The memory stiffens my spine like a blade driven between my vertebrae. My gaze drops to Xeni’s arm, where Cato’s fingers dent the flesh, digging in hard enough to leave marks. An animalistic urge to shove Cato back rises so fiercely I have to look away before I act on it.
Sakane’s mouth hangs open in stunned silence, and Ego leans against the table with her arms crossed, blue hair catching the light as casual interest sharpens with intrigue.
“This is Dom.” Sakane breaks the silence, dragging the words out like he’s uncertain.
Xeni’s visible eye flicks to him and scans his thin frame, then locks back onto mine with an intensity that steals my breath.
“Dom?” he asks.
The name is soft on his lips, but it lands like a punch to the gut.
Wrong, so fucking wrong.
A syllable that no longer belongs to me when spoken by him.
“Well, technically Domino,” Sakane continues, oblivious to the tension as he gestures toward my hip, “but we all call him Dom, ya know? Got his name from that white dot—”
“That’s enough,” I cut in, the words carrying a bite that stops Sakane’s rambling mid-sentence.
“Do you two know each other, boss?” Ego asks. She blows a small pink bubble, the pop loud in the sudden quiet. The question is rhetorical, because she not only sees straight through me, she recognizes his pale complexion as the twin to the mark on my hip.
She knows who he is.
“Everyone out,” I say, but the command comes out far too soft to carry the weight I need. I have never had the voice for leading, and they only stare, waiting for clarification.
“Out!” I bellow, pouring everything into it.
Sakane scrambles for the door first, and Ego follows at an unhurried saunter. After a moment's hesitation, Cato releases Xeni and turns, but I reach out in a blind panic.
My fingers close around his wrist. “Not you.”
I can’t be alone with Xeni.
Can’t leave myself exposed to the most dangerous person I’ve ever met. He stripped away every layer of armor I had ever built and left me bare.
Flayed wide open.
Vulnerable.
I had loved it then—the way I could fall apart in his arms. He handled every jagged part of me with care and without judgement, and took those scattered pieces and turned them into something whole. He had filled those hollow places inside me, the ones I’d carried like open wounds, and I had let him.
Gladly.
Greedily, even.
Ours was the kind of love you read about in sonnets and old books. It was the all-consuming sort that poets chase and cynics dismiss. The impossible type you don’t believe exists until it crashes into you and rewrites your entire world.
Itwaspossible, and it was mine.
Until the morning he broke my heart and scattered those pieces once more. He left them sharper than ever.
It was a strike against an unguarded heart.
An easy target for a betrayal I never saw coming.
Gods, I want to hate him.
Needto hate him.
