Chapter 12 #2
He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it bends around something else now. Shock, maybe. Or at least genuine surprise.
“You were… worried about me,” he says slowly.
I shift my weight from foot to foot, wishing I’d stayed in the car. “Yes.”
“Nobody worries about me,” he says, shaking his head slightly.
“Well, I do,” I snap, brattier than I mean to, anxiety spilling over into irritation. “And since you’re the one who kicked down my door last time I didn’t answer your texts, you really don’t get to act surprised that I drove out to make sure you were okay.”
He scoffs at that. “Brendon, I am the last person who needs you worrying about him. You do understand how insane that is, yeah?”
“I don’t know,” I say, frustration bubbling up. “I don’t know what you are half the time. I just know you walked out today looking like you wanted to break something, and I know what your version of breaking something looks like.”
“So you think showing up here is safer?” he asks. “You think walking into the wolf’s fucking den, because you felt some weird good-boy guilt, is a sane decision?”
“I didn’t say it was sane!” I shoot back. “But I couldn’t sit in my apartment and pretend I didn’t care if you went out to add another number to your body count.”
He looks at me for another long heartbeat, then reaches out, grabs a fistful of my sleeve, and yanks me inside.
The door slams behind me with a solid thud. I stumble once, catching myself on the wall, and then Dominic is in front of me again, crowding into my space.
He pushes me back until my shoulders hit the wall beside the entryway. His forearm lands across my chest, not crushing but firm; a bar that says stay. The scent of him hits me, that goddamn cologne that always has me folding. His eyes are blazing now, anger up close and personal.
“You want to know how my night’s going,” he says slowly, voice lethal, “since you’re so fucking worried?”
I swallow. “No, I—”
“I haven’t fucked anyone in two weeks,” he says, steamrolling over my protest. “Do you know how long that is for me?”
“Most people manage their whole lives without—”
“I haven’t killed anyone in two weeks,” he continues, as if I didn’t speak. “Not one person. Not a single piece of shit who deserved it. Nothing. My entire fucking system is misfiring, and it’s your fault.”
I stare at him incredulously. “W-what? My fault?”
“Yes, your fault!” he snaps. “I’ve been sitting on my hands for two weeks.
No kills. No hookups. Nothing. I thought about fixing that tonight.
I thought I’d take the bike, go find some asshole who needed to disappear, maybe blow off steam with someone who doesn’t come apart every time I say their name. ”
My chest tightens painfully as unjustified jealousy roars through me. “And?”
“And I couldn’t,” he says, each word clipped. “I got on the bike. I made it all the way to the shitty bar on 14th. I walked in, stood there, and I looked at every motherfucker in that place. But all I could think about was you.”
“Me?” I ask immediately, my brain stuttering at the thought.
“Yes, motherfucker. You,” he snarls. “You did this. You crawled into my head and let me put my cuff on you. You let me kiss you. You shoved your way into the part of my life that was simple. I’ve lived with blood and bodies and empty sex for years without flinching—now I can’t fucking move in either direction without tripping over you. ”
His arm presses harder across my chest, then eases just shy of painful.
“You’re blaming me because you didn’t kill someone tonight,” I say, the absurdity of it twisting my voice.
“I’m blaming you because I tried and couldn’t.
I lined up three different options,” he goes on, voice dropping even lower.
“One guy shoving his girl around. One prick bragging about driving drunk and getting away with it. One asshole trying to drag some drunk girl into the bathroom. Normally, I’d flip a coin.
Tonight, I fucking froze, and it was not because I suddenly grew a conscience.
All I could picture was you walking in on me again and looking at me like that. ”
My stomach twists listening to him talking about this so casually. I understand the words he’s not saying: location scouting, risk calculation, the bone-deep familiarity of predation.
“Looking at you like what, exactly?” I whisper.
He leans in closer, eyes burning into mine. “Like you were scared out of your mind and still couldn’t make yourself run.”
My heart is beating so fast, because now I know I’ve made a massive mistake coming here. “Dom—”
“I walked out and didn’t touch anyone. I got on my bike, came home, and I felt… blocked,” he spits the last word. “Twisted. Wrong. It felt like someone jammed a fucking wrench into the gears.”
He slams his free hand into the wall next to my head, making me flinch. The drywall cracks faintly under his knuckles.
“Then I come home, and I’m pacing my own fucking house because I’m too keyed up to sit down, and I keep thinking, ‘This is Brendon’s fault. He got into my head. He fucked with my rhythm.’”
My mouth is dry. “I didn’t ask you to stop.”
“That’s the point,” he snaps. “You didn’t ask for any of it. You just walked into my life with your neat little notes, and your quiet little martyr complex, and now I can’t even do what I’ve been doing for years without your face flashing in front of my eyes like some fucked-up conscience.”
The air between us feels electric, and my heart is racing so hard it hurts.
Logically, I should be horrified. I am horrified.
He just admitted he went out hunting and couldn’t pull the trigger because of me.
He just told me he hasn’t killed or slept with anyone in two weeks, and that he’s angry about it—that he blames me for that anger.
And under all that, under the fear and the revulsion and the familiar weight of religious guilt, there’s another feeling I don’t want to put a name to.
He couldn’t do it.
He tried and couldn’t.
Because of me.
“But…. You didn’t kill anyone… That’s good.”
“Good?” he spits out. “You think my leaving those assholes was good?”
“Of course, it is! Dominic, that’s the definition of good. That’s literally the best possible outcome.”
He shakes his head, frustrated. “You’re missing the point.”
“Then spell it out,” I say, anger edging into my voice now. If he’s going to blame me for him not murdering someone, I need to hear the full, insane logic.
“It means I’m not just obsessed with what you are, I’m obsessed with what you do to me.
It means you’re in my head when I’m at my worst, and instead of making me stop being that, you’re just…
rerouting it. I stand there, ready to put my hands on someone, and all I can think about is putting them on you.
I go out to fuck someone, and my dick won’t get with the program because it’s too busy remembering the way you whine.
You think that’s noble? You think that makes me safer?
It doesn’t; It just means all the shit I usually spread around is bottlenecking in one direction. ”
I stare up at him, heart pounding, torn between relief and something that feels dangerously like responsibility. “Mine.”
He lowers his face until his forehead almost touches mine. “You walking up my driveway tonight is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
I blink up at him. “I know that.”
“And we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about you showing up here at night without warning. But first, I need you to understand something,” he says, his blue eyes full of fury, making me feel frozen in place. “You’re the weight on the fucking scale now, Brendon.”
My heart kicks hard at that. There’s fear in me, yeah, because he’s still who he is—still dangerous as hell—but there’s also this dark, awful flicker of something like relief that he walked away tonight.
Relief that if I’m in his way, at least that means someone else isn’t under his hands. “You make your own choices.”
His eyes search mine, and for the first time since I’ve known him I see something that looks disturbingly close to vulnerability flicker across his face, before he slams the door on it.
“I do; but now, you’re here in my house on a night I went out looking for blood or sex or both, and came home with nothing. You really expect me to believe you didn’t know exactly what you were walking into?”
I don’t have an answer for him. I don’t even have an answer for myself. All I know is I came here to make sure he wasn’t doing something terrible, and now he’s got me pinned to a wall while admitting he tried and couldn’t. Somehow, that feels worse and better at the same time.
And from the way his fingers flex against my chest, from the tension in his jaw, from the heat in his eyes, I know one thing with terrifying clarity—
Whatever he decides to do with that wrench in his gears, I’m already in the machine with him.