dash. It’s even beyond saying you wanted to get my sister pregnant. I’ve been thinking it over, and that wasn’t the real crime. What you said was horrible, uncalled for, hurtful, all of that and more, and then claiming it was a joke was even worse before you finally owned up to it,” Zinnie said. “But the real crime was you giving me the assurance that someone, for the first time in my life, saw me — me — and then years later smashing my assurance like a glass jar against the rocks.”
Her words threw me back to a conversation early in our relationship.
“Do you feel weird going out with the sister of someone you used to date?” Zinnie asked me after our fifth date — not counting the lunches in the cafeteria we’d been having almost every day –
as I was walking her back to her place.
“Not at all,” I’d told her, loving the feel of her hand in mine.
It felt as if internships and residencies put you in either adrenaline mode or crashing mode, and there weren’t many occasions to simply live and enjoy the tender little moments like this. My
time with Zinnie meant everything to me, and I found myself counting the hours until I could be with her again.
“And why is that?”
“Because, Zin, I dated Iris in high school for a year. That was twelve years ago. I know there are some high school sweetheart stories that last, but those are the rare exceptions and most don’t and shouldn’t last, and ours was one of those. High schoolers date, break up and move on. I never looked back after Iris and I broke up or thought about getting back together with her. I moved
on.”
“But Iris — “I
“But Iris nothing, Zin. Twelve years later, I saw a beautiful, gorgeous woman in the hospital cafeteria and something in me told me I needed to meet her because she’d change my life.” I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips. “I was right.”
Chapter33
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“Beautiful? Gorgeous?” she scoffed, and I hated that she didn’t see herself as someone who was absolutely breathtaking. I did everything I could think of to let Zinnie know how beautiful I found her, but changing her mind after years of Iris being the golden child was hard to overcome right
away.
“Yeah, Zin. Stunningly so. I was attracted to you right from the start, and then your personality enchanted me. It didn’t matter to me whose sister you were, especially not when it had been almost half a lifetime ago when I was a stupid teenager and hadn’t been that deep.”
“Mom and Iris weren’t happy when I told them I’d been seeing you,” she said, and her voice was
discouraged.
“I told you I’d be on the call when you told them we were dating.”
“That would have delayed the inevitable reckoning,” she muttered.
“Zin, please stop letting them —”
“They’re my family, Dash. I couldn’t keep it a secret forever. And they came around in the end. Kind of. Iris told me she’d forgive me for breaking sister code, and Mom said they could eventually get around my betrayal.”
“Zinnie, she and I dated in high school more than a decade ago. It’d be a different story if she and I had been dating for years as adults and had broken up two months before I ran into you in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t even close to that. They need to get over it because I’ve never felt this way before in my life, and I’m not going to give what we have up.”
“It’s only been five dates, Dash.”
“And daily calls, texts and lunches almost every day,” I added.
“You know I’m not used to going up against them.”
“If you’re feeling even half of what I’m already feeling, then you know what we have is special, Zin, and worth fighting for.”
She’d looked up at me. “I’m feeling the same way, Dash. And, um, Mom said she wants all of us to do lunch one day soon.”
“I hope you said no. We don’t need to do that yet.”
I was scared they’d try to guilt her into not seeing me, and she’d give in because she always had.
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.