He looks down. “I burned for it. Trained through injuries. Lost friends, lost years. I didn’t care. All I saw was the goal line.”
“I know how that feels,” I say. “When everything in you is pointed at one dream. When you’re the only one carrying it.”
“I wasn’t carrying it alone.” He looks up, eyes soft. “I had Jace. We had the same dream. We pushed each other and somehow ended up on the same team. But you?” He leans in slightly. “You didn’t sign up for that.You’re not obligated to live with the consequences of it.”
He pauses and slowly lifts a hand, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I lean into his touch, fighting not to close my eyes. It leaves me too soon when he sets his hand down again.
“I finally looked around and realized I’d hit every milestone I was killing myself for… and then had no one to share it with.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Then you came along. You disrupted my routine, my peace, my habit. You forced your way into my home...”
My heart drops. The way he words it makes it sound so bad, as if he regrets it. Disappointment flashes across my face.
“And it was one of the best things that could’ve happened to me,” he adds, placing a finger under my chin to lift my face.
I look up, confused. “So you don’t…hate it?”
Dom smiles and shakes his head. “You shook my cage, Jessica. You shook it so damn hard I finally noticed it was there. And once I did, I wanted nothing more than what was standing outside of it.”
“What’s outside?” I whisper.
“You.”
Chapter twenty-four
~DOMINIC~
By the time the sun starts bleeding into the water, we’ve killed a bottle of champagne and most of a bottle of Clase Azul that I dug out of the kitchen.
Jessica’s tipsy.
It’s evident in the flush on her cheeks, the lazy way she licks sugar off her thumb, and the faint glaze in her eyes when she laughs. She’s loosened up, talking with her hands like she’s trying to sculpt the air.
I like the sober version of her, too. She’s sharp, snaps back, negotiates, tests every boundary I put in front of her. But this one? This soft, uncaged version who isn’t watching herself every second? I could watch her for hours.
Apparently, I already have.
I haven’t talked this much with anyone who isn’t Jace in… I don’t even know how long. It’s easy with her, which is unexpected.
“…and that’s when he said it,” she declares, scooping another chocolate-covered strawberry and pointing it at me like a weapon.
I drag my eyes from her mouth to her face. “Hm?”
“You females. I know what you like.” She drops into an imitation of that asshole’s voice.
“He said that to you?” I raise my brows.
She nods, eyes bright with tequila and vindication. “Yup. You females. Like we’re a separate species he read about in a textbook once.”
I already hated that prick when I saw him crowding her with his hand on her wrist. Hearing the actual words he used? I want his neck under my skate blade.
She shifts to face me, legs folded under her, hair a little wild from the wind. “So. I’m at the bar. You’re in your testosterone castle behind your little velvet rope—”
“It’s called VIP,” I correctwith a chuckle.
“It’s called insecure,” she corrects sweetly. “Anyway. This guy keeps throwing lines at me. I say no and he hears ‘try harder.’”
She’s recalling the first time we met, which I didn’t think would put me in a murderous state, but here we are.
“And then,” she continues, “the crowd starts doing that thing…” She wiggles her fingers to mimic the way people parted. “Everyone’s eyes go in one direction,” she says, swooping her hand to the side, “so obviously, I look too. And there you are.”
