Chapter 39 #3
He shrugs, and there’s this reckless light in his eyes that scares and thrills me at the same time.
“If they call, they call,” he says. “If they don’t, they don’t.
I’m still going to play my hardest because that’s who I am.
But I’m done bending myself into a shape that fits better on a poster than in my own skin.
I’m not hiding you just so I can maybe get a shot at a league that will trade me the second I tear something.
I love you. That weighs more than a contract right now. ”
“Why?” I murmur because I need to hear it in plain words.
“Because if you had died,” Dominic says, eyes locked on mine, “I wouldn’t have had a reason to keep living.
Not like I have been—killing for her, playing for them, existing for everyone else’s expectations.
I’m not doing that without you. I’m not interested in being their golden boy if it means sitting in a big empty house alone with the ghosts of people I’ve put in the ground and the memory of the one person I loved bleeding out on my couch.
You’re not just my weakness, Brendon. You’re my fucking reason. ”
The room goes very still. My heart is pounding, and my side throbs in time with it.
“You called me your soft spot,” I say. “You said that makes me a weakness. You were trying to protect me by pushing me away. Now you’re holding me and telling me I’m not a burden. Which one am I supposed to believe?”
His jaw flexes, eyes dark. “Both,” he says.
“You can tell me I’m better off with someone else all you want.
You can call yourself stupid, weak, or pathetic.
I’m not listening. I’ve watched you change your entire life because you couldn’t stomach lying to yourself anymore.
I’ve watched you kneel for me and still argue about Bible verses.
You’re the bravest person I know, even when you’re a mess. ”
My eyes blur again, but this time the tears feel different. Less acidic, more gentle.
“I’m overbearing because I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you under my watch again,” he says.
“I almost lost you once. I’m not rolling those dice a second time.
So yeah, I’m going to hover. I’m going to follow you to the bathroom, cut your food into pieces, and make sure you take your meds on time.
I’m going to be annoying as fuck. Because the alternative is you vanishing on me while I look the other way, and I can’t live with that. ”
I let out a shaky breath. “You can’t do that forever,” I say, but there’s no real heat in it.
“Watch me,” he says, eyes soft and stubborn. “Or better yet, stay alive long enough to complain about it for the next fifty years.”
A wet laugh escapes me. “Fifty,” I echo. “Ambitious.”
“We’re going to need at least that long for you to unlearn all the bullshit your parents shoved into your head,” he says. “And for me to figure out how to be a person who doesn’t solve all his problems with a knife.”
“You’re really okay with losing football,” I ask, quieter. “For me.”
“I’m not planning to lose it,” he says. “I’m planning to make them adjust. But if they don’t… yeah. I’m okay with walking away. I’ve already killed the biggest monster in my life. Everything else is just logistics.”
The enormity of that sinks in slowly. The boy who once told me football was his way out is sitting here telling me he will set it on fire if it means staying with me. My chest aches in a new way.
“You’re insane,” I whisper.
He grins, finally, a flash of wickedness. “Takes one to love one, Little Sin.”
I snort and flinch because my stitches complain. He immediately fusses, shifting me slightly, smoothing my hair back from my face.
“I’m still mad at you,” I say, just to be difficult.
“I know,” he says. “You can be mad. You can yell. You can cry. You can tell me I’m hovering too much. Just don’t tell me I’d be better off with someone else. That’s the one thing I’m never going to let slide.”
I chew on my bottom lip, looking up at him. “You really came out to Keller,” I say again, because my brain is still stuck there.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not hiding you anymore. Not from him. Not from myself. We’ll figure the rest out.”
The we settles in my bones, heavy and warm.
I shift as much as my side allows and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling myself closer. He adjusts his hold without missing a beat, one arm braced under my thighs, the other banded around my back. My head tucks under his chin. I can hear his heartbeat again, steady and strong.
“I’m scared,” I admit into his hoodie.
“I know,” he says. “Me too.”
“You don’t sound scared,” I mumble.
“I learned how to sound like this from someone who thought fear was failure,” he says. “I’ll unlearn it. With you.”
Jericho jumps up and wedges himself in the tiny gap left between us, purring like a little engine, one paw pressing into my neck. The three of us are a ridiculous, precarious pile on this old sofa, stitched together with bruises and bad decisions and confessions.
“Fine,” I say. “You can hover.”
“Damn right I can,” he says.
“I reserve the right to complain.”
“Wouldn’t recognize you otherwise.”
I close my eyes, listening to his heart, the cat, and the night sounds outside. My body is exhausted enough and my head quiet enough that sleep feels possible.
If this is overbearing, I can live with it.
He’s overprotective because he almost lost me.
I’m angry because I almost lost myself. Somewhere in the middle of that, we’ve carved out this bloody, messy, tender thing that feels suspiciously like a life, and as much as it terrifies me, as much as my upbringing screams that this is all wrong, I know one thing with the kind of clarity I don’t get often.
I would rather be in his arms on this torn couch, stitches pulling and tears drying, than anywhere else on earth.