Dominated

Chapter 37

It was nearly midnight when Damien poured himself a drink and defeatedly sank into the couch in the living room. He was glaring at his phone while he drank from his glass, as if staring at it hard enough would make it ring somehow. Amelia had been sending him straight to voicemail, but that didn't stop him from checking his phone every two seconds.

"What are you doing here?" Zoey asked from the bottom of the stairs. She rubbed her eyes, and when Damien didn't disappear upon clearing them, she cautiously approached him. "Aren't you supposed to be on vacation?"

He nodded and took a long sip of his whiskey. The liquid burned his throat as he swallowed, but he preferred the pain over the emotional distress.

"I came home early," he told her.

"Where's Amelia?"

"I left her."

"You broke up with her?" Zoey sat beside her brother and grabbed his arm, shaking him. "Why would you do that?"

"I meant that I came home early," he said, yanking his arm away.

"What was so urgent that you needed to leave your girlfriend?"

"Evelyn," he replied. "She was really upset about what happened last night and asked me to come home."

Zoey snickered. "So, you dropped everything and ran?"

He nodded and shamefully looked down into his glass, staring at the dark liquid. "I made the wrong choice, and I hurt the woman I love."

"I'm surprised at you," she said, shaking her head disappointedly. "I thought you were over Evelyn."

Damien frowned. "I am."

"Then why did you come back for her?"

"You should know. You were with her last night."

"No, I wasn't," Zoey informed him. "Evelyn handed me a twenty dollar bill and told me to call an Uber. Then she left the club with some guy, and when he didn't call her this morning, she came over here looking for sympathy. I had nothing to say to her, so that's probably when she reached out to you."

Damien lifted a brow and abandoned his drink on the coffee table before turning to his sister. "Evelyn told me that she was assaulted and drunk when it happened."

She blinked hard, taken aback by his words. "That's not what happened. She was sober the entire night and invited him back to her place. He was practically fucking her out the door."

Although he didn't visibly react, he was fuming inside. He felt betrayed that she would make such a serious accusation, but he was even angrier at himself for believing the lie.

"I fucked up," he murmured. He dropped his head in his hand and rubbed his forehead. "I may have lost Amelia over this."

"You did mess this up," Zoey affirmed. She sheepishly smiled when he shot her a glare. "You believed Evelyn's story and you wanted to help, but you never should have come back. Even if it had been true, she can't depend on you to heal her."

"I thought I was doing the right thing."

"I know." She attempted to comfort her brother by rubbing his back, but she wasn't useful in easing the pain. He still looked distraught. "I didn't wanna say anything before, but I never understood why you kept Evelyn around."

"There's a lot of history between us," he explained. "I thought you liked her though."

"Not anymore," she said, frowning. "She left me for some guy she just met, and she had a lot to say about Amelia, who is the sweetest person by the way."