Chapter Twenty-Nine
I give Dax a brief tour of all my old childhood haunts—my high school, the skate park, and the make-out spot I never used before but that we made good use of now.
When I pull into the driveway, the silence in the car is content.
I’ve never done this before—meeting the family—and neither has Dax, but we’re doing it together, figuring it out together.
He fetches both our bags from the trunk and starts down the path to the front door, but I incline my head for him to follow me to the basement door.
Once inside, we toe off our shoes, Dax subconsciously straightening my Chucks with his Vans as he slides them into place next to mine.
When his duffle hits the ground, the adjoining room goes silent.
“SAMM-AY!” my brothers crow as one.
Dax’s brows pinch together at the nickname, and I shake my head and laugh. “Not Sammy, just a burglar,” I call.
“Oh, thank god,” Austin says, sighing in faux relief.
I hover inside the doorway, glancing back to silently check in with Dax. He ducks his head, pressing his forehead against mine.
“I love you,” I whisper.
A low grumble comes from Dax, almost like a purr. “I love you.”
Sliding my hand into his, I tug him behind me into the basement living room.
“Hi, everyone. This is my—” I freeze, not sure how to qualify Dax.
Boyfriend is both too big and too small.
Biscuit comes thundering down the stairs at the promise of someone new to beg for attention from, golden tail wagging happily as he wiggles in Dax’s general direction, too excited to walk straight.
“This is Dax,” I finish in an attempt to cover my blunder.
The evil grins my brothers are shooting my way make me uncomfortable, so I turn back to Dax, who is dutifully scratching Biscuit behind his ears.
“Dax, this is… everyone.” I jerk my head toward him, and my brothers jump off the couch to introduce themselves, remembering their manners.
My dad, Bryce, and Anna wander downstairs at the sound of voices, trays of snacks in hand.
Introductions are made, hands are shaken, and miraculously, my dad doesn’t comment on the tattoos or the septum piercing, though I can tell he’s making a concerted effort not to fixate on Dax’s gauged ears.
His eye contact is a little too intense.
I lost my grip on Dax’s hand during all the introductions (Gray insisted upon a hug because of course he did), and I slide my hand back into his and guide him onto the nonbroken chaise section of the couch. As we settle into the corner, Gray mouths to me, Mooning.
I shoot him a glare and he snickers, preemptively ducking out of reach of the punch I’m already preparing to land on his biceps.
“Nintendo!” Nate says suddenly, squishing himself between Gray and me on the couch and effectively ending the impending squabble.
As if a game of Super Smash Bros. has ever defused anything in the Donavan household.
The sag in the middle of the couch is a direct result of Bryce Falcon punching Nate off the spaceship one too many times in a row and the wrestling match that ensued.
In a rare moment of awareness, Bryce slides off the couch and switches out the Smash Bros. cartridge for Mario Kart.
Austin is already on the floor, drawing up a new bracket to accommodate the five of us plus Anna and Dax. With more kids than controllers, tournament brackets were a peace-keeping necessity.
“Whoa,” my dad calls. “I want in.”
All of our brows shoot up, but Austin says nothing as he erases the board and starts over. We haven’t been able to convince my dad to play any game other than Scrabble in years.
My brothers and I exchange wicked smiles.
“Same team?” I ask.
They nod. “Same team.”
“What does that mean?” Anna asks in alarm.
My dad sighs. “It means they’re teaming up against us to make sure we”—he gestures between himself, Anna, and Dax—“lose. My children are ruthless. I’m so sorry, but also—” He gestures to Anna and Dax. “You chose them. And I’m stuck accepting I raised them this way. So let’s kick their ass.”
The jaws of all five Donavan children drop in unison. Our dad never swears.
“Hell yeah,” Anna agrees, bumping fists with Dax.
I exchange a wary look with Bryce. “I don’t know how I feel about this.”
My brother shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll lose soon enough,” he says confidently. Anna attempts to tackle him, but she’s so much smaller it has little effect.
“My dad never plays,” I mumble to Dax, settling between his legs with my back to his chest. “He’s showing off for you. Well… he’s going to be terrible, so it’s not so much showing off as he’s trying.”
Dax’s laugh ruffles my hair, his arms coming around me and grabbing the second controller in my lap.
He twirls and flicks the joystick beneath his thumb in a move that my body automatically responds to, and he smirks when he catches me crossing my legs.
“I can’t believe you wouldn’t call me your boyfriend. ”
I flush. “Are you?” I ask under my breath.
His chest shakes with laughter behind me. “Probably not after I kick your ass at Mario Kart.”
I feign offense, my head tilting back to look him in the eye. “You wouldn’t do that to your sweet girlfriend, now, would you?” I bat my eyelashes at him and he snorts.
“You forget you’re not the only one with too many ruthless siblings. You can’t flirt your way out of a Mario Kart ass kicking, baby.”
I raise my brows. “Me, flirt? I would never.”
“That would be disgusting,” he agrees.
“Completely abhorrent,” I intone automatically, the memory, the words, imprinted on my heart like a tattoo.
When he pulls back after placing a chaste kiss to my lips, the smile that spreads across his face has me melting farther into him, and goddamnit, I am mooning.
Final Revelations’ Self-Titled: Reviews
“With this final installment, Final Revelations is selling tickets to their autopsy. The self-titled album starts off with a sound akin to their early days, the style progressing more toward what we know them as now and ending on an unexpected note, almost a tease of what they could have become had they not thrown in the towel. For longtime fans of the band, this album will scratch the itch and then leave you jonesing for a fix that will never come.”
—Rolling Stone
“[…] but the real shining star of the album is the final track. It’s the song we didn’t know we wanted from Final Revelations until they gave it to us.
It’s not a ballad, but with soft cleans we so rarely get from Nakamura, the melancholic start that builds so achingly slow is like being edged until you’re begging for release—and with a hell of an intro from bassist Cain Williams and drummer Barrett Johnson at the halfway mark, the tempo doubles and you’re riding the wave of an eargasm, a release you weren’t sure they’d give you, only to take you back down again in sated outro bliss. ”
—The Noise
“The choice to self-title this album is a metaphor, a celebration of everything Final Revelations, like viewing their career through a kaleidoscope, tinted and honed by years in the industry. This is an older, wiser Final Revelations that knows who they are, battle-tested and unafraid to show their scars. It’s a bittersweet ending, an overarching theme of escape laced throughout—escaping oneself, addiction, temptation, imposter syndrome, the trappings of fame, and most notably, escaping an industry that chewed them up and spit them out, only to come back swinging with an album that won’t soon be forgotten by a band that helped shape an entire era of music. ”
—Kerrang!
“After years in the desert waiting for a new Final Revelations album, it would be too easy to get drunk guzzling down this album—but the band knew what they were doing when they crafted the track list. Little sips of what we’ve come to expect from them—heavy riffs, unrelenting energy, growls from hell, aggressive breakdowns, and infectious hooks.
It’s an album whose layers reveal themselves to you with each playthrough—and it’s one we will be playing through, start to finish, for years to come. ”
—Billboard
“Whatever deal Dax made with the devil for those vocals must be up. That’s the only reason they’d quit while still at the top of their game.”
—YouTube comment
“How soon is too soon for a reunion tour? Asking for me.”