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Why do I still feel like I can fix him? I ache with the need to make him better, even after everything he’s done. I was as screwed up as he was, two broken souls needing to mend each other, matched like pieces of a puzzle. Except I was the only one who felt that way. He’d only wanted me gone.
Maybe he’d get his wish after all.
He reaches a hand toward me, and I flinch back.
“Please, just listen to me for a moment. Seeing you like that, in the church, it changed something. I-I thought I was going to lose you.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I snap. “If I’d died, I’d be out of your hair for good.”
He rubs the muscles at the back of his neck, his head dropping. “I never wanted that. God, Mack. Never.” He lifts his gaze back to mine. “I was so fucking scared.”
I can’t trust him. I can’t trust a single word he says. Is he just telling me what I want to hear so he can mess with me all over again?
I want to throw myself at him, to scream, and cry, and pound my fists against his chest and beg to know why he did it. Why couldn’t he have just allowed us all to be happy? Mom could have married Nataniele, and I’d never be any the wiser. I could have continued my relationship with the Devils, and we would have only gone from strength to strength. We could have been amazing together, the four of us. We could have taken on the world. Instead, Dom decided to burn it all down.
I force myself to straighten my spine and lift my chin. My heart is breaking, but I can’t let him see that. I don’t want him to know the effect he has on me. I have nothing left, but I can still scrape together the fragments of my pride that lie scattered around me.
“Good. I’m glad you were scared.”
He stares at me. “How can you be so cold?”
I bark laughter. “After what you did? You have the nerve to call me cold?”
“I said I was sorry, Mack. Fuck. What more am I supposed to do? I’ll throw myself to my knees in front of everyone and beg for your forgiveness if that’s what you want. Anything, if it’ll make things better.”
“Why? Because now I’m the sick girl?”
“It’s not like that. I’m telling you that I…care about you.”
It’s as though he’s struggling to say the words. I don’t believe him.
“Did your dad put you up to this?”
His brow furrows. “My dad? No. Why the hell would you think that?”
I fold my arms across my chest and glare at him. “Go make nice with the stepsister or he’ll cut you off? Something like that?”
“What? No—Fuck.”
I find myself enjoying the hurt in his eyes. I want to deepen it. I want him to feel the pain I’ve felt.
“Why don’t you go cut yourself some more, Dom. Give yourself a hand job at the same time. Imagine it’s me, ’cause it’s the closest you’re ever going to get to me again.”
I spin on my heel and storm into my room, slamming the door behind me. I press my back to the wood, my heart pounding, struggling to breathe. My promise to myself to stay calm has gone out the window.
How can I stay here after all this? I can’t see the Devils, day in, day out. It will grind down my heart until there’s nothing left. I can’t stand to be around my mother either, or Nataniele. He helped with arranging my father’s murder.
It doesn’t matter what kind of excuses Mom and Nataniele come up with; there is nothing that makes what they did all right. My dad is dead because of them. They stole him from me. Maybe he wasn’t the perfect man I’d believed him to be, and he’d gotten us in a whole heap of trouble, but that didn’t mean they had the right to take his life.
And now they’re cozying up like two lovebirds, and it makes me sick.
What can I do? I know I can’t stay here. I have so much to consider, though I don’t want to think about any of it.
I only want to get away and never see any of these people or this place again.
Chapter 4
Domenic
