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“You don’t know anything!” He roars, prowling towards me with a wildness flashing in his eyes. When I flinch at his sudden advance and harsh tone, he stops short. Just barely reigning in the fury rolling off of him in waves. “If you did know, I wouldn’t have to tell you that you’re the only woman who has ever owned any part of me. And it’s always been you, Sloane. For twelve fucking years, you’ve walked around with my soul clutched between the same fingers you wear Eric’s rings on. You’re the ghost I’ve been chasing. Now look me in the eyes and tell me you already knew that.”
Every one of his words sends a thunderous wave of shock coursing through me. This can’t be true. It can’t. There can’t be a version of this life where Dominic has been in love with me for twelve years. Where he stood by and watched me fall in love with his best friend.
It just can’t be.
“What are you—” My voice is shaking, every word a warbled version of itself, so I clear my throat and try again. “That’s not possible. You haven’t liked me from the first moment we met.”
His lips curl into a bitter smile. “That day in the dorm wasn’t my first time meeting you, angel.”
“Yes, it was, Dominic. Otherwise, I would have recognized you when you walked into the room. I would have remembered meeting you. I would have remembered.”
“You were drunk, Sloane. It was the first party of the year, and it felt like everyone who moved on campus early was packed into that one small house. There were so many fucking people there, but the moment you walked in, all I could see was you—”
“Stop!”
My stomach rolls as I process Dom’s description of a night I’ve seen in my dreams many times over the years but have never fully remembered. I try to pull the pieces together in my mind, to force myself to remember something that could refute his story, but I can’t get anything to stick.
“You wanted the truth from me, angel. This is it. This is our truth.”
“Dom, please.”
I hold up my hand because I need a moment of quiet. Just a few seconds to get the gears in my brain to start turning. He presses his lips together as I begin to mumble through my recollection of that night, more to myself than him.
I remember the hours before the party he’s talking about. My mom and I argued on the phone. She called me a constant disappointment, and I finally accepted I would never be good enough for her. Then I decided to fit eighteen years’ worth of teenage rebellion into one night.
And, because I had no idea how to be a rebel, I made a trouble list.
Back then, the worst thing I could imagine doing was wearing a dress that barely covered my ass, getting drunk at a frat party, and….oh no. The very last item on my list was something about spending the night in a guy’s bed, but the next morning, I woke up in my own. Nothing but hazy images and the distinct feeling I was forgetting something important.
I curl my arms around my middle, attempting to hold myself together as the most impossible truth seeps into my bones. “It was you?”
Dom is silent, and I have to look at him to see if he heard my question. He stares at me with eyes so soft, so tender, I find it hard to believe just moments ago he was a raging fire.
“Yes.”
“But I…I didn’t even check that off my list. I woke up in my bed. Alone.”
“Because I took you home, angel.” The words are soft with the slightest bit of heat coating them. An accusation. “I left a note.”
“No.”
My entire world tilts on its axis as disbelief swirls in my gut. Even though he’s confirmed it, I still don’t understand how this can be true. For years I thought I dreamed up the person I spent the last part of my night with. Crafted him and our soul-deep connection, forged in a matter of hours, in the depths of my mind.
Now Dom wants me to believe he’s the mystery man from my dreams and I belonged to him before I belonged to Eric. Which would mean our seemingly random connection—the one I never understood on his end—wasn’t sparked by the night at Club Noir. It was reawakened.
This is too much.
“Sloane—”
“Please don’t say anything else.” I clutch myself tighter, rocking back and forth. “I need you to go.”
Dom stares at me, and I force myself to hold his gaze. He presses his lips into a hard line and nods like this played out exactly how he expected it to, and he’s mad at himself for thinking it could have gone any differently, but he doesn’t say anything else.
And when the door shuts behind him, I’m left with nothing but silence and the regret of asking him to leave when all I wanted was for him to stay.
.
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