Chapter 14
“Excuse me.”
I’m sure the puzzled look on my face shows my confusion as I watch Dom abruptly leave the kitchen. As he goes by, he puts the envelope on the table, and I glance down.
New York State Penitentiary.
My heart sinks when I see the sad expression on Aunt Sofia’s face as she watches him walk away before she turns to me. She looks at the envelope, then covers my hand with hers, giving it a gentle pat.
“He has to make some decisions about his father.”
I look back down. New York State Penitentiary? What? His father? I turn and look in the direction he went, then back to Sofia. “He’s never said anything.”
She nods. “I know how stubborn he is at letting people in. So I figured he hadn’t told you about his father.
Are you aware that you’re the only person he’s ever brought to visit?
I take that back… He’s brought Jaxon by a few times, so I should say you’re the only person he’s fucking that he has ever brought by. ”
“Aunt Sofia!” I laugh.
“What? Again it’s true. Kids these days always wanna dance around it. If I say fucking, you know exactly what I mean. No confusion. Si?”
I nod my head. This woman is amazing. If I believed in spirit animals, she’d totally be mine.
“Dom doesn’t talk about his father. But I think with you it’s going to be different.”
“I don’t know. He would’ve said something if he’d wanted to tell me.”
She pushes the envelope toward me. “And he didn’t have to set this here. Sometimes we need to see the signs.”
I look back in the direction he went, like it’s gonna show me a portal with all the answers, or… I read the sign. “Will you excuse me?” I ask.
“Of course.” She pats my hand. “Go, I’ll handle the dishes.”
I make my way down a small hallway until I hear the sound of running water as I pass the first door on the right. I give a soft knock, feeling hesitant. What if he doesn’t want to talk to me? Maybe he wants to be left alone. Some people would prefer that.
The water stops, and the knob twists before the door opens slowly. Dom stands there, looking more wrecked than I’ve ever seen him. His face is blotchy, and I can tell he was just splashing some water on it.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course,” he says, but doesn’t look at me. I crowd him, moving us further into the bathroom.
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
Dom closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start.”
“How about if I ask a question? Will that help?”
He nods.
“Who’s in the New York State Penitentiary?”
“My father.”
I know this from what Sofia said, but the admission still catches me off guard. He says the name with such disdain. He turns and grips the counter, his whole body tense.
“Why did they send you a letter?” I ask.
He looks at me through the mirror. “You don’t wanna know why he’s in there?”
“He must be locked up for a reason. But that’s not what’s bothering you. It’s what’s in that letter.” Sometimes I sound wiser than I really am.
I move, squeezing myself between him and the sink, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “What’s in the letter, Dom?”
His eyes scan mine, and I see a moment of hesitation before he finally tells me. “My father is eligible for parole, and his attorneys want my statement. To show what a great father he is, that he’s a reformed citizen who can do good on the outside.”
“Judging by your tone, I’m going to guess that’s not the case.”
He lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “Far from it.”
“When is the hearing?”
“Two weeks.”
“Okay, this is what we’re going to do.” I give a sideways glance, hoping I’m not crossing a line. Dom is not one to let someone else run the show. Especially if it’s his show.
When he doesn’t say anything, I continue. “We are going to go back out and help Aunt Sofia with the dishes.”
“Oh God, did she put the guilt trip on you?”
“I can’t tell, but maybe. Then we are going to sit down and enjoy the amazing dessert. I refuse to pass up homemade cannoli. Also, your aunt Sofia can be a little scary, and I feel like she would threaten violence to my right testicle if I refused.”
His shoulders bounce with laughter, and I give him an extra tight hug. When he pulls back and looks into my eyes, I see a man searching for something, and I hope like fuck he finds it.
He hooks a finger under my chin and tips my face up.
The first brush of his mouth is soft, then he deepens it, tongue tracing the seam of my lips.
I open for him without thinking. Heat rolls through me in a red-hot wave.
He kisses like he means it, like he’s taking a breath after being underwater, and I give him everything he asks for—pressure, pace, a low sound I don’t mean to make but can’t swallow down.
Kissing has never really done it for me in the past. But it also doesn’t surprise me that with Dom it’s intoxicating.
My hands slide to his hips and drag him closer, while his palm cups my jaw, anchoring me.
He tastes of sugar and fennel and the simmering tomatoes still clinging to the house.
When he nips, I chase. When he licks into my mouth, I answer, greedy and grateful.
The world narrows, echoing the wrecked noises we’re both making.
I let myself get lost in the sensation of it all.
He finally breaks the kiss, but I follow for one more, and one more after that—small, hungry aftershocks—before our foreheads fall together, breaths mingling.
I take two steadying breaths, then a third, because I absolutely cannot walk into Aunt Sofia’s kitchen with a full-blown boner.
“Are you ready?” I manage, voice rougher than I intended.
“I should be asking you that,” he says, looking down at the bulge in my pants.
“Maybe if you didn’t make me hard in your aunt Sofia’s bathroom, I wouldn’t have this problem,” I mutter.
“All I did was kiss you,” he says, leaning in again.
“Oh no you don’t. If we have to stay in here any longer in order for my dick to calm down again, she’s gonna know.”
Dom chuckles. “She’d probably bake us a cake.”
“I hope it’s tiramisu,” I say, amused.
He smirks, thumb sweeping my bottom lip like he’s tempted to start again. “Consider it motivation to behave.”
“Cannoli first,” I say, kissing his smile once more—quick, electric. “Then I’m misbehaving.”
He raises a brow, and I laugh, opening the door and pulling him with me.
We spend the next hour at his aunt’s kitchen table, eating cannoli while she tells me all the embarrassing Dom stories.
“He had just come to live with me. And bless him, he was trying to make me dinner. Boy, I don’t know what he put in the spaghetti sauce, but ragu would’ve tasted better.”
“And that’s why I don’t cook. Scarred me for life,” Dom says.
Laughter echoes throughout the kitchen. Seeing the love and affection between Dom and his aunt fills my soul but also makes me sad.
I miss my dad so much my heart breaks all over again every time I think too much about him.
My father was my rock. He was a loving person.
When I came out, he just hugged me and said, “Cool, I’m happy for you.
I know how hard that was to admit.” Like he was more focused on me overcoming my fear of telling him than on my being gay.
Like it was no big deal. And my mother, well… Fuck her.
“Beckett, dear. I’m going to hand this to you,” Sophia says, pulling out two containers of what I can only assume is spaghetti sauce.
“Make sure it makes it into his freezer. And when he’s running low, please make sure you call me.
” She slips me a piece of paper with her phone number on it.
I stare down at it, then back at her. “Thank you.”
“And Domenico, if I ever hear about you serving spaghetti sauce from a jar again, I will cut off the fruits of your labor.”
I gasp. “I told you.”
“You two are ridiculous.” Dom stands up, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet. “That’s our cue to leave before you decide to plan a night out at the strip club together.”
We look at each other, heads tilted in question.
“Nope, not happening,” Dom says, giving his aunt a kiss on the cheek, and he tells her he’ll call her next week.
“Thank you for having me,” I say, giving her a really big hug. She gives me a tight squeeze back, and I take in the motherly hug for all it’s worth.
“Anytime,” she whispers before stepping back. “And you simply must come with me to the Italian market next time I drive down. It’s so close to Camden I can’t believe you’ve never been.”
“I can’t believe no one told me about it, but you have yourself a deal.”
When we finally make it out the door, Dom doesn’t ask, just drives to his place. Just as I don’t ask him to take me home, I simply get out of his vehicle when we pull into his driveway.
With the earlier rain combined with the drop in temperature, it looks like a “Thriller” video, all wet pavement and fog filling the night air.
What happens when you see a large puddle?
Some would say you could walk around it. And some would say you could jump over it.
Which sounds way more fun to me.
I stop and steady myself, my mind doing the calculation in my head. Not actually a calculation because I didn’t pass physics, but I play the odds of making it over. I got this.
“What are you doing?” Dom asks.
“Ummm, I’m about to jump over this puddle. What else would I be doing?”
“I don’t think…”
“It’s fine. I got this.”
I rock once on my heels, gathering momentum like some Olympic long-jumper who trained exclusively on TikTok, then push off.
For the record, I absolutely had it—clean takeoff, solid arc, ten out of ten form—right up until I didn’t.
A blur swoops in out of nowhere, a frantic flutter of wings, and something hits my head.
Claws—or very committed toes—snag in my hair.
There’s a whoosh in my ears, then chaos.
Okay, two things happen.
One, I scream like a little girl, waving my arms in the air. Every time it flaps, my scream gets louder and maybe a little higher-pitched.
Two, I trip over my own two feet in a desperate attempt to get whatever it is off me. This, of course, leads me to tumble to the ground and land right in the giant puddle. My scream changes to a heavy dose of curse words.
“Are you okay?” Dom asks, already laughing even though he’s trying to swallow it.
“Peachy,” I groan, peeling myself off the asphalt. Water slaps against my thighs as I stand, jeans glued to my skin in the least sexy way imaginable. “What the fuck was that?”
“Looked like a bat to me,” he says between bouts of laughter.
Of course. A bat. Because apparently I’m Snow White if she’d taken a wrong turn into Gotham City.
“There’s a bat house in the back yard,” he adds, still grinning as I stomp up the stairs, every step a wet, indignant squish.
I spin on the top stair and glare at him. “Why the hell do you have a bat house?”
Dom reaches around me and unlocks the door, pushing it open and ushering me in. “Because bats eat insects, like mosquitoes. They’re the superheroes of the night.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, kicking off my shoes with a squelch. “Did you give them adorable vigilante names?”
“No,” he says, matching me shoe for shoe by the mat. “I did not name the bats.”
I glance down at myself and grimace. “Ugh. I am a human sponge.”
“Come on, little mouse,” he murmurs, and the warmth in his tone slides under my skin. “Let’s get you naked and into the shower.”
I gasp like he’s confessed to a conspiracy. “Oh my God, you trained them—your bat army—to get me naked.”
“Did it work?” he asks, deadpan.
I swat his chest as I pass, intending a light reprimand and getting a handful of sculpted muscle instead. The shiver that runs through me could be from the cold clothes.
It’s not.
He catches my wrist, easy and sure, and steers me down the hall to the bathroom.
The water hisses to life, steam blooming across the mirror. When he turns back, there’s that look, lion to its prey.
He lifts the hem of my soaked shirt, and I obediently raise my arms, which turns out to be a tactical blunder because suddenly my face is a fabric burrito. I’m tangled to the shoulders, elbows pinned, dignity optional.
“Can I name them?” I ask from inside my cotton purgatory.
“Yes, baby,” he says, voice dipping on the word like it’s been waiting there all night. “You can name them. Now hold still, or I’ll leave your arms exactly like this.”
Baby…
I give my arms the customary tug. Wow, I’ve really gotten myself into a predicament here. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad predicament…
“Really?” he says in disbelief.
“What? I was just weighing my options.”
“Your lips are turning blue. You have no options. Naked, now.”
“Ugh, fine. But maybe later you could…?” I say and give my arms another tug.
“Yes, I will tie you up later.”
He peels the cotton over my head and finally sets my arms loose. Air tastes better than it did two seconds ago. His fingers find the button of my jeans, pop it, and then slide the zipper down with calm efficiency. I step out of the denim with all the grace of a newborn foal.
In an act of self-preservation, I straighten my spine, tip my chin, and let a slow, dangerous smile unfurl.
Time to pivot.
“That’s what you said about the edging,” I point out.
“That’s why they call it edging.”