Lahat ng Kabanata ng Ruin Me, Blackwood: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

Dominic’s POVI didn’t know what I was expecting when I texted her. Maybe silence. Maybe another one-word answer like before, something sharp and dismissive, something that matched the cold distance I’d forced between us.But she replied.See you at eight.Those four words had no right making my chest tighten the way they did. I sat in my car across the street from the café, fingers tightening around the steering wheel as I stared through the windshield like a coward. She wasn’t even inside yet, but I already felt like I was being dragged backward — pulled into a memory, into a version of myself I had spent years trying to bury.Amelia Carter had always been the soft spot I tried to ignore.Even as a teenager, when she was just my best friend’s little sister, always lingering around with too-wide eyes and too-curious questions, I’d known she was dangerous. And now? She wasn’t just dangerous.She was devastating.I ran a hand through my hair, sighed, and checked the time again. 7:58. T

Dominic’s POVI stared at the empty hallway long after Amelia disappeared behind her apartment door. Every cell in my body screamed at me to follow her, to make this right, to say what I should have said hours—hell, months—ago. But my feet wouldn’t move. My fists were clenched at my sides, the only thing keeping me upright when everything inside me was shaking.The elevator doors slid closed behind me, trapping me in a tin box that felt too quiet, too still. I’d held it together as long as I could—through dinner, through the tension at the door, through the crack in her voice when she said goodnight like it was goodbye.Now, alone, the weight dropped.I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and pressed my palms to my eyes. What the fuck was I doing?Amelia wasn’t just anyone. She wasn’t some disposable fling, not a convenient escape from the numbness I’d lived in for years. She was the goddamn pulse in my chest. And I’d spent every second of the night pretending she wasn’t,

Dominic’s POV I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I’d driven home with her scent still clinging to my skin, her voice still echoing in my ears, and my hands clenched so tight on the steering wheel they ached. I didn’t turn on music. Didn’t roll down the window. Just drove in silence, the city blurring past me like I wasn’t really there. Because I wasn’t. I was still back at her doorstep. Still standing in front of Amelia with every nerve in my body screaming at me to stay. But I didn’t. I told myself it was for her. That leaving was the right thing to do. That if I crossed that threshold, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from ruining her. I’d take everything she was offering and give her nothing but pieces of me in return. Broken pieces. She deserved better than that. Better than me. And yet, hours later, I was lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling like it held the answers I was too much of a coward to face. The moonlight carved through the slats of my blinds, stripin

Dominic’s POV The taste of her hadn’t left me. Not her lips. Not her voice. Not the way she’d looked at me when she said, “You just have to stay.” God, it haunted me. She didn’t know it, but she cracked something in me that night. Something I had boarded up, chained down, and buried so deep I’d almost convinced myself it didn’t exist anymore. Hope. It was fragile and terrifying. Because hope meant I had something to lose. And Amelia—she wasn’t just something. She was everything. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep on her couch, but her scent wrapped around me like a drug, pulling me under. Her blanket still smelled like her shampoo, and when I rolled over sometime around four a.m., I realized she’d draped another one over me while I was out cold. That tiny gesture undid me more than any kiss ever could. I stared at the ceiling until the early light broke across it, doing nothing but thinking. About her. About us. About the version of myself I was scared to show her—and the one I

Dominic’s POV I told myself I wouldn't go. I tried to lie in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, counting the shadows as they stretched across my walls like ghosts I couldn’t shake. The city was quiet — deceptively calm — and my mind was anything but. Her laugh echoed in my ears. The feel of her hand in mine, the way her lips had parted when I kissed her… it was imprinted on me, in my bloodstream now. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She wasn’t supposed to mean this much. Amelia Carter was supposed to be off-limits — my best friend’s little sister, the girl who used to chase us around the backyard with popsicles and scraped knees. She wasn’t supposed to be the woman who now haunted every corner of my thoughts, who made me want to be the kind of man who didn’t ruin good things. But I did. That’s what I did. That’s what I always did. Yet, at some point in the night, after tossing the weight of my regret from one shoulder to the other, I found myself driving. Her apartment wa