Our Forbidden Desires : Chapter 9 - Fractures

Before proceeding, please be aware that this is a work of fiction and fantasy. Any resemblance to real life, persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All characters portrayed in this narrative are over 18 years of age.

This chapter features strictly adult themes, including:

• Adult / Explicit Content (+18 / NSFW)

• Incest / Family Taboo Themes: Depicting sexual and psychological dynamics and fixations within a family context (father, son, and grandfather).

Chapter 9 - Fractures

The phone screen glowed in the dark: 3:15. Dom let out a short sigh and flopped onto his back against the mattress. He stared blankly at the dark, silent ceiling for a few seconds, motionless. Then, he tossed the phone back onto the nightstand and rolled over for the umpteenth time, dragging the tangled sheets around his legs. He reached out blindly, but his hand found only the cold, untouched mattress on the other side. The double bed felt too big. A desert of ironed sheets where his body felt left over, out of place.

“I should’ve gotten rid of this...” he muttered to the ceiling, his raspy voice trailing off.

Tap... Tap...

Dom clenched his jaw, startled and immediately irritated by the noise. It came from the corner of the room, where the wind was pushing the tip of an oak branch against the windowpane. With every gust, the dry wood scraped against the glass, making a sharp, repetitive clicking sound that drove him crazy.

Dom finally sat up on the edge of the bed and clicked on the lamp. Burying his face in his hands and rubbing his temples, he thought: Shit. I haven’t had insomnia in years. Is this bullshit really back?

Pushing off his knees, he stood up. He took a few steps toward the door, but his eyes locked onto the nightstand on the other side of the bed. There lay a messy pack of rolling papers, a metal grinder, and a faded yellow lighter. Dom stared at it for way too long. He’d never taken a drag of anything in his life, but just looking at the charred spark wheel, he could almost hear it strike in the dark and smell the sweet scent of weed filling his nose.

Heading downstairs, the faint light from the streetlamps bled through the window, highlighting the pale, rectangular outlines on the wall where picture frames used to hang, leaving only empty nails behind. Dom didn’t even look. He just hurried down the steps, crossed the living room, and took the small back stairs where the air grew heavier and colder, finally pushing open the heavy door to the garage.

The space felt like a massive, raw concrete box, reeking of grease and gasoline. In the center, his motorcycle shared the oil-stained floor with a leather weight bench. In one corner, bike parts and scattered tools covered a small wooden workbench. In the other stood an old, homemade arcade cabinet—an unfinished project with exposed wiring that pulsed with a faint blue glow.

“Argh...” “Hnnngh...” “Raaah...”

Hours bled by, and those muffled grunts and the clanking of weight plates were the only sounds in Dom’s garage.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, he felt around the floor next to the bench until he found his phone. 5:21. He opened his messages: the “hey” he’d sent Lucas the night before hadn’t even been left on read.

Did he tell someone? he thought, his stomach churning. Fuck.

He locked the screen, gripping the phone in both hands as he stared into the void, still sitting on the bench. He stayed like that for far too long, frozen in the silence of the garage, until the weight of his own stagnation became unbearable.

“Fuck it,” he muttered to no one.

He hurled the phone against the concrete floor and shot up. Striding across the garage to a wall rack, he yanked off another dumbbell—this time a fifty-kilo one. His fingers closed around the freezing metal, his knuckles popping sharply under the strain.

Back on the bench, he brought the weight to his chest and started the reps. No resting pace, no counting. Just the metal shooting up and down. The veins in his neck bulged, and his breathing turned into sharp hisses escaping through his teeth. His ass lifted off the worn leather with every brutal rep, cold sweat pouring down his forehead and stinging his eyes. His chest burned, his arm shook, but he forced out another rep, and another, driving the weight up on pure rage until he completely ran out of air. A sharp, dizzying spike of pain shot through the base of his skull, making the room spin and his vision black out.

Dom stopped dead. He rested the dumbbell on his knee, his shoulders heaving frantically as nausea crept up from his stomach, hot and bitter. His chest cracked as he gasped for oxygen. He stayed like that for a few minutes, head bowed, waiting to catch his breath.

Thinking he had recovered, he stood up to rack the weight. He took a step toward the stand, but another wave of dizziness hit him. His knee buckled. His right hand gave out, his fingers losing their grip, and the dumbbell plummeted straight down.

The impact against the top of his right foot produced a sickening crunch, followed by the sound of bone grinding under the massive weight. The iron then slammed against the concrete floor, echoing through the garage. Dom collapsed to the side. The air hitched in his throat, turning into a suffocating knot. He tried to bite back the sound, clenching his teeth as hard as he could, but the agony was blinding. A raw, ragged roar tore from his chest—a sound that bounced off the cold concrete walls, carrying all the violence of the spasm that felt like it had shattered his bones.

“Well... looks like you’re lucky you didn’t pass out before calling 911,” the old man in the next bed commented, adjusting his glasses. “My grandson had a spell like that last year.”

“Argh... you’re right,” Dom groaned, slightly lifting his leg to inspect his foot.

With a dull thud, the room’s door swung open. The doctor stepped through the doorway, holding a thick manila envelope.

“Alright... the good news is, according to the tests, your dizzy spell was just fatigue and stress. You just need some rest.”

The doctor let out an ironic little chuckle, clipped the X-ray to the glowing lightbox on the wall, and crossed his arms, looking at Dom over his glasses.

“The bad news is... your foot is a jigsaw puzzle.”

“What do you mean, John? Is it a bad break?”

“’Bad’ is an understatement,” John said, shaking his head. “You obliterated your second and third metatarsals. Luckily, they’re not displaced, so you won’t need surgery. But forget about putting any weight on this foot for the next six weeks. I’m having the nurse put a plaster splint on it now because of the swelling, and next week we’ll swap it for a full cast. Welcome to crutches, my friend.”

Dom closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow.

“Shit...”

John turned to the next bed, adjusting the stethoscope around his neck. “And how about you, Richard? Everything okay over there? Feeling any better?”

“Sure am, doc,” the old man replied, adjusting his injured arm across his stomach. “The pain eased up after the meds.”

“Excellent. The nurse is on her way to take you to the casting room.” He gave the foot of the old man’s bed a gentle pat. Then, he pointed his clipboard at Dom. “And you’re right after him. Don’t even think about trying to make a run for it dragging that leg.”

“Argh... Great. Can’t wait,” Dom grumbled.

“Alright then,” John said, turning and walking to the door. “Once you both get your casts on, you’re discharged. And Dom... I’ll bring you something to eat when my shift ends.”

The doctor opened the door and stepped out.

“You don’t have to, John!” Dom called out, raising his voice so his friend could hear him down the hall.

“Yes I do!” John’s voice shouted back, already muffled by the busy corridor.

Dom let out a heavy sigh through his nose. In the bed over, Richard gave a little half-smile, adjusting his bad arm while he waited for the nurse.

“He’s a good one,” the old man remarked with a quiet chuckle, fixing his glasses. “If I were you, I wouldn’t turn down free food...”

The door opened again, interrupting the conversation, but this time a light-footed older woman stepped through the frame, carrying a woven straw bag. She had long gray hair braided with colorful threads, several stone necklaces dangling over a floral blouse, and silver rings adorning her fingers.

She took two steps inside, locked eyes with Richard, and shook her head.

“Leave the poor man alone, Richard!” she fired off, before even closing the door. “Let him rest! Are you already trying to talk his ear off?”

“I was just being sociable, my Aphrodite...” Richard mumbled.

“You’re sociable with the birds in the backyard, honey. With people, you’re just a chatterbox,” she replied sweetly, walking over to her husband’s bed and planting a loud kiss on his forehead.

Then, she turned to Dom. She had striking, lively blue eyes and an expression that seemed to read people without asking permission.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Rosa,” she said, extending a hand full of silver rings for a gentle shake. “Don’t mind my old man. Whenever he’s stuck somewhere and can’t walk, talking up a storm is his medicine.”

Dom gave a half-smile, returning the light handshake.

“Nice to meet you, Rosa. I’m Dominic, but you can call me Dom. And it’s no problem at all, Richard was just distracting me from this sh—... ah... excuse my language.”

“Nonsense...” Rosa tossed one of her braids over her shoulder and gave Dom’s arm a light pat. “The human body does crazy things, doesn’t it? Sometimes it has to scream real loud to make us realize something’s wrong. The universe has very... let’s say... painful ways of sending a message.”

Richard chuckled. “Here she goes with the universe talk again...”

A short nurse in blue scrubs walked into the room holding a clipboard, followed by an orderly pushing a wheelchair.

“Mr. Richard?” she called out. “The casting room is ready. Let’s go fix up that arm?”

“Hey, miss, is this gonna hurt?” Richard asked.

“No, Richard, it won’t,” the nurse replied with a soft smile. “Just a little uncomfortable. I promise it hurts less than trying to fly down the stairs. If you cooperate, we’ll be done in a flash.”

Before her husband could settle into the chair, Rosa touched the nurse’s arm.

“Excuse me, miss... Do you mind if I wait for him here in the room? I’d rather not stand in the hallway, and it’s much quieter in here.”

The nurse smiled. “Of course, ma’am. Make yourself at home. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Thank you so much,” she told the nurse, then turned back to her husband. “I’ll be right here, love.”

As soon as the door clicked shut, Rosa sighed, dropped her straw bag onto the empty armchair, and turned to Dom, who was watching her curiously.

“Well, now that the chatterbox is gone...” she said, pulling a chair over and sitting next to his bed. “So... tell me, Dom. What on earth happened to your foot? Forgive my curiosity.”

Dom rubbed his face, his thumb scratching against his stubble.

“Insomnia... came out of nowhere,” he replied with a dry, humorless laugh. “Something I didn’t even remember having. Woke up in the middle of the night with my brain on a loop and went to the garage to take my stress out on the weights... When I went to rack the iron, my body just blacked out for a second. You can guess the rest.”

Rosa looked at him for a moment.

“Insomnia and blackouts don’t just pop up out of nowhere, sweetheart,” she said, gently crossing her arms, her silver rings clinking softly. “Mind and body don’t short-circuit for no reason. What was weighing so heavily on your mind at three in the morning that you needed to pump iron?”

Dom let out a short laugh, the corner of his mouth curling in amused disbelief as his eyes dropped to her rings.

“What are you, a therapist?”

Rosa beamed, adjusting the necklaces over her blouse.

“Retired, my dear. But... yes. Let’s just say I spent decades listening to people who thought their chests were bursting from a heart attack, when in reality, it was just their souls trying to kick the door down.”

The silence stretched between them, filled only by a distant beep in the hallway. Dom stared at his fingertips, smelling the rubbing alcohol cutting through the sterile hospital air.

“There are things we try to shove down into the basement, but the body has a master key,” she murmured, her voice low.

“I just... thought I could handle holding it all together on my own,” he said.

Rosa leaned back in the armchair, making it creak softly, in no rush to fill the space.

“The whole ‘handling it on your own’ thing in our society... sometimes it’s just a way to blame a person for something they have absolutely no control over. I mean... not all the time, but it happens,” she replied smoothly.

“Yeah...” he said.

Rosa kept her eyes locked on him for a few more seconds. The hospital’s rhythm around them seemed to fade away, leaving only the muffled sound of distant footsteps on the linoleum.

“Are you married?” she asked.

Dom took a moment to answer, but soon a subtle smile touched the corner of his mouth.

“No... Actually, I’m a widower.”

Rosa’s eyes narrowed slightly, her expression softening.

“I’m so sorry, Dom,” she said.

“It’s okay... It’s been three years.”

The silence stretched for minutes, broken only by the monotonous drip of an IV and the distant hum of the corridor. Rosa sat perfectly still in the armchair, letting him take his time, her steady gaze resting on Dom’s face.

“The crazy bastard really loved his weed...” he murmured, the smile on his lips widening into an amused crease. “Leonard. That was his name... Fuck... he was gorgeous,” he added, breath escaping in a short, warm laugh. His eyes gleamed with the sudden flash of someone rediscovering an old laugh inside a good memory.

“Do you have a picture of him?” she asked.

Dom hesitated for a second, his fingers blindly feeling the nightstand until they hit his phone case. He unlocked the screen with his thumb, the blue light illuminating his tired eyes for a moment before he swiped through his gallery and held the phone out to her.

“Yeah. Here.”

Rosa took the phone carefully, her silver rings lightly tapping the glass. She stayed quiet for a long time, soaking in the image on the screen, while Dom’s breath seemed to hang suspended in the room.

“A work of art, I must say,” she said, lifting her eyes back to his face.

The corners of his eyes crinkled in a genuine, light-hearted smile, like someone recalling the exact punchline of an inside joke only the two of them understood. His forehead was smooth, free of the deep creases Rosa was used to seeing.

She handed the phone back to him, holding onto it for a second longer than necessary.

“You seem to have handled the grief very well... I don’t see sadness,” she murmured, her voice low, almost curious, as she handed it back with a gentle touch, her fingers searching his palm for any hint of a tremor.

Dom’s thumb swiped across the screen, killing the glare before dropping the phone onto the mattress. He didn’t curl his fingers or clench his jaw; his shoulders, previously rigid beneath the hospital gown, finally gave way against the pillow, sinking into the feathers with a loose, natural weight.

A breath escaped the corner of his mouth, closer to a stifled laugh than a heavy sigh.

“Sadness?” He turned his face toward the window, where the heavy gray of the early morning was beginning to dilute into a pale blue. “Sadness is what’s left when someone leaves and rips the floor out from under you. Leonard... Leonard just left a mess.

“We spent five years laughing at things that could’ve gotten us arrested. He could turn a total blackout into a tragicomedy. I cry because I miss him, not because I’m sad.”

“Oh, my Lord...” Rosa said, an incredulous smile breaking at the corner of her mouth. “He was one of my people.”

“Yeah... he was a bit of a hippie too.”

The smile didn’t vanish all at once; it dissolved at the edges, the corners of his lips relaxing slowly until they settled into a tense, straight line. The playful gleam in his eyes lost its breath, giving way to an opaque stare.

Dom’s fingers, which had been resting limply on the blanket, began to rub the hem of his pajama sleeve, pulling and twisting the fabric in a mindless, repetitive friction. His breathing, which had been flowing calmly, grew shallow, catching higher in his chest as his jaw silently hardened.

“I have a son... you know?” His voice broke the silence after a few seconds, low and raspy.

“What’s his name?” Rosa’s question cut through the quiet without rushing him, her fingers still resting on the edge of his mattress.

“William,” he replied, the name escaping with a stifled weight. “He must be about thirty-six by now.”

Rosa’s eyebrows slowly arched, her head tilting to the side.

“Must be?”

Dom’s Adam’s apple bobbed stiffly in his throat. He looked away instantly, his eyes gluing to the empty corner of the ceiling, while his right hand abandoned the bedsheet to furiously rub the back of his neck in a mute effort to chase away the tension climbing his spine.

“I kind of...” His voice broke in half, his shallow breath catching in his chest before finding a way out. “I kind of abandoned him when he was eighteen. I thought I’d never see his face again... except life found a way to put us close to each other again.”

Dom stopped talking and ran his tongue over his dry lips, letting out a clicking sound. His hand suddenly flew to his neck, his fingers gripping the center of his throat as if trying to pry open space for air to pass. He swallowed hard twice in a row, his Adam’s apple catching on the way up before slowly descending.

“And I’m terrified.”

“Have you two met?”

“No. That’s exactly what’s tearing me up inside,” he rasped, air failing his throat. “I want to sit down and talk to him, but... fuck, the fear is paralyzing me.”

Rosa kept her eyes pinned on him, unhurried, just waiting for the echo of his own words to settle in the room.

“Why did you abandon him?”

Dom’s jaw locked so tight the muscles bulged in his cheeks. He looked up at the ceiling, jaw hard as stone, before letting out a harsh sigh that seemed to tear at his chest.

“I don’t want to get into the reasons, Rosa...” his voice came out low, dragged like sandpaper against his throat, his eyes fixed on his own hand. “But I didn’t leave him completely stranded. I left him fifty grand and the house. I just... I had to leave.”

The muffled hum of the hallway filled the space between the beds, a vacuum where no one’s breathing seemed to fit right. He threw the numbers into the air like a shield, his fingers digging into his thigh until the skin under his nails turned white.

Rosa kept him in her sights, tracking the tiny tremor pulling at the corner of his lips. She saw his jaw flex before the stiffness slowly gave way; her own shoulders relaxed, the crease in her forehead vanished, and she reached out, lightly brushing her knuckles against the back of his hand.

“Do you regret it?” she asked, her voice a soft thread.

“Every single day...” The weight of the sentence plummeted as his shoulders sank into the mattress, his voice reduced to dragged gravel. “I’m a horrible person.”

The room shrank in the silence. Rosa didn’t pull back, didn’t offer the cliché comfort anyone else would have dumped on him; she just kept her spine straight and her gaze locked deep in his eyes, steady as an anchor.

“What’s it like being a horrible person?”

Dom’s body jerked back, the back of his head hitting the pillow with a muffled thud.

The half-smile that bloomed at the corner of Rosa’s mouth was almost imperceptible, a flash of dry irony crossing her face. She tipped her chin up slightly, arching a brow at him.

“You’re the one who said it.”

“Yeah... ah...” Dom shook his head slowly, his chin resting lightly on his chest, his voice losing strength until it became an opaque whisper. “It’s paralyzing.”

He let out a short, dry laugh, utterly devoid of humor.

“Whenever I do something good... really good, like my volunteer work... I remember the awful things I’ve done. And then... the good thing I’m doing kind of loses its shine. It’s like nothing is ever enough.”

Dom’s jaw clenched hard in a futile attempt to swallow the lump rising in his throat. The tears in his eyes suddenly spilled over, sliding in silent streaks through the tired lines of his face. He didn’t raise a hand to wipe them away; he just let his body sink further into the mattress, his shoulders hunched under a weight that felt like it was crushing his ribs.

“I think about it all the time...” his voice broke mid-sentence.

Rosa’s analytical, observant demeanor completely fell away. She uncrossed her arms in a swift motion, dropping any trace of professional distance, and leaned forward, getting close to him like someone stepping in to hold a friend together in the middle of a storm.

“Fuck it, I’m retired...” she blurted out, her voice shedding its neutral poise for a warm, fiercely loyal, and firm tone. She reached out, resting her fingers firmly on his forearm. “Listen to me: only truly good people ever wonder if they’re horrible. Bad people don’t even question it.”

Dom squeezed his eyes shut against the room’s bright light, his tears breaking the dam in muffled sobs that shook his shoulders. His voice came out ragged, carrying the weight of years of suffocation:

“I abandoned my son...”

“And you regretted it!” she cut in instantly, without missing a beat, squeezing his arm hard to ground him.

Rosa let out a long sigh, her thumb drawing a slow circle on his forearm, softening the harsh tone she’d used seconds before.

“In college...” she began, dropping her voice a notch, reaching for a more intimate corner of her memory. “A professor of mine told the story of a man who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. He said that the exact second his feet left the ledge, he realized that the only thing in the entire world he couldn’t fix was exactly what he had just done.”

She paused for a moment, letting the weight of the image settle between them before looking deep into Dom’s red, tear-filled eyes.

“You’re not falling off a bridge, Dom. What’s in the past is in the past, no matter how ugly it was. But you’re right here, breathing. As long as we’re alive, things can be fixed. We can try. We can talk.”

Dom’s jaw clenched slightly, fear still lurking in the back of his bloodshot eyes. He swallowed hard, his voice coming out in an almost inaudible breath.

“What if he doesn’t accept it?”

“Then you tried,” she said, point-blank.

Silence stretched for a few seconds. Rosa watched him for a long moment, letting the echo of those three words settle in his chest, before a small, genuine, and deeply comforting smile finally broke at the corners of her mouth.

The soft creak of the door broke the quiet that had formed between them. The nurse pushed the door open, making way for Richard, who now sported a sturdy plaster cast holding his arm to his chest, supported by a sling.

“Mission accomplished, Aphrodite,” Richard announced with a calm smile, adjusting his glasses as he took his first steps into the room.

Rosa turned in her chair, her face immediately lighting up with that crease of amused affection she reserved only for her husband. She stood up and went to him, helping him settle back into the adjacent bed.

“Look at him, all proud with his cast,” she joked, affectionately adjusting his shirt collar with her silver-ringed fingers. “Did he give you a lot of trouble, nurse?”

“Not at all. I was the absolute picture of patience,” he retorted, shooting her a knowing look before shifting his eyes to Dom, noticing the remnants of tears and the new lightness in the younger man’s face. “And over here? Looks like the boss’s private therapy session paid off.”

Dom gave a genuine smile, feeling his chest noticeably lighter, and gave a small nod.

“It did, Richard. Saved my sanity for today.”

“Dom, you really should look into a real professional. I think it would help you a lot...” Rosa said, her voice mild. “But, if you ever want to, I’m at the church every Sunday if you need to talk.”

“Thank you, Rosa.”

“Come on, old man, before you run out of jokes,” she teased affectionately.

Richard waved at Dom with a serene smile.

“Good luck with the crutches, kid. See you around.”

As soon as the couple said their goodbyes and left the room, the nurse turned to Dom with a practical smile. She grabbed the pair of crutches leaning against the wall, walked over to the bed, and handed them directly to him.

“Your turn,” she said, bracing the crutches and giving him an encouraging half-smile. “Think you can keep up?”

Dom shifted his weight onto the crutches, the aluminum squeaking slightly with every measured hop as he followed the nurse down the short hallway to the adjacent room. The space was brighter, dominated by stainless steel counters and the distinct smell of plaster and dampness.

Sitting on the examination table, he propped up his injured leg as the process began: layers of orthopedic cotton were carefully wrapped around his foot, cushioning the shattered metatarsals, followed by wet strips that started to harden as they hit the air. The faint heat from the chemical reaction radiated through the bandages, turning the dressing into a white, firm, heavy shell.

While the nurse smoothed the material with precise movements and finished the cast, Dom’s mind drifted far away from there.

The weight of that cast felt insignificant next to what he had been carrying in his chest. Rosa’s words were still echoing in his head, cutting through the fog of his guilt. As long as we’re alive, things can be fixed.

The fear was a bitter taste in the back of his throat, a tight rope around his chest threatening to paralyze every muscle. But, looking at his immobilized foot and the sheer fragility of that moment, he realized he couldn’t pretend anymore that time would heal what he himself had broken.

No more running, he thought, closing his eyes for a second to absorb the impact of his own decision. He was going to need a hell of a lot more than crutches to take this step, but for the first time, courage started to outweigh the dread. As soon as he left this hospital, he was going to find William.

The nurse gave the cast a few final, light taps to smooth the surface, which was already cooling and hardening into a solid white shell around Dom’s foot. She peeled off her disposable gloves and looked up at him with a professional smile.

“Doctor’s orders, you’re officially discharged, Dom. Careful with that foot, alright...”

Before she could finish her sentence, a sharp, chaotic noise slashed through the hallway: the casters of a gurney scraping violently against the wall, frantic footsteps sprinting, and tense voices shouting for the trauma team.

Dom jumped, holding up a hand to stop her mid-sentence, his eyes locked on the doorway.

“Wait... what’s going on out there?” he asked, frowning, feeling the adrenaline spike in his throat.

The nurse’s expression flipped in a second, her calm demeanor vanishing, replaced by the urgency of the ER. She glanced out into the hallway and turned back to him, already gathering her trays.

“We just got radioed! A guy got stabbed, the ambulance is pulling into the ER bay right now, and the whole team is scrambling to get set up,” she explained rapidly.

Dom swallowed hard. He tucked the rubber grips of the crutches under his arms and carefully pushed himself off the table.

“Got it... Thank you for everything,” he said, giving her one last grateful look.

Leaning heavily on the aluminum, Dom pivoted and started making his way toward the exit, navigating the hallway as the emergency response erupted around him.

The sound of stampeding feet and shouting tore through the sterile atmosphere of the corridor.

“Clear the way! Move, move!” a voice echoed, shrill and urgent, making nurses press themselves against the walls and visitors jump back in shock.

Dom planted his crutches on the linoleum floor and, with a clumsy lurch, scrambled to get out of the way, pressing his back against the cold hospital wall to clear the path.

At the far end of the hall, the double emergency doors burst open with a crash. Paramedics were sprinting, pushing a gurney at full speed, completely out of breath. Keeping pace with the frantic crew, a man ran right alongside them, his t-shirt and hands completely covered in blood.

As the bloody man tried to rush past the restricted access doors with the medical team, a staff member and a nurse blocked his path. In response, the blood-soaked man grabbed his head, doubling over in a gesture of absolute exhaustion and despair.

For a split second, Dom’s eyes drifted from the man and locked onto the figure lying right there, at his eye level. As the gurney sliced through the space just inches away from him, the harsh, blown-out glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights washed over the wounded young man’s face.

The blood rushed to Dom’s ears, drowning out every remaining sound into a deafening ring. His heart gave such a violent lurch in his chest that he lost the breath he needed to stay standing.

Underneath that scarlet sheet, terrified and fighting for every last gasp of life, was him.

Lucas.

To be continued... Thank you for reading!