ONE EIGHTY FOUR

For a moment, I just stood frozen, the silence swallowing me whole, the only sound the desperate hammering of my own heart against my ribs. But then, something snapped inside me.
Something raw and furious and terrified that refused to be silent any longer.

I didn’t even think.
I ran.

My footsteps pounded against the floorboards as I shoved away from the wall, my pulse screaming in my ears, my tears blurring the shape of him just a few steps ahead — that stubborn, familiar figure moving steadily down the hallway like he could actually leave me like this.
No.
No.

I caught up to him in three frantic strides and grabbed his arm with both hands, yanking him back with every ounce of strength I had left. Dominic staggered, his steps thudding hard against the ground, his body twisting half toward me with a startled grunt — but he barely had a second to react before I exploded against him.

I slammed my fists against his chest — once, twice, again — my entire body trembling so violently I could hardly see straight.
He didn’t fight back.
He didn’t move.
He just stood there, letting me hit him, letting me pour it all out like he knew he deserved it.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?!" I screamed, my voice cracking into a thousand jagged pieces as I pounded my fists into him, each blow landing against the hard plane of his chest but doing nothing, nothing to scratch the surface of the anguish tearing through me.  "Who the fuck gave you the right to do this?!" Another shove, harder this time, making him rock back a step.
"To decide you get to leave—just like that! To just walk away like it’s your goddamn mission to die for us!"

The words ripped out of me like bullets, fast and wild and unrelenting, every syllable pushed by a sob that shook my whole frame.  "And it’s not just me you're leaving, you asshole!" I shoved him again, harder, my palms stinging. "It's your son! Your son, Dominic! You think you can just disappear again, leave him wondering where the hell you went when he finally knows he’s ours? You think you can just leave him like he doesn’t matter? Like we don’t fucking matter?!"

The world around us blurred and dissolved, the hallway, the cracked paint on the walls, the dim light buzzing overhead — it all faded into white noise. All I could see was him. Him and the way he stood there, rigid and silent, his green eyes wide and stricken, watching me come apart at the seams in front of him.

"I am not letting you do this," I gasped, barely able to get the words out as the sobs tore through me, leaving my throat raw and shredded. "You hear me? I’m not. You are not going in there alone and pretending it’s all on you. You’re not leaving me behind."

My hands, shaking so violently now they barely obeyed me, fisted in the front of his jacket, yanking him down toward me in desperate, jerky pulls. "I’m coming with you," I rasped through clenched teeth, my forehead almost touching his chest now because I was losing the strength to even stand straight. "I’m coming with you, Dominic. You have to agree. You have to fucking agree to that!"

Each word was punctuated by a shove, a desperate, furious little punch against his unmoving chest, my body sagging more and more with every hit, like all the rage and terror and heartbreak inside me was burning itself out, leaving only exhaustion behind. "I’m not... I’m not losing you," I cried, the words spilling over in a broken whisper now, my fists curling uselessly against his shirt.  "I can’t... I won’t survive it, Dominic. I swear to God, I won't."

The hallway around us seemed to collapse inward, the ceiling pressing lower, the air turning thick and suffocating, like the universe itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what he would do.

And Dominic — God, Dominic —
He didn’t speak.
Not yet.
He just stood there, his chest heaving beneath my fists, his hands twitching at his sides like he wanted to grab me but didn’t know if he was allowed to.
His face... his beautiful, broken face... was twisted with so many emotions it made my heart physically ache — fear, guilt, anger, longing, all of it flashing across his features faster than I could name them.
But the worst thing, the thing that gutted me completely —
Was the pain.

It was there in his eyes, wide open now, raw and unshielded.
Pain so deep, so consuming, that for a second, I forgot how to breathe.

He was hurting just as much as I was.
Maybe even more.
Because in his mind, he wasn’t just saving Tina.
He was saving me.
And he was doing it the only way he knew how — by sacrificing himself.

But I wasn’t going to let him.
Not this time.
Not without a fight.

I stood there, palm pressed against the front of his shirt, now a little breathless and panting. For a long, terrible second, neither of us moved. I could feel the way his heart hammered beneath my palms, steady and wild like a battle drum trapped inside his chest. My own body sagged, trembling violently, and I hated how small I must have looked right now, sagging under the burden of my own desperation, but I couldn’t stop—God, I didn’t want to stop. Every breath hurt. Every beat of my heart felt like it was tearing open fresh wounds inside me, bleeding out the truth I’d tried so hard to pretend didn’t exist. I needed him. I had always needed him. There was no life after Dominic if he went through with this. Not for me, not for the boy he didn’t even realize was his son. The thought sliced through me with an agony so sharp I almost doubled over. My fingers, shaking with the ferocity of everything crashing down inside me, twisted tighter into the material of his clothes, balling into white-knuckled fists as I pressed my forehead harder against him, choking on the sheer enormity of what I couldn’t lose. He smelled like leather and rain and something faintly like smoke, and the familiarity of it only shattered me more.

I could feel him breathing—deep, shuddering breaths that lifted and dropped his chest against my clenched fists—but still, he didn’t say anything, didn’t try to pry me off, didn’t even reach for me. He just stood there, stiff and trembling in his own way, like he didn’t know if it was safe to move, like one wrong gesture might cause me to shatter into a million irreparable pieces. Somewhere in the dim, half-lit hallway, a door creaked on its hinges, but I barely registered the sound. It was just him and me, locked in this desperate, helpless gravity, this silent battle of wills where the only weapon either of us had left was the ability to hurt each other with truths too deep to say out loud. The rough texture of his jacket scraped against my skin with every broken gasp I sucked into my burning lungs, and I realized I was still shaking, not from cold, not from exhaustion, but from pure, bone-deep terror.

Because I knew exactly what it felt like to lose him.
And I couldn’t survive it again.

The memory slammed into me so hard I actually swayed against him—the memory of that day at the police station, standing there with blood dried stiff on my hands and wrists, my body vibrating with fear and adrenaline, the stink of disinfectant and despair thick in the air, waiting for news that never came. I remembered the cold finality of the detective’s face when he said there had been an incident, how the words blurred and shattered like glass inside my brain, how I had clawed at them, desperate for a name, for a certainty that the man I loved wasn’t lying cold and broken somewhere beyond the sterile white walls. I remembered feeling like I was already dead inside the moment they refused to tell me if Dominic had made it. I remembered thinking, this is what dying feels like—not fire, not knives—just the slow, unbearable pulling apart of everything you are until there’s nothing left but ashes.

And then after that, after I'd tasted that particular brand of hell once, I'd felt it again when he came back—not whole, not healed, but bleeding and broken and stubborn and alive. And here he was, ready to tear himself away again, ready to offer himself up to the city that had already tried to take him from me twice, ready to throw himself into the fire again without a second thought, without me by his side, as if I could bear it, as if I could just wait this time and pray he didn’t end up a body in a morgue drawer I wasn’t allowed to see.

"Please," I whispered against his chest, my voice wrecked and low, barely human. My fists loosened slightly, not out of forgiveness, but from the sheer collapse of my strength. I sagged against him harder, my whole body wracked with tremors. "You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to decide it’s your sacrifice to make. You don’t get to walk into the fire and tell me to stay behind and watch you burn."

Dominic flinched like I had struck him—not physically, but somewhere deeper, somewhere closer to the bone. His jaw tightened, the muscles feathering beneath his stubbled skin, and for a second, he looked like he might break too. His hand twitched at his side, a fraction of a second from reaching for me, from holding me together when I was so clearly coming apart—but he didn't. He caught himself, locking down with that same stubborn, infuriating restraint that made me want to both kiss him and punch him at the same time.

I shifted back just enough to see his face, tears smearing the corners of my vision but not enough to hide the way his green eyes were glittering too bright, his throat working as he tried to swallow whatever was threatening to escape. He looked like he was at war with himself, fighting a losing battle against everything I was pouring out into him, and somewhere deep inside, a savage satisfaction curled in my chest. Good. Let him feel it. Let him know that this wasn’t just about tactics or survival or noble goddamn sacrifice. This was about us. About what we were risking. About what we stood to lose.

"You don’t get to leave me behind," I whispered, my voice cracking like a dry branch in the dead of winter, trembling with the force of the truth behind it. I lifted one trembling hand from his jacket and pressed it flat against his chest, feeling the steady, desperate thud of his heart pounding against my palm. "This is mine," I said fiercely, tilting my tear-soaked face up to meet his hollow, aching gaze. "You hear me? This heart is mine. You don’t get to tear it out of my chest and leave me to die while you march off thinking you're some fucking martyr."

For a long, terrible moment, Dominic just stared at me, and I could see it happening—the walls he’d so carefully built around himself starting to fracture, the armor cracking along old fault lines he thought he'd long since buried. His breath hitched in his throat, and for the first time since we’d started this brutal, bleeding conversation, he looked scared. Not of the mission, not of the danger, but of me. Of what I was asking of him. Of what it would cost to stay. Of how much harder it would be to leave knowing he was walking away from someone who would never stop bleeding if he didn’t come back.

And just like that, the distance between us collapsed completely.

I was going to with him if he liked it or not.