Chapter 42
Today is Saturday which is the day Loch Ness and Finley are going to the movies together. Not that I even care. Mom said I could play Fifa all day and I still have all the snacks I bought for the blanket fort plan except I get to eat it all myself now so it’s even better.
Update: Alice and Anthony just left and she looked really pretty so I hope Finley at least tells her that. I would get too scared to I think but maybe I could write it down on a piece of paper and give that to her instead.
Update: I bet he took her to the movies because he knows he’s really boring and doesn’t have a lot to say. Alice loves talking a lot so I don’t think that’s going to work for long. They’re not compatible.
Update: I’m going to go to their house and see if Gampy wants to play backgammon. It’s past my bedtime but if Alice can stay up then it’s only fair that I get to do it too.
Update: Alice got home while Gampy and I were in the middle of our game and she was talking to her mom about how much fun she had.
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but the door was kind of open and they were out in the main living area.
She’s really excited because she really likes him a lot I guess.
I don’t really get it. He’s really boring and not funny, and he doesn’t even know how to play backgammon or even how to read I don’t think.
Alice
I’d seen that look on my brother’s face exactly one other time in my life: the day he found out what Josh, our estranged cousin, had done to Ria.
On a related note, said estranged cousin was now walking around with a new, reconstructed nose. And it had all started with that exact look.
“What are you doing here?” The dark chill in Adrien’s tone made me instinctively tug Dominic closer and attempt to stand in front of him. He wouldn’t allow it, not realizing how dangerously close he was to a split lip.
“Adrien,” Dominic said by way of greeting.
Adrien’s icy glare slipped down to our joint hands, then moved to me. “What is he doing here?”
Ria, looking slightly bewildered by the tension in her husband’s posture and body language, placed a questioning hand on his flexed bicep.
Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were frozen in shock, and Gampy was looking a little bored, hands resting on the polished handle of his walking cane while he waited for them to catch up.
“We need to talk,” I said. Sweat was starting to trickle down my back.
“No shit.”
Adrien took a half step forward, stopping only when Ria slipped her arm around his.
The smile she’d plastered on for Dominic did nothing to hide how closely she was assessing him.
Almost like he looked a little familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite place where she knew him from.
“Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said politely, holding out a hand. “I’m Ria. Adrien’s wife.”
“Dominic.” The speed with which he released her hand meant he’d also clocked the annoyed tick in Adrien’s jaw. “Alice’s… friend.”
Gampy sighed loudly to let us know he was hungry, and we were officially taking too long.
Ria’s smile wilted. She looked him up and down. Straightened. Released Adrien. “You’re Dominic Crawford.”
Dom cleared his throat. “Yes, and I just want to say how sorry I am about—”
“About what?” Her perfectly manicured brow hooked up.
“Which part? Dragging my husband through hell and back with the bullshit you spread about him, or how the consequences might finally be about to catch up with you in light of your…” She trailed off with a glance in my direction and pursed her lips, biting back whatever she’d been about to say for my sake.
There was a slight chance I’d underestimated how easy Ria would be to win over.
Even Adrien seemed surprised by the way she was sizing up Dominic like she wanted nothing more than to see him “accidentally” trip and fall into a den of venomous snakes.
“Maybe we should all go sit down somewhere and talk this out,” Mom tried. Her body language—the way she was still staring at him like he might disappear into thin air if she blinked—screamed how badly she wanted to rush forward and pull Dominic into a teary embrace.
But she couldn’t.
Dad reached for her hand.
“I know just the place,” Gampy said. “We’ll call Torrent and have them add another seat to the table. Adrien, Ria, I’ll go with you two. Anthony and Julie will take their car, and we’ll all meet there. Let’s go.”
No one moved, which prompted Gampy to flick his eyes skyward and ask Gammy Lucy to lend him some of that kindness and patience she was known for.
Adrien’s bitter attention swung my way. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a joke and that you’re not actually entertaining the idea of forgiving him, let alone…
” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. He had to pause and scrub his jaw as the tension in his shoulders coiled tighter.
“Him, Alice? Still?” he finally said. “You’re still going to choose him, after everything he did? ”
I could explain.
I knew exactly what I needed to say to fix this. I’d rehearsed the lines over and over in my head, but all I could think in that moment, while the bitterness of my betrayal dug its claws deeper into my brother’s expression, was that this had been a mistake.
The thick fleece of my sweater was sucking every morsel of stifling heat out of the air and trapping it against my flesh. I needed to breathe, cool down, think of a way out of this that didn’t end with me losing someone I loved.
“Wait, I can… gimme a second. It’s so hot.” I released Dominic’s hand so I could tug the sweater off before it cooked me alive, only vaguely aware that the damp T-shirt I had on underneath was lifting with it.
The collective intake of sharp breaths made me freeze. I ripped off the fleece, trying to see what had caused the reaction, right as I felt Dominic’s knuckles graze my stomach and yank my shirt back down.
The potent alarm in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. You could actually see the color drain from his face as my family gaped at the two of us, wearing near-identical expressions of horror.
Oh no. Oh nonononononononono.
I clutched the sweater to my stomach, even though it was far, far too late. This morning, during another one of our games, Dominic had grabbed one of the markers I’d later used to sketch out our plans, gotten on his knees, and drawn three arrows over my stomach.
All three were pointing downward. And annotated with the following:
Insert cocks here.
No permission needed.
Property of Dominic Crawford.
Judging from the way he tensed and nudged me to the left, Dominic saw it coming before my brother even moved. So tell me why, instead of ducking or stepping out of the fucking way, he just stood there and allowed it to happen.
We were granted one last moment of stillness.
Before Adrien’s fist connected with his jaw.
“No permission needed? NO PERMISSION NEEDED?” He had Dominic by the collar, shoved up against the back of a cherry-colored minivan in the blink of an eye. “My little sister, motherfucker? You drew that shit on my little sister? Are you that fucked in the fucking head?”
“Adrien, stop!” My heart was hammering, my internal alarms blaring as the entire focus of my existence zeroed in on the singular point of contact between the two men. “Let him go! I told you I can explain!”
Dad gripped his shoulders and tried to pull him back, but Adrien barely budged.
The second worst part of this waking nightmare was Dominic’s blatant refusal to defend himself. His arms were limp at his sides, his face frustratingly blank. Almost like he thought he deserved it.
“Adrien, it was all consensual! Let him go!” This time, when I pulled at his sleeve, he did move. He didn’t take his eyes off Dominic, but he moved.
Ria had intervened, gently tugging at his arm and cooing something soothing up at him, guiding him back to her.
He let go.
“Holy shit, you okay? Let me see.” I lodged myself between them and gently grabbed Dominic’s face to assess the damage. He winced, and it felt like a punch to the gut.
I was going to kill my brother.
My hands curled into fists as they dropped to my sides. I whipped around, my teeth bared. “Were you raised in a goddamn barn? What the fuck do you think—”
“Alice.”
I shrugged Dominic off. “Let me finish.”
“Alice. Just stop. Please.” It was the soft, unexpected plea in his tone that got me. My jaw locked, my body putting up the barest fight as he pulled me back.
“You feel any better? Did it work?” Dominic asked.
There was no sarcasm or condescension in his voice.
The question was sincere. “Do you want to get another one in? Maybe two? Can’t think of a better place to do it.
” He flicked his head toward the hospital as Gampy shooed off a curious passerby who was holding his phone like he wasn’t sure whether he should start filming.
“Do not hit him again,” I warned. There was a screeching in my left ear, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a distant siren or just my head.
I took a deep breath. “Listen, I get that what you went through was really, really rough. I get it. No one is denying that being torn to shreds by the media is—”
“It’s not about the media, Alice!” Adrien snapped. “That’s not—Jesus Christ, I feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind here! How is no one else saying anything?” He spun around, throwing a round of accusatory glances at Gampy and my parents. “You’re all okay with this? Are you serious?”
My dad scratched the back of his head, glancing down. Mom took the reins. “Honey, it’s not up to us, and it’s not up to you. She’s an adult. The only thing we can do is see what they have to say and try to understand where she’s coming from.”
“You’ll want to hear them out on this one, Addy,” Gampy chimed in coolly.
All of their heads turned at the same time.
“You knew?” Adrien asked.
“For a while now,” Gampy admitted. “Let’s go sit down and talk. Trust me.”
Dominic stepped forward. “Listen, I know I don’t deserve—”
Adrien held up a hand to cut him off. “You… you don’t get to talk right now. You don’t get a say in this. You wanna know why?”
Dominic said nothing.
“Because you weren’t there, asshole. You and Rosie left. You blocked our numbers. You shut us out, and you weren’t there to see the damage you caused.” There was a long pause, and then Adrien pointed a finger in my direction. “She stopped talking at one point, did she tell you that?”
My pulse gave a start. “Adrien!”
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said. “She wasn’t sleeping. Stopped going out. Wouldn’t eat. It got so fucking bad that there was a four-day period where she couldn’t muster up the energy to talk, Dominic.”
Bile was starting to pool over the back of my tongue. Dominic’s head flicked in my direction. I kept my gaze fixed on my brother.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the articles you put out.
If I did, I would have sued your ass for defamation the second your team hit publish on the first one.
I took it, because if your focus was on me, you were leaving her the fuck alone.
And while you were busy buying up these companies like a little kid in a candy store, Alice—” He cut himself off, taking a moment to breathe through his nose, his teeth clamped tight.
“You want to know why I was promoted so early? You were there, you knew what the plan was. I wasn’t supposed to take over for another five years, and you, shithead, you and Alice were supposed to come work with me while you saved up enough money to start your gaming company, remember that?
That was the deal. But you left, and it fucking broke her, so Dad decided to retire early and follow her to the other side of the fucking country when she started college because she still hadn’t fully recovered, and leaving her alone in that state wasn’t a fucking option.
I wasn’t ready, everyone fucking knew it, and you popped outta fucking nowhere, bought 6Queue just so you could add jet fuel to the fucking fire, and almost burned whatever happiness she’d managed to gain back to a fucking crisp.
So I don’t give a flying fuck what your excuse is, Dominic. You don’t deserve her.”
With that, he turned around and walked off.
My lungs burned, my blurry gaze smudging over the details of the scene as I fought to stay in control of my reaction. Ria squeezed my arm, shooting me a conflicted, almost apologetic look before following her husband.
“Well,” Gampy eventually said, “that went about as terribly as expected.”