Chapter 10
Brendon
Itell myself I’m only here because I’m nosy.
That is the lie I settle on. It sounds better than I’ve been thinking about Dominic Volkov for three straight days, and I need to see him with my own eyes or I’m going to start crawling out of my skin.
It sounds academic, almost. Observational.
Rational. Like I’m conducting a character study instead of driving across town to watch a murderer teach children how to hold a football.
I know Lakehaven’s golden boy volunteers with underprivileged kids every second Saturday. It fits too well with the image everyone else sees—sweet, kind, and generous. The star athlete who stops to sign autographs for children and old ladies, making everyone around him feel special.
But I know better.
I’ve seen blood on his hands. I’ve seen the look in his eyes when he’s forgotten to wear the mask, the coldness underneath all that easy charm. I’ve heard the way he talks when he’s got his hand around my throat and I’m trying not to shatter in front of him.
That’s the true him—I know it is—so why does everyone else only get the polished version? Why does he save that other face for me? Maybe the more uncomfortable question is the one my brain keeps circling.
Why do I keep going back anyway?
Like right now, I’m sitting in my car outside a run-down community field on a Saturday afternoon, squinting through the windshield like a stalker.
“I’m here because I need to understand why no one else sees it. That’s a normal reason. A healthy reason. Very investigative journalism of me.”
The field isn’t much to look at. Patchy grass.
Rusted bleachers on one side. A chain-link fence that’s been repaired so many times it looks more zip tie than metal in places.
The children’s home sits a little way back from it.
It’s a squat building, painted a tired cream, with bright murals of cartoon animals along the sides like someone tried to give it joy on a budget.
Kids are everywhere. Little boys in oversized practice jerseys running around with too much energy and not enough coordination.
A few girls, too: some playing, some sitting on the sidelines with juice boxes and skeptical expressions that say they were dragged out here by younger siblings, and are evaluating the whole spectacle with healthy judgment.
I should leave.
That thought comes and goes in a weak little flutter as soon as I see him.
Dominic is standing there in black athletic shorts and a fitted gray T-shirt that clings to his shoulders and chest, showing every dip and curve of his abs.
His sunglasses are shoved up into his hair, dark strands falling around his face anyway.
He’s holding a football under one arm and gesturing with his free hand while eight or nine tiny kids stare up at him like he’s descended from heaven in Nike trainers.
Oh, God, I understand the appeal instantly.
Even from here, from the safety of my car and all my unresolved annoyance, he’s magnetic. Not because he’s loud. He isn’t—that’s the weird part. He doesn’t have that performative coach energy some men get around children, all exaggerated enthusiasm and baby voices.
Dominic talks to them like they’re people. Short, clear, and still cursing, because apparently, that part of him cannot be fully contained, even in front of eight-year-olds.
I sit there for a minute with both hands on the steering wheel. Staring.
“Absolutely not,” I whisper. “No. We are not doing this.”
I get out anyway.
I keep to the edge of the lot, cutting behind the bleachers where the metal shade hides me enough that I don’t feel completely insane.
There are a few other adults around: staff, maybe, and some other volunteers.
No one pays me much attention. I choose a spot at the far end of the bleachers, half-obscured by the support beams, and sit down with my sunglasses on—like that helps.
Dominic blows a whistle once. “All right, little monsters,” he calls out, and a grin tugs at his mouth when a couple of them immediately look delighted by the title. “Line up. We’re doing footwork first before any of you get to pretend you’re NFL stars.”
One of the kids groans dramatically. Another raises his hand, as if this is an actual classroom. Dominic points at him with the football. “Yeah, Mateo.”
“That’s not fair,” the kid says, maybe eight and missing one front tooth. “We already know footwork.”
Dominic raises an eyebrow. “You do, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” he says, “because last week you tripped over your own shoes and blamed the sun.”
The whole line dissolves into laughter while Mateo goes red and crosses his arms. “The sun was in my eyes.”
“Bro,” Dominic says dryly, “the sun was behind you.”
More laughter. Even Mateo cracks.
I stare at Dominic and feel my irritation wobble in a way that’s genuinely offensive.
He’s good at this. Not just “kids like him because he’s tall and lets them hold the ball” good.
Actually good. He remembers names and stupid little incidents from previous weeks.
He knows exactly when to tease and when to correct.
There’s no impatience in him, none of the cold edge I’m used to seeing when adults waste his time.
Instead, he drops the football to the grass and crouches in front of them so he’s more eye-level, forearms braced on his thighs and attention fixed completely on the kids in front of him.
“Okay,” he says. “Show me stances. Properly this time, or I’m making you all do bunny hops until somebody cries.”
A chorus of horrified little laughs meets that. They scramble into rough approximations of ready position, some better than others, with one kid nearly tipping over in his eagerness.
Dominic moves down the line, adjusting them with quick, gentle touches. A hand on a shoulder. Two fingers nudging a knee wider. The back of his hand tapping a spine straighter.
“Not bad, Noah. Better.”
“Riley, you’re thinking too hard. Bend your knees. You’re not about to sit on a toilet, just loosen up.”
That one sends a ripple of delighted cackling down the line, because little boys apparently find toilets funny no matter their zip code. Dominic shakes his head with a grin and keeps going.
When he gets to the smallest kid at the end, a little blond thing who can’t be more than six, he pauses. “You good, Ollie?”
The kid’s lower lip wobbles. “I don’t wanna get tackled.”
Dominic’s entire face changes. It’s subtle; if I didn’t know him as well as I do, I might miss the way he softens. He crouches all the way down, until he’s almost kneeling on the grass in front of the kid.
“You’re not getting tackled today,” he says. “Not for real. We’re learning, not murdering each other. That starts when you’re older and have a lot more attitude.”
Ollie blinks at him, uncertain. “Promise?”
Dominic extends his pinky without hesitation, and the kid wraps his tiny finger around it. Dominic nods once, as if they’ve just signed a legally binding agreement.
“Pinky promise,” he says.
I stare at their linked pinkies and feel something weird move in my chest.
Practice gets going properly after that. Warm-ups. Sprints. Passing drills. Every now and then, one of the kids will do something so stupid it should warrant irritation, and I brace automatically for that flash of darkness I know lives under Dominic’s skin. It never comes; not like it does with me.
He’s funny with them. Worse, he’s patient. Not endlessly, saintly patient—there’s still sarcasm in him, still that dry edge, still the constant threat of light mockery if they act ridiculous—but it’s never cruel.
It’s the kind of teasing that makes them laugh instead of shrink. He corrects without humiliating and encourages without turning syrupy.
Who is this man?
That thought loops in my head with increasing offense, because I know who he is.
I know the man who made me kneel, who touched every ugly, hungry part of me and coaxed it out into the light until I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist anymore.
I know the man who stood over a corpse with blood on his hands and asked if our meeting was today, like it was the scheduling mishap that bothered him most.
And yet this version is real, too.
It would be easier if he were faking—if I could spot the manipulation in the smile, the calculation in the patience, the way he’d check for who was watching while he tied little kids’ cleats and called them “bud.”
But I don’t see that. Every now and then, he glances toward the building or the road out of instinct, because of course he does. Dominic is never fully off. Still, his attention always comes right back to them.
When he laughs, it’s real. When one of the smallest kids finally catches a decent pass and turns to him with his whole face lit up, Dominic’s answering grin is real, too. He’s proud of them. Not fake proud, or camera proud, but real, quiet, chest-softening proud.
This is why everyone falls for him.
Not just because he’s pretty, or talented, or famous on campus. Those things help, sure, but this is the real danger: he knows how to make people feel seen and chosen, like the spotlight isn’t just on him but warming them, too.
It would be easier to hate him if he were simpler. If he were just a monster or a killer. Just a manipulative athlete with a dark side and a pretty face.
But no, he has to be all of it at once. The blood and the tenderness. The possessiveness and the patience. The man who can call for “disposal” over a body and then spend his Saturdays teaching underprivileged youth how to pivot without rolling an ankle.
I drop my head into my hands and breathe out slowly. “God, I’m in trouble,” I mutter to myself.
“You spying on me, Little Sin?”
I look up too fast, and there he is, standing at the end of the bleachers with one hand on the chain-link fence, football tucked against his hip. His mouth is already curved into that slow, smug smile he gets when he catches me doing something I’d rather deny.