Chapter 39
Brendon
Discharge day feels a little like getting paroled, and a lot like being adopted by a very large, very bossy prison warden.
The doctor runs through the instructions in that calm, practiced voice they teach in med school, and I try to pay attention, I really do—but it’s hard to focus when Dominic is a wall of tension pressed to my side, arms folded, jaw clenched, glaring at the clipboard like he can intimidate it into listing fewer restrictions.
“Daily dressing changes,” the doctor says, ticking things off with her pen.
“Keep the wound dry for another forty-eight hours, then you can start with quick showers; no soaking. No lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk for at least two weeks. No strenuous exercise for four to six weeks, no sports, no running. Listen to your body. If you feel dizzy, short of breath, or unusually tired, call us. Watch for signs of infection: fever, chills, increased pain, redness, discharge. Questions?”
“Define strenuous,” Dominic says immediately. “Because he thinks walking to the kitchen counts as cardio.”
I shoot him a glare. “I walk a normal amount. You just forget other people are not six-foot-four murder machines with endless stamina.”
The doctor’s mouth twitches. “Strenuous means anything that makes that incision pull,” she says. “You’ll know. Listen when it complains.”
“Great,” I mutter. “My side is going to nag me like my parents used to.”
There is a brief pause. I see Dominic stiffen slightly, as if the words hit him too.
“Your parents have not called,” the doctor says carefully, which is code for they are not coming. “Your partner has been here the whole time, though. He has the instructions and my number. I’m comfortable discharging you into his care.”
The word partner hits my chest hard. I sneak a glance at Dom, and his expression does not change, but the muscle in his cheek jumps once.
“Cool,” I say, trying not to make it weird. “I promise I’ll be the most obedient outpatient you’ve ever had.”
She gives me a dry look that says she doesn’t believe it at all. “If your pain spikes, use the medication as prescribed, not more,” she adds. “You already have enough going on in your chart without adding an opioid dependency.”
“I’ll watch him,” Dominic says, hand closing gently around my shoulder. “He’s not going to do anything stupid.”
That’s funny, because I’m the one who got stabbed on his couch, but I let it slide because I do not have it in me to argue in a hospital gown. I don’t even argue about the fact that he paid my hospital bill, because I’m apparently a kept boy now.
They wheel me out in a chair despite my insistence I can walk, apparently due to legal policy.
Dominic walks beside me, one hand on the chair’s back, shielding me from the world.
People look, especially around him. Today, there’s a new edge; a few nurses smile and whisper about the hero quarterback who brought the TA in.
I stare straight ahead, ignoring words like ‘victim,’ ‘mugging,’ and ‘poor boy.’
He loads me into the passenger seat before I can argue, buckles the seatbelt himself when I fumble, then crouches to adjust it carefully around the bandage, his fingers firm and gentle.
The whole time, he mutters under his breath in Russian.
I’m too tired to ask if he is cursing me out or praying for me.
So I just close my eyes and focus on the feeling of his hands making sure the strap doesn’t press too hard against my side.
“Pain level?” he asks, once he gets in on his side and starts the engine.
“Six,” I say. “It was a four, ten minutes ago. Congratulations, you made it worse.”
He snorts, eyes flicking toward me before he pulls out of the space. “That’s because you decided to stand up on your own like you weren’t just stabbed, Little Sin,” he says. “We’re keeping it under four, or I’m turning around and abducting your doctor for a house call.”
“You can’t kidnap a doctor,” I say.
“Watch me,” he says, and I know he’s half serious, which makes my stomach both flip and settle at the same time.
I assume we are going to my apartment. Jericho needs feeding, my plants probably need watering, and my emails need checking.
My assumptions apparently mean nothing, because Dominic takes the turn out of town that leads toward the lake and the cottage instead, hands loose on the wheel, but jaw clenched.
“Dom,” I say slowly. “This isn’t the way to my place.”
“I know,” he answers nonchalantly.
I wait for more, but all I get is silence.
“Are we… going somewhere else first?” I try.
“Yeah. Home.”
My pulse stutters. “My home is—”
“Where I can see you,” he cuts in, still calm, still driving, eyes fixed on the road. “Right now that’s the only definition that matters.”
“Dominic,” I try again. “We’re going to my apartment. My place. With my bed and my bathroom and my cat and no murder ghosts in the walls.”
“Your cat is not at your apartment,” he says, eyes on the road. “Jericho is at the cottage.”
“You kidnapped my cat?”
“I relocated him,” he retorts. “He’s mad about it, but he’ll live.”
“You can’t just steal someone’s emotional support animal, Dominic.”
“You can’t call him that when he spends every night trying to smother you in your sleep,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Point is, you’re not going back to that building without me. I can’t be in two places at once. So, you and the cat are with me until I say otherwise.”
“Wow,” I say. “That sounded less like a suggestion and more like a kidnapping charge.”
He cuts me a sidelong look. “You almost died. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The tone kills the joke in my throat. I sink back against the seat, clutching the discharge papers in my lap a little tighter. It should feel smothering; it does. It also feels safe in a way that scares me more.
When we pull up the gravel drive to the cottage, Jericho is already in the front window.
Somehow, that annoys me more than anything. My own cat, betraying me to go live with my… whatever Dominic is now. Boyfriend feels too soft for a man who killed his own mother in front of me. Partner feels too clinical. Owner feels too on the nose.
“I can’t believe you catnapped him,” I say.
“He got in the carrier voluntarily,” Dom replies. “I shook the treats once. He came. That’s consent.”
He’s at my side before I can argue, helping me out of the car, one arm banded carefully around my waist, taking more of my weight than I want to admit I need.
The steps up to the porch feel like a mountain.
I grit my teeth and let him guide me, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and not collapsing in a pathetic heap.
Inside, the cottage smells like home.
Jericho is on the back of the couch now, claws buried deep in the fabric, shredding a cushion with intense, vindictive concentration. The second he sees me, he abandons the carnage and launches himself across the room, landing with surgical precision on my lap as soon as I sink down onto the sofa.
“Ow,” I wheeze, as a paw lands a little too close to the fresh wound.
“Get off the patient, menace,” Dominic says, reaching to scoop him up.
I put a hand out. “No, he’s fine. He’s mad at you, not me.”
Jericho proves my point by hissing at Dominic and digging his claws into my thigh instead of my stitches. I wince and scratch under his chin.
“Traitor,” Dom mutters at the cat. “I saved your idiot. Show some respect.”
The rest of the day is a blur of overprotective bullshit.
Dominic hovers—that is the only word for it. He brings me water, adjusts my pillows, checks my meds schedule like he is prepping for surgery every time the clock flicks to the next dose. He reads the instructions twice and glares at the pill bottles like they might attack me.
“You need to eat,” he says, standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed, watching me pick half-heartedly at the soup he heated up. “You have to give your body something to work with.”
“I’m trying,” I say. “My stomach is still convinced it got stabbed, too.”
He stares. I take another bite just to get him to stop looking at me like that. Every time I so much as shift, he materializes out of nowhere, a large, anxious shadow.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I snap at one point, when he appears at my elbow the moment I lever myself off the couch.
“You’re wobbly. I’m going with you.”
“You’re not coming into the bathroom with me,” I say, scandalized. “I draw the line there.”
He looks at me, then at my side, then back at me. “Fine,” he says, at last. “Door open. If you faint, shout.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll work great,” I mutter. “I’ll shout on the way down.”
“Brendon,” he warns.
I sigh. “Door open.”
He stands in the hall like a guard outside a royal chamber while I pee, the door ajar like a toddler’s, and it is stupid and humiliating and somehow also bizarrely sweet, which just makes me more irritated.
By the time the sun sets on the third day, and the living room is bathed in orange light, my nerves are raw.
Every little thing he does grates. The way he plumps the cushion behind my back without asking.
The way he adjusts the blanket if it slips half an inch.
The way he asks ‘you okay?’ every time my face moves.
At first, I swallow it. That is what I do—I swallow, smile, say thank you, and push things down until they sit in my gut and rot.
Tonight, the rot reaches my throat.
He comes back from the kitchen with another glass of water and the pain meds in his hand, brows drawn in that permanent frown he wears when he is pretending he’s fine.
“Time for another dose,” he says. “You’re starting to tense up.”
“I’m fine,” I say, even though my side is throbbing.
“You’re not,” he says. “You’re pale, and you’re doing that thing with your mouth. Take the pills.”
“Stop.”
His eyes flick up, surprised. “Stop what?” he asks.