Theflingofthedoor sends a gust of wind across my back, and I flinch at the sharp slam as Cato storms into the room.
For a long moment he says nothing and simply stands behind me with that overbearing presence, and it chips away at my patience until I can’t take the silence anymore.
“Are you going to say something?” I finally ask.
“You want to tell me what the fuck that was all about, Dom?”
The name stings more than I expected after hiding behind it for so long. It’s tainted now, poisoned by the real one spoken aloud, and coming from his lips, it feels like a lie.
Itisa lie.
Allof this is a lie, and I’m no better than a con man behind a counterfeit smile.
“It was nothing,” I mutter, desperate for him to leave me to my thoughts.
Cato isn’t so easily swayed.
He grabs the back of my chair, spinning me around to face him. I set my jaw and meet his eyes. They’re hard, impenetrable in the way he so often is, but I know the softness that lies beneath that rough exterior.
“Nothing?” he repeats, gripping my chin when I try to look at the floor. “You want to call that stuntnothing? I let you get away with it this time because you’re hurting, but kiss me again and I’ll knock you on your ass. You don’t get to use me.”
Shame settles heavy in my gut. It’s an emotion I rarely face, because my choices are almost always governed by logic rather than impulse. But after letting everything boil over earlier, it sits there now, and it’s undeniable.
Cato and I met years ago, when I was little more than a ghost of myself, desperate to feel anything at all. I’d spotted him across the crowded pub where I was trying to drown everything in enough liquor to take down a much larger man.
He was handsome, yes, but more than that, he wasdifferent. Thick, messy red hair instead of long, flowing white strands. Broad shoulders and a solid neck rather than willowy, graceful limbs. Piercing honey-brown eyes instead of cloudy, serene white.
I’d stumbled over, dropped myself into his lap without invitation, and kissed him with a ferocity that screamed I was running from demons I couldn’t outpace.
He’d let me run for a while, leading me upstairs to an empty room and crashing onto the bed with me. I was a drunk, feral thing, clawing at his skin and clothes in a frantic attempt to forget. But he’d pulled back, concern replacing the heat in his eyes as his thumb brushed away the tears streaking my cheeks.
At first, I was angry he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, but once the anger faded, all that remained was my broken heart. I’d cried until there was nothing left, and despite being a completestranger, he’d held me through the night while I soaked his shirt with endless tears.
We’ve been inseparable ever since. He’s the closest thing to family I have now. A brother who never tolerates my lies or bullshit when he sees through them.
I hesitate before meeting his eyes again. There’s been no romantic spark between us since that first night, but his words linger.
“I’m not… using you,” I say at last, sighing when he arches a brow at the weak argument. “Fuck. Okay, yeah, that was using you, and it was shitty of me. You aren’t…”
I trail off, searching his expression. “There’s no… likethat… between us, right?”
Cato snorts a laugh and shoves me away, making me scowl as I rub my chin. “Don’t flatter yourself. Things might’ve gone differently if we’d met under other circumstances, but you made your stance clear from day one.”
“My stance?”
He rolls his eyes and flops onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “You were always in love with his memory. You might’ve pretended otherwise all these years, but don’t think I haven’t noticed the type you cozy up to at the bar. Tall, thin… long blond hair. A little coy mixed with a whole lot of cocky. You’ve been chasing his ghost, man. That shit isn’t healthy.”
Heat floods my cheeks as I glance away, staring at the floor. “Yeah, I know it isn’t.”
“And now it’s caught up with you,” Cato says, stern but not unkind. “You can’t ignore him when he’s sitting a hundred feet away. What are you going to do with him?”
I groan and recline in my chair, scrubbing my hands over my face. “Act like this never happened? Go back to pretending he’s dead?”
“You don’t want that,” Cato says, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.
“Let me live in my delusions, man. At least then I could keep believing he never came back because he couldn’t. Maybe he was locked away somewhere, or maybe he’d been searching for me the whole time. It was such a pretty picture in my head.”
“That’s an entire damn ocean of denial,” Cato says in his token judginess, lips pursed.
