25. Chapter 25 #4
She nods rapidly and then I’m in her arms. She smells like the laundry detergent she’s used my whole life and the perfume she won’t retire even though it’s been discontinued for years.
“My girl,” she keeps saying into my hair, words broken with tears. “My clever, beautiful girl. You did it.”
“I don’t understand,” I babble into her shoulder. “How are you here? When did you…I thought you—”
My dad’s arm folds around both of us, big and solid and warm.
“She’s been like this since we got off the plane,” he tells me. “Cried all over the TSA man too.”
“Peter, I’m an emotional person,” my mom sniffles.
I pull back, blinking, mascara probably a lost cause.
“How are you here?” I look between them.
“About that.” My dad’s eyes crinkle.
Then his gaze slides to Dom with exaggerated solemnity.
“This one,” he says, jerking his chin in Dom’s direction, “called us. Weeks ago.”
“What?” I spin back to Dom .
“You think I was going to let you walk your first show without your parents here?” he says. “Come on.”
My mom wipes her eyes with the side of her palm. “He somehow found our number,” she says. “He called and said, ‘Hi, this is Dominic, I’m dating your daughter, and I need you to keep a secret.’ I almost hung up — I thought it was a prank.”
My dad snorts. “I thought it was the bank.”
“You got them here?” I ask, heart beating stupidly hard.
“I did,” he says, searching my face.
“He paid for everything. Flights, hotel,” my mom starts. “Which, we will pay back.” She points a finger at Dom, who shakes his head firmly. “He picked us up when we landed.”
I’m staring at him. He found their number, booked flights and a hotel room, and picked them up from the airport.
My dad clears his throat, eyes glinting. “You didn’t have to put us in first class. I’d have been perfectly happy hanging onto the wing. ”
“You put them in first class?” Heat rushes up my neck.
“Of course,” Dom says. “And,” he adds, “I made a reservation for dinner. All of us. Tonight.”
“All of us?” I echo.
He nods. “You, your parents, me, Dannie. If Jace and Melody behave themselves, they can come, too.”
My dad eyes him for a long beat. “You planning to keep doing things like this?” he asks.
“Dad,” I hiss.
“Yes, sir,” Dom chuckles.
My dad’s mouth twitches, like he’s fighting a smile and losing. “Bit much, isn’t it?”
“I’m in love with your daughter, sir.” Dom smiles. “It’s my pleasure.”
The words hit me square in the chest.
He’s in love with me. Dominic Moreal just confessed he’s in love with me.
My mom makes a soft, delighted sound and my dad studies him for one long, weighted moment.
“Well,” he says. “In that case, I suppose we can see what the restaurant’s house wine is like. And thank you for getting us here. ”
“Thank you for not hanging up on me,” Dom replies.
“Well,” my dad says, clapping his hands once. “We’re in Miami. Be a shame if all we saw was air-conditioning and concrete. I was thinking tomorrow, if the weather’s decent, maybe I find some real water. Do a little fishing.”
My mom groans. “He checked the maps in the car.”
“Damn right I did,” he says. Then he looks at Dom. “You fish, son?”
Dom huffs out a quiet breath. “Not really. Never had much of a chance.”
“Your old man never taught you?” my dad squints at him.
My heart pulls tight, knowing the history between Dom and his parents.
Dom’s father taught him plenty—how to smile for people he hates, how to speak in rooms that don’t want him there, how to carry a family name like a curse. But not this, I’m sure.
Dom’s gaze drops for half a second. His jaw ticks; it’s the first time I’ve seen him look almost self-conscious .
“No, sir,” he says with a shake of his head. “He didn’t.”
Something in my dad’s expression softens. The joking falls away at the edges.
“Well, that’s wrong,” he says simply. “I taught my two boys how to fish. Guess I better teach my third.”
Everything in me stutters as I turn to face my dad.
Third.
He said it too easily for it to be a line.
He just… put Dom in the same column as my brothers. I glance at Dom and he’s actually thrown. It’s in his eyes, wide for a fraction of a second, as though the words hit somewhere he didn’t know was unguarded. I’ve seen him pissed, focused, turned on, amused. I’ve never seen him look like this.
My dad doubles down before anyone can pretend it didn’t happen. “Just us boys,” he adds, tone light again. “What do you say, son? You come out with me tomorrow? We’ll see if Miami’s got anything with fins that isn’t on a menu.”
Dom swallows while I fight to keep in tears.
He clears his throat and nods once, then again, faster. “I’d like that, sir. A lot. ”
“Good.” My dad nods, satisfied. “I already looked up a pier where the tourists don’t trample each other. We’ll go early, before it’s hot enough to kill us. And quit with the ‘sir.’ None of my sons call me that.”
The corner of Dom’s mouth kicks up.
He looks at me then. There’s a smile on his face I haven’t seen before. He looks young, boyish. Almost shy.
I suddenly see a young boy who never got the chance to be a kid—whose father didn’t teach him to fish, whose mother didn’t kiss his cheeks—and my heart is full of something so bittersweet a single tear finally slips free.
“I’m going fishing,” he says, like he can’t fully believe it until he says it out loud to me.
My full heart does a somersault. I grab his face and kiss him, a hard press of my lips, before pulling away with a grin. “You’re going fishing,” I echo.
My dad slings an arm around Dom’s shoulders. It’s a bit ridiculous given the size difference. My father has to reach up, and Dom instinctively hunches down, but they both commit to it .
“Come on then,” my dad says, steering him toward the exit in that half-guiding, half-herding way dads have. “Show me this restaurant of yours, see if they serve real meat or just leaves arranged in a circle.”
“I checked the menu,” Dom protests, but he’s going, letting himself be dragged, with that stunned-little-kid smile still ghosting around his mouth. “There’s steak, sir.”
“There better be,” my dad says. “I didn’t cross an ocean for microgreens. And what did I say about the ‘sir’?”
They disappear down the corridor together, my dad still talking, Dom listening with his head tipped slightly to catch every word.
My mom squeezes my hand.
I stand there for a moment in the middle of the backstage mess and watch them go—Dom in my tux, my dad’s arm around his shoulders, plans for fishing in the morning. Warmth floods my chest, heavy and terrifyingly good.
Tonight, I put my name on a runway. Tomorrow, my father is going to teach the man I’m in love with how to do something because he wants to .
Dom has never needed anyone. Not really. Not that he’d admit it.
But as I watch him get pulled into my family, one thought settles in: maybe we can give him something he’s never had before.
A loving home.