Page 127 of Yearn

It barely took two minutes for me to get out of the house and head to Dominic.

The night air pressed cool and damp against my face.

Next door, Mrs. Patterson’s window was still glowing, but instead of her usual quiet vigilance, she was on her feet, clapping at the television like a woman at a revival.

Her voice carried across the hedges—something about a game show or a rerun.“Come on now, baby! Double or nothing!”

A fork gleamed in her other hand. “Yes, Lord! That’s how you do it!”

I ducked low, biting back a laugh that came out as a shaky exhale. My heart pounded, half from nerves, half from ridiculous gratitude.

If Mrs. Patterson was busy cheering at the TV, she wasn’t watching me sneak out the back like a guilty teenager and head to Dominic.

Thank God.

I slipped through the yard, keeping to the shadows.

The sound of her clapping faded behind me, and for a strange, fleeting second, I wished the woman luck with her late-night contestants.

Then I turned toward Dominic’s entrance.

The basement door was heavy; the wood had swelled in the evening’s humidity. I pulled gently and then slipped in, letting it close behind me without a click.

I took the steps.

Hand on the rail.

Anger and adrenaline made my knees weak.

With each stair, the house above me felt farther and the gravity under my feet stronger.

What is he going to say?

At the bottom, I got to Dominic’s door and knocked once.

For a beat there was only my pulse ticking in my throat.

Then the latch turned.

The door opened a handspan, then wider, and Dominic filled the frame like a shadow stepping forward to become a man.

Fuck.

He was bare from the waist up, skin tanned and mapped with muscle.

A thin sheen of sweat gleamed at his collarbones.

His jaw was tight.

His eyes were worse: not wild, not soft as usual, just dark and intense.

I took him in all at once and felt the wrongness and the want hit me together.

His voice was low. “You came.”

“Of course I came,” I whispered, and hated how breathless it sounded.

Behind him, I clocked the details like evidence: a folded towel on the back of the chair, a closed emergency kit with a single hypodermic needle laid across the lid, a beer cap flattened into a crescent on the counter.