19. Chapter 16 | Dom
The parking lot was concrete and one buzzing streetlight, half the bulbs in the fixture already dead. Lewis had CJ by the wrist, dragging him toward a truck so old the tailgate was more rust than metal.
Dom started walking. Fast, then faster.
"—ought to be grateful I'm even taking you back," Lewis was saying, thick and slurred, "after the stunt you pulled today—"
"You're hurting my arm," CJ said, trying to twist free.
Lewis spotted Dom coming and shoved CJ toward the truck bed. "There she is. Knew you couldn't help yourself."
Dom didn't slow. Ten feet, then five, her hands already curling into fists.
Elle got there first, stepping into the gap between them.
"Dom, wait."
"Elle, move."
"Let me try something." Elle turned to face Lewis, and her voice dropped into a register Dom hadn't heard from her before, calm and reasonable, the voice of a woman used to talking men into things. "Mr. Jordan. Maybe we can work something out. Let CJ stay with us a few days. Let things settle."
"I don't negotiate with perverts."
Elle didn't flinch, already digging in her purse, pulling bills from her wallet. "There's forty dollars here. It's yours. Just leave him with us tonight."
It wouldn't work. Dom knew it, watched Lewis's face curl with contempt before Elle finished counting, and loved her anyway for trying.
"You think you can buy my daughter?" Lewis stepped closer, swaying. "From that dyke's woman?"
Dom moved instinctively. Elle threw one hand back without looking, a flat stay-there gesture. Her face was still.
Not fear. Dom realized that a half second too late. Something colder.
"You took my reputation," Lewis said, jabbing a finger at Dom over Elle's shoulder. "Now you want my daughter too?"
"He isn't yours to control," Dom said. Her voice flat, dangerous. "He never was."
"She's my daughter—"
"He's his own person."
"You put sick ideas in her head—"
"I told him he doesn't have to take a beating from you."
"She's a confused girl who needs some discipline, is what she—"
He didn't finish.
Elle hit him.
Dom watched it happen: Elle's weight shifting forward, her shoulder turning into it, her fist coming up clean and fast, the same shape Dom had drilled into CJ's hands a dozen times over that kitchen table. Elle Brown, her careful woman. Threw a punch when it mattered, when it mattered.
Lewis's head snapped back. Blood sprayed from his nose. He staggered into the truck's fender, catching himself, one hand coming away red.
"What—"
"You hit me." The words didn't fit in his mouth.
"I did." Elle's voice was strange and level. Not the woman who laughed at Dom's jokes over breakfast. Someone harder, underneath, that Dom had never met before tonight.
Lewis touched his nose again, wet fingers shaking. "I could walk back in there. Tell them you assaulted me."
"Go ahead." Elle didn't move.
Dom understood, watching her, why it had to be Elle and not her.
If Dom had thrown that punch, Lewis would've had her in a cell by morning and never thought twice.
But Elle wasn't supposed to be capable of it.
And a man like Lewis would rather drive off than walk back inside and explain to a room full of deputies that a woman half his size had put him on the ground.
"Go tell them," Elle said, "how you had everything handled, and then one woman broke your nose in a parking lot."
Lewis's face contorted, humiliation fighting rage and losing.
CJ scrambled free of the truck bed, running to them.
"CJ," Elle said, not looking away from Lewis. "Come here."
CJ ran. Dom caught him, pulled him in hard against her chest.
"Mom." His voice broke on it, muffled into her shoulder, like the word had been waiting behind his teeth for months and only came loose now that it was safe to. "Mom, you came."
Dom's whole chest went tight around it. Three months, and he'd never once called her that, not through nightmares, not through bruised knuckles, not over a kitchen table full of roux gone wrong. Now, here, safe.
"I'm here," she said, voice not quite steady. "I'm here, baby. I've got you."
Lewis took one step after them and stopped, blood dripping steady onto his shirt.
"You think this is over?"
"I think you're done," Elle said. "There are people who saw what he looked like this morning. What's on his arms right now. You want to explain that to a judge, go ahead and try. I'd love to watch."
Lewis stood there, swaying, blood running down into his collar.
"Keep the little freak, then," he said finally, flat and empty, and climbed into the truck. He sat there a second, looking at them through the windshield, before he started the engine.
The taillights shrank down the block and turned the corner and were gone.
Dom stood there, CJ in her arms. Elle stood a few feet off, blood drying on her knuckles. Nobody moved at all.
"Is he really gone?" CJ's voice came muffled against Dom's shoulder.
"Yeah, baby." Dom's voice came out rough. "He's gone."
CJ made a sound that was half sob, half laugh, his whole body shaking against her.
"Elle." Dom looked up and met her gaze across the lot.
Fear still worked its way out of Elle's face. Underneath it, a fierce emotion, with nowhere to go now that the danger was over.
"You broke his nose," Dom said.
"I know." Elle's voice had shrunk down small again.
"You hit a man in a parking lot."
"I know that too."
Oretha's car pulled up fast. "Get in."
They climbed in, Dom in back with CJ, Elle up front. Oretha pulled out quick but careful, checking every mirror twice.
CJ cried the whole way home, real crying now, shoulders shaking. Dom held him and murmured into his hair and kept half her attention on the woman in the front seat, on her hands, on the blood already gone brown at the edges where it had dried.
"I've got you," Dom told CJ. "You're safe. I promise you that."
But she was watching Elle.
"Thank you," Dom said quietly.
Elle turned in her seat to meet her eyes. "He was hurting him. I didn't think about it. I just moved."
Dom nodded and held CJ tighter, the words crowding up behind her teeth unsaid. There'd be time.
?
Back at the bar, Papa Louie was already on the steps, like he'd been standing there since they left.
"Come on in," he said. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Dom sat CJ down at the kitchen table. His shirt was still stained, his face swollen from crying.
"Let me see your arms."
CJ extended them. Bruises were already coming up dark where the officers had gripped him.
Dom's jaw tightened, but her hands stayed gentle working over the marks. "Anything else hurt?"
He shook his head, still not quite able to talk yet.
"Okay." She cupped his face, made him look at her. "You're safe. You hear me? You're home."
His eyes filled again. "I meant it. Back there. Calling you that."
"I know, baby." Her thumb brushed his cheek. "I heard you."
He leaned forward and pressed his forehead into her shoulder, and Dom wrapped both arms around him and held him until the shaking eased and his breathing evened out.
"Go on up and get cleaned up," she said finally. "I'll come check on you in a minute."
He nodded, started to go, then turned back and hugged her hard and quick.
"Thank you," he said, "for not letting him take me."
Dom's throat closed around whatever she meant to say back. "Always, baby."
She watched him climb the stairs until he was all the way up, then let herself breathe.
Elle was at the sink, running water over her knuckles. The water went pink, then clear.
Dom crossed the kitchen and stopped behind her, close enough to feel her warmth, not quite touching yet.
"Let me see."
Elle turned and offered her hand. Her knuckles were swelling already, a bruise coming up dark across two of them. Dom took her hand careful as glass.
"You broke his nose," she said again, quiet.
"I know." Elle's voice had thinned. "I didn't think. He was going to take him and I just—"
"You saved him." Dom cupped her jaw with her free hand, tipped her face up. "You know that? You saved our kid."
Elle's eyes filled. "I've never hit anyone in my life."
"You did good." Dom's thumb moved over her cheekbone. "You did so good, baby."
Elle leaned into her hand and let her eyes close, one tear slipping loose before she could stop it. Dom pulled her in and held her while she shook it out against her chest, quiet, in the kitchen, with the water still running behind them.
Dom didn't say it yet. Not because she didn't know it, standing there. She knew it plain as anything.
She'd say it when Elle could hear it clean, and not just as relief talking.