Under Locke by Mariana Zapata

flinch at the same time he sucked in a low, barely audible breath. Then he just stared at me. Eye to eye. Me having to look up at him because while I wasn’t short, he still towered over me.
     
    Dex lifted a hand to press his fingertips to his upper lip. Silent. His odd shade of blue eyes were penetrating mine, probably hoping that I’d go back to my state of being a quiet, avoiding wuss. “Look...I'm sorry.”
     
    Did he say he was sorry?
     
    "I can be a fuckin' asshole sometimes," he kept going.
     
    Well, I wasn't going to argue with him on that point, though I wasn't exactly positive why he felt obligated to care whether or not he'd hurt my feelings. Probably because of Sonny. I could only imagine what he'd threatened him with.
     
    "You're impatient and you're mean," I corrected him, not bothering to admit that I'd called him an asshole in my head at least a dozen times. A dozen times an hour that is. “You’re rude—and forgive me for saying it, but you make some dumb friggin’ decisions. And you think I’m stupid? Why the hell would you risk hurting your hand by getting into fights with people? That’s stupid.” Should I have stopped? Yes. Did I? No. “What do you have to be so pissed off about anyway?”
     
    It took me a second before what I said really hit me. What had I just done?
     
    Stood up for myself. Sort of. It wasn’t like I could take it back either.
     
    Dex's nostrils flared, his face still impassive. "Said I didn’t mean it ," he repeated in a crisp tone.
     
    "It's not that easy." I stood there, waiting for something I wasn't even sure of.
     
    "Yeah it is . I said sorry, now you can quit bein' pissed," he said the words like a command.
     
    Oh my God. "No." I narrowed my eyes at him. " It doesn’t mean anything if Sonny had to threaten you to be nice.”
     
    That same muscle in his neck quivered again as he stared back at me. “Look…” That burning blue gaze made a slow trek from my face down my body and up again. Slow, slow, slow. Under the thick black stubble of his neck, his throat bobbed. The texture of his voice got rougher. "I'm sorry, all right ? Ain ’t that enough? "
     
    This was pointless. I loved words. I ’d always loved words. I loved the freedom you could find in them. I loved manipulating them. I loved the way they sounded and the power they held.
     
    But sometimes, sometimes , they weren’t enough.
     
    Sometimes strings of letters were meaningless in comparison to actions. Actions held the power of a choir versus the strength of a solitary singer. My bones recognized that this was all I would get, this one person a cappella.
     
    “Be the bigger person,” my mom would have said. I didn’t really want to but I lifted a shoulder anyway. My breath came out shaky. " Saying that you’re sorry doesn’t take back what’s been done, at least in my book . I can ’t just forget it overnight. "
     
    Dex's throat bobbed again, those eyes beamed a hot line straight into me. " I wanna ask if you’re bein’ serious, but I think you are. "
     
    When I didn't say anything in return, he licked his bottom lip, looking down my length one more time.
     
    “Say somethin’ ."
     
    I didn't.
     
    He stared at me for a minute, the tension in his shoulders tightening before he let out a whoosh of air. Pure exasperation. " C’mon ."
     
    Was I that resentful that he could see that I wasn't happy with him? That I'd rather sit in a portable toilet than next to him? I'd spent the last few years trying my best not to stress about things, trying to take care of myself, and the first time someone was genuinely mean to me–upset me—I crumbled?
     
    I could still be hurt, but I didn't want to let that linger in me too long. Not anymore.
     
    " Ritz ?" he asked in a low voice.
     
    I shrugged. God. There really wasn't a point in being bitter forever. Constantly raging against him went against the majority of the cells in my body. “Forget it. Apology accepted. I won't say