15. Ryan #2
I didn’t look back as I strode for the door. There was a shout from behind me. I thought maybe it was my name, but there was no way. Dominic wouldn’t be calling after me.
Except he was.
I was halfway down the street when I heard it again. “Ryan! Stop. Wait.”
Nope. I was done listening to Dominic. Look where it had landed me. Sure, I might have friends now. The bullying had stopped. I’d even gained confidence. If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I’d have told you this was all I’d ever wanted.
Now I knew different. I’d have given it all up if it meant I could give up these feelings too.
The confusion that had me wanting to punch something hard.
The lust that kept me awake night after night.
The jealousy whenever Dominic’s attention was on anyone other than me.
The fucking yearning he’d somehow unlocked in me.
The cracking in my chest. Fractures I wasn’t sure would ever seal over.
I’d give it all up in a heartbeat. What I was feeling wasn’t worth it.
I turned into an alley, praying he’d just leave me alone.
I should’ve known better.
“Shadow, stop.” He grabbed my bicep roughly, dragging me to a halt. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” I was aiming for breezy but missed it by several thousand miles. “Let me go, Dominic.”
“Not until you let me explain. Please.”
“There’s nothing to explain.” I yanked my arm out of his grip and turned to face him.
That was a mistake. I could’ve lived quite happily without ever seeing this look on Dominic’s face. It was some brutal combination of guilt and sorrow. There was vulnerability there too.
I squeezed my eyes shut so I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t being dragged back into this…whatever it was. “You don’t have to explain anything because we’re just friends.”
“Friends,” Dominic repeated hollowly. “Are we? Because half the time you look at me like you can’t stand me.”
My eyes flew open at that. “Can you blame me? I swear you drive me crazy on purpose.”
“Maybe,” he said softly, his hands going to my hips. I knew I should shove them away, but I didn’t. “I can’t help it. Something about seeing you all riled up just does it for me.”
My breath caught as he drew nearer. “That’s so fucked up.”
“Probably.” His hands gripped me tighter. “But at least I know then I’m seeing the real you.”
“I’m always the real me.”
“Liar,” he murmured. Was his face this close before? I could feel his breath fanning my lips. “You’re always pretending. Trying to blend in with the shadows when what you deserve is to shine under a spotlight.”
I moistened my lips, trying not to notice how hungrily Dominic tracked the movement. “Wait, is that why you call me ‘Shadow’?”
“One of the reasons.”
“What are the others?”
“That’s a story for another time,” he said. “Come back in, Ry. Don’t go. I’ve…I’ve missed you. Come back with me.”
Right. The party. I drew out of his hold with a bitter laugh. “Sure. Really looked that way.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed, his fingers twitching like he was stopping himself reaching for me. He probably was. He seemed to think it was his right to touch me however and wherever he liked. “I told you I can explain that.”
“And I told you there’s nothing to explain.”
“Feels like there is if you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset,” I said stubbornly, folding my arms over my chest. “Go back inside to your girl, Dominic.”
But he didn’t, the fucker just stepped closer. I tried to retreat, but hard brick stopped me as I backed into a wall. “She’s not my girl, Shadow. And you are upset. Don’t lie to me.”
“No, that’s your job.”
Dominic cocked his head. “Really? When am I supposed to have lied?”
His hands were on my hips again. And again, I wasn’t pushing them away. “You lie constantly.”
“Not to you.”
I searched my brain for an example, latching on to the first one that surfaced. “You told me you didn’t care if I took Maya out again. That was a lie.”
He thought about it before nodding slowly. “Fine. It was a lie, but that one doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re lying about the exact same thing right now.” His eyes burned like hot coals. “You’re upset, just like I was then.”
Fuck. He was right. I was just as bad. My guard slipped, letting some honesty free. “But why? Why are we upset?”
Dominic blew out a breath. “I don’t know, Ry. Well, not for sure. If we’d had that conversation I suggested, maybe we would know.”
An image of him smiling down at Gabriella flashed in front of my eyes. I shoved him in the centre of his chest, forcing him back a step. “Yeah, maybe. But judging by what I just saw, I don’t think it’s necessary now. Just let me leave, Dominic. Go back inside, and let me go home.”
His eyes flashed. “Why? So we can both go back to being fucking miserable?”
I laughed bitterly. “You didn’t look miserable with Gabriella. Far from it.”
“Then maybe you should look closer”—Dominic’s nostrils flared—“because what you saw in there? That was me just trying to cope.”
“Cope with what?”
“With losing you!” His voice was so loud it echoed off the walls. “With losing…whatever the fuck was going on between us.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. My hands numb. “Nothing was going on between us.”
Now Dominic was the one laughing bitterly, rubbing his hands over his face.
“See, this is what I mean. You don’t want to deal with it, so we need to move on.
That was the agreement, right? We could talk or ignore it.
You chose the latter, Ryan. You, not me.
And that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to do what I thought you wanted. ”
“You thought I wanted to see you getting off with a girl?”
“Of course not.” Dominic slumped against the opposite wall. “I didn’t know you’d be there tonight. With how you’ve been avoiding me…”
“We’ve been avoiding each other. Which is what I thought we both wanted.”
“I don’t even know what I want. All I do know is that I looked up while I was dancing with her and saw your face…
” He paused, meeting my gaze across the alley.
“I knew right then that I’d fucked up, because that look on your face…
I never wanted to see it again. And I certainly didn’t want to be the one to put it there. ”
I should say something. I knew that, but I couldn’t speak. Dominic’s hushed confession had sent me into a free fall, one that was reshaping me in a way that felt permanent.
“Forget it,” Dominic said heavily, shoving off the wall. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have come after you either. I’m sorry, Ry. Let’s just pretend nothing ever happened and move on, okay? I know that’s what you want.”
I’d heard that there are times in your life that you remember forever. Moments when you make a decision that you know will have irrevocable consequences.
Right then, standing in that alley, watching Dominic walk away, I knew this was one of those moments. I could let him go and chalk the last few weeks up to experience.
Or I could be brave, and take a leap into the unknown.
I took a deep breath. “That’s not what I want.”
Dominic froze at the mouth of the alley, his shoulders taut as he faced away from me. “What?”
“That’s not what I want,” I repeated, my voice shaking. “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not that. I don’t want to forget this or pretend it never happened.”
He didn’t say anything, which was fair. Of the two of us, he was the one who’d been vulnerable. Who’d been brave.
Now it was my turn.
“I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t know what to say,” I confessed quickly. “Because the things I want to say…they scare me, Dom. I don’t fucking understand them, and that scares me.”
Dominic turned, and the expression on his face had my heart beating faster. “You think I’m not scared too, Ry? I’m fucking terrified. All these feelings, they’re brand new, and I don’t know what to do either.”
My eyes bugged wide. “Really?”
“Yes!” He shoved his hands into his hair, pacing the alley. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening, Shadow, but I don’t want to pretend it’s not. I can’t pretend. I thought maybe I could. That’s why I was at the party tonight. Why I was dancing with Gabriella.”
I scuffed my foot on the floor as the jealousy reared its ugly head again. “Didn’t look like pretending to me.”
Dominic stopped pacing, rounding on me with a glare. “Like I said, you need to look closer, Shadow. Maybe then you would’ve realised how fucking fake my smiles were. How wrong her body felt under my hands. That the whole time, I was trying to pretend she was you .”
Fuck. I dared to take a step. A single move towards him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said wearily. “God, I’m so fucking pathetic. How is this my life?”
I touched my chest, trying to rub away the sting his words imparted. “Is that what your feelings about me make you think you are? Pathetic?”
“Fuck no.” He scowled at the ground, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m pathetic because I’m hung up on someone who doesn’t feel the same.”
Wow. We really needed to get better at communicating. Was it this hard for everyone? Or was it just because we were eighteen?
It didn’t matter, really. Not when I was going to make an effort to improve it right now.
“Who said I don’t feel the same?”
Dom’s head snapped up. “What?”
“I do,” I whispered, scared to say the words too loudly.
Not because I was ashamed of them, but because I was terrified of what might happen next.
That maybe Dominic would turn around and say it was all a joke.
That he was just fucking with me. But I knew that if I didn’t take this chance, I’d regret it forever.
“I’m so hung up on you, Dom. I can’t sleep without you next to me.
Can’t concentrate. Can’t fucking think about anything that isn’t you.
You’re under my skin, and I don’t know how to get you out.
Worse, I don’t think I want to. I…I like having you there too much. ”
He moved towards me so abruptly that for a split second I thought he was about to punch me. Didn’t help when he grabbed my shirt roughly and hauled me towards him.
But he didn’t hit me.
He kissed me.