Chapter 22
Brooke
“You called Miles?” He sets his glass down, his face unreadable.
“Yeah.” I nod, feeling the weight of what I’m about to say pressing against my chest. “I left him a voicemail a long time ago and honestly didn’t expect to hear back, but he called me when I was walking home from the bodega one night.
” I let out a breath. “He told me you weren’t part of it at all and that you never knew.
He basically said you were a good guy who got caught in the crossfire, and he was the one who let everyone assume you were involved because it took the heat off him. ”
Dominic twists his glass on the table, watching the liquid catch the light.
He’s quiet for long enough that I start to wonder if he’s going to respond at all.
The rain keeps drumming against the windows, and somewhere behind us one of the old guys at the bar lets out a groan at something happening in the soccer match.
“Yeah,” Dominic finally says, and his voice is quieter than before but not angry.
Not cold, just resigned in a way that suggests he made peace with this a long time ago.
“I mean, Miles had a horrible home life. So when everything blew up, I kinda figured he just wanted to take the pressure off, and he was so young. I couldn’t bring myself to throw him under the bus when I knew what he was already dealing with. ”
“So you just... let everyone think you were guilty?” I stare at him. “You let your entire career burn to protect someone who was lying about you?”
He shrugs. “What was I supposed to do? Go public and destroy what was left of his life? He was already spiraling.”
“So were you, though,” I say. “Young, I mean. You were what, six years older than him? That’s not exactly ancient wisdom territory. You weren’t some grizzled veteran who’d seen it all.”
“No, but I was the oldest of five brothers. All of us adopted, all of us with our own shit to work through.” He pauses, staring into his drink.
“I spent the most time with my dad at the gym, and I saw sides of him the others didn’t.
The pressure he was under, the way he worried about all of us, the stuff he carried that he never talked about. ”
“You were close to him,” I say quietly.
He nods, taking a sip of mezcal. “I think I absorbed some of that without realizing it. This idea that it was my job to protect people, especially people who couldn’t protect themselves.
And I just couldn’t bring myself to go after Miles publicly when I knew how much he was already struggling. Even if it would have cleared my name.”
I nod, turning my own glass in my hands. The bar feels smaller now, more intimate, the noise of the TV and the storm fading into background static. It’s just us and this conversation and years of history finally getting untangled.
“I’m so sorry for what I did,” I say, looking up at him and forcing myself to hold his gaze even though part of me wants to look away.
“Because you were right. If I’d done a better job investigating, if I’d actually been the journalist I thought I was, I would have caught it.
All of it. I really thought I was being unbiased, but I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
I had the story I wanted to write before I even started writing it. ”
He meets my eyes, and I brace myself for the anger I probably deserve. The coldness. The ‘too little too late’ that would be completely justified.
Instead, he just looks at me. Really looks, like he’s seeing something he hasn’t seen before.
“What even made you decide to call Miles after all these years?” he asks.
I take a deep breath. “Well, back when I was in Dark River, I went to Aberdeen and tracked down Eddie Kovacs. He admitted he lied because he was pissed at you. It was all just a personal vendetta.”
Dominic blinks. “Wow. You really went down memory lane. Aberdeen. That’s commitment.”
“No kidding,” I say. “Eddie was a charmer, as always. Really rolled out the welcome mat.”
“Let me guess.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms with something that’s almost a smile. “He made you work for it.”
“He had me get in the ring with one of his fighters and said he’d answer one question for every punch I threw.
Every punch I actually landed, he’d tell me something I didn’t already know.
” I laugh, shaking my head at the memory of how ridiculous the whole thing was.
“Mind you, I was in work heels and a pencil skirt. Very professional attire for boxing.”
He actually laughs at that. “Yeah, that sounds like some shit he would pull. That guy was always an asshole.”
“You know, I think you tried to tell me that once.” I smile and he laughs.
We sit with that for a moment, the acknowledgment of all those years of refusing to hear each other. I pick at the edge of my napkin, not quite sure what to do with my hands now that the confession part is over and we’re in whatever this new territory is.
“I guess neither of us trusted each other enough to believe the other was actually telling the truth,” he says, his voice quieter now. “Even when we were.”
I shake my head. “I’m so sorry, Dominic.
Really. I don’t even know how to... I ruined your career.
I took everything you’d built and burned it to the ground, and I know that no matter what I do, no matter how many apologies I make, you can’t get that time back.
It’s gone forever because of what I did. ”
He sits quietly for a moment, and I feel like I can barely breathe. Because suddenly there is no opinion that matters more to me than Dominic Midnight’s, and I want so desperately to be forgiven that my chest aches with it.
He looks up at me. “It’s not your fault. Not really.”
I blink. “What? I mean, I’m pretty sure it is. I literally just described in detail exactly how it’s my fault.”
“No.” He sighs, rubbing his hand across his jaw. “I mean, you had a hand in it, I’ll give you that. You definitely lit the match. But it’s always been easier for me to blame you for all of it than to own up to my own shit.”
“You didn’t know,” I say, leaning forward. “How could you have done anything differently?”
He shakes his head. “I may not have known about the PEDs, but I think part of me suspected something was off. Little things that didn’t add up.
The way Miles was recovering faster than he should have been, putting on muscle at a rate that didn’t quite make sense.
And I wanted my dream so badly that I was willing to lie to myself, to not look any closer in case I found something I didn’t want to find.
” He meets my eyes, and there’s no anger there, just a kind of tired acceptance that somehow makes it worse.
“So no. It’s not all on you. We both played our parts. ”
I don’t know what to say to that, to this man who I’ve spent half my life hating offering me absolution I’m not sure I deserve. The rain pounds against the windows and the soccer match drones on behind us, and I feel untethered.
“Do you want another round?” I ask, because it’s easier than saying anything else.
He smiles, and it’s softer than any expression he’s ever directed at me. “I’d like that very much.”
I wave down the bartender and he brings us two more glasses of the Enmascarado, and we settle back into our mismatched chairs while the storm continues to rage outside.
My mind won’t stop circling back over the last two decades, all that wasted time and energy. All those arguments and grudges and moments where we could have just talked like this, like two people instead of two enemies.
“I still just can’t believe this,” I say. “You know, all this past week I’ve been thinking about calling you to tell you what I found out, but I had no idea what to say or how to even begin. I kept picking up my phone and putting it back down.”
He nods slowly. “I was the same when I found out about Danny. I must have drafted a dozen texts to you that I never sent. I couldn’t figure out how to put it into words.”
I look at him across the table, at this man I thought I knew so well and didn’t know at all. “You really don’t... I don’t know, hate me? After everything?”
“No, I really don’t hate you.” He turns his glass in his hands, watching the mezcal catch the dim light.
“Besides, I like my life. I have a successful business, I love having the gym, I’m part of the community in Dark River.
And my fighter is about to compete for a title, assuming I can fucking get there in time.
” He lets out a breath. “It all kind of worked out. Besides, on the subject of ruining careers, I had a hand in yours too. You probably would have won the scholarship if I hadn’t gone after you.
You could be an editor by now, a media titan. ”
I let out a huff of laughter. “I don’t know about that. You were honestly really tough competition. You’re tough with everything. Even with us sabotaging each other constantly, I think I had to go further than I ever had before just to keep up with you.”
“God, I think I aged ten years trying to sabotage you,” he says, shaking his head with a rueful grin. “You remember when I told the committee you cheated on an exam? That I’d seen you with a cheat sheet?”
“How could I forget,” I say, and for the first time ever, I’m smiling at the memory instead of seething.
It feels so far away now, funny instead of infuriating.
“I had to get my teacher to write a letter confirming she’d watched me the entire time and I never looked at anything but my own paper.
Do you know how humiliating it was to explain why I needed that? ”
“I switched seats to sit behind you during that midterm,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck with the sheepish expression. “I spent the whole test watching the back of your head, trying to catch you looking at notes or your phone or anything. You never even glanced sideways.”