Page 157 of Dirty Hit
I cry for tonight, for the way I drove my knife into her chest and felt nothing but fucking relief. For the fact that I’m too damaged to even regret killing the woman who gave birth to me, beyond the logistical headache it’s going to cause.
I cry because I’m so fucking tired.
I don’t sob pretty. There’s no controlled tearing up, no delicate wipe of a single tear. My breath stutters, and then I’m bent over his hand, shoulders shaking hard, ugly sounds ripping out ofmy chest while I try not to wake him, and fail at keeping quiet anyway. My nose runs, and my eyes burn. I grip his fingers like they’re the only thing tethering me to this shitty fluorescent-lit reality.
Seth will handle the physical cleanup. He’ll make sure my mother’s body vanishes, that her blood disappears from my floor, that the trackers she hid on my shit get ripped out and smashed. He’ll walk through my cottage with gloved hands and a professional eye, and he’ll erase tonight like it was a bad dream. He’s good at that. It’s why I called him.
But there are some stains he can’t touch.
Those are mine.
I’m the one who has to figure out what happens next. How to tell Kyra our mother is gone and that she’s better off without her. How to deal with whatever power vacuum my mother leaves behind in whatever fucked network she built. How to handle the fact that somewhere there are records of everything I’ve done, and I need to find them before someone else does. How to navigate scouts and contracts if word leaks that the golden boy quarterback’s boyfriend got stabbed in a mugging that doesn’t show up on any camera.
All of that can wait.
Right now, all I can do is hang onto his hand, and let my body shake itself apart until there’s nothing left in the tank.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out eventually, words mangled by tears. “I’m so fucking sorry, Brendon. I never wanted this to touch you. I tried so hard to keep you out of it, and I still dragged you right into the center.”
His fingers twitch, just a tiny shift against mine. It might be a reflex, or the meds. My chest lurches anyway.
“I tried to leave you. I really fucking tried. I thought if I pushed hard enough, you’d walk away. I’d hate you for it, and it would be easier to go back to being what I’m supposed to be. I thoughtI could just be the Beast and you could go back to being a good boy, and we’d both live. That was the plan. You weren’t supposed to kneel on my floor and ask if it was that easy. You weren’t supposed to change your next-of-kin. You weren’t supposed to make me pick between you and her.”
I draw a ragged breath that hurts. “You weren’t supposed to win.”
The confession hangs in the air between us, quiet and heavy. He doesn’t move. He’s too deep under the drugs, under fatigue, under blood loss. But his hand twitches in mine, a tiny unconscious squeeze, and the tight knot my chest eases a notch.
I swipe at my eyes with the back of my wrist and look at his face. Even pale and wired up, he’s still the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Stubborn, soft mouth. Tiny crease between his brows. That ridiculous nose I’ve kissed a hundred times. My throat tightens again.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit, my voice shaky, “I don’t know if I’m going to jail next semester, or the NFL. I don’t know how to be anything other than what she made, and I sure as fuck don’t know how to be worthy of you—but you’re stuck with me now. I told your father I’d take care of you, and I meant it. I don’t care what it costs.”
Another wave of tears hits, softer this time, more like the tail end of a storm than the first downpour. I let it come; no one’s here to see except him, and he already knows the worst parts.
I stay like that for a long time, hunched over the hospital bed, with his hand in mine and my cheeks wet, until the sobs finally drain out and I’m left wrung-out and raw. My head aches, and my eyes feel swollen. I straighten slowly, wiping a forearm across my face, and look at him again.
Beautiful in a way that makes no sense in this clinical light. The corners of his mouth are relaxed now, no tight lines of pain.I lean in and press a careful kiss to his knuckles, tasting salt and antiseptic.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I murmur. “Don’t do that again.Please.”
The monitor ticks on. His chest rises and falls steadily.
I drag the chair closer, refusing to let go of his hand, and settle in for the night. If anyone tries to make me leave, they’ll have a fight on their hands. I’ve lost enough for one lifetime.
I lay my head down next to his arm, curl my fingers around his, and let my eyes close, exhaustion finally dragging at me now that he’s stable and breathing and here.
Whatever comes next—cops, consequences, bodies, Kyra, fallout from killing the woman who made me—I’ll deal with it when I have to.
For now, I sit in a too-bright room, holding the hand of the boy who turned a monster into something else, and I let myself be what I never got to be before.
Just a man, who almost lost the person he loves.
Brendon
ThefirstthingIwake up to is pain and Russian.
The pain is easier to name; it’s a hot, continuous throb along my side, wrapped in something heavy and tight, every breath tugging against it. There’s a deeper ache under that, the kind that feels like I got hit by a truck and then reversed over, and my mouth is so dry my tongue feels glued to the roof. Everything else is a blur of beeping, stale air, and the scratch of too-stiff sheets under my fingers.
The Russian is not the soft muttering Dominic falls into when he’s half-asleep and talking to ghosts. It’s clipped this time, consonants hitting hard, vowels cutting through the steady hospital beeping. There’s another voice layered over his, higher, younger, matching him beat for beat in volume and attitude.
