“It doesn’t?”
“No,” I said softly, turning to watch the world racing by outside. “You’ve always been a leader, Dom. People flock to you, they always have.”
“Funny how there’s only one person who I care about being part of that flock.” At my scowl, he added, “No, it’s not Max. It’s always been you.”
I ground my teeth together. “You still left with him.”
Dom’s hand slipped away as his jaw tightened. “I thought you understood. That wasn’t about choosing Max over you. It was about choosing myself. Choosing to live. I would’ve done anything to keep you too.”
If that had been true, he wouldn’t have left early. He would’ve been there the next morning, ready to work things out with me.
Instead, he’d opted to spend his final two weeks of freedom with Max.
Suddenly, this was all too much. I couldn’t do this anymore, not in this tiny space. There wasn’t enough air. I needed a distraction. Anything to keep me calm. “Was Taff in your unit?”
Dominic seemed to understand what I needed. “Yeah. Him, Max, Mimic, and Raffle. We were all in the same unit.”
“What was that like?”
Dom considered his answer carefully. “Before we signed up, being in the same unit as Max was my greatest dream. Seeing the world together, working together, it was all I’d ever wanted.”
The age-old jealousy soured my gut.
“But when it happened?” Dom sighed. “It was far from ideal. After everything we went through that summer… Yeah. Having to see him day after day wasn’t ideal.”
“Because you were pissed off with him?”
“Pissed off doesn’t begin to cover it,” Dom said darkly. “And yeah, that was part of it. But it was more because it was him.”
My nose wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”
Dom glanced at me, then reached over to lightly touch my cheek. “Do you have any idea what it was like for me? To see the face of someone I loved on a person I was angry with? To wake up every morning, and for a split second, think you were with me? It was hell, Shadow.”
He drew his hand back abruptly, focusing on the road again. “Sometimes, in my most desperate moments, I wanted to forget you. The exact shade of your eyes or the timbre of your voice. Just to give myself a few fucking minutes of relief. Of wondering where you were and what you were doing. But I couldn’t, because Max was always there. I could never escape you, Shadow.”
“You’re not in the same unit as him now,” I rasped. “You can escape me now. You don’t have to be around either of us if you don’t want to be.”
“Oh, but I want.” He sighed. “That’s the truly fucked-up truth I eventually arrived at. I can’t ever get away from you, because you’re part of me. Somehow, all those years ago, you carved your name on my heart. You claimed me, and now no one else can. Worse, I don’t want them to. The thought of eventryingto let someone else in feels…wrong. But with you? It feels right. Because with you is where I belong.”
He couldn’t say these things. I shouldn’t be listening.
But I couldn’t stop.I found myself leaning closer, my body betraying me once more.
“It’s funny,” he continued. “You thought you were a stand-in for Max, but really it was the opposite. Max was the one who was there, but you were the one I wanted.”
I swallowed a few times, trying to will my mouth to stop being so dry. It didn’t work. “Enough. Can we talk about something else? Please?”
“Course, Shadow,” Dom said easily. “How about I tell you how Max got his nickname?”
18
Ryan
The rest of the drive passed astonishingly fast. Dominic spent the journey telling me stories from his army days, and I would never admit it, but I drank up every detail he gave me like a man dying of thirst. Maybe I had been. Not knowing what Dom had been up to for all these years had almost killed me.
Finally learning about it…it nourished something in me.
“Oh,” Dom said as he followed me inside the cabin. “It’s bigger than I thought.”