Chapter 21 #2
“That’s not fair,” she says, voice rising.
“You were pulling away. You were so wrapped up in your classes, your TA stuff, your parents, your church, and whatever else that you barely touched me. You wouldn’t even consider moving in together after graduation.
You kept saying ‘let’s pray about it,’ and then nothing changed. I felt like I was dating a ghost.”
“If you were unhappy, you could’ve broken up with me. You didn’t need to find someone else while you still had the first one.”
She throws her hands up. “You’re acting like some pure martyr when you know you weren’t perfect either,” she says.
“You’re so stubborn, Brendon. So rigid. You say yes to everything and everyone except yourself, and then when someone doesn’t fit into your neat little moral box, you act like they’re the Devil. ”
The irony almost makes me laugh. If she knew who actually held that title in my life now, she’d need a Xanax.
“This isn’t about my moral box. This is about you breaking trust and then playing victim when I set a boundary.”
Her eyes well up, which used to be my cue to cave. There is a part of me that still reacts to tears like a fire alarm, but it’s duller now—muted by the memory of Dominic slamming his hand against the wall and telling me in that low, controlled voice that no means no, even when it’s whispered.
“I made a mistake,” she says, voice wobbling. “People make mistakes. We could’ve worked through it if you hadn’t just… shut off. Your father says—”
“My father isn’t here,” I cut in, more rudely than I’ve ever interrupted anyone in my life. “And you don’t get to use him on me. You don’t get to quote my parents or anyone else to guilt me into giving you what you want.”
She blinks, thrown. “Wow,” she says again, softer this time. “You really have changed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I have.”
“Is there someone else?” she asks suddenly. “Is that it? Did you meet someone, and that’s why you won’t even try to fix things with me?”
Every muscle in my body goes stiff. Her gaze drops to my wrist, to the leather cuff peeking out under my jacket. I tuck my hand into my pocket before she can comment on it, but the movement is probably enough of an answer. Her expression shifts from hurt to suspicion to bitterness.
“Who is she?” she demands. “Some good church girl who fits your parents’ checklist better than I did? Some pre-law princess who thinks she’s going to be Mrs. Lane and redeem your precious reputation?”
The urge to laugh hits me again and I choke it back, because there is nothing funny about this, not really.
“There’s no ‘she,’” I say. “There’s just someone who doesn’t cheat and doesn’t use my faith against me when they want something.”
“Then prove it,” she says, stepping closer until I can smell her perfume—light and floral, so different from the cologne that clings to my clothes now.
“Talk to me. Five minutes. Tell me to my face that you really don’t feel anything when you see me, that you’re not even a little tempted, and I’ll leave you alone.
I’ll tell your parents you’re over it, that I’m the crazy one, whatever you want.
Just stop freezing me out like I’m nothing. ”
The thing is: I don’t feel anything. Not the way she wants me to.
I feel history, sure. I remember movie dates and study sessions and her folding her hands in church the way I did, both of us singing the same songs without thinking.
I remember the way she used to look at me like I was safe, solid, and predictable.
Mostly, though, I feel tired; and under the tired, a thin, hot line of anger that someone who hurt me is still demanding access to me like it’s a right.
“I’m not tempted,” I say. “I don’t want to get back together. I don’t want to hold your hand, or pray with you, or pretend we’re still the people we were before you decided to blow things up. I just want to get in my car, and go home.”
“To whoever you’re screwing now,” she snaps, that bitter edge back.
I think of Dominic. I think of how he hasn’t ever asked for more than I can give, how he takes what I offer and pushes in ways that somehow make me more myself instead of less.
Screwing doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s the word she has, and I’m not giving her any more truth than she already got.
“Move,” I say instead, nodding toward the door. “Please.”
She laughs, but there’s something ugly in it now. “No.”
“Hannah.”
“No,” she repeats, louder this time. “I am not done.”
I step to the side to go around her, and she catches my arm hard enough to make me wince.
“Don’t touch me,” I say immediately, trying to pull free.
She tightens her grip instead. “You don’t get to walk away from me,” she snaps. “Not after everything I put into this.”
My pulse kicks harder. “Let go.”
“You’re being such a self-righteous asshole,” she says, nails digging through my jacket into my skin.
“Do you know how humiliating this has been for me? Your mother looks at me like I failed some test, your father won’t even say my name, and now you’re standing here acting like I’m dirt because I made one mistake. ”
“One mistake,” I repeat, disbelief flattening my voice.
“Yes, one mistake,” she hisses, yanking me a step closer when I try to pull away again. “And now, you’re throwing me away for some secret little fling you won’t even admit to. What, is she better because she lets you play saint while you screw her in private?”
There’s no one in the lot. No one close enough to hear this. No one close enough to step in.
“Let go of me,” I say again, louder now.
Instead of listening, she shoves me; not hard enough to knock me down, but hard enough that my lower back bumps the side of my own car. The impact isn’t painful so much as shocking.
“You don’t get to cut me off like that,” she says, stepping in again before I can move away. “You don’t get to just decide I’m disposable.”
“I’m not doing this with you,” I say, trying to get around her.
She moves with me, blocking me again. Her hand slaps flat against my chest this time, fingers bunching in my jacket. “You are doing this with me,” she snaps. “You’re going to stand here and listen for five fucking minutes.”
Something cold slides down my spine.
“Hannah,” I say a little quieter now, because that edge in her has shifted into something meaner. “Move.”
“No!” Her voice cracks on it, but the anger is only getting sharper. “You don’t get to act like the victim when you abandoned me first. You don’t get to freeze me out and make me look crazy for wanting closure.”
She shoves me again, harder. My shoulder knocks the car window and I suck in a startled breath. Then she grabs at my wrist, the one with the cuff hidden under my sleeve, and tries to yank my hand out of my pocket.
“What is that?” she demands. “Who gave you that? Are you seriously letting someone mark you now? Is that what this is?”
I jerk my hand back before she can expose the leather. “Back off.”
Her face twists. “Oh my God,” she says, and there’s something almost gleeful in the disgust now—like she’s put pieces together and loves how ugly the picture is. “There really is someone else. That’s why you won’t touch me, isn’t it? You’re fucking someone else and acting like I’m the sinner here.”
I don’t answer, which is answer enough. So she slaps me.
It’s not especially hard, but the crack of it in the empty lot makes my ears ring; my head turns with the force of it. For a moment, I just stare at the asphalt, brain trying to catch up to what happened.
When I look back at her, she looks almost shocked at herself too, chest heaving, eyes huge.
Then somehow, she doubles down. “See? That’s what you do. You stand there, all silent and superior, and make people crazy.”
A laugh of pure disbelief almost escapes me at the blatant gaslighting.
“You hit me,” I say.
“You pushed me to this!” she shoots back instantly.
I step away from the car, trying to put actual space between us, but she catches the front of my jacket and yanks me back; the fabric bites at my throat and panic flares fast.
“Hannah, stop.”
“No,” she says, tears spilling freely now, mascara smudging under her eyes. “Not until you tell me the truth. Not until you admit you still feel something. Not until you admit I matter.”
“You’re hurting me,” I say, my voice panicked now, because she is. Her fist is twisted in my jacket, dragging the zipper into my throat. My shoulder aches from where she shoved me into the car and my cheek still stings.
Her expression flickers, but she still doesn’t let go. “Then answer me—!”
I barely register the movement before her head snaps forward. The sound it makes when her skull connects with the frame of my car is sickening, a dull, hollow crack that reverberates through the metal and up my spine.
For half a second, my brain blanks, refusing the input; then she crumples, knees folding, body sliding down the side of the car in a graceless tangle of limbs. I stumble back, hand flying to my mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” I choke out, stumbling back another step until my spine hits the edge of my car. “Dominic!”
He’s breathing a little harder than usual, chest rising and falling under his hoodie, but that’s the only obvious sign that anything in him is running hot.
His expression is disturbingly calm, almost bored as he flexes his fingers once, shaking out his hand like he just punched a wall and mildly regrets the sting.
His eyes flick past me, then over to my cheek, down to the grip marks wrinkling my jacket, then finally to Hannah crumpled on the ground, and something in that flat stare turns even colder.
“She’ll wake up,” he says, tone flat. “Eventually.”
I stare at him, then at her. Her eyes are closed, but her chest is moving—it’s shallow, but moving. There’s a red mark blooming on the side of her forehead where she hit the metal.
“What the fuck did you do?” I demand, my voice higher than I want it to be. “Dom, she— you—you can’t just—”
“I can,” he says simply. Then his gaze cuts back to me, and the calm in it is worse than anger. “And I did. She put her hands on you, shoved you into the car, slapped you, and still wouldn’t back the fuck off when you told her no. She doesn’t get to do that.”
His eyes flick over my face again, to the cheek she hit, and his jaw tightens hard enough that I hear his teeth grind.
“She thought she could grab you, put her hands on your throat, rip at your clothes, and keep going because you’re too decent to make a scene,” he says, voice dropping lower with every word. “She thought she could corner you in an empty lot and get away with it. That’s not happening.”
He steps over her like she’s an inconvenience, closing the space between us in two strides. His hand comes up, fingers pressing under my chin, forcing my head up when I try to look back down at her.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
My heart is racing. “Dom, she’s—we have to—she could be—”
“She’s breathing,” he says. “You can check if you want, but I promise she is. I didn’t hit her that hard, I just turned the volume down before she put her hands on you again.”
The casual way he says it makes my skin crawl. This isn’t the first time he has done something like this; I know that, theoretically, but seeing it in front of me is different.
“You can’t do that,” I say, but it sounds weak, even to my own ears.
His fingers tighten on my jaw, not enough to hurt, but enough that I feel the tremor running through him now, the fury he’s still sitting on.
“She can’t do what she just did,” he says, voice still soft, but with that dangerous undercurrent I’ve learned to recognize.
“You said no. You told her to move. You told her to stop touching you. She ignored you, grabbed you harder, put her hands on your chest, your wrist, your fucking throat, and then she hit you when you still wouldn’t give her what she wanted. ”
His nostrils flare. “She does not get to corner you, scream in your face, slap you, and yank on you like you belong to her, just because she’s upset.
She doesn’t get to demand access to you because she misses you.
She doesn’t get to use tears and guilt and your parents and whatever else she thinks works, then turn violent when it doesn’t. ”
The world tilts, his words banging against everything I’ve been taught.
“That’s not how this works,” I say, my head spinning. “She’s—she’s a person, Dom.”
He leans in, his face inches from mine, eyes flat and terrifyingly clear. “So are you,” he says. “You’re my person. That’s the difference.”
My knees almost give out.
This is what it means to belong to a monster, I think, dazed.
This is what it means to be his.