His dark eyes rake over me like he’s searching for an injury.
“You look like shit,” he announces.
The words startle a laugh out of me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He pulls out a carton from the takeout bag and flips it open, revealing a pile of fries that have clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for too long. He pushes them toward the center of the table. “Want some?”
I take a fry. Not because I’m hungry because my stomach is too bound up in knots for that, but just because he offered before eating any of it himself.
Typical alpha, even if he doesn’t like to acknowledge it.
The fry is lukewarm and slightly soggy, but my stomach reminds me that I haven’t eaten since the terrible breakfast at the Seafoam Inn approximately a million years ago. I chew mechanically, tasting nothing.
“I thought you didn’t live here anymore,” I say, mostly to fill the silence.
“I don’t, but figured hanging around was a good idea.” Dom cracks open a beer and takes a long pull. He leans back in his chair, balancing on two legs the way he used to do when we were teenagers and Judah’s mother would scold him for scuffing her floors. “But I’ve always been the type of guy who slows down to look at car crashes. Just can’t help myself.”
I clear my throat and take a sip of tea. He’s deliberately trying to needle me and anything other than a placid reaction will just encourage him.
“Plus,” he continues, dark eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my skin prickle, “whenever you finallydecide to reveal the bullshit reason you left, I’d like to be around to hear it.”
My composure cracks.
Not visibly, thankfully. I’ve spent too much time masking for that. But I can feel the chasm widening inside me.
I set my tea cup down hard enough to clatter in its saucer. “Judah still had his family, this town, everything that mattered to him. I had to give everything up when I left.”
Dom’s expression hardens. The casual amusement drains from his face, replaced by something cold and serious.
“You didn’t justgive it up, Mace.” His voice is quiet, but it cuts like a blade. “You threw it away. No warning. No explanation. No goodbye.” He leans forward, chair legs hitting the floor with a sharp crack. “One day you were here, and the next you were gone. And Judah spent six months barely functioning while I tried to hold him together with duct tape and my own stubbornness.”
I flinch but don’t deny it.
What could I possibly say? He’s right. Nothing he said is factually incorrect.
So I take a deep breath, because a moment like this was coming from the moment our engine failed.
“You need to understand something. I didn’t leave because I stopped caring.” The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. “I left because caring was destroying everything.”
“Explain that to me.” Dom’s voice has lost some of its edge, replaced by something that sounds almost like genuine curiosity. “Explain how running away without a word was supposed to help anyone.”
My response is automatic and defensive. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Dom’s jaw tightens. I prepare myself for a vitriolic reaction, because he has never been the type of person to hold back.
But instead, his expression softens. The hard lines around his mouth ease, and I catch a glimpse of something I’ve never seen on his face before—pain. Real, unguarded pain that he’s been hiding behind bravado and sarcasm for God knows how long.
“Then offer me something just because I’m asking for it,” he says softly. “I need to know what I missed.”
The confession hits me like a punch to the gut.
Dom. Blaming himself. For something that had nothing to do with him.
“It wasn’t—“ I start, then stop. Try again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. None of this was because of you.”
“Thenwhat?” He spreads his hands, frustration bleeding through. “What happened? What made you decide that vanishing into thin air was better than talking to us?”
I close my eyes.
