Chapter 11 Bash
Bash
The world tilts beneath my feet until there’s nothing solid to keep me anchored. Denial surges loud in my ears and insists this can’t be him, could never be him, because the Xeni I loved is gone. Dead, or as good as dead, for all these years.
But here he stands, close enough that I can see the faint tremor in his lower lip.
My heart is already broken. It’s nothing better than a map of old breaks held together by stubborn will, but somehow, as I take him in, it finds new fault lines to split along.
Xeni stands there, unchanged in all the ways that matter and utterly transformed in the ones that hurt the most. The sight of him pierces fresh wounds into places I thought had long gone numb.
He was always lean, but now his cheeks are carved too deep, and the warmth has been drained from his pale skin. My gaze stutters as it traces the leather patch covering his left eye.
It’s jarring across a face so perfectly beautiful.
A million unspoken questions race through my mind, each with an answer I’m not sure I’m ready to hear.
He shivers, and his hair shifts under the lights.
It falls almost to his waist now, a waterfall of long, wild strands that once curtained us in our own private world when he moved above me.
It would tickle my face in the mornings, and I would thread my fingers through it while he slept curled against me.
He was always the little spoon… always seeking the shelter of my arms.
He wanted to feel safe.
In the end, I was the one who needed safety.
The memory stiffens my spine like a blade driven between my vertebrae. My gaze drops to Xeni’s arm, where Cato’s fingers dent the flesh, digging in hard enough to leave marks. An animalistic urge to shove Cato back rises so fiercely I have to look away before I act on it.
Sakane’s mouth hangs open in stunned silence, and Ego leans against the table with her arms crossed, blue hair catching the light as casual interest sharpens with intrigue.
“This is Dom.” Sakane breaks the silence, dragging the words out like he’s uncertain.
Xeni’s visible eye flicks to him and scans his thin frame, then locks back onto mine with an intensity that steals my breath.
“Dom?” he asks.
The name is soft on his lips, but it lands like a punch to the gut.
Wrong, so fucking wrong.
A syllable that no longer belongs to me when spoken by him.
“Well, technically Domino,” Sakane continues, oblivious to the tension as he gestures toward my hip, “but we all call him Dom, ya know? Got his name from that white dot—”
“That’s enough,” I cut in, the words carrying a bite that stops Sakane’s rambling mid-sentence.
“Do you two know each other, boss?” Ego asks. She blows a small pink bubble, the pop loud in the sudden quiet. The question is rhetorical, because she not only sees straight through me, she recognizes his pale complexion as the twin to the mark on my hip.
She knows who he is.
“Everyone out,” I say, but the command comes out far too soft to carry the weight I need. I have never had the voice for leading, and they only stare, waiting for clarification.
“Out!” I bellow, pouring everything into it.
Sakane scrambles for the door first, and Ego follows at an unhurried saunter. After a moment's hesitation, Cato releases Xeni and turns, but I reach out in a blind panic.
My fingers close around his wrist. “Not you.”
I can’t be alone with Xeni.
Can’t leave myself exposed to the most dangerous person I’ve ever met. He stripped away every layer of armor I had ever built and left me bare.
Flayed wide open.
Vulnerable.
I had loved it then—the way I could fall apart in his arms. He handled every jagged part of me with care and without judgement, and took those scattered pieces and turned them into something whole.
He had filled those hollow places inside me, the ones I’d carried like open wounds, and I had let him.
Gladly.
Greedily, even.
Ours was the kind of love you read about in sonnets and old books. It was the all-consuming sort that poets chase and cynics dismiss. The impossible type you don’t believe exists until it crashes into you and rewrites your entire world.
It was possible, and it was mine.
Until the morning he broke my heart and scattered those pieces once more. He left them sharper than ever.
It was a strike against an unguarded heart.
An easy target for a betrayal I never saw coming.
Gods, I want to hate him.
Need to hate him.
But even now, some traitorous part of me is dying to cross the space between us, to touch him and prove he’s real. Feel something again after years of feeling nothing.
Xeni’s face twists as his eye tracks down my arm to where my fingers dig into Cato’s wrist. His fury gives me a cruel thrill, and I despise myself for the satisfaction I take from his jealousy.
I have always been the person to turn the other cheek. Not passive, but guided by fairness and a heart too soft for my own good.
Not today.
Today I want him to hurt the way I have hurt every single day since he left.
My grip on Cato’s forearm tightens as Xeni’s nostrils flare. Anger swirls inside that pale eye. Where I have learned to leash my emotions, Xeni was always their captive. He’s ruled by whatever burns hottest inside him.
“Not you,” I repeat, voice calmer, and Cato relaxes beside me.
My fingertips linger over his skin a moment longer than necessary before I let go, but I never look away from Xeni.
“Heard a rumor you were dead,” I say at last.
His tongue flicks out to wet his lips, and his gaze abandons Cato’s wrist to find mine again. “That’s… not entirely true…”
“Obviously not,” I snap as I shake my head. I turn away, unable to bear the sight of him another second. “You think I wouldn’t know if you were?” I muse quietly.
“Bash,” he whispers.
The plea is the first tremor of an earthquake, rattling the foundation I’ve fought so hard to rebuild. My eyes close against the sound and my throat seizes, airways narrowing until every breath feels borrowed.
Both Xeni’s and Cato’s gazes bore into me as I drag in slow breaths, but calm is unreachable.
“Don’t call me that,” I finally manage to say.
“Bash, please,” he tries again.
The last thread of my restraint snaps.
I spin and close the distance in two strides, hands slamming into his shoulders. His back hits the wall, and I crowd in until we're nose to nose, with every inch of space between us crackling with heat.
My body screams for contact.
It aches to let him feed the fire he started all those years ago, even as it threatens to consume me. His scent floods my lungs, sweet amber and achingly familiar, and the flames roar higher.
“I said don’t call me that,” I growl through bared teeth, hating the sadness pooling in his eye.
He has no right to it.
No right to stand here and unravel everything I rebuilt from the ashes he left behind.
But he doesn’t fight back.
Doesn’t push, doesn’t move, just waits beneath me, docile.
I shove harder, pinning him with my weight. “It’s not my name. Not anymore.”
“Why not?” he whispers, voice trembling. The frantic drum of his heart matches mine, always perfectly in sync.
For a treacherous second, I close my eyes and let myself fall into the illusion.
The planes of his body.
The warmth.
The silk of his hair tangled in my fingers again.
It’s all so fucking familiar.
My eyes snap open. He watches me warily, his chin tilting as my fist tightens in his hair to hold him exactly where I need him. I tug harder, and his lips part on a soft, involuntary gasp that shoots straight through me.
I should let go.
Instead, I drag the moment out, savoring the contact like poison I know will kill me.
“It’s not my name,” I finally say, voice raw, “because you’re the one who gave it to me.”
His face collapses into a masterpiece of ruin.
I release him and force a step back, the distance feeling like tearing flesh. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“Bash—” he starts, voice breaking.
The sound of it guts me. My stomach plummets, pain echoing his so perfectly that I want to fold in half just to make it stop.
None of this should still belong to me.
Not the hurting, not the longing, not the love I buried under four years of grief and rage.
None of it.
“No,” I interrupt. “You don’t get to call me that. You don’t get to show up here after all these years and break me all over again. It isn’t fair. That’s not fucking fair, Xeni!”
“Please,” he whispers, his insistence turning to pleading. “Please just listen.”
My throat swells as I close my eyes and force my logical brain to take over. If I give the reins to my heart, it’ll cave, because despite everything he did, it still yearns for its other half.
I take a half step back, then fight my impulses and do it again. When I speak, my voice shakes with pain I’ve held onto for years.
“It’s your turn to listen. You’re going to answer my questions. Got it?”
His lip tightens and quivers slightly. He looks ready to argue, but he nods instead, small and defeated.
“Why are you in the city?” I demand.
His throat works in a swallow, then he wets his lips as he glances at Cato, then back to me.
“Can we talk in private?” he asks.
The fear of being alone with him has only been amplified after being so close. His scent still burns in my nostrils, and I can’t be trusted.
I force my head to shake. “Anything you need to say can be said in front of him.”
Unmistakable jealousy flares across his face. It stirs a bitter satisfaction inside me, but it’s hollow, more ache than triumph.
He stays quiet for a long moment, the fight draining out of him until his shoulders sag and he stares at his lap.
“I guess you’ve heard about Ljómur,” he says.
I close my eyes, reliving the day the report came. Seeing the pictures of the destruction and reading the casualty list… staring at his name listed in bold, the word ‘deceased’ so casually scrawled beside it.
The emptiness, despite knowing it wasn’t true.