Chapter 16: The Night That Never Let Go
1006 Words
He’d built a fortress around that night.
Brick by brick, buried beneath work, women, and the illusion of control. He had convinced himself the memory was too faded, too fragmented, too irrelevant to grieve. A night of impulse, that’s all it had been. A glitch in the matrix of his otherwise meticulous life.
But tonight?
He let the walls fall.
The glass of single malt in his hand caught the dim light like a secret. It was the only thing warm in the penthouse. Aria hadn’t spoken to him since the appointment. Since the photo.
Since Leo whispered “Daddy?” in his sleep last night.
Now Dominic stood alone at the floor-to-ceiling window, Manhattan glittering below him, and his mind burning with the ghost of her.
Not Aria.
Not the woman he was learning to know again.
But the girl from Vegas.
💭 Five Years Ago – Las Vegas, The Mirage Crown Gala
He remembered the chaos of that night. The Mirage Crown Gala was everything he hated: opulence dressed as charity, hollow toasts, rich men bidding on reputation.
Gemma had orchestrated the whole trip—his suit, the cameras, even a possible engagement teaser leaked to a social blog. She wanted press. He wanted silence.
They fought in the elevator.
"You’ll never give me what I want!" she hissed.
"You don’t even know what that is," he bit back.
She stormed into the ballroom alone.
And he wandered.
Wandered through poker tables and velvet corridors and the smell of too much cologne until he found the rooftop bar.
And her.
She was a break in the pattern.
Where others glittered in gold, she wore a simple burgundy dress. Her curls were pinned loosely, like she hadn’t expected to stay long. She sat at the far end of the bar, hands wrapped around a ginger ale like it was a talisman.
And when she laughed at something the bartender said?
Dominic heard it before he saw her face.
Soft.
Real.
Unrehearsed.
And suddenly, the chaos around him stopped.
He took the seat beside her.
"Long night?" he asked, tone dry.
She didn’t turn to him at first. Just sipped her drink. Then, “Do I look like I want company?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m not very good at listening.”
That made her look at him.
Not with recognition.
With amusement. Wariness. Maybe the faintest tug of interest.
“Name?” she asked.
“Dominic.”
She raised a brow. “Just Dominic?”
He hesitated. “You wouldn’t believe the last name anyway.”
“Try me.”
“…Blackwood.”
She didn’t flinch.
Didn’t fawn.
Didn’t even blink.
Instead, she said, “Jade.”
He knew it wasn’t real.
But it didn’t matter.
He wasn’t here to be himself.
They walked.
Talked.
She asked strange questions.
What was your biggest lie?
What’s the one thing you’re still afraid of?
Have you ever been loved for you, and not your net worth?
He didn’t have answers.
She didn’t ask for them.
At some point, the Strip blurred behind them and they were in his suite.
She walked in barefoot, twirling her heels by the straps, glancing at the art on the walls like it was a museum and she’d snuck in without paying.
“You always book the penthouse?”
“Only when I want to forget something.”
She smiled.
And then he kissed her.
It wasn’t fast.
It wasn’t drunken.
Every touch felt like it meant something.
Every sigh like a secret let loose.
He remembered how she didn’t rush. How she let him undress her like a story unraveling. How she whispered against his mouth, “Don’t make this about fixing you. Just let it be soft.”
No one had ever said that to him.
No one had ever seen him without asking to own him after.
They lay tangled in sheets that smelled like lavender and midnight.
She traced a scar on his rib with the tip of her finger.
He asked her what she wanted to remember about tonight.
She said, “That I wasn’t just passing through someone’s life—I left something behind.”
He didn’t sleep well.
He wasn’t used to stillness.
But she calmed it.
Her breath against his chest. Her hand curled beneath her chin. Her body curled into his like it had always been welcome there.
He woke just after sunrise.
The light was gold and hazy through the curtains.
And she was gone.
💭 Present
Dominic’s chest tightened.
Even now, five years later, his first instinct was to blame himself.
He didn’t ask for her name again.
He didn’t try to keep her there.
He just… let her go.
Because he was used to people walking away.
Because he believed if they stayed, they’d see what he was really made of.
And leave anyway.
He opened the drawer of his desk, and there it was, the box of her
Inside: .
The necklace she left behind.
The receipt from the hotel, faded and creased.
The photo of the empty bed.
Leo’s drawing.
A cocktail napkin with a sketch of a feather.
And the note the cleaning staff had found under the bed that he’d never seen until checkout:
Thank you for letting me pretend. I won’t forget it.
- J.
He hadn’t.
Not for a single day.
Now, Aria was in the next room, sleeping off old pain and new fear.
And Leo—his son—was dreaming about dragons and spaceships and boys who didn’t know they were missing a father.
Dominic poured the last of the scotch down the sink.
And whispered into the dark:
“I found you. And I’m not losing you again.”
The city of sin gave him one honest night.
And in return, it took five years of a life he never knew he had.
Now he knew.
And Dominic Blackwood would burn down every lie he ever told himself—
just to win them back.
- Writer
