Before We Fall

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jacey

My chest literally hurts at the look on Dominic’s face… at how shattered he is… at how shattered he’s always been.

“You’ve carried this for so long,” I finally manage to say. “This has been so much to carry, Dominic.”

He sits slumped in the chair by my bed, his hands in his lap. I’m holding his hand, but his fingers are limp. He doesn’t even think that he deserves comfort. It’s heartbreaking and I feel mine shatter into a million tiny pieces.

“Dom,” I whisper. “You didn’t push her into Cris’s arms. This wasn’t your fault. She made the choice. Not you.”

He doesn’t say anything, he just closes his eyes. I see that his hands are shaking, and it breaks my heart. Such a young girl, so much loss… and Dominic. God. He was so young, too. Too young to carry such a heavy burden.

My head pounds, but I ignore it as I roll out of bed and kneel in front of Dom.

“Look at me,” I tell him softly. He keeps his eyes closed, so I repeat myself more firmly. “Look at me, Dom.”

He opens his eyes, and they’re so, so dark. Filled with grief, filled with guilt, filled with unimaginable things.

Things that he has actually seen.

“Is this why you won’t get close to anyone?” I whisper, gripping his hands hard. “You think that you’re not fit to be with anyone because you killed Emma. Is that right? That’s what you think?”

He just stares at me.

“Yes or no?” I ask bluntly.

There’s a beat, then he nods once.

My heart breaks and I feel a tear slip down my cheek. “And you can’t trust anyone to not hurt you like that again, right? She crushed you. She died and left you… she left you with all of that guilt, and you were furious at her for that, right?”

He closes his eyes.

“Yes or no, Dominic?” I know I sound harsh, but he has to face this or he’s never going to get past it. I’m no expert, but even I know that.

He nods once more.

“Anger is a normal response when someone dies,” I tell him softly. “Trust me, I know. Remember when I told you that my last boyfriend did something terrible? Well, he was a psychopath. And I shouldn’t have gone back to him, but I was weak and I did. And when I did, a good friend of mine died because of my actions. He died because he tried to save me. And when he died, I was so pissed. I was pissed at him for trying to help me, but then I was pissed at myself… because if I wasn’t so weak, he wouldn’t have had to save me in the first place.”

“It couldn’t have been your fault.” Dominic finally speaks. I stare at him.

“No? I tell myself that. But I’m not sure I believe it. Not deep down. That’s something you know a lot about, right?”

Dominic nods. “But your situation is different than mine.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s really not. Someone I love died because of a decision I made. You think someone died because of you. The difference between you and me is that my friend really died because of me. Emma died because of a choice she made herself.”

“And your friend made that choice himself, too,” Dominic tells me, his voice as dark as his eyes. “He chose to try and help you.”

“I know,” I tell him softly. “It’s something I think about every day. Because he was close to me, because he loved me. That guilt is hard to carry. But it’s also something I know that I have to let go… and I’m working on it. I’ve been working on it ever since that horrible day. You have to let this go, Dominic. You have to try. Regardless of why, Emma is gone. You can’t bring her back, and it’s not going to help anything to carry the blame forever. It won’t help.”

“I know,” he says softly. “You have to believe that I’d do anything to let it go. I feel chained by her… by what happened. I feel trapped by everything. It’s around me all of the time. I can never get away from it. Every day, I know what I did to her. I love her and I hate her at the same time. I feel like there’s a wall in front of me and I can’t move forward. I would give anything to break through it and be able to move on.”

“You can do it, Dominic,” I tell him urgently, squeezing his hands. “You really can. You just have to go through the motions.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” he answers limply. “When I met you, when I got to know you… for the first time since Emma died, I felt a need to get close to someone, to you. But even you can’t save me from this. You can’t help. No one can. And if you try, Kira was right… you’ll drown right along with me.”

“You want to get close to me?” I ask quietly, incredulously, because his actions have been so contradictory lately.

“I did,” Dominic admits, looking away. “But then I realized that it’s not fair to drag you into my toxic life. That’s when I ended things. Not because I really wanted to, but because you deserve far, far better than me.”

“Why don’t you let me decide that?” I suggest gently. But Dom just looks away, his jaw clenched. I can see in his eyes that he’s thinking of Emma, and of how he let her in and she decimated him. How he thinks that he killed her. How he thinks he wasn’t enough to save her, as if that was ever within his power in the first place.

The look on his face, so sad, so vulnerable, so hopeless… it shatters me. And so I do the only thing I can think of to do.

I kiss him.

I take all of my sadness for him, all of my heartache, and I channel it into a kiss. It’s the only thing I know to do. I want to take his sadness away, I want to absorb it in the only way I know how.

At first, Dominic is limp, sitting still as I envelop him in my arms. But after a minute, his hands slide up my back and I feel the warmth of his fingers gripping me. His breathing picks up, ragged and harsh.

“You shouldn’t be with me,” he tells me again desperately. But I ignore him.

We kiss again and again, and our hands are everywhere, a sudden and feverish frenzy. I want him. I want to take his pain and replace it with something good. He deserves that… if only I can make him see. His heart beats against mine, loud and strong as I run my hands down his chest, down to his belt buckle.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he rasps against my ear. “I want to. But I don’t think I can. I haven’t been able to… be with anyone since Emma died. I have this debilitating fear of trusting someone again. After Emma died, I didn’t handle my grief. I suppressed it. I focused so much on the fear and the guilt that it grew into a monster that I can’t get past. There’s something inside of me that’s broken, Jacey.”

I stare into his eyes, into his heartbreak, and I melt.

“Then let’s fix you.”

I silence his protests with my lips as I crawl onto his lap and suck down his pain. I breathe it in as my hands stroke him everywhere, his face, his chest, his arms. I take his guilt and his sadness and his angst. My chest presses against his, my heart beating with his.

Both of them are racing, pounding, breaking.

“Fix me, Jacey,” he whispers, his hands pulling at my nightgown, pushing it up and pulling it over my head. “If you can.”

Oh, I can.

I tug at his clothes until there is nothing left between us but skin and heat. Heat and skin. The delicious smell of him, the feel of his fingers and his tongue. There’s so much emotion between us now that my body feels so sensitive, electric. Every touch of his fingers sends me arching toward the sky, pulling him onto me.

Because I want more of him.

I’m finally going to get all of him.

We tumble onto my bed together, his hand behind my head. He kisses me again and again and again, and our heat feels like it’s going to explode in a firestorm of emotion. I’m not sure I can take this much sensation. It’s too much to bear.

Everything is a blur now… a blur of emotion and need and heat. His hands, his face, his eyes… his aching.

His guilt.

All of it wraps around me and I inhale it. I want to free him of it.

In this moment, he wants to change, and I want to help him do it.

“Be with me, Dom.” I breathe. “Be with me.”

The energy in the room is palpable as he fluidly slips his fingers into me, cool and long. His body hovers over me in the dark, his breath warm on my face.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” he says again, uncertainly. “I…”

“We can,” I assure him firmly. “You can.”

I can.

I slip from under him and flip over on top of him, straddling his hips as I stare down at him. His face is beautiful in the dark, even as it is tortured.

“Do you want me?” I whisper softly, leaning forward to trail my fingers down his cheek. I can feel his erection pressing against me, rigid and hard. “I know you do.”

He nods and I raise an eyebrow.

“Yes or no?”

He smiles ever so slightly, but I can see the pain behind it.

“Yes,” he murmurs, his hands gripping my hips and pulling me closer. With one movement, I lift and sink onto him, burying him deep within me. He glides into me easily, deeply, completely.

The moment is frozen in time, like the world stops.

Like it’s so fucking reverent.

Like the universe knows how significant this is.

We gasp at the same time, then Dominic groans, closing his eyes as my warmth surrounds him, as he sinks into a woman’s body for the first time in six years.

“Jesus,” he mumbles, his fingers digging into my skin as I rock on top of him. I start out slow, but I can’t keep from growing frantic. I want to please him, to pleasure him… to save him.

As a whole, what we’re doing is so much more than this simple action. It’s more than a simple fuck. And we both know it.

It’s significant on a thousand different levels.

Words escape me as I watch his face… at the look of wonder, amazement, and raw pleasure. I realize in this moment that he actually thought he couldn’t do it. He had an actual mental block and he thought he’d never get past it. It took me pushing him… taking matters into my own hands to make him do it.

“God, you feel good,” he murmurs, opening his eyes and staring into mine. I lean down and kiss him, my tongue tangling with his, my heat pouring into him.

“See?” I ask him, rocking softly atop him once again. He reaches up and cups my breasts, kneading my skin, his thumbs rubbing over my nipples, gentle at first, then harder. “You thought that only the dark and taboo worked for you. You thought you deserved that. You thought you deserved dark corners and hidden rooms. But you deserve this too, Dom. You deserve to be loved.”

Dom stops and looks at me, his eyes widening.

“You love me?”

His voice is quiet and shocked. And he’s no more shocked than I am that I said the words out loud.

I stop all movement, shoving my hair away from my face as I stare at him. The idea of putting myself out there like that is terrifying. But I have to do it.

He has to know.

“I love you,” I whisper hesitantly. “I do.”

Dominic closes his eyes, squeezes them closed as his hands slide lightly down my back, his fingernails grazing my skin. “Don’t,” he whispers. “Don’t love me.”

I bend and cup his face in my hands, kissing him on the mouth. “Too late,” I whisper against his lips. “It’s too late.”

A tiny bit of wetness escapes from Dominic’s eye, streaking down his cheek. I wipe it away as he opens his eyes.

“Well, god help you then,” he says simply.

He groans and flips me over, pinning me against the bed before he plunges into me, hard and fast, deep inside of me, as far inside as he can be. He throws his head back and practically growls. I grip his back, scratching into him as I kiss his arm.

“More,” I tell him urgently. “Give me more.”

He thrusts harder and faster, moaning into my neck, nipping at my skin. I feel his heart beating, I feel his heat, I feel the moisture from his skin. His scent surrounds me, uniquely him, and I inhale it, pulling it into me along with the rest of him.

“More,” I say again, and he thrusts again.

His eyes are glued to mine as he thrusts. His green eyes are almost black and all the hidden things that usually linger there are gone. His intense gaze is open, and it’s all for me.

I limply cling to his back until finally he shudders, throwing his head back before he collapses on top of me, pulling me close. He breathes into my neck as his hands caress my back. It’s a long time before he speaks.

“I don’t know what to say,” he finally admits quietly.

“Don’t say anything,” I answer softly. “You don’t need to.”

And I mean it. Words aren’t necessary right now. I know what he’s afraid of. I know what he thinks he is. It’s up to me to show him that there’s nothing to fear.

Dominic’s eyes fly open.

“We didn’t use protection,” he says shakily. “Jesus. I didn’t think about it. I haven’t had to worry about that in a long time.”

“And don’t worry about it now,” I tell him calmly. “I’m on the pill and I haven’t had unprotected sex in a very long time. I’m healthy. You don’t need to worry about me getting pregnant. You won’t have to go through that again. I promise.”

He closes his eyes and I feel him relax into the bed next to me.

“Ok. I’ll just worry about fucking you up with my fucked-uppedness,” he mutters as he pulls me into his arms.

“Don’t worry about that, either,” I tell him softly, pressing a kiss to his damp brow. “I’m fucked up enough on my own.”

He smiles, his eyes still closed, and I have to wonder if I should worry. Closing my eyes, I decide that I won’t. Not tonight.

I can start that shit tomorrow.

For now, I fall asleep in the arms of the man I love.

I love.

I love.

I love.

I love him.

He rejected me, but he came back. I stood my ground and he’s willing to try. Maybe there’s hope for us both.

I love him.

He’s sad and broken and amazing and sexy and haunted. He’s all of those things and I love him. It’s a wonderment to me and it’s the last thing I can think of as I drift into sleep.