“With losing you!” His voice was so loud it echoed off the walls. “With losing…whatever the fuck was going on between us.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. My hands numb. “Nothing was going on between us.”
Now Dominic was the one laughing bitterly, rubbing his hands over his face. “See, this is what I mean. You don’t want to deal with it, so we need to move on. That was the agreement, right? We could talk or ignore it. You chose the latter, Ryan. You, not me. And that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to do what I thoughtyouwanted.”
“You thought I wanted to see you getting off with a girl?”
“Of course not.” Dominic slumped against the opposite wall. “I didn’t know you’d be there tonight. With how you’ve been avoiding me…”
“We’ve been avoiding each other. Which is what I thought we both wanted.”
“I don’t even know what I want. All I do know is that I looked up while I was dancing with her and saw your face…” He paused, meeting my gaze across the alley. “I knew right then that I’d fucked up, because that look on your face… I never wanted to see it again. And I certainly didn’t want to be the one to put it there.”
I should say something. I knew that, but I couldn’t speak. Dominic’s hushed confession had sent me into a free fall, one that was reshaping me in a way that felt permanent.
“Forget it,” Dominic said heavily, shoving off the wall. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have come after you either. I’m sorry, Ry. Let’s just pretend nothing ever happened and move on, okay? I know that’s what you want.”
I’d heard that there are times in your life that you remember forever. Moments when you make a decision that you know will have irrevocable consequences.
Right then, standing in that alley, watching Dominic walk away, I knew this was one of those moments. I could let him go and chalk the last few weeks up to experience.
Or I could be brave, and take a leap into the unknown.
I took a deep breath. “That’s not what I want.”
Dominic froze at the mouth of the alley, his shoulders taut as he faced away from me. “What?”
“That’s not what I want,” I repeated, my voice shaking. “I don’t knowwhatI want, but it’s not that. I don’t want to forget this or pretend it never happened.”
He didn’t say anything, which was fair. Of the two of us, he was the one who’d been vulnerable. Who’d been brave.
Now it was my turn.
“I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t know what to say,” I confessed quickly. “Because the things I want to say…they scare me, Dom. I don’t fucking understand them, and that scares me.”
Dominic turned, and the expression on his face had my heart beating faster. “You think I’m not scared too, Ry? I’m fucking terrified. All these feelings, they’re brand new, and I don’t know what to do either.”
My eyes bugged wide. “Really?”
“Yes!” He shoved his hands into his hair, pacing the alley. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening, Shadow, but I don’t want to pretend it’s not. I can’t pretend. I thought maybe I could. That’swhyI was at the party tonight. Why I was dancing with Gabriella.”
I scuffed my foot on the floor as the jealousy reared its ugly head again. “Didn’t look like pretending to me.”
Dominic stopped pacing, rounding on me with a glare. “Like I said, you need to look closer, Shadow. Maybe then you would’ve realised how fucking fake my smiles were. How wrong her body felt under my hands. That the whole time, I was trying to pretend she wasyou.”
Fuck. I dared to take a step. A single move towards him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said wearily. “God, I’m so fucking pathetic. How is this my life?”
I touched my chest, trying to rub away the sting his words imparted. “Is that what your feelings about me make you think you are? Pathetic?”
“Fuck no.” He scowled at the ground, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m pathetic because I’m hung up on someone who doesn’t feel the same.”
Wow. We really needed to get better at communicating. Was it this hard for everyone? Or was it just because we were eighteen?
It didn’t matter, really. Not when I was going to make an effort to improve it right now.
“Who said I don’t feel the same?”
