Page 130 of Dirty Hit
That knocks the air out of me.
A wet, helpless laugh breaks out of me, and with it, the pressure behind my eyes finally gives. I swipe at my face with the heel of my hand, annoyed and relieved all at once.
“I hate you,” I say, and we both know there’s no real heat in it. “I really fucking hate you.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “I earned that.”
“I hate that this works,” I go on. “That you drop to your knees, and suddenly everything in me wants to forgive you, because at least you get it. I hate that you’re the one person who can break me, and then put me back together like you’re assembling some fucked up puzzle.”
His mouth softens. “I’m trying to put you back together better than you were, not into what you were before. Into something that’s yours—not your parents’, not your church’s, not mine.”
“Pretty sure letting a serial killer kneel at my feet and apologize like this isn’t in any self-help book,” I mutter.
He shrugs, the movement small on those broad shoulders. “Fuck self-help books. They don’t have chapters for us.”
That drags another laugh out of me, wetter this time. I slide off the couch and onto my knees in front of him before I can overthink it. Our faces are suddenly level, his eyes widening slightly, but he doesn’t move away.
My fingers slide from his cheek into his hair, cradling the back of his head. I lean forward until our foreheads touch, the same way he did to me earlier.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay. I forgive you. It still hurts. I’m still going to bring it up when you do something dumb in the future, because I’m petty. But I forgive you.”
He exhales, the sound shaky—relief and pain wrapped together. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and there’s no arrogance in it. Just raw gratitude.
“Get up,” I say again, nudging his shoulder. “My anxiety can’t handle you on your knees for this long. The universe will see this, and decide to smite us both.”
He huffs out a small laugh. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to trigger your ‘smite kink’,” he says, because he can’t help himself.
“I don’t have a ‘smite kink’,” I protest.
“You have amekink,” he says, pushing himself up, muscles flexing under my hands. “Close enough.”
He settles back onto the couch beside me, and I immediately fold into him, my body moving before my brain can second-guess. He wraps his arms around me, one draped over my shoulders and the other pulling me in at the waist, until I’m half in his lap again, tucked against his chest.
His heartbeat is still fast, but this time, mine matches it.
Brendon
Dominic’sasleeplongbeforemy brain even considers shutting up.
He’s heavy around me, all solid muscle, and heat, and those stupidly long limbs that make me feel small in a way I never hate. His body just automatically locks me in whenever I’m within reach; one arm is curved under my shoulders, hand spread between my shoulder blades, the other loose around my waist.
His breath moves against my hair, slow and even. The kind of breathing that says dead to the world, not just lightly dozing.
I should be jealous of that. I should be annoyed that he can just drop off, while my head is running laps, but all I feel is this hollow little ache of relief. Every time his chest rises under my cheek, the tension in mine unwinds another millimeter. He’s here. He made it home. He’s alive. Whatever he did tonight, he came back to me, instead of hiding somewhere I’d never find him.
None of this is normal.
He told me more tonight than he ever has. Not in a neat, sit-down way, with bullet points and dates. Dominic doesn’t talk like that. It’s pieces, scattered between curses and deflections, and that quiet voice he uses when he’s not performing for anyone.
“She trained me.”
“I learned from the best.”
“She will kill anything that takes my focus.”
He never says “my mother did this” in a straight line, but the picture doesn’t need more paint to be clear to me now.
I know what it’s like to be built by somebody else’s hands. To have all the wrong wiring shoved into place under the guise oflove,protection,and‘this is for your own good’.“
