Page 26 of Dominion

“Judah—”

“I know. I know. Chiara’s men are on it. Just lower your gun.”

“He was here. He, he…” I stammered. “He told me?—”

“I know,” Cillian added, slowly coming closer to me. “Can you lower your gun? I don’t want you to shoot me, darling.”

“He told me?—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t want to go out, but Claudio left. I-I-I had no idea what was going on, Kill. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, hey.” His voice was clearer now, his face more visible the closer he got, but I couldn’t let go of the gun. Not until he came all the way to me, took hold of the gun, and slowly pulled it out of my hands. “You’re okay.”

Cillian’s arms wrapped around me, pulling me into his hard chest. It wasn’t until he started rubbing his hand over my upper back that I realized that the shaking didn’t come from him—it came from me. My entire body rebelled against everything my mind was trying to do, and every movement felt like a marathon I needed to finish. My knees turned into jelly. If it wasn’t for Kill and his body holding me up, I would’ve been on the ground by now.

“You’re okay, darling,” he kept saying, his words barely registering in my mind. “We’re gonna catch him. We’re gonna make him pay for everything he’s done.”

But those words did nothing to push down the hatred I felt toward myself. I had a chance to end it all right here and right now, and I froze. Instead of pulling the trigger the moment I saw him, I hesitated. I allowed him to do what he always did best—control me. I’d dreamt about this moment for so long, and the moment I had it in my hands, I fucked it up.

Just like everything else.

“Five more minutes, please.” I sniffed, hiding my face in the crook of Cillian’s neck.

“Okay,” he simply answered, tightening his hold on me. “Five minutes.”

When five minutes passed, my tears still kept on coming. “Just a few second more.”

“Okay.”

The softness and patience in his voice unraveled the last bit of me I was keeping steady. The floodgates opened, releasing every single worry, every memory that plagued my mind, every broken bone, and bruised knees… All those things that made me who I was today, that shaped me, kept on rushing to the forefront of my mind, releasing through the tears cascading down my cheeks.

“Sky,” Cillian murmured. “I know you might not want to hear this right now, but things will get better.”

“Did they get better for you?” I asked shamelessly, because I could see it, the daily struggle he lived with. I could see his demons as clearly as I could see mine every time I looked into the mirror. The drugs, the alcohol, those were all coping mechanisms we used to survive the day, to push through this life, and I was tired of only surviving.

I wanted to live, goddammit. I wanted to laugh, be happy… Truly, truly happy. I didn’t want to fake my happiness in order to spare the people I cared about, because talking about it never made things better—it only made them worse.

“No,” Cillian answered, his soft voice soothing the gaping wound inside my chest. “But I’m still holding on to hope that it will. I’m still hoping that one day I will get to wake up in the morning without thinking that I want to die.”

His words sliced some part of me that I couldn’t exactly name, opening a chasm in my chest. I hated this for him. I hated this cruel, cruel world that made people like Cillian suffer.

But if I wanted to change anything, if we wanted to find Judah, I couldn’t keep on standing here, crying over my failures.

Stepping away from him, the cold night air slammed into me from all sides, and I immediately missed the warmth his bodyprovided. Embarrassment flooded my system, my head hanging low. I lifted my fingers to my face, trying to erase the traces of my tears. Crying in the middle of the mountain with a temperature that was threatening to freeze you even without any additional factors like tears was not the best idea. Obviously. The jacket I wore did nothing to stop the icy cold from caressing my skin, but it was the knowledge that the cold wasn’t only on the surface—it was deep inside my bones, in my bone marrow, freezing the red cells spreading through my bloodstream, through my heart.

I wrapped my arms around my middle, as if they could protect me from what lived inside of me. If I could, I would’ve ripped my heart out, just to clean up the tar I allowed to enter my system.

My head snapped up the moment I remembered why we were here. Guilt tasted like ashes on my tongue, suffocating me as I stepped toward Cillian once again, my eyes scanning every inch of his face. “Ash and Dylan?” I barely breathed out, gauging his reaction, and it wasn’t the one I wanted to see.

I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been looking at him, trying to figure out what had happened, but there it was. A tiny wince, barely there, but I saw it.

“No,” I shook my head. “No, no, no?—”

“No, wait. Sky.” He moved closer, taking my hands in his. “They’re down by the car. They’re… alive.”

Alive but not okay.

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