Page 26 of A Lethal Game of Trust

“How do you know where we’re going?”

He retrieved his hand and sat back in his seat, focused on the road ahead.

We were going the right way.

“You know where Jared lives.”

9

AsUndeserving 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 Iwent 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.”