Dominic #2
I lift him, and he immediately begins telling me about the dinosaur display in the hotel lobby where they stopped to use the restroom. I catch the words “teeth,” “giant,” and the phrase “Dad scared.”
“I was not scared,” Cliff calls from across the room.
Elena comes down the hall, and Sophie drops her bag to run to her.
“Aunt Elena!”
“Careful,” Cliff says.
Elena crouches enough to receive the hug without letting Sophie hit her stomach at full speed. Cliff notices. So do I.
Sophie leans back. “Dad says you’re having a baby.”
“I am.”
“Can I help name it?”
“No,” Cliff and I answer together, the response so instinctive it’s startling.
Elena looks between us. “That was unsettling.”
Sophie plants her hands on her hips. “I have good names.”
“What are they?” Elena asks.
“Princess Sparkle if it’s a girl. For a boy…” She pauses. “Maybe Kevin.”
“Strong range,” Rachel says as she walks in carrying two large paper bags.
I set Theo down long enough to take the food from her. She kisses my cheek, then crosses to Elena and holds her face between both hands.
“You look beautiful.”
“I threw up yesterday because Dominic opened the refrigerator too quickly.”
“It released an odor.”
“It was a refrigerator. They do that.”
Rachel pulls her into a hug. “Still beautiful.”
Within twenty minutes, the quiet apartment is full of bags, shoes, food containers, children, and competing conversations.
Sophie empties the contents of her duffel across the guest-room floor to prove Cliff misplaced her socks.
Theo builds a block tower beside the coffee table, knocks it over, and gasps with theatrical shock every time.
I’m carrying plates to the table when I notice Elena pressing two fingers to her temple.
“Headache?”
“A small one.”
“Do you need food?”
“I’m about to eat.”
“Water?”
She looks down at the nearly empty glass beside her. “Please.” The word is barely audible, but I’m already moving.
I refill it and bring the box of crackers from the kitchen. Elena takes one, then catches my wrist.
“Thank you.”
I bend and kiss her hair. Her fingers remain around me for another second before she releases me.
Cliff watches from the dining table.
I see him watching again when everyone begins choosing seats.
Elena points to the chair across from mine. “I want that one.”
“The one beside me has better back support.”
“The one across from you lets me see Sophie’s presentation about why Princess Sparkle is a serious option.”
“It has visual aids,” Sophie announces.
I move the chair Elena chose and take a cushion from the other one.
She adjusts it behind her. “Perfect.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You challenged my selection first.”
“I improved the implementation.”
Rachel shakes her head as she sits. “How do either of you get anything done?”
“We’re excellent at our jobs,” Elena says.
“We also disagree efficiently,” I add.
“That sounds exhausting,” Cliff says, but without the sharp edge from before.
Elena reaches beneath the table and hooks her foot around my ankle. “It has benefits.”
I look at her.
She takes a bite of her sandwich with an innocent expression that convinces no one who knows her.
Cliff definitely sees that.
He sees the rest too. Elena asks me to bring her cardigan when the apartment gets cold.
I retrieve the gray one without asking whether she’s sure.
When she says she’s full, I close her food container and slide it into the refrigerator rather than telling her to eat more.
When I offer to carry a box upstairs, she says she has it, and I let her.
She never becomes quieter because I’m in the room.
She corrects me when I tell Rachel the prenatal notebook is organized.
“It was organized,” Elena says. “Then Dominic added color-coded tabs without proper authorization.”
“The tabs make the urgent questions easier to find.”
“They’re all urgent to you.”
“That’s inaccurate.”
“You asked the doctor whether the building’s emergency power system covers the ultrasound equipment.”
“It was a reasonable question.”
Cliff’s mouth twitches.
After lunch, Sophie pulls Elena toward the guest room to settle the missing-sock controversy. Theo climbs into my lap with a book, and Rachel begins gathering empty containers from the table.
Cliff looks down the hall after his sister.
“She’s still herself,” Rachel says.
He turns to his wife. “I know.”
“You’ve been checking since we arrived.”
“I’m allowed to look at my sister.”
“You’re looking for what this costs her.” Rachel lowers her voice, though Elena and Sophie are arguing too loudly to hear us. “She’s happier. She lets people help her. She hasn’t made herself smaller to be with Dominic.”
Cliff’s jaw tightens as he glances at me, irritated that I heard.
Rachel continues clearing the table. “You wanted to know whether she was safe with him. Watch her.”
A few minutes later, Cliff asks Elena if they can talk alone.
She takes him into my study and closes the door.
I fight the instinct to stay near the door, close enough to hear if her voice changes. Instead, I carry Theo and his dinosaur book to the living room while Rachel helps Sophie choose a movie.
Elena asked for privacy, so I give it to her.
Almost fifteen minutes pass before the study door opens. Elena’s eyes are damp, and Cliff’s face is drawn. She walks directly toward me and slides her hand into mine.
I want to ask if she’s okay. I wait.
“I apologized,” she says. “I told him keeping the relationship private stopped protecting anything once we began lying to the people who loved us.”
Cliff remains near the hallway, listening.
“I told him the contract was my idea,” she continues. “So was lying about ovulation. Coming back from Colorado was my decision, and staying here is too.”
Her shoulder presses against my arm.
“Loving you is my choice, Dominic.” The words land in the quiet space between us, a truth she’s offering not just to me, but to her brother.
I lift our joined hands and kiss her knuckles.
Cliff looks at his sister, leaning into me because she wants to. When he meets my eyes again, the hard anger in them has softened.
After dinner, Rachel and the children settle in the living room for a movie. Elena goes with them after Theo rejects every option Sophie chooses, and Sophie accuses him of having bad taste.
Cliff stays in the kitchen.
I place the last dish in the dishwasher while he takes a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. He holds it up.
“Yes.”
He pours two glasses and slides one toward me.
We listen to the argument in the next room. Elena suggests assigning numerical values to everyone’s choices. Sophie approves until Elena explains that Theo receives the same vote.
“That sounds like her,” Cliff says.
“She started a spreadsheet for baby names.”
“Of course she did.”
“She has filters.”
A quiet laugh leaves him. It’s brief, a crack in the tension, but it’s the first one directed at me all day.
He looks into the living room. Elena sits on the floor beside Sophie with Theo half across her lap. She turns at that moment and finds me watching. Her smile is small and private.
“I’m still angry about how it began,” Cliff says.
“You should be.”
“The secrecy. The contract. You being her boss. Falling in love doesn’t turn any of that into a good decision.”
“No.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “You’re really not going to argue with me?”
“I’ve already had this argument with myself. You make several valid points.”
“Several?”
“I’m not giving you all of them.”
He almost smiles again, then looks back at Elena. “I can see what this is now.”
I wait.
“She isn’t here because she’s pregnant or because that contract trapped her in an arrangement she couldn’t end. And you aren’t playing house because you feel obligated.”
“No.”
“She trusts you.” He says it like a verdict he didn’t expect to deliver.
The words settle heavily in my chest. “I know.”
“She didn’t do that for a long time.”
“I know that too.”
Cliff turns his glass between his palms. “I was afraid she’d lose herself again. Daniel made every compromise sound reasonable until she barely recognized her own life.”
“I won’t pretend I never try to manage things for her. I do. She tells me when I’m doing it, and I listen.”
“I saw that.”
“She’s also learning she can ask me for something without owing me.”
“I saw that too.” He studies me. “What are you promising her?”
“That I’ll keep choosing her.”
“She needs more than that.”
“It needs to be.” I set down my glass, wanting no barrier between us for this. “I’m not promising a perfect relationship. We’ll disagree. I’ll handle things badly sometimes, and so will she. I can promise I’ll tell her the truth, listen when I’m wrong, and stay long enough to repair what I can.”
“And the baby?”
“I’ll show up every day. I’ll change diapers, attend appointments, learn what I don’t know, and be there when both of them are furious with me.”
“You know she’ll be furious with you.”
“She already has significant experience.”
Cliff takes a drink, his eyes fixed on me over the rim of the glass. “Do not give her a reason to regret choosing you.”
“I’ll never use what she trusts me with to control her. I won’t punish her for needing me, and I won’t ask her to become less so I can feel like more.”
His eyes remain on mine for several seconds.
Then he exhales. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“I know you won’t.”
It’s not forgiveness, but it’s a truce—more than I’d hoped for today.
Cliff raises his glass.
“Congratulations on the baby.”
It’s a start.