Page 52 of Dirty Hit
When I walked out of that bar and got on my bike, I kept thinking that I should just pick someone and push through: snap the neck, feel the fight go out, let my system reset.
Instead, I rode home, paced my house like a caged animal, and thought about his face. About the way he looked in his bed with my hand on his throat. About how he’s tangled up in my head so deep I can’t even do what I’ve been trained to do without him appearing in the middle of the scene like some twisted ghost.
And then I heard a car pull in, opened the door, and there he was. On my porch. At night. Alone. Saying he was worried. He has no idea how fucked up that is. Of course the repressed good boy who licks boots would drive out to the cottage at night because the monster looked a little off his game.
You should send him away.
That thought is buried somewhere under all the others, rational and quiet, drowned out by the roar in my blood.
He shouldn’t be here, not when I’m this wound up. Not when I’m fighting the urge to grab the first thing that moves wrong and make it bleed until this pressure eases. He’s the reason thepressure is there in the first place. He’s the wrench in the gears; the fucking weight on the scale.
I step back and open my mouth to tell him to get the fuck out, but before I can say it, he speaks.
“Do you want to take it out on me instead?”
For a second, I think I misheard him. There are a lot of fucked up things that have come out of his mouth in the short time I’ve known him, most of them unintentional, but that one… that one is new.
“What?” I say, and it comes out quieter than I intend.
He swallows hard before speaking next. “You almost killed someone,” he says, and there is that stubborn thread in his tone again, the one that doesn’t know when to quit. “And you stopped. Because of me. That’s…” He exhales shakily. “That’s on me, then.”
“You being in my head does not mean it is your job to manage my kill count,” I growl. “That is not how this works. Go home, Brendon. Go sit in your apartment, play with your cat, grade your papers. Pretend none of this exists, and leave the murder management to the guy who has been doing it for years.”
I say that, but the thought of using him has heat spiking low in my spine, because I recognize exactly what he’s offering, and like it too much.
He’s standing here, willingly putting himself between me and the violence I usually aim outward. That taps into all kinds of fucked up instincts at once. Possessiveness. Cruelty. That weird, twisted fondness I’ve been pretending I don’t feel every time he looks at me like he hates himself for wanting to please me.
“You told me I jammed a wrench in your gears,” he shoots back. “You told me you haven’t killed or fu—sleptwith anyone in two weeks, and that it is my fault. What am I supposed to do with that, Dominic?”
“You’re supposed to stay away when I tell you to stay away,” I grind out. “You’re supposed to listen when I say I am not using you like that. You’re not a pressure valve for my bloodlust.”
“You don’t get to make your urges my problem and then act offended when I try to help you out,” he exclaims.
“Jesus, Brendon,” I say, dragging a hand down my face. “You offering yourself as a human stress ball is not‘helping me out.’ I don’t take things out on innocent people. That’s not how this works. When I hurt someone, it’s because they’ve earned it, and the world’s better off without them. I don’t do casual violence. I don’t come home pissed and just… fuck up the first soft thing that wanders into my path for stress relief.”
“You told me you were going to kill someone tonight,” he says quietly. “One of three options. You didn’t decide based on who ‘earned’ it. You flipped a coin.”
Touché. The fact that he caught that should annoy me, but, it lands as another mark in the column of reasons this boy is dangerous in ways he doesn’t understand.
“Even then, I had criteria. You heard them.”
“Abusive,” he recites. “Reckless. Predatory.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You think you belong in that lineup?”
He hesitates, then drops his gaze. “Maybe.”
I blink rapidly, not expecting it. “Why the fuck would you think that?”
His throat works around a swallow, and when he finally looks up, there’s shame all over his face. Not embarrassment or nerves.Shame. The kind that sinks deep and rots.
“Because I want this,” he says. “Because I’m a preacher’s son who is supposed to know better. I’m supposed to want good things. I’m supposed to want a nice life and a nice girl and a nice church wedding and all that other bullshit they built for me before I could even speak. Instead, I want a man.”
His bottom lip trembles as he shakes his head. “And not just a man.You.A monster. Someone who should terrify me, and does—and I still keep coming back. Good people don’t stand in front of monsters and want to kneel. Good people don’t hear a man say he hasn’t killed or slept with anyone in two weeks and immediately think, “I can help.” Good Christian boys don’t want to submit to wrath. They don’t want to be pinned down by something dangerous, and made to feel small and owned and—”
“You think you deserve my wrath because some fucked-up part of you wants to kneel?” I scoff and shake my head. “Everything wrong with you was put there by someone else. Your parents. Your church. That ex in your office pretending she knows what you need better than you do. They all taught you to hate every instinct that doesn’t fit their picture. That’s not on you.”
“It feels like it’s on me,” he says. “Every second.”
