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He sat at the kitchen table. It was cheap pine and it looked like someone had traced their initials into it. JP.
His son’s name was Jason. He didn’t even have Dornan’s last name. But he would.
Dornan’s hand went into his pocket and he squeezed his fist tight around the bullets he’d just reclaimed.
And then he heard her car in the driveway.
He didn’t bother hiding. You couldn’t see the kitchen from the front door, so he helped himself to a glass of milk, sat back down at the kitchen table, and he waited.
She took a while. He heard several doors opening and closing, the screech of metal that needed to be greased, the jangle of keys in the door.
And then she was in front of him, her mouth hanging open, the paper shopping bags in her arms falling and crashing to the floor.
Dornan eyed the contents momentarily before returning his gaze to her. He felt beads of milk clinging to the stubble above his lip. He wiped it with the back of his hand and smiled at the bitch who was having conniptions in front of him.
Goddamn, she was still beautiful.
‘Hello, Stephy,’ he said. ‘You got a real nice house here.’
She was frozen. She couldn’t form words. Dornan laughed, taking another gulp of milk. He would have preferred beer, but she didn’t have any in the refrigerator.
She was so fucking obvious. He saw her eyes dart over to the kitchen drawer where her now-empty revolver was hidden. She rushed over, the shock still sharp on her face, opening the drawer and taking the gun out.
It was stupid, the way his heart hurt when she pointed the gun at him.
‘That’s not very nice, baby,’ he said, his voice low and rough. ‘I come all the way here to visit you, and you pull a gun on me?’
She cocked the revolver in trembling hands. She still hadn’t said a word to him. Was he really that frightening? She’d loved him, once. She’d let him hold her life in his hands, and now she wanted to end his?
‘How’s my son?’ Dornan asked, his tone shifting rapidly, acerbic and bitter.
She huffed. ‘He is not your son.’
So she did speak.
Something broke inside him, something he’d been trying to push down and keep locked away for fifteen years. Longer. Sixteen.
He had loved her, goddamn it! He. Had. Loved. Her.
And she was staring at him like she’d never laid eyes on him in her life. No, it was worse than that. She was staring at him like he was a fucking monster.
‘That’s funny,’ Dornan replied looking at the framed photograph on the wall of a small boy, maybe seven, his dark brown eyes and hair a dead ringer for Dornan’s. ‘Because I’m pretty fucking sure he is.’
‘Get out,’ she whispered, her eyes full of tears, her aim steady. ‘Get out or I’ll shoot you, Dornan, I swear to God.’
Dornan nodded, reaching for his own gun. Terrified, Stephy aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. And pulled it again. And again.
‘It needs bullets to work,’ Dornan said calmly. ‘Here, have one of mine.’
He aimed at her shin and pulled the trigger on his own Glock, smiling with satisfaction as she went down hard, her lower leg exploding in a mess of blood and bone fragments as she landed between a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread.
Dornan took a deep breath, the victory of vengeance singing in his veins as he stood up and drank the rest of his milk. He let the empty glass fall to the ground at his feet, where it shattered.
‘Stephy,’ Dornan teased, stepping between the fallen groceries to get to her.
She cowered in the corner, her hands covering her face, which was turning swiftly pale. She had hurt him, and he was going to hurt her back. He was going to hurt her very, very badly. And the thought filled him with relief.
He holstered his gun. He didn’t want this to go too quickly; no, he wanted to draw out her suffering, the way she had drawn out his suffering. His endless fucking pursuit of a shallow grave, of a confession from her killer, of something. And all the time, she had been here, living and smiling and bearing his fucking child.
