Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
REMI
S omething pulled me from a restless sleep—a shift in the air, a sixth sense that curled cold fingers around my throat. Sweat slicked my skin, making the silk sheets cling to me, wrapping me in the echoes of last night. My limbs were heavy, drugged with exhaustion, but I reached for him anyway, my arm stretching across the mattress, fingers brushing nothing but emptiness.
The bed was cold.
I was alone.
A dull ache pulsed beneath my ribs, slow and insidious, twisting deep inside me. My body knew before my mind did—something in me had fractured in his absence.
Shafts of sunlight cut through the darkness of Domino’s room, catching the abandoned switchblade on the nightstand and glinting off the steel like a silent reminder. The sheets still smelled like him, a potent mix of smoke, leather, and something darker, something uniquely him. I turned my face into the pillow and breathed him in, inhaled until my lungs ached. Until the pressure in my chest became unbearable.
The bruises on my thighs pulsed with every breath. I ran my fingers over them, tracing the places where his hands had pressed too deep, where his blade had teased too hard. A canvas. That’s what I’d become—painted in shades of him, a masterpiece of violence and possession.
I should have felt angry.
I should have felt free.
But all I felt was severed, a marionette whose strings had been cut.
The world was off-kilter without him. The gravity of his presence was gone, and I was floating, untethered, lost in the vast nothingness he’d left behind.
It should have terrified me—how much I needed him now. How much of myself had been rewritten in his image. Even before Mom’s stroke, I had always been alone. Always learned to navigate the world on my own, to survive without needing anyone.
And yet, here I was, clawing at the ghost of him.
The devil himself had built me a gilded cage and called me his. Instead of fighting it, I had stepped inside and locked the door.
Inside these walls, I wasn’t just Remington Cain.
I was something else.
Something darker.
Something freer.
Domino had looked inside me—past flesh, past bone, past the carefully constructed version of myself I had built for the world—and he had seen the truth.
The hunger.
The fascination with death.
The thrill of power, the beauty in destruction.
I had spent years burying it. Locking it away. Hiding it behind careful smiles and sketchbooks full of things I could never say out loud.
Domino had ripped me open. Set me free.
Now, in his absence, I felt the edges of myself fraying. The apartment was silent, but it wasn’t empty.
He was everywhere.
In the shadows stretching across the walls. In the lingering scent of cigarettes and cologne. In the weight of the switchblade resting inches from my fingertips, a silent promise.
My phone sat face down on the nightstand—a landmine waiting to detonate. I hadn’t checked it yet, but I knew. Even when he wasn’t here, Domino always found a way to touch me.
I showered too long, scrubbing at my skin like I could wash him away, like I could burn him out of me with scalding heat. But it didn’t reach deep enough. It never did.
When I caught my reflection in the mirror, it didn’t look like me. Eyes shadowed. Lips swollen. Neck painted with his marks. I pressed my fingers against the bruises, half-expecting them to sting, half-hoping they would.
The pain meant I was still here. That I hadn’t simply unraveled in his absence. By the time I was dressed, my hands were shaking. My thoughts were a turbulent storm.
When I was with him, his presence consumed me. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t breathe without inhaling him. But now, in the silence I had once craved, I questioned everything.
Who I was.
Who he had made me.
What I wanted.
I was Schrodinger’s cat. Both dead and alive, existing in a paradox of desire and doubt.
The elevator doors softly slid open, revealing another smiling doorman. Another unfamiliar face in a perfectly pressed uniform.
“Morning, Remi. You off to Deveraux?”
“Yeah…” My voice felt wrong, thin. I forced a smile that I knew didn’t reach my eyes. “Yes, Matty.” According to his nametag.
He hesitated. “Mr. DeMarco said to let his?—”
I lifted a hand, cutting him off. “It’s fine. I’ll take the bus.”
Matty’s expression tightened, his gaze assessing. I knew what he saw—knew exactly what questions were lurking behind his eyes.
Why do you look like that?
Why do you look like someone had torn you apart and stitched you back together?
I didn’t owe him an answer.
“I’m sure,” I said, nodding once. “I like the bus.”
He sighed but let me go, holding the door open as I stepped onto the too-bright streets of Marlow Heights. The noise hit me like a punch to the ribs. People crashed into me, shouldering past without a glance. Car horns screamed. Voices shouted. The air was thick with exhaust and decay.
By the time I reached the bus stop, my hoodie was up, strings pulled tight, an imperfect shield against a world that had never felt more foreign. My blood simmered.
My jaw ached from clenching it too hard. My fingers traced invisible patterns of blood and broken bones against the fabric of my jeans.
I needed to breathe. I needed a release.
Blood.
Pain.
Power.
I needed it all. In the light of day, everything I had done with Domino felt like a fever dream. A hallucination.
But I wanted it.
I needed it.
Drawing it wasn’t enough anymore. Not now that I’d felt it. Not now that I had touched death with my own hands. Not now that I had learned what it was like to take control.
To own the moment.
To spill blood and bathe in it.
The hunger clawed at me from the inside, tearing me apart.
I needed to do it again.
And deep down, I knew—Domino would give me exactly what I wanted.
The city’s steel and smog clung to my skin as I stepped off the bus, but the moment my feet hit the ground, the atmosphere changed. The road ahead stretched long and quiet, a tunnel of looming oaks weaving shadows and fractured light over the blacktop. The air felt different here—cleaner, quieter, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Deveraux was breathtaking. Gothic spires clawed at the sky, black limestone towering, sharp-edged and severe. Stained glass glowed with the memory of sunlight, intricate depictions of saints and monsters bleeding color onto the stone floors. The entire campus was a living relic, steeped in history, whispering secrets through every weathered archway and iron-wrought gate.
Normally, I’d lose myself in it. Skip a lecture and disappear into the sprawling grounds; let my mind wander through pencil and paper. But today—today, my skin felt too tight. The air pressed too heavily against my ribs.
Inside the classroom, the fluorescent lights burned me like a bug under a magnifying glass. I sat stiff-backed in the wooden chair, trying to pretend that I could be normal, that I could listen to a lecture on Renaissance art—an elective—without feeling Domino’s grip still seared into my wrist, without my fingers twitching against my thigh, without the phantom vibration of my phone pulling me under.
I told myself I wouldn’t check.
I told myself I didn’t care.
I checked anyway—Nothing.
A sharp exhale passed my lips. A hollow pit expanded in my chest. My phone disappeared into my pocket, and my fingers curled into fists until my knuckles ached.
I didn’t need him. I didn’t.
So why did I feel like I was bleeding out in his absence?
I moved through the crowd of students like a ghost. Their voices blurred into static, their laughter rang hollow. Faces passed in waves, but I felt untethered, unseen. This place had once been a sanctuary, a world apart from everything else. Now it was foreign. It was an echo of something I barely recognized.
My hoodie was pulled tight around me, the collar abraded against my throat, hiding the evidence. The bruises, the teeth marks, the ownership burned into my skin. Imprinted into my soul. My body ached with it. And yet, I craved more.
The wind cut through me as I stepped outside, climbing the stone steps leading to the library. I sat down in a quiet corner, rubbing my wrist absentmindedly where his fingers had wrapped too tight the night before. My hand twitched toward my phone.
I wasn’t going to check.
I wasn’t.
A shadow fell over me before I even sensed someone was there.
Kyran.
He didn’t speak right away, just dropped down beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. He exhaled slowly, like he was choosing his words carefully, like he already knew I wouldn’t want to hear them.
I stiffened, my body on edge. “What?”
His gaze pinned me in place, sharp and suffocating. “You look like shit.”
I huffed out a humorless laugh. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You look like shit, too.”
My eyes flicked over the bruises on his face, yellowing and fading but stark reminders of the day we met. We’ve never talked about it. I wasn’t sure how much he even remembered after I had walked away from him on the steps to Nocturne—how much he recalled of Domino breaking him apart, of me watching, or what came after.
How Domino had forced me to my knees and throat fucked me as he lay broken and bleeding next to us. How I let him.
Kyran reached out, but I flinched before he could touch me. He pulled his hand back, curling it into a fist against his thigh. “Look what’s happened to you, Remi.”
I tensed, but before I could move, he grabbed the collar of my hoodie and tugged. His fingers stilled against my skin. His breath hitched. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
His eyes locked onto the deep bruises trailing down my throat, the faint line of a cut tracing my collarbone. His expression twisted—horror, disgust, something else I couldn’t name. He yanked the fabric lower, revealing the imprint of Domino’s teeth.
“Are those—are those fucking bite marks?”
I ripped away from him, yanking my hoodie back up and pulling the hood over my head like it could hide the truth. “It’s none of your business.”
Kyran’s jaw clenched. He raked a hand through his hair, his movements sharp, barely contained. “You think this is normal?”
I scoffed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Wouldn’t I?” His laugh was bitter, hollow. He grabbed my wrist, flipping it over, his grip gentle, a contradiction to his voice. “I know what it’s like to be pulled under. To think drowning is the same thing as devotion.”
My stomach twisted. “You don’t know anything about us.”
“You think this is love,” he snapped. “But it’s a fucking prison.”
A cold chill ran through me. I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him he was wrong, but the words wouldn’t come. Love? Love was fleeting. Love was temporary. The only thing that lasted forever was death.
Kyran exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “He’s inside your head, Remi. You don’t even see it, do you?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” he shot back. “You’re covered in bruises. You flinch when people touch you, and you can’t go five minutes without checking your fucking phone.”
My fingers twitched again, betraying me.
Kyran let out a harsh breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to live like this. You don’t have to go back to him.”
I laughed, but it was empty, lifeless. “Go back?” My voice was quieter now. “I never left.”
Kyran’s face twisted, frustration boiling over. “Do you even hear yourself?”
I looked away, my pulse hammering against my ribs. The world around me felt distant, unreal. My chest was too tight, my skin too hot.
Beneath it all, past the fear and doubt—I knew the truth. I didn’t want to leave. Because in Domino’s grasp, in his world of blood and pain and ownership, I had never felt more alive.
My phone buzzed, and everything else fell away. I snatched it from my pocket, heart slamming into my ribs. My vision tunneled, narrowing in on the screen. The message icon flashed. I clicked it instantly and waited for the picture message to load.
I was asleep, my arm draped over him, face buried into his skin like I couldn’t get close enough. I looked peaceful. Free. The contrast between my pale skin and his tattooed olive chest was stark, but it was the darkness in his eyes that anchored me. That lit the ember inside me and let me breathe.
The world steadied. The static in my head dissipated. The suffocating wrongness of this place evaporated. The chains of reality that shackled me loosened. The pressure in my chest lifted.
Domino was my home.
Kyran’s voice was still there, a dull murmur in the background, saying something—pleading, maybe—but I couldn’t hear him. My pulse roared in my ears. My blood hummed with certainty.
I stood. My body knew the way before my mind could catch up.
“Remi, wait—” Kyran grabbed my arm, his grip desperate. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go back.”
I turned to him, really looked at him. Pity curled in my chest—not for myself, but for him. For thinking he could save me from something I didn’t want to be saved from.
I leaned in just enough so he could see the truth in my eyes. “I was never meant to be part of this world.”
His expression cracked, something breaking behind his gaze. I didn’t wait for him to speak. I yanked my arm free and walked away, my steps sure, my destination inevitable.
A roar split through the air, sending shivers down my spine. The deep, guttural growl of a motorbike engine. I knew that sound like I knew his footsteps. Like I’d know him in the dark.
Domino tore down the long driveway, gravel skidding in his wake as the bike kicked out underneath him. He revved the engine, the sound a thunderclap against the stone walls of Devereaux.
A smirk curled my lips as he pulled off his helmet, eyes locking onto me instantly. A tether snapped taut between us, pulling me home. His lips twitched in response. The tip of his tongue ran along his bottom lip, and a moan built in my chest. I could still taste him. Could still feel the ghost of his touch, the imprint of his claim on my body.
My blood surged under his gaze as I stepped up to him. He pinched my chin between his fingers, tilting my head back, something unreadable flashing across his features before it was gone.
Students and teachers stopped to stare as he leaned in and claimed me in front of them all. I should have been embarrassed. But I didn’t give a fuck.
These people didn’t matter.
Their opinions meant nothing.
“Did any of those fuckers mess with you?” His voice was a low snarl against my lips.
I inhaled his fury and let it breathe life into me. “No,” I said simply, rolling my eyes. “You’ve marked your territory so well they’re afraid to even look at me.”
Domino sneered, his gaze flicking past me, locking onto someone. “Not everyone. He touched you. Again .”
He was all steel and blood and wrath.
“It was nothing.”
My voice was quiet as I turned to see Kyran, his face twisted, confused. Two guys held him back as he threw his weight against them. He looked wild, like a man possessed—like he wanted to rip me from Domino’s arms.
“Hop on, piccolo agnello .”
I swung my leg over the bike, took the helmet he offered, and wrapped my arms around him.
Kyran broke free, screaming my name.
Domino’s body vibrated with laughter. I saw the smirk on his face. He revved the engine, the sound rolling through me like a promise. As Kyran lunged forward, Domino released the throttle. The back tire spun, kicking up gravel and spraying it like shrapnel.
Each hit landed. Hard. Crimson dots bloomed on Kyran’s skin as he collapsed to the ground. Then we were gone, leaving Devereaux behind in a blur.
I didn’t look back.
I had made my choice.
I chose hell.
I chose my devil.