Page 125 of Dirty Hit
He sucks in a breath, lips parting, eyes now shining for a different reason. His hands lift, hesitating in the air like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch me, so I close the gap for him, catching his wrists and guiding them up to my chest, flattening his palms over my heartbeat.
“You feel that?” I say quietly. “Everything I did tonight, no matter who else I saw or touched, nothing moved it. You walk into a room. and it fucking sprints.”
A tiny, broken sound escapes him.
“This isn’t easy for me, Brendon,” I add. “Leaving you was not easy. Staying away is not easy. Hurting you like that… I will hate myself for a long fucking time. But I did it because I don’t know how else to keep you breathing in a world where my mother exists.”
He searches my face, like he’s trying to see if there’s any lie in what I’m saying. When he doesn’t find anything, some of the tension in his shoulders bleeds out—just a fraction.
“So, now what?” he asks, and there’s no brat in it this time; just a scared, exhausted boy who wants an answer. I wish I had a clean one. I wish I could tell him I’m going to quit killing and move us to a cabin in the woods. I wish I could promise him happy endings, and normal fights about laundry, and whose turn it is to buy groceries.
Instead, all I have is the one truth that’s been anchoring me through this whole fucked up spiral.
“Now,” I say slowly, “I wash this shit off my hands. I feed you. I put you on my couch, and you tell me every part of today that hurt so I can own it, instead of letting your head twist it into something worse. After that, we figure out how the fuck to keep you alive while my past tries to drag me back under. I can’t promise you safe, Little Sin, but I can promise you I’m done pretending I don’t care.”
His eyes well up again, but his mouth curves, small and trembling. “You still got me?” he asks, voice cracking on the word like it did that night in my kitchen, when he made me hook my pinky around his.
I let one hand slide down to his wrist, fingers circling the cuff. With the other, I hold up my hand between us, pinky finger crooked. My throat feels tight as hell.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve got you. Pinky promise.”
For a heartbeat, he just stares at my hand—then a broken laugh slips out of him, and he hooks his little finger around mine, squeezing
And just like that, my heart beats again.
Brendon
Myfingersarestillwrapped around his, clinging to stupid childhood symbolism, when he exhales, and lets our hands fall back to his chest. His heart is still hammering under my palms when he tilts his head toward the kitchen.
“Come on,” he says, voice low. “I said I’m feeding you. You look like you haven’t eaten since the Crusades.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitches. “That’s dramatic,” I mutter.
“You’re dramatic,” he shoots back. “You show up, kneeling in my living room like some sacrificial lamb. Shut up and let me feed you.”
Normally, I’d argue—or at least pretend to. Tonight, I just feel… empty; tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. My legs are still a little numb from kneeling, my head is spinning from the adrenaline dump, and there’s a hollow ache behind my ribs where all the hurt has been sitting.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t seem to expect that. His hands slide from my wrists to my waist, fingers pressing in, and I think he’s just going to steer me toward the kitchen.
Then, without warning, he bends and lifts.
My body moves with his, arms automatically going around his neck as he picks me up. My feet leave the floor, my stomach dips in that brief, weightless second, and I’m settled against his chest—one arm under my knees, the other around my back, like I weigh nothing.
“You know the drill,” he says, eyes warm in a way that hurts. “I carry what’s mine.”
There should be a part of me that brats at that and tells him I’m not luggage. It’s there, but it’s buried under the louder part of me that just melts. I tuck my face into the side of his neck instead of replying, breathing in the mix of soap, copper, and that maddening cologne I love so much. Not all of the night’s been washed off him yet, and I try not to think about that.
The soft, amber light of the kitchen flips on, warming the small space. Dom sets me on the edge of the counter, hands lingering a second longer at my hips to make sure I’m steady.
“Stay,” he tells me, like I’m Jericho. “I’m serious. Don’t pass out, or wander off, or start cleaning my cabinets or some shit.”
I snort, the sound cracked around the edges. “I’m not that bad.”
“You alphabetized my spices once,” he reminds me, turning to the sink and rolling his sleeves up. “In Russian.”
“You only have five spices,” I mutter. “It took two minutes with a translator.”
