Chapter 39 #2
“Hovering,” I snap. “Fussing. Treating me like I’m going to shatter if I move wrong. I’m not made of glass, Dominic. I got stabbed once, that doesn’t mean I break every time I stand up.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m making sure you don’t rip your stitches out, or bleed internally, because you think you’re fine when you’re not. Excuse me for giving a fuck.”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t care,” I say. “I’m saying you’re suffocating me.”
His eyes flash. “I carried you into an ER covered in your blood while a surgeon dug around inside you to make sure you didn’t die,” he says. “Forgive me if I want to make sure that wasn’t for nothing.”
My patience snaps.
“I’m the one who started this whole mess!
” I fire back, voice rising. “I’m the idiot who left his apartment in the middle of the night because he missed his boyfriend and wanted to be in his stupid murder cottage instead of staying where he was safe.
I’m the one who fell asleep on your couch like a fucking child and didn’t even wake up when your mother walked in and stabbed me.
You’re not suffocating me, Dominic; I suffocated myself. I walked into the knife, not you.”
My throat hurts, my eyes burn, but I can't stop the words from coming out. Tears spill over. I hate it. I hate the way my voice cracks, the way my chest heaves, the way my vision blurs. I swipe at my face angrily, only making it worse.
“I’m always fucking crying and I hate it,” I choke. “I’m weak and small, and I can’t handle anything without falling apart. You went and killed your mother and came back like some avenging angel, and I’m here sobbing on your couch because I can’t stand that you’re watching me breathe.”
“Brendon—”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Listen. You’re…
you. You’re this impossible, terrifying, beautiful monster who stares down linebackers like they’re nothing and cuts the rot out of his life with a knife.
You’re better off with someone who can match that—someone who doesn’t flinch at every noise or has panic attacks.
Someone who didn’t almost die right in this spot because they were too pathetic to stay in their own bed.
Someone who isn’t always going to be the weak link in your chain.
You deserve better than a whining, crying, church-bred mess who can’t even walk to the bathroom without supervision. ”
By the end, I’m hiccuping on the words, tears and snot running, head pounding. Jericho has abandoned the back of the couch and is now a little black loaf at my feet, ears flicking anxiously. The room feels too small, too bright. I swipe at my face again, furious at the wetness.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I love you, but you’re better off with someone else—” I don’t finish my sentence as Dominic swiftly closes the distance, bends down, and lifts me as if I weigh nothing. I cry out, instinctively grabbing his shoulders, feeling a sharp pain on my side.
“I’ve got you,” he says, voice steady, one arm under my knees, the other around my back, careful of the wound. “Relax. I’ve got you.”
He sits back down on the couch with me in his lap, adjusting me until my head is tucked against his chest, one of his hands sliding up to cradle the back of my neck. His heartbeat thuds under my ear, solid and fast.
I try to pull back, embarrassed, but he just tightens his hold, rocking us slightly, the motion gentle, almost instinctive. It takes me a second to realize I’m clinging to his hoodie, fingers knotted in the fabric like a kid.
“Breathe,” he murmurs, his lips against my hair. “Let it out. You’re allowed.”
That undoes me.
The next sob is ugly, pouring out everything I’ve bottled since the hospital—shame, fear, anger, and grief. I make sounds that don’t even feel human. Burying my face in his chest, I let it happen because I have no energy left to fight.
He holds me, no shushing or telling me to calm down, no flinching from the snot and tears soaking his hoodie. One hand strokes my spine slowly, the other cradles my head, fingers threaded through my hair.
Eventually, the tears burn themselves out. My breathing evens out into hitching little gasps. My eyes feel swollen, nose is clogged, my throat is raw. I am exhausted and wrung out and still cradled in his lap like some kind of messed-up prince and the psychopath story.
“I don’t like crying,” I mumble into his chest.
“I know,” he says. “You hate anything that makes you feel like you’re not in control.”
“Yeah,” I sniff. “Wonder who I got that from.”
He huffs a breath that might be a laugh.
“You’re not weak. Stop saying that. Getting stabbed is not a character flaw,” he says.
“Walking into danger because you love someone is not a weakness. Being scared and doing it anyway is not a weakness. Crying sure as fuck isn’t weakness.
If you were weak, you would’ve run the first time you saw me with my hands around someone’s throat.
You would’ve blocked my number when your parents cut you off.
You would’ve walked away from all of this and let me rot in my own mess. You didn’t.”
“It feels like I keep making everything worse,” I whisper.
“It feels that way because the people who were supposed to catch you when you fell let you smash into the ground instead,” he says. “That’s not on you.”
I sniff again, trying to pull myself together, and shift enough to look up at him. His face is close, eyes dark and intense, mouth curved in a way that is almost tender.
“You said I’m better off with someone else,” he says. “You’re wrong. You’re not just my weakness or my soft spot, Brendon; you’re the reason I’m not a fucking ghost walking around in cleats.”
I blink, completely caught off guard. “What?”
“You said all the wrong choices were yours,” he says.
“So let me tell you mine. Until you, I had no reason to exist besides killing or winning because others told me to. My mother’s approval, coaches’ pride, scouts’ attention—it was noise that kept me moving but left me dead inside.
I fucked when needed, killed on command, studied enough to skate by, and slept with nightmares and nothingness. ”
He swallows, throat working.
“Then you walked into my cottage in your neat little button-down and your cross and your judgment,” he says.
“You saw the worst part of me in the first five minutes, and instead of running, you sat at my table and started explaining case law. You shouldn’t have interested me.
You annoyed me. You were small and mouthy and terrified, and you pushed back anyway.
Every instinct I had said use him, break him, move on.
I tried. I pushed. I watched you kneel for me, and I should’ve felt nothing but power.
Instead, I felt something waking up in my chest that I didn’t know what to do with. ”
My heart stutters. I tuck my face closer to his hoodie so he doesn’t have to see how wide and wet my eyes are.
“And suddenly I sleep,” he says. “I sit in boring classes and actually try because you care about my grades. I get stabbed up for the first time in years, and the only thing I can think about while I’m fighting is whether you’re going to be okay with a world that doesn’t have me in it.”
His voice cracks on that last part, and my breath catches.
“When I walked into that hospital room, and the doctor said you’d make it,” he goes on, “I cried. Not the little manly eye-shine they show in movies. Full body, ugly shit. I haven’t cried since I was ten, and she beat it out of me. I didn’t even cry when she… when I…”
He swallows, and I squeeze his shoulder, because we both know what he means and we don’t need the word.
“I cried when they told me you’d survive,” he says.
“Because I realized if you didn’t, there would be nothing left tying me to this place that isn’t covered in blood.
No reason to play nice with Keller. No reason to keep pretending I care what the scouts think.
No reason to even pretend the mask matters.
Watching you bleed and knowing she did it to hurt me was the first time I ever wanted to drop the knife and run away with someone instead of finishing the job. ”
My heart is pounding now, my side forgotten, my whole world narrowed down to the man holding me like I’m precious, like I’m the knife he doesn’t want to drop.
“You said I’m better off with someone else,” he says. “You’re wrong. If you’d died, I wouldn’t be better off. I wouldn’t be at all.”
Tears spill again, hot and stupid. “Dom…”
“I have never loved anyone like this,” he says. “I didn’t love my mother; I obeyed her. I don’t even love football. I was good at it, and it got me what she wanted for me. That was it. Then there was you.”
I stare at him, lips parted, trying to picture him in that chair like Kyra said, eyes wet, shoulders shaking. It doesn’t fit. It also fits perfectly.
He exhales, thumb still stroking my jaw. “I came out to Keller,” he says abruptly, like he needs to stack confession on confession before he loses his nerve.
I look at him, not comprehending what he’s saying, and my brain stutters. “What?”
“I went into his office while you were asleep,” he says.
“Told him I was with you. Told him my mother is gone, and I’m not hiding anymore.
Told him if that means the NFL decides I’m too much of a risk, they can choke on it.
I’m done playing golden boy for people who would leave you bleeding on a couch because of who you love. ”
My stomach swoops. “What did he say?”
“He said his job is to coach me through plays, not through my personal life, and if anyone makes that an issue in the locker room, he’ll handle it. He said scouts want men who can take hits, not boys who cry when someone has a boyfriend. He also said I’m an idiot for not telling him sooner.”
“And the NFL?” I whisper.