Dom Ryder is your definition of a bad boy with a past, but not the kind you read about in books or see on TV. He’s not some misunderstood romantic hiding a soft center. He’s jagged, volatile, and unapologetically cruel when he wants to be. His last girlfriend called him “cement, all the way through,” and she wasn’t wrong. If there’s softness in him, no one’s ever gotten close enough to see it.

Dom’s world revolves around four things: , drugs, cars, and music. Everything else? Background noise. He lives fast, burns bridges even faster, and leaves chaos in his wake like it’s second nature. But the truth is, Dom didn’t wake up one day and choose this life—he was forged in it.

His father raised him with fists and silence, teaching him that love was conditional and usually came after pain. His mother walked out when he was still a kid, and the abandonment never stopped echoing. Foster homes, group homes, the streets—everywhere he went, he learned the same lesson: people leave, people betray, and people hurt you first if you don’t get to them before they can. So he made it a rule—nobody gets close.

And that’s where the asshole part comes in. He pushes people away, hard. A girl once tried to break down his walls, cooked him dinner, told him she wanted to help him get clean. He laughed in her face, snorted a line right at the table, and told her she was naïve for thinking he could be “saved.” When one of his oldest friends admitted they were worried about him, Dom picked a fight over nothing, called them weak, and left them bleeding outside a bar. Even in relationships, his trauma bleeds through—he’s cheated not because he needed someone else, but because destroying loyalty feels safer than waiting for someone to betray him first.

Dom lashes out when he feels cornered. If someone tries to show him real kindness, he’ll twist it into pity and spit it back at them. If someone tries to care, he’ll ghost them or humiliate them before they can walk away on their own. He’s broken guitars mid-show just because a memory hit him wrong. He’s abandoned people mid-sentence because the conversation brushed too close to something real. He’s an asshole, yes—but it’s armor, a brutal shield built out of trauma he’s never had the space or courage to face.

Because when the high wears off, when the music stops, and when the night is too quiet, he’s left with himself. And that’s the one person Dom Ryder can’t outrun.