Page 123 of Dirty Hit
My brain initially refuses the image. I’ve finally cracked; I finally pushed myself too far, and now my guilt is hallucinating my worst and best temptation right where I’m weakest.
“What the fuck?” I mutter under my breath, dropping the duffel on the floor. “Brendon?”
Nothing. Just the rise and fall of his shoulders. He’s not ignoring me; he’s deep, far down the rabbit hole of his own head, caught somewhere between stubborn and broken. That jagged mix of surrender and floating that I usually coax him into on purpose. Seeing him here, uninvited, knocks me sideways.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, louder now—but he still doesn’t look up. His fingers twitch once on his thighs, then go still again.
Fuck this.
I cross the remaining distance and drop to a crouch in front of him, my knees popping loudly in the quiet cottage. Up close, I can see the tremble in his hands; the sheen on his cheeks.
It takes me a second to realize those are tear tracks drying in uneven lines along his cheeks; his lashes clumped together at the tips. He doesn’t flinch at the movement, but his breath hitches when I get close enough that my shadow falls over him.
“Brendon,” I say again, and this time I letthattone slip in; the one I reserve for him when I want obedience, when I want his attention on me and nothing else. “Eyes on me.”
He finally obeys, and when his eyes meet mine, it immediately hits me in the sternum. The hurt I saw on the quad, stripped of all the control he tried to cover it with. He blinks twice, green eyes glassy and rimmed red, and a breath shudders out of him.
“What are you doing here?” I repeat, because I need him responsive, not lost in whatever storm left him on his knees in my living room. “Use your words, Little Sin.”
His throat works around a swallow, and when he speaks, his voice is wrecked, rough, and thin. “Was it that easy?” he whispers.
I don’t follow. “What?”
“Was it that easy,” he says again, just a little louder, eyes locked on mine, “to leave?”
The cottage spins a fraction; all the bullshit I told myself about protection, about strategy, about keeping him off the board, looks pathetic from his vantage point on the rug.
I see it how he must see it; one day, I’m in his bed, telling him I’ve got him, hooking my pinky with his and promising in a stupid voice that it’s binding. The next, I’m ignoring him, having admin reassign him, letting him see me with some random girl perched on my lap.
No explanation or closure—just absence.
And he showed up anyway. He walked into the lion’s den again, knowing full well what I am, and dropped to his knees anyway, because that’s how he knows how to talk to me now.
My mother wanted proof I’m still a weapon, but here’s the proof she’ll never see: the only thing that ever really gutted me is kneeling in front of me right now, asking if he was that easy to walk away from.
“Brendon—”
“Because it fucking hurts,” he says, voice breaking, anger finally coming through. “I know I was stupid to come here. I know I shouldn’t have. I know you’re probably trying to push me away for some noble, deranged reason you’ve built up about your mother. But… I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop smelling you on my clothes. I can’t stop waking up, reaching for you, and finding a cat instead. And then today, I see you withher, and you looked so… normal. Like it was easy. So I need to know if it was… I need to know if I was that easy to leave.”
The knife in the alley never felt like this. This feels worse. This feels like I’m the one on the floor, and he’s the one holding the blade without even knowing it.
“No,” I say, before my brain can try to spin it. It comes out hoarse and raw. “No, Brendon. It wasn’t fucking easy.”
He swallows, jaw clenched. “You made it look easy. I thought it was just you lying about your feelings, to scratch an itch before leaving to be a big star. I was stupid for believing there was more. I should’ve known better. I was an idiot to fall for you.”
Every word is a small, precise knife, and none of them miss; guilt claws up my throat, hot and bitter. I bring my hands up to frame his face, palms bracketing his cheeks, thumbs swiping at the damp tracks.
“It wasn’t easy,” I say again, forcing each word to sound steady, because if I let them shake, he’ll think I’m lying. “It’s never been easy with you, Brendon. It was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He stares at me like he wants to believe me and doesn’t trust himself to. “Then why?” he breathes. “Why all of this? Why the silence? Why her? Why make me watch?”
“I had to,” I say. “My mother is still in town, and if she even suspects I care about you, she’ll put you where she put everyone who has ever meant a thing to me. I would rather rip my own heart out than let that happen.”
He flinches at the implication. “So, your plan is to break me first, so she doesn’t have to?” he says bitterly.
I close my eyes for a second, hating the way it sounds when he says it—hating that there’s truth in it. When I open them, he’s still watching me.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” I say, and it comes out quieter than I mean. “That’s the only fucking truth I live by lately. You’re my only soft spot, Brendon. You’re my only weakness, and she can’t know that. I thought if I pushed you hard enough, if I made you hate me enough, you’d walk away before she noticed.”
