Chapter 30
Dominic
My hands are steady on the steering wheel, knuckles pale. There’s a smear of dried red on the back of my left thumb I missed, so I rub at it with my right hand, grinding it into the skin more than wiping it away.
I just killed two people, and felt nothing.
My body was there, sure, but my mind was back on the Lakehaven quad, back in the middle of the fucking day with sunlight and students and normal life—and Brendon standing there in his neat clothes, with his broken heart written all over his face.
He looked at me for maybe three seconds, long enough for me to see his expression go from blank to hurt and then to nothing, before he looked away and walked off.
I did that on purpose. I made sure our official sessions stopped and I quit texting—letting the space widen. I told myself it was strategic, that distance was safer, that if my mother ever sniffed around me again, she’d see nothing weak to exploit.
“You see? Already your movements are smoother. Last time I watched, you were too distracted, too hesitant. Now the engine is warm.”
She stood behind me as I killed, her accent heavier tonight, suggesting she’s pleased. Then she touched my face, and everything in me screamed to push her away.
If anyone else had touched me after a kill, I would have broken their wrist. With her, I gritted my teeth and let it happen. This was the game tonight—the part I indulged in to keep her gaze pointed away from the one person she can never know about.
I casually tilted my head and let her fingers slide along the line of my jaw, pretending it didn’t make my skin crawl.
“The game next weekend will go better now. When you are violent regularly, the rest of your life flows. This is good for you.”
My mother thinks this is balance; to her, this is me recalibrating. Kill a couple of strangers, score a couple of touchdowns—rinse and repeat. She thinks the only things that throw me off in life are missed tackles and coaches who yell too loudly.
She has no fucking idea that the thing rattling around in my chest like shrapnel is a law student who hooked his pinky with mine and believed my promises. Who walked away from me today with his face shut down so hard it felt like a door slamming in my own skull.
I rest my forehead against the steering wheel and shut my eyes, refusing to cry. Tears were useless in my house growing up. They bought me nothing. They got my twin brother killed, my father and siblings buried, and they made her smile.
I grind my teeth and breathe until the urge passes—until all that’s left is a dull throb behind my eyes and the familiar acidic crawl of self-disgust.
“Don’t waste too much time in your head, Domenyk. You are what you are. No point crying about the knife, when you were born to hold it.”
“You wanted this,” I mutter to myself, starting the engine; the Charger rumbles to life, comforting and steady. “You wanted him gone, you got it. Congratulations. You’re free.”
The lie tastes sour.
The cottage is dark when I pull up, just a hunched shape at the end of the gravel lane. No lights, no movement, no reason for my brain to conjure the image it does: Brendon on my couch, mug in hand and bare legs tucked up under him, papers spread out, cat on his lap.
That was last week; that’s over. This place is back to being mine alone.
I turn off the ignition and sit there with my hands on the wheel again.
She wants two more bodies cold before she leaves on Friday. That’s my away game, so I need to keep her happy before she leaves. Before she realizes I have a weakness here. Before she realizes that she’s not the one I bow to anymore.
“In and out,” I tell myself quietly. “Shower, bed, sleep, practice, film, two more bodies, game. You can do this. You’ve done worse.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, inhale through my nose, and exhale slowly. Then I do it again. The urge to slam my fist into the dashboard and keep going until bones crack is almost overwhelming. I don’t. The Charger doesn’t deserve my bullshit.
I finally pry my fingers off the wheel, grab my duffel from the passenger seat, and climb out.
The air smells like damp earth and distant smoke from someone’s fireplace a couple of properties over.
I unlock the front door and head towards the living room, switching lights on as I go. Then, my brain short-circuits.
Brendon is kneeling in the middle of my living room floor.
He’s exactly where I usually put him—center of the rug, not too close to the table, not too close to the couch—the space I deliberately cleared so there’s nothing for him to bump into if I drag him around by the hair.
He’s wearing jeans and one of those soft sweaters he likes, sleeves pushed up, hands resting on his thighs.
His back is straight, head bowed, and his hair is falling forward just enough to shadow his face.
The cuff I put on him months ago is still there, and my chest punches tight so hard it feels like another rib cracked.
My brain initially refuses the image. I’ve finally cracked; I finally pushed myself too far, and now my guilt is hallucinating my worst and best temptation right where I’m weakest.
“What the fuck?” I mutter under my breath, dropping the duffel on the floor. “Brendon?”
Nothing. Just the rise and fall of his shoulders.
He’s not ignoring me; he’s deep, far down the rabbit hole of his own head, caught somewhere between stubborn and broken.
That jagged mix of surrender and floating that I usually coax him into on purpose.
Seeing him here, uninvited, knocks me sideways.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, louder now—but he still doesn’t look up. His fingers twitch once on his thighs, then go still again.
Fuck this.
I cross the remaining distance and drop to a crouch in front of him, my knees popping loudly in the quiet cottage. Up close, I can see the tremble in his hands; the sheen on his cheeks.
It takes me a second to realize those are tear tracks drying in uneven lines along his cheeks; his lashes clumped together at the tips. He doesn’t flinch at the movement, but his breath hitches when I get close enough that my shadow falls over him.
“Brendon,” I say again, and this time I let that tone slip in; the one I reserve for him when I want obedience, when I want his attention on me and nothing else. “Eyes on me.”
He finally obeys, and when his eyes meet mine, it immediately hits me in the sternum. The hurt I saw on the quad, stripped of all the control he tried to cover it with. He blinks twice, green eyes glassy and rimmed red, and a breath shudders out of him.
“What are you doing here?” I repeat, because I need him responsive, not lost in whatever storm left him on his knees in my living room. “Use your words, Little Sin.”
His throat works around a swallow, and when he speaks, his voice is wrecked, rough, and thin. “Was it that easy?” he whispers.
I don’t follow. “What?”
“Was it that easy,” he says again, just a little louder, eyes locked on mine, “to leave?”
The cottage spins a fraction; all the bullshit I told myself about protection, about strategy, about keeping him off the board, looks pathetic from his vantage point on the rug.
I see it how he must see it; one day, I’m in his bed, telling him I’ve got him, hooking my pinky with his and promising in a stupid voice that it’s binding. The next, I’m ignoring him, having admin reassign him, letting him see me with some random girl perched on my lap.
No explanation or closure—just absence.
And he showed up anyway. He walked into the lion’s den again, knowing full well what I am, and dropped to his knees anyway, because that’s how he knows how to talk to me now.
My mother wanted proof I’m still a weapon, but here’s the proof she’ll never see: the only thing that ever really gutted me is kneeling in front of me right now, asking if he was that easy to walk away from.
“Brendon—”
“Because it fucking hurts,” he says, voice breaking, anger finally coming through.
“I know I was stupid to come here. I know I shouldn’t have.
I know you’re probably trying to push me away for some noble, deranged reason you’ve built up about your mother.
But… I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop smelling you on my clothes.
I can’t stop waking up, reaching for you, and finding a cat instead.
And then today, I see you with her, and you looked so…
normal. Like it was easy. So I need to know if it was…
I need to know if I was that easy to leave. ”
The knife in the alley never felt like this. This feels worse. This feels like I’m the one on the floor, and he’s the one holding the blade without even knowing it.
“No,” I say, before my brain can try to spin it. It comes out hoarse and raw. “No, Brendon. It wasn’t fucking easy.”
He swallows, jaw clenched. “You made it look easy. I thought it was just you lying about your feelings, to scratch an itch before leaving to be a big star. I was stupid for believing there was more. I should’ve known better. I was an idiot to fall for you.”
Every word is a small, precise knife, and none of them miss; guilt claws up my throat, hot and bitter. I bring my hands up to frame his face, palms bracketing his cheeks, thumbs swiping at the damp tracks.
“It wasn’t easy,” I say again, forcing each word to sound steady, because if I let them shake, he’ll think I’m lying. “It’s never been easy with you, Brendon. It was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He stares at me like he wants to believe me and doesn’t trust himself to. “Then why?” he breathes. “Why all of this? Why the silence? Why her? Why make me watch?”
“I had to,” I say. “My mother is still in town, and if she even suspects I care about you, she’ll put you where she put everyone who has ever meant a thing to me. I would rather rip my own heart out than let that happen.”
He flinches at the implication. “So, your plan is to break me first, so she doesn’t have to?” he says bitterly.