“Come over.” I shook my head, realising this was all coming out wrong. Taking a deep breath, I centred myself before speaking again. “That night, when we broke up, I went to find you.”
Dom stopped moving. Stopped dancing. I thought he might’ve stopped breathing. “What?”
Tears pricked at my eyes. “I know what I said that night, but I was a fucking idiot. I realised it pretty quickly. You were right. What we had was too special to throw away over an argument.”
“No,” Dom said, drawing out of my grip. “No, Shadow. You didn’t.”
But it was out there now. I couldn’t take it back. All I could do was finish the story. To tell Dom what had happened to hurt me the most. The reason I couldn’t let him back in. He deserved to know; I saw that now. “I might’ve forgotten some details from that night, but not this. You told me we could stay together. That we could make it through.”
The firelight illuminated the horror on Dom’s face. “And we could have. I would’ve doneanythingto make that happen, Shadow.”
“But you didn’t,” I said hollowly. “You were already gone, less than six hours later.”
“Because I thought that was what you wanted,” he repeated desperately.
“I wantedyou.” My voice rose to a shout. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Dom. I was a foolish fucking eighteen-year-old. I said things I didn’t mean, and it cost meeverything.”
His face was deathly pale as he swayed on the spot. “You really came after me?”
“I planned to.” I dropped heavily onto the sofa. “But by the time I got back, you’d already left. It wasn’t even dawn, Dom. You said you wanted to work things through, but you couldn’t even wait a few hours for me to get there.”
“That’s not fair,” Dom whispered. “You ended things, Ryan. You did, not me. I didn’t want things to end. You know that.”
“But you still left. Early, I might add. With my brother. The person who’d taunted me about you being in love with him. Can’t you see how that looked?”
A long silence followed. So long that I was tempted to check if he was still in the room.
“Yeah. With hindsight, I can see how that looked. I’m sorry, Shadow. If I’d known… If I’d had even the slightest inkling that there was hope, I never would’ve left.”
“You didn’t just leave.” I was staring into the flames again, remembering how I’d longed to burn. Now that I was, I was remembering the pain that came with it. “You cut me out, Dom. There wasn’t a single text or phone call. Not even a letter. Just ten years of silence.”
Dom slumped onto the sofa beside me and put his head in his hands. “I thought that was what you wanted. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Maybe you were. Maybe I was the fool, thinking we could’ve made it work after everything that hadhappened. I did tell you to leave, you’re right about that. I just…”
“You just what?”
“I didn’t expect you to actually do it,” I said thickly as tears rolled down my cheeks. “You never listened to anything I told you to do before. Why’d that have to be the first?”
A choked sob was his only response.
“I shouldn’t blame you,” I continued. “You’re right. You did exactly what I asked. It took me too long to realise it wasn’t what I wanted. I was such a fucking fool, Dom. Really, we should laugh about it. Do you know I left my window open every night for months on end? Stupid really. I knew you weren’t coming back.”
I wasn’t laughing and neither was Dominic. I wiped away tears with the back of my hand. Maybe this was a good thing. We were finally getting everything out in the open. And now…now Dom might understand why we couldn’t go there again.
“It took me a long time to be able to close my window,” I said. “Longer to accept that I’d never hear from you again. I don’t think I fully accepted it until the night you nearly died.”
Dom turned to face me. “What?”
“It was bad enough to know you’d almost died. But it was worse knowing it could’ve happened and I might not have found out.” My voice cracked as I admitted a fear I’d hidden even from myself. “If your dad and I weren’t close, if you had died, how long would it have taken for me to know? Would Max have called me? Or would I have just been scrolling social media one day, only to be blindsided by the news?”
“Shadow…” Dom reached for me, but I flinched away.
“That’s what hurt me the most,” I said, needing to getall of this off my chest at once. “You were everything to me, Dom.Everything. Then, suddenly, I was nothing to you.”
“You are and have always been everything to me, Shadow,” Dom said fiercely. Springs creaked, and then Dom was in front of me. He cupped my face, tears streaking down his cheeks as he looked down at me. “I can’t believe you came looking for me. I can’t fuckingbelieveI’d already left.”
“Of course I did. I loved you, Dom.”