Page 161 of Dirty Hit
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh if it wasn’t so wrecked. “I was never just the golden boy,” he says. “That was marketing. I was always this; I was just alone with it. You didn’t break me, Brendon. You gave me something worth breaking for.”
The words hit like a blow and a balm at the same time. “That’s messed up,” I say, because my brain doesn’t know what else to do with it.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re messed-up people. It tracks.”
We sit there in that weird little pocket of truth. My hand in his, the monitor doing its patient little metronome thing, the fluorescent light humming overhead.
“Your sister,” I say, because I need to change the subject before I drown. “Kyra. She’s really being shipped off to Siberia?”
He glances at the door, then back at me. “No, Baby Volkova isn’t being shipped off to Siberia. I brought her here to tell her she’s finishing the year somewhere else. Somewhere far away from Lakehaven and from all the shit that just hit the fan.” His mouth tightens. “She’s not happy about it.”
“I heard,” I say faintly. “She called you a hero. I think. Between the Russian and the yelling.”
He snorts. “She thinks I’m trying to play martyr, but I’m not. I just refuse to let her end up on a floor the way you did because someone decides hurting me through her is efficient.” His fingers brush my wrist again. “I’m done letting people use my soft spots against me.”
“Soft spots,” I echo.
His gaze pins me. “Every monster has one. Mine happen to be a bratty good boy, and a little sister who makes my blood pressure spike,” he says quietly. “Kyra’s pissed, I get it. She thinks now that our mother is gone, everything is fine, and she can just… have a brother and not a handler.”
“You want that too,” I say, because it’s obvious.
“Yeah,” he says again, softer. “But wanting it and being able to give it to her are different things. There’s fallout coming from this. My mother had fingers in a lot of pies. Money, people, blackmail. I need to sort through it and make sure none of it lands on Kyra, or you.”
“You think it’ll come for you?” I ask.
He shrugs, a tiny movement. “Probably. She built me to be dangerous, and dangerous tools attract attention. I’m not naïve.I know someone is going to come knocking to see what they can salvage. I’ll handle it.”
“And me?” I say, because the gash in my side is a pretty clear sign I’m already in it.
His grip on my hand tightens. “You’re out of it,” he says. “You’re done taking hits meant for me. You’ll stay here, you’ll heal, you’ll let me do the ugly shit. That’s the deal.”
“You’re adorable when you’re delusional,” I murmur.
He chuckles. “I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I,” I say. “You’re not the only one who gets to decide what blast radius I stand in, Dom.”
His eyes flash. “I almost lost you,” he says, voice low and rough. “I got to the cottage, and there was blood on your mouth, Brendon. I pressed my hand to your side, and when it came away red, I thought you were already gone. I don’t ever want to feel that again. I don’t fucking care how ride-or-die you are; I’m not putting you back in that spot on purpose.”
The rawness in his voice shuts me up; I squeeze his hand instead, threading my fingers between his, anchoring both of us.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “Then we’re careful—you don’t get to throw yourself on grenades and call it solo heroics, either.”
He snorts. “You’re literally lying in a hospital bed because you got caught in a war between my mother and me, and you’re lecturing me about heroics.”
“I’m literally lying in a hospital bed because I fell in love with a sinner,” I say, the words surprising me even as they leave my mouth. I hold his gaze, let him see that I’m not joking. “And I’m not sorry.”
Dominic’s entire expression breaks at my words. He leans down, presses his lips to my forehead, lingering there, breathing me in. I close my eyes for a second, just to feel it—the warmth of his mouth, and the steady weight of his hand.
“What now?” I ask eventually, since the future is this giant blank space now, and my brain keeps trying to fill it with worst-case scenarios.
“Now, you heal,” he says, like that’s obvious. “You let them pump you full of antibiotics and pain meds, and you let me bully the nurses into giving you extra Jell-O. You don’t worry about tuition or rent or your parents or my sister or the scouts, or any of that shit. Not right now. You just… exist. Breathe. Stay.”
“You can’t pay for everything,” I say automatically, the guilt twitching back to life. “You’ve got your own stuff. Draft prep. Whatever fallout is coming from—”
“Brendon,” he cuts in, squeezing my hand, voice dropping into that tone that says argument over. “I have a trust fund I barely touch. I have more money in the bank than I know what to do with, because I’ve been too busy killing people and playing football to figure out what the fuck to buy. I will happily blow it all, making sure you don’t miss a single class because some righteous asshole decided his pride was worth more than his kid. Let me.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “You’re going to make me dependent on you,” I say, trying to inject a little brat into it so I don’t sound as terrified as I am.
