11. Chapter 8 | Elle
"Did I win?"
"Yes, you won."
Dom tried to smile, blood on her teeth. "Good."
Her eyes closed again.
Elle stayed on her knees until she was sure Dom's breathing was steady, shallow but steady. Around them, the crowd dispersed, money counted, bets settled, the ugly transaction complete. Men stepped over them without looking down.
She was still there when she saw Claudette—not heading toward the ring, not looking for Dom.
Walking toward Lewis Jordan's corner with the same unhurried purpose she'd had all night.
Her hand found his arm, thumb already tracing that slow circle.
Lewis leaned down, and Claudette laughed at something he said, low and private.
They walked out together.
Elle watched the door close behind them. Understanding landed like a stone in her stomach. This hadn't been an accident, or even simple greed. They'd set it up together—Claudette and Lewis—and sent Dom in swinging. She filed it away, the way she'd learned to file things away, and went back to Dom.
She stayed on her knees. The bar noise had dropped to almost nothing. Someone swept up broken glass at the far end of the room. A man stepped over Dom's legs without breaking stride.
Elle got up, found the back room, and located the phone on the wall—grimy receiver, coin slot sticky. She dropped in a nickel and dialed the number Dom had made her memorize during her first week at the bar for emergencies.
Oretha picked up on the second ring.
"It's Elle, from Papa Louie's," she said, keeping her voice low with her back to the door. "Dom needs a ride. She got hurt."
"Where are you?"
"Saturn Bar, Ninth Ward."
A brief pause, no sound of surprise. Then: "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
Dom was on her feet when Elle returned, barely standing, leaning against the wall with one arm wrapped around her ribs, her jaw set like she was arguing with her own body about whether it was allowed to give out.
"Who did you call?" Dom's voice was rough.
"Oretha."
Dom went rigid. "No."
"Dom—"
"Call someone else. Anyone else."
"She's already on her way—"
"Then tell her to turn around." Dom pushed off the wall, swayed. "I don't want her seeing me like this."
Elle caught her arm before she could go down. "You can barely stand."
"I don't care." Dom's voice was fierce despite everything. "Not her. I can't—" Her voice broke, just slightly. "She already left me once. I won't give her another reason to be ashamed of me."
Elle gripped her arm and didn't let go.
"She's coming," she said. "And if she has a problem with it, she can answer to me."
Oretha pulled up twelve minutes later. She got out of the car before it had fully stopped, already moving toward them with the brisk warmth she brought to everything — taking charge of whatever she'd walked into.
She took one look at Dom, and her face softened. "Oh, Dom—"
"Don't." Dom's voice was flat despite the pain underneath it.
Oretha reached for her arm. "Let me help—"
"I said don't." Dom let Elle take her weight instead, turning from Oretha with as much dignity as she could manage. "Just drive."
They got Dom into the back seat, Oretha behind the wheel, Elle in the back with Dom's weight against her shoulder, an arm around her to keep her upright. The Ninth Ward gave way to the Seventh, then to Tremé.
"I'll always come when you need me," Oretha said quietly, watching the road. "You know that."
Dom made a sound that might have been a laugh if her ribs had allowed it. "I don't know shit."
The car hit a pothole. Dom's breath sharply hissed out of her, her whole body contracting around the pain. Elle's arm tightened around her shoulders. Dom pressed her fist against her ribs, held it there, breathed through her teeth until the worst of it passed.
"Dom—" Oretha started. "You have to let it go sometime. We're family."
"What is with you two?" Elle said. "Why are you like this?"
Dom was quiet, breathing through the pain. "Fine. I'll tell you." She didn't look at Oretha, keeping her gaze on Elle instead, as if Oretha wasn't the one who needed to hear it.
"Three years ago." Dom's voice was low, each word careful and deliberate, her gaze fixed on Elle.
"She organized a protest. We all got arrested.
" Another pothole. Dom's jaw locked, a low sound escaping before she could stop it.
She waited it out. "But I wasn't charged with disorderly conduct like everyone else. "
Oretha's hands tightened on the wheel.
"I was charged with cross-dressing. Which was existing while looking like myself."
Elle froze.
"You know what that's like? Sitting in a cell while cops make jokes through the bars?
While they talk about what dykes need? What would fix me?
" The car went over something rough and Dom made a sound low in her throat, pressing harder against her ribs.
When she spoke again, her voice was tighter.
"I sat there two days while Papa Louie scraped together bail money. "
She didn't turn toward the front seat.
"CORE bailed everyone out but me. She decided I was too controversial. Bad for the movement's image. Can't have queers making things complicated when you're trying to desegregate lunch counters." The memory seemed to cost her as much as her wounds.
"Dom." Oretha's voice thickened. "I was nineteen. I was wrong. I know I was wrong—"
"Save it."
Silence filled the car. This was a woman who organized sit-ins, who showed up every single day, who had called Dom her cousin and meant it — and who had looked at Dom in a cell and decided she was too inconvenient to defend. Who had done the math and come up short.
The movement Dom fed and organized and bled for — literally bled for, a hundred dollars' worth, tonight — hadn't bled back.
Elle thought about her brother, Curtis. The letter from the prison. The way people became disposable when they were the wrong kind of cause.
Her hands curled in her lap. She said nothing. Dom had already said it all.
"We're here," Oretha said.
Papa Louie's was dark, the sign off, the street quiet. Oretha got out and came around to Dom's door — efficient, reaching in.
"I'll help get her inside—"
"No." Dom's voice was barely there, but it was final. "That's enough of your help."
Oretha flinched. She stood there, hand still on the door, like she might push, insist, try to fix some small piece of it. Then she nodded once and got back in the car.
Elle watched the taillights disappear down the street.
Getting Dom inside the bar was harder than it looked.
Dom kept trying to help, but her legs refused to cooperate.
Elle got Dom's arm over her shoulders, her own arm around Dom's waist, and they made it through the front door of Papa Louie's in a kind of controlled stumble — Dom breathing hard through her teeth, Elle not breathing much at all.
The bar was dark except for the light coming down from upstairs. It smelled like old wood, whiskey, and the quiet of a room that had been full of people hours ago and remembered it.
Elle aimed for the booth in the corner. Old cracked leather, the kind of seat that had seen a lot of weight over the years. She lowered Dom onto it as carefully as she could.
Dom made a sound she'd never made before — between pain and relief, like a person setting down something very heavy.
Elle stood there catching her breath.
She went behind the bar, found clean towels on the second shelf, the basin under the counter, filled it with warm water, and carried it back to the booth. She knelt.
"This is going to hurt," she said.
Elle wet the towel and brought it to Dom's face. Dom hissed when it touched the cut above her eyebrow. Her jaw tightened.
"Sorry."
"S'okay." Dom watched her, even now, half-wrecked.
Elle worked slowly, cleaning blood from Dom's temple, her cheekbone, the split in her lip.
The water in the basin turned pink. Elle rinsed the towel.
Dom's breathing was shallow—cracked ribs announcing themselves with every inhale—and her knuckles were shredded, the wrapping dark with blood.
A hundred dollars. Elle used to spend that on perfume without blinking—on wine, on some bauble that caught her eye in a shop window.
She'd never once had to bleed for money.
Dom had bled for all of it tonight, every bit arranged by that snake, Claudette.
Elle wondered if Claudette had taught Dom that bleeding was the price of being wanted at all.
Elle's throat tightened.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For what?"
"That you have to do this. That this is what they leave you."
Dom said nothing. Outside, a car passed and was gone. "You got nothing to be sorry for."
"I know. But I am anyway."
Elle rinsed the towel again, wrung it out, and returned to Dom's face. She worked more slowly now, the acute damage mostly addressed, just the careful work left. She felt Dom watching her hands, felt the stillness between them, the bar holding them both, the city going on outside without caring.
"Your hands," Dom said finally.
Elle looked up.
"They're soft."
Elle almost laughed. "Yours aren't."
"No." Dom looked at her own hands—swollen, bruised, knuckles split. She flexed them slowly, testing what still worked. "These are working hands."
"So are mine," Elle said. "Different work."
Dom's mouth curved, careful not to pull at the split lip. "You're always patching me up. Even the first night we met, when you came at me with that iron."
"You're always getting banged up."
"Not usually like this." The joke left her voice. "I'm more than a little banged up this time."
Elle's hands stilled on the towel. "I should call someone. A doctor."
"Tomorrow."
"Dom—"
"Tomorrow." Quieter now. "Not tonight. I don't want anybody else's hands on me tonight. Just yours."
Elle let it go, though she assured herself she'd be calling a doctor come morning whether Dom liked it or not.
Her hand found Dom's wrist instead — careful, away from the ribs, away from anywhere it would hurt — and stayed there, not fixing anything, just letting Dom feel that she'd heard all of it: the cell, the cops, the two days waiting on Papa Louie's bail money, and none of it had moved her one inch further away.
Dom looked at her the way she only did when the performance dropped — quieter, more herself.
Elle realized her own hands were shaking, had been since the ring, since Dom's legs gave out, maybe since before that.
The bar sat very still around them, just the basin of pink water between them and Dom watching her with that same careful attention she'd had since the first morning in the kitchen.
Dom's hand came up, slow and careful, and touched her face.
Elle went still.
"Tell me to stop," Dom said, her voice rough and quiet.
Elle didn't.
Dom's thumb traced her cheekbone — gentle, despite the ruined knuckles, despite everything. Elle's lids closed. She leaned into it without deciding to — the way you lean into the first warm thing you've felt in longer than you want to admit.
She felt Dom shift on the booth seat, felt the quality of the attention change.
Elle opened her eyes.
Dom was looking at her like she was the only thing in the room. Like the bar, the city, the whole long, ugly night had narrowed down to this.
Elle leaned forward and kissed Dom's forehead, soft and deliberate.
Dom inhaled sharply.
Neither of them moved.
Then Dom's hand slid behind Elle's neck — careful, unhurried — and pulled her down, and their mouths met.
Soft at first. Questioning. Then not.
Dom tasted like blood, and Elle didn't care.
Her lip was split, and it must have hurt, but she didn't pull away, and neither did Elle.
Dom's hand was warm against the back of Elle's neck.
Elle's palms found Dom's face, careful of the bruising, and Dom made a sound against her mouth that Elle felt in her sternum — low and involuntary, the sound of wanting more than a body could deliver.
She could feel it in the tremor of Dom's hand, in the strain behind every small movement — Dom wanted more than this, wanted it badly, and her own ribs wouldn't let her take it tonight.
Elle pulled back slightly, breathing hard, Dom's blood on her lips.
Dom's eyes were half-closed, and she was grinning — giddy, unguarded, like a kid. Elle would have thought she was drunk, if she hadn't known better.
"Stay," Dom whispered.
Elle kissed her again. That was her answer.
Slower this time. Deeper. Dom's hand pressed warmer against the back of her neck, her mouth softening against Elle's, until they broke apart on their own, unhurried, foreheads still touching. Just breath, and the quiet, and Dom's thumb tracing one last slow line along Elle's jaw.
Then Dom went slack.
Elle pulled back.
Dom's eyes were closed. Her face was peaceful in a way it almost never was — the lines of it eased, her jaw unclenched, all that contained competence and careful armor set down for once. Breathing shallow but steady. Just breathing.
Elle stayed where she was, kneeling beside the booth, close enough to feel Dom's warmth.
Then she settled Dom — eased her down properly, found an old coat hanging by the door and draped it over her shoulders. Then, almost before she'd decided to, Elle grabbed a second coat off the same hook for herself. She checked Dom's breathing. Checked it again.
Then Elle sat down on the floor beside the booth, back against the seat, and stayed there.
A sound on the stairs — soft, deliberate. Elle looked up. A shadow at the top, CJ's height, there and then gone. The floorboard settled back into silence.
Elle's stomach dropped. What would they even tell him — that his father was a monster who'd set out to hurt Dom on purpose, and that Dom had walked into that ring as much for her own reasons as for his? There was no soft way to say any of that, and she wasn't sure there should be.
Then she let it go. That wasn't hers to carry tonight. Dom would know what to say when the time came, the way she always seemed to know exactly how much of the world CJ needed shielding from. Elle would trust her with it — the same way she was learning, slowly, to trust her with everything else.
Elle leaned her head back against the booth seat. Somewhere above them, a door clicked shut. Somewhere outside, the city went on without either of them.
She found Dom's wrist again, laid her hand over it, and let her own eyes close.