Page 40 of Dirty Hit
Dominic’s entire face changes. It’s subtle; if I didn’t know him as well as I do, I might miss the way he softens. He crouches all the way down, until he’s almost kneeling on the grass in front of the kid.
“You’re not getting tackled today,” he says. “Not for real. We’re learning, not murdering each other. That starts when you’re older and have a lot more attitude.”
Ollie blinks at him, uncertain. “Promise?”
Dominic extends his pinky without hesitation, and the kid wraps his tiny finger around it. Dominic nods once, as if they’ve just signed a legally binding agreement.
“Pinky promise,” he says.
I stare at their linked pinkies and feel something weird move in my chest.
Practice gets going properly after that. Warm-ups. Sprints. Passing drills. Every now and then, one of the kids will do something so stupid it should warrant irritation, and I brace automatically for that flash of darkness I know lives under Dominic’s skin. It never comes; not like it does with me.
He’s funny with them. Worse, he’s patient. Not endlessly, saintly patient—there’s still sarcasm in him, still that dry edge, still the constant threat of light mockery if they act ridiculous—but it’s never cruel.
It’s the kind of teasing that makes them laugh instead of shrink. He corrects without humiliating and encourages without turning syrupy.
Who is this man?
That thought loops in my head with increasing offense, because I know who he is. I know the man who made me kneel, who touched every ugly, hungry part of me and coaxed it out into the light until I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist anymore. I know the man who stood over a corpse with blood on his handsand asked if our meeting was today, like it was the scheduling mishap that bothered him most.
And yet this version is real, too.
It would be easier if he were faking—if I could spot the manipulation in the smile, the calculation in the patience, the way he’d check for who was watching while he tied little kids’ cleats and called them “bud.”
But I don’t see that. Every now and then, he glances toward the building or the road out of instinct, because of course he does. Dominic is never fully off. Still, his attention always comes right back to them.
When he laughs, it’s real. When one of the smallest kids finally catches a decent pass and turns to him with his whole face lit up, Dominic’s answering grin is real, too. He’s proud of them. Not fake proud, or camera proud, but real, quiet, chest-softening proud.
This is why everyone falls for him.
Not just because he’s pretty, or talented, or famous on campus. Those things help, sure, but this is the real danger: he knows how to make people feel seen and chosen, like the spotlight isn’t just on him but warming them, too.
It would be easier to hate him if he were simpler. If he were just a monster or a killer. Just a manipulative athlete with a dark side and a pretty face.
But no, he has to be all of it at once. The blood and the tenderness. The possessiveness and the patience. The man who can call for “disposal” over a body and then spend his Saturdays teaching underprivileged youth how to pivot without rolling an ankle.
I drop my head into my hands and breathe out slowly. “God, I’m in trouble,” I mutter to myself.
“You spying on me, Little Sin?”
I look up too fast, and there he is, standing at the end of the bleachers with one hand on the chain-link fence, football tucked against his hip. His mouth is already curved into that slow, smug smile he gets when he catches me doing something I’d rather deny.
Heat floods my face so fast I almost feel dizzy. “No.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You are literally hiding behind the bleachers in sunglasses.”
“I’m sitting,” I say. “In public. On public bleachers. That’s not spying.”
He starts walking toward me, unhurried, knowing exactly how much that makes my pulse go stupid.
“Sure. I just so happen to volunteer here every second Saturday, and you just happened to wander by on a random weekend?”
I open my mouth, then close it again, because there is no non-embarrassing answer. He stops one step down from me, close enough that I can smell sun-warmed cotton and traces of his cologne under the sweat. Close enough that I want to lean both away and toward him at the same time.
“You’re fantastic with kids,” I blurt, because apparently public humiliation is the hobby I’ve chosen.
His grin widens. “Yeah?”
