Page 92 of Dirty Hit
It’s not especially hard, but the crack of it in the empty lot makes my ears ring; my head turns with the force of it. For a moment, I just stare at the asphalt, brain trying to catch up to what happened.
When I look back at her, she looks almost shocked at herself too, chest heaving, eyes huge.
Then somehow, she doubles down. “See? That’s what you do. You stand there, all silent and superior, and make people crazy.”
A laugh of pure disbelief almost escapes me at the blatant gaslighting.
“You hit me,” I say.
“You pushed me to this!” she shoots back instantly.
I step away from the car, trying to put actual space between us, but she catches the front of my jacket and yanks me back; the fabric bites at my throat and panic flares fast.
“Hannah,stop.”
“No,” she says, tears spilling freely now, mascara smudging under her eyes. “Not until you tell me the truth. Not until you admit you still feel something. Not until you admit I matter.”
“You’re hurting me,” I say, my voice panicked now, because she is. Her fist is twisted in my jacket, dragging the zipper into my throat. My shoulder aches from where she shoved me into the car and my cheek still stings.
Her expression flickers, but she still doesn’t let go. “Then answer me—!”
I barely register the movement before her head snaps forward. The sound it makes when her skull connects with the frame of my car is sickening, a dull, hollow crack that reverberates through the metal and up my spine.
For half a second, my brain blanks, refusing the input; then she crumples, knees folding, body sliding down the side of the car in a graceless tangle of limbs. I stumble back, hand flying to my mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” I choke out, stumbling back another step until my spine hits the edge of my car. “Dominic!”
He’s breathing a little harder than usual, chest rising and falling under his hoodie, but that’s the only obvious sign thatanything in him is running hot. His expression is disturbingly calm, almost bored as he flexes his fingers once, shaking out his hand like he just punched a wall and mildly regrets the sting.
His eyes flick past me, then over to my cheek, down to the grip marks wrinkling my jacket, then finally to Hannah crumpled on the ground, and something in that flat stare turns even colder.
“She’ll wake up,” he says, tone flat. “Eventually.”
I stare at him, then at her. Her eyes are closed, but her chest is moving—it’s shallow, but moving. There’s a red mark blooming on the side of her forehead where she hit the metal.
“What the fuck did you do?” I demand, my voice higher than I want it to be. “Dom, she— you—you can’t just—”
“I can,” he says simply. Then his gaze cuts back to me, and the calm in it is worse than anger. “And I did. She put her hands on you, shoved you into the car, slapped you, and still wouldn’t back the fuck off when you told her no. She doesn’t get to do that.”
His eyes flick over my face again, to the cheek she hit, and his jaw tightens hard enough that I hear his teeth grind.
“She thought she could grab you, put her hands on your throat, rip at your clothes, and keep going because you’re too decent to make a scene,” he says, voice dropping lower with every word. “She thought she could corner you in an empty lot and get away with it. That’s not happening.”
He steps over her like she’s an inconvenience, closing the space between us in two strides. His hand comes up, fingers pressing under my chin, forcing my head up when I try to look back down at her.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
My heart is racing. “Dom, she’s—we have to—she could be—”
“She’s breathing,” he says. “You can check if you want, but I promise she is. I didn’t hit her that hard, I just turned the volume down before she put her hands on you again.”
The casual way he says it makes my skin crawl. This isn’t the first time he has done something like this; I know that, theoretically, but seeing it in front of me is different.
“You can’t do that,” I say, but it sounds weak, even to my own ears.
His fingers tighten on my jaw, not enough to hurt, but enough that I feel the tremor running through him now, the fury he’s still sitting on.
“She can’t do what she just did,” he says, voice still soft, but with that dangerous undercurrent I’ve learned to recognize. “You said no. You told her to move. You told her to stop touching you. She ignored you, grabbed you harder, put her hands on your chest, your wrist, your fucking throat, and then she hit you when you still wouldn’t give her what she wanted.”
