Page 118 of Dirty Hit
“Mmm,” he hums, already drifting. “You’ll disagree in the morning. Hate this. Hate me. Hate that I let her get in my head.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say, the words rushing out before I can stop them.
He makes a soft, broken sound that might be relief or disbelief. “You should,” he whispers. “Would be safer.”
My chest feels too tight, so I keep my hands busy, fussing with the tape on his bandages because I don’t know where else to put them.
“She’s wrong, you know,” I say, before I can swallow it.
He huffs out a bitter laugh that turns into a wince, then he blinks, expression going serious and unfocused again. “I shouldn’t have you; I know that. She’d kill you just to prove a point. Does that stop me? Of course not.”
“Dom—”
“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t fucking matter. You’re mine.” His hand fumbles blindly, fingers catching my wrist where the leather cuff sits, and he squeezes. “Mine, Little Sin. I don’t share. I don’t… I don’t lose people anymore. Not to her. Not to anyone. Can’t… can’t lose you. Not you. Please…”
“Hey,” I say, voice thick. “You’re not losing me, okay? I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
He mumbles more, words slurring together. “Dom,” I whisper, leaning closer, free hand smoothing his hair back from his face. “You’re safe. You’re with me. I’ve got you.”
His eyes crack open one last time, glassy and unfocused, but they find my face, locking there like it’s a fixed point in a spinning room. The cocky smirk, the golden boy mask; all of it is gone. What’s left is bare, and terrifying in its honesty.
“Didn’t… want to love you,” he mumbles, the word landing between us and leaving me shaken to my core. “But I do. That’s the problem. Love gets you killed.”
My breath stutters and I swear my heart forgets how to beat. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out. There’s a thousand things I could say—protests, reassurances that I love him too, that it’s okay, that we’ll figure it out—but his eyes have already slid shut again, lashes resting against his cheeks. His grip on my wrist loosens as his body finally gives in.
“Dom?” I ask, panic spiking. “Hey, stay with me a little longer.”
He doesn’t answer, but his chest rises and falls—slow but steady. His head lolls slightly to the side, mouth parting on a soft exhale. He’s out-not dead, just exhausted and hurt. He crashed hard enough that even his monsters had to lie down for a minute.
My hand is still cradling his, listening to his breathing and waiting for some external authority to walk in and tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do with all of this. No one does. It’s just me, Jericho, watching from the arm of the couch with owl-wide eyes, and the bloodied monster sleeping on my cheap cushions.
I sink to the floor beside the couch, back against it, knees pulled up, and stay there until my own body gives up on staying awake—head eventually tipping sideways to rest against the cushion near his hip, Jericho a warm line against my thigh. The last thing I’m aware of, before sleep drags me under, is the steady rise and fall of Dominic’s chest and the faint, stubborn imprint of his muffled words in my ears.
‘Didn’t want to love you. But I do.’
Yeah. Same.
Dominic
Iwakeuptothefaint tickle of fur across my temple. My brain goes straight to the worst place: cat on my face, suffocating in my sleep. This is how the serial killer dies—not with a bullet or a knife, but a house pet staging an assassination.
My neck hurts in that dull, stiff way that says I fell asleep somewhere I wasn’t planning to, and my head has that cottony ache that comes after adrenaline burns off and leaves you with nothing but the bill.
I crack one eye open.
Jericho is perched two inches from my face on the arm of the couch, yellow eyes huge and unblinking. His whiskers are forward like he’s making sure I’m actually awake and not some particularly large corpse he has to figure out how to eat around. His paws are tucked neatly under him, tail curled in that smug, self-contained way only cats manage.
“Morning, menace,” I rasp, voice wrecked.
He blinks slowly, then lifts a paw and taps my cheek once, claws politely sheathed. He curls back into his loaf afterward and starts purring, like that settles that.
I shift my head, and the room comes into focus. On the floor, right up against the couch, Brendon is curled onto his side with his neck at a murderous angle, one arm thrown over his head, and mouth parted on soft, uneven breaths.
He didn’t make it to his bed. He didn’t even make it to the other end of the couch. My chest pulls tight in a way that has nothing to do with bruised ribs.
He didn’t leave.
He could’ve. Heshould’ve.I broke into his apartment in the middle of the night, bleeding and half out of my mind, knocked over his shit, scared his cat, and he could’ve called security and had me dragged out in cuffs. He could’ve stood there and watched me bleed, made me explain everything, made me beg. He could’ve told me to get the fuck out, and locked the door behind me.
