Suddenly, I turn around. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want these stupid, fake gestures.”
With a delicate touch, he moves my hair to the side, revealing my neck and causing me to freeze. A shiver runs through my body, momentarily paralyzing me and making it impossible to speak or move.
“I don’t believe anything you say, Zoe. Your body tells me a different story.”
“Stop,” I plead, but he doesn’t. Instead, his fingers tighten around my hair.
“Keep reading,” Dominik commands.“Please.”
His voice carries a familiar desperation that tugs at me. I crouch down and collect a handful of sticky notes.
“Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?”
“Think of you! I do not think of you; you are always before my soul.”
“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness.”
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
I fucking love the last quote fromWuthering Heights.
When I continue reading, Dominik’s voice fills the air, giving life to the words as he reads them aloud.
"I cannot live without my soul."
"I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."
"You said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers."
"Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
All the things I’ve avoided, all the emotions I’ve suppressed for years, are slowly resurfacing, and it feels nauseating. I lose my grip on the book, causing the sticky notes to scatter everywhere. I shift my position to confront him, and our eyes connect in a locked stare.
“What the actual fuck is all this? What are you doing?”
“Trying to prove to you what you already know. What we both have known for so long.”
I glare at him, feeling the anger surging within me. “And what’s that? That you’re a psychopath?”
Dominik doesn’t hesitate. “That you’re mine. You have always been mine and will forever be mine.”
“I’m not yours. Never have been and never will be. Get it through your crazy, thick skull.” My heart thumps loudly in my chest.
Dominik smiles confidently. “You already belong to me, Zoe. What will it take for you to finally see that?” His words carry apleading tone, as if he is on the verge of breaking. “Do you want me to get on my knees and beg for your forgiveness?”
I never expected those words to come out of his mouth.
“No, I want you to get out,” I grit out.
Dominik’s towering presence casts a commanding aura over me as the weight of his confession overwhelms me, though I conceal it.
“I’m not beyond doing that. Begging. I may want to own you, control and dominate you, but I am not too prideful to get on my knees and beg for your forgiveness, if that’s what it will take.”
“I don’t want your fucking apologies, Dominik.”
Frustrated by my refusal to open up, he takes a deep breath and turns away, running his hands through his hair. When he finally faces me, his eyes are glassy in the dim light. I think that shocks me more than his earlier words.
“I’m sorry I lied,” he says softly. “I’m sorry for all of it: for leaving you to rot in that town with people who don’t care about you, for pretending to be someone else when you were trying to explore parts of yourself that night in Boston, for impeding on your space and invading your privacy when you got to New York.”
