Page 107 of Dirty Hit
So, I don’t bring it up.
Iwon’tbring it up.
Not because I don’t want to hear it again. Christ, I want to hear it so badly it makes my teeth ache. I want to pin him under me and make him say it with his eyes open. I want to hear it when he’s fully conscious; when he knows exactly what he’s handing me. I want to hear it over and over, until the words stop sounding impossible in relation to me.
I won’t bring it up, because he doesn’t know he said it—and there’s old rot in me that would turn that into leverage without meaning to. I know myself too well for that. I know how easy it would be to tuck it away and pull it out when he’s vulnerable, to use it as proof he’s already halfway in whether he admits it or not.
That isherin me. That is exactly the kind of shitshewould do: take someone’s unguarded moment and turn it into a chain.
I’ll keep it to myself and silently lose my fucking mind instead.
The Charger is an anchor—has been since I was nineteen. The trust hit, and I bought her out from under the dust my dad left her in. Every time I work on her, I feel a little bit of that samecalm from when I was a kid, watching his hands move under the hood while he muttered about timing and compression and how American muscle has soul.
Before everything went sideways.
That familiar tightness pulls in my chest, the one that isn’t about blood or football or anything I know how to fix with a wrench. It’s older than Lakehaven, older than this car, older than half the scars on my body.
When I was sixteen, I knew exactly what not to do. I knew the rules: keep it casual, keep it shallow, and never, ever let anyone become something you can’t lose without hitting the fucking ground with them.
The worst part is: high schoolusedto feel good. Before everything really sank its claws in, there were pieces of it that felt almost normal. I had real friends; not just teammates who liked me because I could carry an offense on my back.
We’d crowd around this same car in the driveway while my old man taught us how to change oil and rotate tires. Leo would slap my shoulder and say,“You listening, Dom? You fuck this engine up and she’ll never forgive you.”My friends would laugh and call the Charger my true love. We’d spend hours sitting on the hood, talking shit about coaches and colleges and who was hot in chem class.
They cared about me, and I cared back. Stupid teenage loyalty, sure; but it was real. There were sleepovers, late-night drives, and shared secrets. I remember one of them, Tyler, telling me his parents were divorcing while we sat in this car in some grocery lot at midnight, both of us pretending it wasn’t a big deal while my chest ached for him.
Then senior year hit.
They started ignoring me, one by one, in ways that looked like drifting if you didn’t know what you were looking at. Tyler stopped responding to texts, and Leo said his parents werecracking down, so he couldn’t hang out anymore. Some stopped sitting with me at lunch. Some stopped looking me in the eye. Some disappeared entirely.
I didn’t have proof—she never left proof—but when you’ve spent your entire life watching the way someone solves problems, you just know. You feel the pattern in your bones. Every time someone got too close, they just… vanished.
You learn quickly, in a house like mine, that loving anything is the same as taking a knife and laying it gently against its throat.
So, I stopped getting close. I can play the part—captain, leader, friend. I’ll take a hit for you on the line, I’ll back you up in a fight, and I’ll help you study enough that you don’t fail out. I’ll joke with you, drink with you, let you crash on my couch when your girlfriend kicks you out.
That’s easy. That’s surface shit. But anything deeper than that, anything that feels like a real attachment, is a no fucking go for me.
Even Colton, for all that I call him my best friend, only gets so far. I like him, yeah; we click. We move in sync on the field, we talk shit in the locker room, we share rides and meals, and we make the same kind of dark jokes only people who’ve been hit too hard can make. He’s the closest thing I have to a brother that didn’t come with my blood. But I still keep certain doors locked; I don’t let him in there often.
Ifshefinds out I genuinely care, if she smells actual love on me, Colton would be a target.
And now there’s Brendon.
He clung without even trying—that’s the worst part. It’s not like he chased me. He didn’t text me a hundred times a day, or show up uninvited, or throw himself at my feet.
He just… stayed. He sat in my kitchen, made coffee, and graded papers. He let me call him Little Sin, Daddy’s good boy, and everything in between. He falls asleep halfway through amovie, with his hand in my hoodie pocket and Jericho on his chest. He wears my cuff, and runs his thumb over it whenever he’s thinking too hard. He kneels like he was built for it, and then blushes after when I tell him he did good.
I care.
I really fucking care.
The smart thing to do is cut this off. Put distance between us for his sake, if not mine. Keep him on purely academic terms; let him help me pass my classes, and leave it there. No more overnights. No more pinky promises in my kitchen with crumbs on his shirt and his cat glaring at us.
The thought makes my jaw clench so hard it hurts.
On campus, nothing’s changed for anyone else. I’m still the golden boy. He’s still the quiet TA. I walk across the quad, surrounded by teammates, headphones in, and hoodie up. He walks ten feet the other way, with his bag and his neat little stack of folders.
Sometimes, he glances over. Sometimes I do. But we never let our eyes linger too long in public.
