"The good thing is your big behemoth butt hasn't gotten in trouble again, and now you aren't defacing public buildings." At that, I lifted both of my eyebrows quickly.

I could tell his was in a good mood considering the conversation. "I found a better canvas, you know." He touched the back of the hand I had loose at my side with his index finger. "A permanent one."

Oh boy. I suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe deeply. I had to settle for a shaky smile at the small physical contact. "And it all started because of your comics."

His hand moved away as he reached up to put a hand on the side of the frame, caging me in on one side. "If it wasn't for all this shit, I wouldn't have a damn thing."

Which was true. What else would he have done if he hadn't gotten seduced into art by his comic books? It'd brought his gift to life, I figured.

"I wish I was half as talented at anything as you are at art," I sighed. "But I'm not good at anything."

Two hands planted themselves on my shoulders. "I'm sure you're good at somethin', babe."

I snorted. "Nothing useful."

"Babe." He said the nickname in a slithering tone, part admonishing, part sigh.

“It’s fine. It’s not too late to learn to be good at something, right?”

The heat on my back intensified as he took a step closer to me, his long fingers dug into my tissues. “I was your age when I got out of jail, Ritz. You got time to figure shit out.” He didn't say anything else after that little pep talk. He just stood there, massaging my shoulders for long moments until he squeezed them tightly once and stepped back. "Lemme show you somethin’."

I shook off the dreamy haze his hands put me under and tried to focus on something other than his out-of-the-blue affection. Dex opened a creaky closet door while I looked over one of the big bookshelves that had collectible action figures on it still in their packaging.

"Here we go," he murmured, throwing a cardboard lid onto the floor. He smiled up at me as he held out a comic book I didn't recognize. Tightly restrained excitement vibrated through his bones. "Look, this is the first one Ma ever bought me."

I took his offering with the widest smile I could muster when he grinned at me like he'd won the lottery.

And it was that smile that had me plastered on the ground next to him for an hour, going through an impressive selection of comic books that Dex explained he’d collected through his early teen years. He was so painstakingly careful with each item he showed me, so serious explaining the editions and their value, that I ate it all up like a starved woman on the floor with him.

He’d tell me something special about each comic, and then he’d ask me something about myself like it was a second thought. What my favorite superhero movie was. If I’d liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid. Who my favorite X-Men was.

Never in a million years would I have ever expected Dex to even have a favorite X-Men or Ninja Turtle, much less care about which one was mine.

"What do your friends think of all this?" I asked him.

He looked me dead in the eye. "I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks." Then he'd paused and quirked a cheek up, like he regretted the word choice he'd used. "But nobody else except Shane's seen 'em. I think Sonny and Trip remember I was into 'em when we were kids but...it's my one thing I don't gotta share with anybody."

God. Where was Dex The Dick when I needed him to keep me far away from this charming monster?

I sucked up how tired I was and looked through another couple boxes he had in his closet.

When I started yawning every couple of minutes, he sat back with his hands propped behind his butt. “You want the bed?”

I shook my head. “I’ll be fine on the couch.

“I’m not gonna ask you twice,” he warned me, smiling wearily.

“Thanks, but I’ll survive.” What I probably wouldn't survive was another night spent in the same bed with him after our day together. Specifically, after I'd become personal with the hot, heavy touch he was capable of. "I need to get used to sleeping on the couch again if I'm ever going to try and get my own place in the future."

I'd been thinking about my financial situation a lot recently, when I wasn’t thinking about all this crap with my dad. Though I liked living with Sonny, I didn’t want to take advantage of him. He would never kick me out but I didn’t want to mooch. I was too old for that. Most importantly, I didn’t want him to think that I would ever use him. He’d done more than enough for me.

So I needed to move out at some point in the sort-of distant future. I’d saved pretty much all of my paychecks except for gas, my Florida medical bills, and other little things, but it still wouldn’t be enough to pay a first month and deposit on even the cheapest apartment, and have money left over to buy some furniture. Which meant that I'd probably invest in a couch whenever I got my own place and sleep on that until I could afford a bed.

Then there was the opportunity to go back to school, too. But that was money I didn't have either, dang it. Why exactly couldn't it grow on trees?

Dex’s face scrunched up. “Why?"

"I can't live with Son forever." I blinked at him.

His face screwed up even more. "You can't live by yourself."

"Yes I can."

"No, you can't," he snapped back.

Heaven help me. "I can live by myself."

There was no hesitation in his voice when he ground out, "The hell you are."

"Dex." I glared at him. "You already know it was just me and my brother for a while, and then I lived with a roommate for a year. I'm not a little kid, and I'm not an idiot. I can live alone."

He opened his mouth and my poor eyes went straight to those pink lips. Then he shut it so quickly that if I wouldn't have been looking, I would have missed him opening it, period. That gaze swept over my face, boring straight into my eyes in what I couldn't miss as being an act of domination.

And obviously when he refused to break our eye contact, I had to accept that this wasn't a battle I was going to win. Regardless, he didn't have a say with what I did and it wasn't like I was going to be moving anywhere in the near future.

I reached out and poked him with my index finger in the shoulder. "Chill out. I don't have enough money yet anyway. And if I go back to school, it'll take me even longer."

The smug jerk smiled slowly.

I should have known by then that his slow smile wasn't a positive sign.

~ * ~ *

Two days later, in the middle of my lunch break, I found out why Dex had been such a sly jerk in his spare bedroom.

The thick packet slid across the counter slowly, pushed by two tattooed fingers I recognized from the length alone.

Austin Community College: Fall Credit Catalog

“There’s info in there about certificates and degrees and shit you can get from 'em,” Dex’s gruff voice explained. “Classes start next month. I’ll help you pay for ‘em if you want, you know. You could go early before we open.”

I didn't know whether to look at the catalog that sat right next to the bean salad I'd brought from Dex's house, or look at the man himself.