9. As Undeserving as Him

Leonie

“Dom, how do you—”

His voice was monotone, final. “I just do.”

“How?”

His glare out the window was intense and he pressed the button for the radio to start. The music blared, but he turned it up further, trying to drown me out.

I turned it off the second his hand was back on the wheel.

“Leonie,” he warned.

“You’re making this more dramatic. Tell me now.”

He loathed being labelled a drama queen, though he was one.

He sighed and, stopped once again at the lights, ran a hand down his face. As soon as the green light appeared, he pulled away and took a deep breath. “When I came back from Iraq, you two had just got together and… do you remember crying in the pub with Issy and your friends? You’d been with him a week and you’d caught him lying about seeing his ex. So I went round to roughen him up a little.”

“I didn’t know you were there,” I said quietly, unsure what to do with that information. It was the bike sheds all over again. Despite judging my life so harshly, he had no problem inserting himself into it.

“I wasn’t really. I’d just bought a drink and hovered by your table because you were upset and I knew my presence wouldn’t be helpful.”

His presence would have made me cry harder, uglier.

My relationships were kept a secret from him back then. I’d never wanted him to know I was with someone, but not because I’d expected him to harass them. I knew he would make some snide remark about them or to them. I hadn’t expected to hide their identities in case they were beaten.

“Why—why would you do that?” And why hadn’t Jared ever said anything?

It made sense why Jared despised Dom so much. At any mention of him, he’d get in a dark mood and I knew to avoid him.

“I…” He paused and took a deep breath before saying, “I hated the thought of someone upsetting you. Of someone as undeserving as him having you and not appreciating what they had. From what I overheard, he gaslit the hell out of you. I’d left for Iraq and you were this confident, feisty girl. I came back to a shrivelled, emotional wreck.”

Lovely.

But he didn’t know the half of it. The year I turned eighteen — and he went on his first tour in the military — his parents forced me into a rehab facility. Between tours, we hardly saw each other and when we did, he stayed on the other side of the room.

“Do you still see me that way?”

He seemed deep in thought, nibbling his bottom lip. “You’re not as carefree as you used to be. That might be growing up or Jared’s influence. Guess we’ll find out.”

I shouldn’t be so excited about that ‘we’ he mentioned. It felt like we were friends again, like the nights when he would steal his dad’s car and take me to get ice cream at midnight. We often ended up just the two of us.

“So,” I elongated the word, brimming with excitement over my next statement. “You’ve missed me.”

He snorted and smiled. “I miss the confident, feisty girl.”

All excitement evaporated.

“How many men have you beaten up for me?”

“Just the one,” he said casually as if he were surprised himself.

“That’s not true.” He only raised a brow in question. “The bike sheds. Sam Yun back when I was sixteen.”

“Oh yeah,” he said and grinned at the memory. I could still picture him pummelling Sam’s face. I could still hear my screams for him to stop. “I forgot about that.”

“He was your friend.”

“No friend of mine,” he snarled. “No eighteen-year-old should be taking a sixteen-year-old’s virginity. Especially not yours.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Especially mine?”

Dom’s voice became gruff. “He only did it to piss me off, to get a reaction. Wanted to prove he could run in our circle. Pompous prat. When he told me, I said I didn’t believe him. So he got a picture of you naked in your bed. Your bed at my house. He wanted me to know it had happened under my roof.”

I’d wanted him to know too. I’d wanted him to hear me, but he’d been out at the time at a party. Immediately after he came on my face, Sam had left me to join him there. So maybe there was some truth in what he was saying.

But the picture must have been from a time after that. There were many times after that, still waiting for Dom to hear or walk in.

“That’s the only reason why, is it?” I snapped. “Somehow, me losing my virginity was about you? No one could want to sleep with me for me? I wish you’d listen to yourself.”

“Of course it’s not the only reason.” His voice met my anger. “Everyone wanted to fuck you, but I’d made it clear you were off limits.”

“I was off limits?” I almost shrieked. My self-esteem had sunk to the inner core of Earth during school. As all my friends went on dates, I was shunned by every boy. The only one that paid me any attention was Sam and he made me promise to keep it a secret. Until he went blabbering. “Are you the reason no one asked me to the Christmas dance?”

He just shrugged. “You were too young for a boyfriend.”

“I was seventeen then!”

“Like I said, too young for a boyfriend.”

“Issy had a date.” She’d been ecstatic and I’d been happy for her, but I’d cried my make-up off that night. “Wait, your sister had a date, but I wasn’t allowed one? I was the only girl who went alone.”

“One of those girls got pregnant that night,” he said, voice matter of fact. “And I drove you in if you remember.”

Yeah, in uncomfortable silence. He’d come home from his first year of university for the holidays and blared music the whole drive. Even though he’d been gone for months at that point, the Belov word was law in Darley. If the boys were told not to touch me, no one would touch me.

He wasn’t someone to piss off.

“You drove me in, but you weren’t my date.” His mum had pestered him until he finally gave in and offered to drive me. “But why could Issy have a date and not me?”

He didn’t respond for a moment. Then, with a deep breath, he said quietly, “Because your dad died, your mother had a breakdown and you… weren’t yourself. I didn’t want you to do something you would regret.”

“This is insane,” I muttered.

But then something came back to me.

“The boys avoided me before my dad died.”

He glanced over at me quickly before focusing back on the drive. “Yeah, well, you were too young before.”

“I wasn’t. Issy had been on dates. I hadn’t.”

“They weren’t good enough for you. None of those boys were.”

“Maybe I do hate you.”

A minute ago, I’d been a little sad that we were close to Jared’s house and our conversation would end. Now, I was more than ready to get out, maybe while the car was still going.

Maybe I’d fuck Jared out on his front lawn for Dom to see.

“You don’t hate me,” he said firmly. “You just don’t like that I’m one of the few people that will talk to you honestly. Some truths you don’t want to hear.”

“No, I do hate you. I despise you. Just because my dad died, it didn’t mean that you had to come in and make rules for my life that I didn’t even know existed!”

He sighed, unimpressed. “There’s the feisty girl. Maybe she’s not lost.”

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed and lifted the back of my hand to my forehead. Maybe I had a fever; I had to be hallucinating. “Pull over here. I’ll walk the rest.”

“You’re not walking. I’m pulling right up on his drive.”

As I reached for the door handle, the locks clicked into place and I groaned, throwing my head back on the cushioned headrest.

For the next minute, we sat in silence until he did just as he threatened. He pulled up right behind Jared’s BMW.

“Go in, get your shit, then leave,” he demanded. “Don’t talk to him much more than you have to. Any problems, call me.”

“I don’t—I don’t have your number.”

He smiled and gestured for me to give him my phone. I did, begrudgingly.

Seconds later, he passed it back for me to see he’d saved himself as ‘Answer.’

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. “It’s okay because I’ll be blocking and deleting it by the end of the day.”

His smile came back with full force. “More like you’ll be texting it begging for me to—”

A knuckle rapped on Dom’s window.

He took in a deep, frustrated breath before winding the window down and smiling sweetly. “Yes?”

But Jared’s dark eyes found mine and he ignored my driver. His sun-kissed hair had lightened with the start of summer and it fell over his furrowed brows that relaxed on sight of me.

“Leo,” he breathed and was then at my side of the car. Dom clicked the locks again and, the moment he did, Jared had the door open and pulled me out of the car by my waist. He held me so tightly to his large body that I wished I’d taken in a big breath. “God, I have missed you.”

“Mm,” was all I could physically say.

Then, gripping my wrist and not even noticing Dom, he pulled me towards the house.