No mess.
Nothing dramatic.
But his face—God—his face looked like he’d been speaking to a darker part of himself and hadn’t told it no.
Dominic watched me. “Is Scott still asleep?”
“Yes.”
His mouth twitched. “Good. I didn’t give him a lot, but we should have more time.”
He looked at me like he’d solved a problem. Like drugging Scott wasn’t a crime but a correction.
A spark of terror licked my spine.
I swallowed. “How long is he going to be asleep?”
“Long enough.”
Another spark—hotter, lower—answered it.
Fuck. My life is out of control.
My boys slept above my head. Their father lay drugged on our couch. And here I was staring at the breadth of this man’s chest, at the veins in his forearms, feeling the air change simply because he had opened the door.
For half a second, a thought flared and made me dizzy: he could kill Scott. If he wanted to, he could. And the shameful thing was that some small, furious part of me didn’t know if I would stop him.
Dominic stepped back with a silent invitation. His gaze never left my face. “Come in.”
I walked in and the hallway’s dimness dissolved.
Dominic’s space hit me in layers.
The first was sound: a hush of soft jazz, saxophone pouring honey into the corners of the room and laying out a lazy, intimate melody.
Then scent came next—warm candle wax, a thread of sandalwood, and something faintly floral underneath.
His apartment didn’t look like its usual self.
No open textbooks.
No notes stacked.
And there were new surprises.
Three candles burned in a line on his dresser. There was now a short vase of white flowers on the desk—peonies or garden roses.
A bottle of red wine waited in a metal bucket packed with ice.
He had made a place for us on his bed—throw blanket folded, pillows angled forward.
Dominic shut the door.
Then, my gaze went back to the evidence—the emergency kit, needle, and beer top—on the table.
My brain assembled the crime in pieces. First, he must have opened a beer bottle. Then he added whatever the hell was in that kit. Pressed the cap back down, twisted it closed like nothing had happened. Carried it upstairs.
How did he get Scott to drink it? Why does he have the beer cap now?
