He smirked. “Sounds like the motto for today. But I am willing to listen.”
“Now, you’re willing to listen?” I asked. “Or is it just so you can have more fodder for our next bickering match?”
“Is that what you have been calling them?”
“I’ve been trying to be nice.”Unlike you most of the time as of late.
I didn’t trust it. I did, however, take a bite of the food in front of me. He was right; it wasn’t bad.
“I have them too sometimes,” Dom said.
He watched as I took a second bite and then another after that. I’d been looking for more solutions to all our problems on my lunch breaks.
“Or I did. Not so often anymore.”
“You had panic attacks?” I asked.
“Up until about last year.”
I waited for more as he nodded.
“Last summer,” he elaborated. “Something about Barnett seemed to calm me when the rest of the world seemed …”
“What?”
“Out to get me?” He pressed his lips together so that he didn’t laugh at the phrase himself.
A good thing since I snorted another laugh at him.
His eyes flared at the unflattering sound.
“Dramatic much?” I asked.
“Another thing we have in common.”
I rolled my eyes.
“The panic attacks started when I was a kid. I was in an accident my sophomore year of high school,” he said. His forehead creased, as if he didn’t realize why or how this had come up but he kept going anyway. “I was at a party I shouldn’t have been at, and my parents came to pick me up that night. One of my friends had called them to let them know I was too drunk to drive and I had no way home unless I planned to hitchhike. I should’ve. I hated my friend for a long time after that.”
“I thought you said that you lived with your cousins.”Last summer, I almost added. But we weren’t talking about last summer.
“That night, when we were driving home, there was ice on the bridge. After that, it has just been me and my cousins until I graduated. We were close, my parents and I. As close as you can be as a little shit teenager anyway. I can’t say I was a great son, but … they were great parents. They were the kind of parents I wanted to live up to. I wanted to make them proud after so many years of being the opposite, I’m sure. For years, I’ve thought of that night. I know I couldn’t have done anything, but—”
His one hand reached over to his other arm, covered with the tattoos. I watched his fingers absentmindedly graze up and down his forearm. A raised scar was underneath the detailed tarot cards and thorny vines that went into a skull up toward his bicep. Tiny indents littered the way, like pockets of road rash. It was easy to see.
If you looked.
I’d never noticed them before. I never really had a reason to. Yet how had I not noticed? I had touched those arms. I had lain in those arms.
I forced myself to pry my gaze away as I shook my head at his words.
“You couldn’t have done anything. It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered.
“I know that.”
A new ache formed in my chest. I was not going to feel bad about him or anything that was going on. I didn’t like Dominic Rovnik. I hated him. I hated every ounce of his being.
Except for the memories of him. Sometimes.
