Chapter 18
Charly
“Are you awake?” Dominic asked in the darkened room.
“Yeah,” I replied as I rolled over onto my side. The clock said it was a quarter to seven. “Where’ve you been?” I asked, eyeing him in his sweatpants and no shirt.
Dominic was so fine, and I loved his build. He was muscular, but not overly so. His tattoos only added to his overall attractiveness.
“In the living room all night thinking.”
“What time did you get in?”
“One.”
“A little over a couple of hours after me. I didn’t hear you.”
“I came in, grabbed something to eat, watched some of Joaquin’s videos, and fell asleep in my room.”
We had been sleeping in my room together lately. I had climbed into bed after showering, expecting that he would climb in with me when he got home.
“Where did you go after you left the meet-up spot?”
“My parents. Went to talk to my dad.”
I sat up in bed and pulled the covers up to my chest. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt the need to protect myself in some form. I had slept in the nude.
“About?”
He pushed off the doorframe where he had been standing since he first spoke to me. I watched as he walked to the bed and sat on the edge. “Us.”
My body grew tense with his answer. “About the things that Chopper said?”
“Nah. I’m not worried about that shit.”
“You should be, Dom. I don’t want to be that girl who costs you everything. I’m supposed to build you up, not cause you to lose what matters to you the most. And if I am your blind spot, then—”
“Stop that,” he stated, reaching out and gripping my wrist.
“I’m serious, Dom.”
“And so am I. I told you to stop. If that’s what people want to call it, then so what?
You’ve always been the most important thing to me, and I’ve always been ready to protect you at the drop of a dime.
If people have a problem with that, then that’s their problem, not mine.
I love you, Char, and nothing is going to change that. ”
“But I don’t want you to lose your spot on the team for this.”
“Listen, shit jumps off at the track and meet-up spots all the time, you know this. I’m not the first one, and neither are you, and we won’t be the last. It’s time for us to get serious about our future, Char.
That’s all I’ve been thinking about all night.
The reason that I never wanted to get with you in the first place was that I knew that I had been bullshitting all these years.
I wasn’t ready to give up the lifestyle I was leading because it didn’t place any demands on me.
I never had to be accountable to anyone but me and the streets. ”
“And now?”
“Now, I know that I have never wanted anything or anyone more than I have wanted you. Baby, I was always struggling with my feelings for you. But now that I’ve been with you, loving you, spending time together, and protecting you differently, I know that I don’t want to let that shit go, Char. You’re it for me, baby girl.”
My eyes watered, and I found it hard to hold back the tears. “For real?” I asked with a trembling bottom lip.
He chuckled and pulled me into his arms. “Big ass crybaby.”
“What are you going to do if you don’t have racing, Dom?”
“Racing is my passion, baby. But it doesn’t make or break me.
You already know that I’ve got my sights set on NASCAR.
Truth be told, if I keep street racing, I could land my black ass in jail again, and I ain’t trying to go that route.
So I’m going to keep working for Uncle Chris, and in the interim, work on my NASCAR dreams. It’s not like I’m broke. ”
“You get paid a decent salary with your uncle, but not all that.”
“My job with Uncle Chris is to keep my probation officer off my ass, and because this is what I have to do for a little while longer. Uncle Chris’s job doesn’t pay my bills. I take that money and dump it into my account.”
“Where does your money come from?”
He gave me a blank stare, and I recalled what he used to do before getting locked up. “Are you still in the streets, Dom?”
“Nah. If you’d asked me that about a month ago, the answer would have been yes.
When I first got out, I was heavily in the streets again, but for the last several months, I had been working on a plan to pull back.
I’m not in the streets anymore, baby. But I did stack my paper the way that I was supposed to before I went down, and when I got out.
I can live comfortably for a while with no job at all. ”
“What’s a while?”
“A few years.”
I pulled back and stared at him. “What?”
“I have some investments and some real estate. That was the most important part. So I have income coming in. I want to take some courses to get my realtor’s license. But like I said, I did what I needed to do to keep them folks off my back and keep my papers in order.”
“I’m proud of you for being so smart. I always knew you were.” I kissed his jaw, and he wrapped his arms around me tighter.
Looking down at me, he shook his head. “I wasn’t too smart. I let your ass get away for too long.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.” I was silent for a while before I spoke up again. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but I got an offer from Jensen Pharmaceuticals for the communications specialist role yesterday. I planned to tell you after the race.”
“Baby! I’m so proud of you.” The comfort of his arms increased as he wrapped me tighter and peppered my face with kisses.
“Thank you. I start in two weeks.”
“What about bartending? You’re not going to keep that up, are you?”
“I was thinking that I would quit. I love it, but I don’t want to have to work two jobs, Dom. If I need to, so that I can get my own place, I might. But when I did the calculations with what they offered me, the signing bonus, and my savings, I didn’t need to do that to get a place.”
“Wait. What the hell are you talking about? You’re not moving.”
“Dominic, we both said this was temporary. I don’t want to infringe on your space.”
He squeezed my hip and patted my thigh. “We’ve been living together for a little over a month now.
You’ve taken over every space in this apartment, including my bathroom.
I have held you every night except for last night and when you first moved in.
We eat together, watch TV together, talk about our days together .
. . I mean, we’re like a little old married couple now. You can’t move out.”
“Aww, is that your way of saying that you want me here with you?”
“Hell yeah. How much more do I need to say to prove it?”
“Nothing, baby. I just didn’t want to infringe on you.”
“I mean, the ladies might feel their way about not being able to slide through, but—heyy!”
I smacked him hard on the chest. “I wish you would slide another female up in here. You and her are gonna get your asses beat.”
“Hey, you’re not gonna be threatening me. And that’s another thing; I don’t want you out there fighting like that. It’s not ladylike.”
“My mama and daddy taught me that if someone puts their hands on me, that I need to ‘fuck ’em up.’ So I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He gripped my face between his palms and kissed my lips. “Try though, baby?”
“I did try. They didn’t want me to be great. If she hadn’t pushed me, then I wouldn’t have been fighting.”
“She pushed you?”
I nodded.
“Grimy bitch.”
“That was after she claimed she slid in your DMs.”
“She sent me something, but I didn’t bother to read it. I blocked her ass.”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“Because what’re you gonna do?” he asked while unlocking his phone. He handed it to me, and I smirked.
“I just wanna see if you blocked her or not.”
“You don’t trust me?” he asked, looking into my eyes. I was mesmerized by the warm, coppery undertones of his russet-colored eyes.
My heart twinged, and I handed his phone back to him. “Yeah, baby. I trust you.”
“I mean, do what you feel you need to do. I just don’t want you ever to doubt me. I need to know that you believe me. I would never lie to you.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
“Good,” he whispered against my lips.
“Are you sure that you’re supposed to use bacon?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s how my daddy always made it.”
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack.” Dominic was so dramatic the way he rubbed his chest as I tossed the pack of bacon in the grocery cart.
“If you haven’t had one in all these years, and you’re still alive and kicking it, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Still can’t believe Mamá requested you to do this shit.”
“I think it’s like a peace offering. We haven’t spoken since Ramon and I broke up. That’s not usual for your mom and me. We spoke at least once a week, but I’ve been avoiding her calls.”
“I know,” he declared as he lifted a block of sharp cheddar cheese and then glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
I took the cheese from his hand and tossed it into the cart along with a block of Colby Jack and two more packages of cheese. “She told you?”
He nodded. “She’s been asking me to have you call her, but I told her that you would have to do it in your time.”
“I know she probably hates me,” I groaned.
“No, she doesn’t. She wants to talk to you, and she’s not telling me what it’s about. She says that she loves you the same as she always has, and she wants you to be okay. She’s disappointed that you didn’t feel you could share with her what was going on with you and Ramon though.”
“So she’s letting me make the mac and cheese as a peace offering?”
His mother had requested that I make the macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving. I had often made my dad’s recipe, and I wanted to do a test run before the big day. So Dominic and I were picking up ingredients for it during our usual grocery shopping trip.
“No. She’s letting you make the mac and cheese because your dad won’t be in town to do it this year.”