Page 56 of Counterpoint
Dom pushed thoughts of Adrian aside. “What? We’ve been practicing for weeks!”
“Yeah, but not like this.” Ray grinned at him. “With you as rock-star you.”
As Domino. A strange vertigo filled Dom. “I’m me. I’m always me.” But was that true? Had it ever been?
In the end, those practices were some of the best they’d played. Near live-performance quality. And there was more about that, too. The venue was nailed down, and the time and date—six weeks from now. They were set.
Thursday was the photo shoot for the article that was going intoRockPass Magazine, and the marks Adrian had left were gone, so Dom put on his low-slung leather pants and not much else, and posed for the cameras. Sexy, snarling Domino Grinder. And once more, it felt so damn real andrightthat it hurt—and gave Dom whiplash.
Ray and Zavier were still talking with Marcella and the photographer when Mish and Dom entered the dressing room to change into something a little less full-on rock star and to pack up. Mish leaned against her makeup station, crossed her arms, and leveled that look at him. “You okay, hon?”
He should have expected her to ask eventually, but it caught him off-guard anyway. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Not exactly a lie. Not quite the truth. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the man Adrian never saw. The rock star. The persona that gave him the ability to walk onstage.
She got that look she always got when one of them was bullshitting her. “Tell me for real, Dom.”
He dropped his shoulders. “I love this.” He gestured to himself. “I feel a thousand feet tall when I’m Domino and onstage.”
She cocked her head. “And you feel safe.”
His laugh was strangled. “Yeah. You should have seen me when I was younger. I was a wreck.”
“You’re not that old, honey. People grow.”
True. But the strangling fear still lurked deep inside him. The voice that told him he wasn’t good enough to be onstage with Ray. “Yeah, I know that.”
“And your man?”
God, Adrian. He closed his eyes briefly. “I feel safe with him, too. But not as Domino.”
“If this guy is worthy of you, you should be comfortable with him all the damn time, no matter what.” She pushed herself off the station and opened her arms. An invitation.
He took it, stepping forward and letting her wrap him into a hug. Mish gave the best hugs, probably because she towered over him by several inches, even when he wore his boots. “But Domino is so different,” he murmured. “And what if he tells someone else who I am?”
Mish pulled back. “Sweetheart, someday your cover’s gonna be busted. You’ve been damn lucky it hasn’t been yet.”
His heart stuttered and a cold wash flew up his back. “I know.” He hated thinking about it. “But it’ll happen faster if I tell someone.”
“Even the man you trust?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “Maybe?”
Her sigh was heartfelt, and cut straight through Dom. “You need to be true to you, hon.”
“I know.”
They broke apart and got to packing when Ray and Zavier entered the room.
If Domino was his true self, who was the man who wanted to spend time with Adrian? The one who playfully texted him, the one who’d stroked himself off to Adrian’s voice on the other end of the phone whispering just how hard he should come. He’d skimmed through the books on BDSM Adrian had lent him, and there Dominic was, too, in some of those paragraphs and explanations. Adrian was on those pages, as well. His control and care.
In the dark of his room Thursday night, he stared up at his ceiling, thin lines of light cutting across the painted white surface, and tried to piece all of it together. Domino. Dominic. The music and the stage. The burning need to play and perform. The fear and panic. Bowties and button-downs. Kneeling. Being tied up. The way Adrian made him feel so good and complete with words and touches. With laughter and sweets fed on the end of a fork. The light in Adrian’s eyes when Dominic turned around and fucked him instead.
He wanted every single piece of it all. But one was a lie, a sham, and the other was real. And in the end, he couldn’t be both. He could never be both.
What happened when there were two dreams, and holding one meant losing the other? Dom closed his eyes and tried not to think about that.
* * *
If the week as Domino had thrown him, his weekend with Adrian twisted him around, tossed him up in the air, and set him gently back down on his feet. Two weekends, that’s all it had taken to upend everything he’d planned. All he knew about himself.
