Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2)(46)
Zaf might’ve been embarrassed about dealing with a full-blown panic attack in front of a woman he wanted to sleep with—if he hadn’t spent the last couple of years developing a curriculum designed to teach boys that mental health struggles didn’t make them less masculine, and that there was nothing wrong with being less masculine, anyway. So, once he pulled himself together, he felt nothing but familiar exhaustion, and the glitter of laughing with Dani, and a slight annoyance that he hadn’t brought his antianxiety meds.
He’d handled things, though. He’d handled things well. So he’d focus on that. Or maybe on Dani, who was so pretty, he could stare at her all day.
Until she ruined things by asking hard questions like “Should we talk about the fact that you’re nervous?”
Zaf sighed and made himself concentrate on words instead of the fine little creases at the corners of her eyes. “I’m not nervous. It’s just, if I disgrace myself on the radio, my mother will beat me with a slipper every day for at least the next year. And I bruise like a peach.”
She swept a laughing gaze over him. “You do look rather delicate.”
“You have no idea.” Questions and concern successfully dodged, as always. Now they’d leave the conversation there, go inside, and never, ever discuss exactly what had triggered him, because Dani wasn’t his family or his forever, which meant she didn’t need to know.
But she looked at him—just looked at him, with this quiet, conscious acceptance, as if to say Maybe you’re hiding the whole story, but if you need to, I’ll let you. And something about that look leaned on every last one of Zaf’s pressure points—not in a painful way, not exactly. More like a massage that hurt really fucking good.
Maybe she wasn’t family or forever, but she was a really good friend. Beneath his memories of moments like this going pear-shaped, one undeniable fact shone like a star: Dani didn’t hurt people and she didn’t make things worse. She always—always—tried to make them better. That must be why, for the first time in a long time, he wanted to keep talking more than he wanted to shut someone down.
He could trust her. He did trust her. He would trust her.
“The thing is,” he said, “I’m nervous because, back when I used to play, something bad happened. One day my dad and brother were in a car crash, and they, uh, died.” He always stumbled over that part. Not because it hurt—although it really fucking did—but because it seemed so . . . small. So simple and flat and anticlimactic a phrase for something as monumental as death. You told people “they died,” and hell was folded up inside those two short words. Some people got it. Some people didn’t.
He knew the minute he met Dani’s eyes that she did.
“Oh,” she breathed, and caught both his hands in her own, as if she knew instinctively that once upon a time, he’d fallen apart—but if she just held him tightly enough now, the memory of it might be a little easier.
And it was easier with her hands on him and her eyes so soft and warm. Suddenly, he had no idea why he’d worried she might react the wrong way to any part of this story. Well, yes, he did: anxiety. That was why. But still. Dani was never going to treat him like a sideshow, because she was a good person. And if she had, she wouldn’t have been a good person, so what she thought wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
He’d never . . . he’d never quite looked at it like that.
“I was at practice,” he said, steeling his spine because if he didn’t, he might wobble, just a little bit. “My phone was off. But it was a big crash, locally, and there were a couple of sports outlets that paid extra attention to me—I don’t know if you know, but there aren’t many Muslim rugby players. It was a, er, point of interest.” He rolled his eyes as he said the words. “Most of them were just waiting for me to fuck up. But anyway. I got more press than I technically should’ve, and when I left practice, there was a reporter waiting for me.”
Dani’s eyes widened. “Zaf . . .”
“He told me. He said, ‘Zafir, how do you feel about the tragic death of your father and brother?’ ”
She pressed a shaking hand to her lips. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“I broke his nose.” Zaf paused. “That’s what I heard, anyway. I don’t really remember.” He flashed her a smile, because telling this story shouldn’t be sad; it was already too much to bear inside his head. “I was always surprised he didn’t press charges, but—”
“But you would’ve been well within your rights to murder him, and he probably knew it,” Dani snapped, rage flickering around her like flames, so intense he could feel the heat. He wasn’t angry anymore, had worked hard not to be, but for some reason he liked seeing that anger in her. Maybe because it was for him. She was feeling for him, and it made him hungry for more.
Get a grip. He cleared his throat and continued. “Life went downhill from there. Everything fell apart, or maybe I ripped it apart with my bare hands. I don’t know. I was kind of going through some shit.” She laughed softly then, just like he’d wanted her to, and even more pressure slipped away. “I made some bad choices, wanted to fight the world. And for about a week, a few of those right-wing rags decided following me around was their new favorite thing. It didn’t last long—I wasn’t famous enough. But it felt like forever to me. So now, I guess, I’m a bit . . . private.” That wasn’t the full story, just a fraction of it. Because the press had left Zaf alone eventually, but grief hadn’t. Not for a long, long time. He wasn’t going to tell her about the heights his anxiety had reached, or how it turned out depression could fuel rage like nothing else, or how bleak it felt when the fire ran out and the demons were all you had left. Not right now, anyway.