Chapter Two Dominic
Chapter Two
Dominic
W ell, that was embarrassing.
Dominic walked into the front door of his new empty brick house with the deflated ego of a man who’d just been served his ass on a rustic platter by his handywoman neighbor.
A neighbor who’d been wearing only a neon green bikini top under jean overalls with the biggest brown eyes he’d ever seen that somehow matched the perfect shade of brown ringlets that fell out of her ponytail. He might be partially blind, but not blind enough not to notice the way her curves hugged her outfit or the blush on her cheeks when she’d first seen him.
He had a detached retina to thank for the increasing partial blindness and his early retirement from the Detroit Tigers. But he couldn’t blame a baseball to the face for his inability to hold a normal conversation with… literally anyone. As he’d just proven with his brand-new neighbor who clearly already hated him.
Not that he cared.
Well, not that he wanted to care. Ever since his wife left him after she’d decided he wasn’t as fun in retirement as he’d been when he was actively playing baseball, he’d promised himself that he wasn’t going to let anyone else’s opinions dictate who he was. When he’d said his marriage vows, he’d meant forever. Apparently, his soon-to-be-ex-wife had only meant until one of them had a depressive episode. Then she was completely out.
And this depressive episode appeared to be more of a lifestyle choice now.
That wasn’t a fair thought, and he knew that. His marriage and the circumstances surrounding his divorce were a lot more complicated than that, but he wanted to sit in self-pity today.
The mover stepped out of the back of the moving van and looked up at the house Dominic had just purchased. “This is it?”
Dominic nodded. “Yeah. Try not to break anything.”
“Man, I don’t get it,” the mover said, this time leaning his weight against the liftgate on the back of the moving truck. “This place is small and out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s not that small.” He wasn’t even sure why he felt the need to defend himself to this complete stranger who he was paying by the hour. “It’s almost two thousand square feet inside if you include the back porch. You can’t beat the view of the lake.”
“I’ll give you that,” the mover agreed as he motioned for the other men on his team to start grabbing boxes. “It’s just that penthouse we moved you out of this morning was a thing of beauty. Never seen that much glass that high in the sky before in my life. How did you even find this place all the way out here?”
“My grandfather used to rent a place here for at least two weeks every summer.” Dominic wasn’t sure how his grandfather had found it to begin with, but he did know that every memory he had here was warm and positive. It wasn’t even just the vacation part of it—what kid wouldn’t love swimming in the lake, taking the rowboat or canoe out, or going hiking in the wooded areas? That was all fun and amazing, but it had been the quiet nights around the fire pit with his grandfather playing guitar and his mother singing along that had really made things memorable.
His father had never been in the picture, and his mother had picked up all the slack for both parental roles. Because of that, Dominic’s grandfather had become the biggest paternal figure in his life, and he really appreciated that his mother prioritized Dominic’s relationship with her father. At this point, he couldn’t even begin to imagine who he’d be if not for Grandpa Carleton.
Burying him two summers ago had been the hardest moment of his life, and he’d made a vow then and there that he was going to come back to Heart Lake again one day. He hadn’t expected a career-ending injury to speed up his timeline, but he was fulfilling his promise all the same.
“That’s a nice memory,” the mover replied, this time finally carrying a box and walking toward the house. “They still come up around here?”
Dominic shook his head. “Nah.”
The man waited for a moment, as if expecting Dominic to say more, but that wasn’t going to happen. Finally, the mover shrugged his shoulders and finished carrying the box inside.
Dominic circled around the house and came to a stop on the back lawn that jutted up to the lake, just staring out at it for a few moments. It had been a while since he’d talked about his grandfather, and being here was stirring up memories he’d been pushing away for a long time.
Two summers ago, Dominic had been in the middle of a game against the Yankees when he saw a messenger run over to his coach on the sidelines and whisper something urgently. The coach’s eyes had darted to Dominic immediately, and an unsettled pit in his stomach had burst to life, but then the coach wiped his expression away and the game continued on. He’d tried to ignore it as some sort of weird coincidence, but after they’d finished the ninth inning in the lead by two points and Dominic was headed back to the locker room, his coach had stopped him and given him the news about his grandfather. It had been a heart attack—so quick that nothing could have been done.
His first thought had been for his mother—it had always been just the three of them. His grandmother had passed away before Dominic had been old enough to remember her, so it was just his mother, Grandpa Carleton, and… that was it.
Dominic had already planned that one of the bedrooms in this new house was going to be his mother’s room. Not that he expected her to visit often—she had decided to go back to school in her early sixties to get a graduate degree in counseling and was very busy with class work and internships. She had had him when she was barely out of her teenage years, and he was proud of her for getting back out there and choosing what kind of life she wanted for herself.
Her newfound ambition and drive, however, made it glaringly obvious to Dominic that his was completely gone.
Dominic felt his phone vibrate in the pocket of his jeans and pulled it out to glance at the screen. Speak of the devil. His mother’s name and photo appeared, and he swiped to answer her call.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Sweets, I’ve got the best story to tell you,” Ellen Gage began with all the gusto of someone about to spill the latest local tea.
He frowned but kept his eyes on the lake as he watched a bird dive down and snatch something to eat out of the water. “What happened?”
“So you know how I’m doing this internship at a residential mental health facility, right?” she began. “And remember my boss, Jennie? Jennie with an ie , not a y .”
“Mom, I met Jennie less than a month ago at the last fundraising event,” Dominic reminded her.
“Right, right.” Ellen was not swayed by her dimming memory. “Well, today I walked into the office, and the door wasn’t working very well so I kind of had to jam it. Like really put my shoulder into it. It’s an old house they lease, so I just figured the wood had warped or something and it had gotten stuck. Turns out, it had been locked.”
Now Dominic was frowning, picturing his twig-framed mother hulking out on a piece of plywood. “You knocked down a locked door?”
“Well, I didn’t know it was locked at the time, but that’s not the story,” she continued. “The story is what I walked in on once the door popped open—barely took a tap, I’m telling you.”
Dominic turned away from the view of the lake to look back at the house just in time to see one of the movers drop a box and then trip over it. He tensed for a moment to make sure the guy got back up and was okay, but once he did, all that was left in Dominic was annoyance. “What was going on in the office, Mom?”
His mother continued, “Jennie was playing online poker—on the work computer—but that wasn’t even the worst part. The regional manager was doing it with her.”
“Bentley?” Interesting development, but he had definitely gotten a vibe from the two of them at the last fundraising event that they were more than just co-workers. “That’s weird. How were they playing it together?”
“I don’t know,” his mother admitted. “I didn’t actually see it, but she was sitting in his lap in front of the computer, and they said there weren’t enough chairs for them both to see the screen at the same time. How absolutely irresponsible to be gambling on company time like that. Can you believe them?”
Dominic bit his lip because he wasn’t about to say that he actually didn’t believe them at all, and it seemed quite probable to him that a computer gambling game had a lot less to do with what was happening in that scenario. His mother was the one trying to become a counselor though, so she was going to have to figure out how to read people better and he wasn’t giving his two cents. “Wow, Mom. What a wild story.”
She clucked her tongue on the other end of the phone. “Some people just don’t take work seriously, kid. Not like you and me, you know? I know you’re so busy today, but I wanted to check in. How is the big move going?”
He shrugged, even though she couldn’t see him at the moment. “I’m not using this moving company ever again, but it’s been fine. There’s still a lot to do, but the place looks in good shape. The view of the lake is everything the previous owner said it was.”
“I can’t wait to come up and see it,” she commented. “In the meantime, send me pictures. Oh, and your new address. I want to send you a care package as a housewarming gift.”
“Thanks, Mom. I will.” He could feel the icy edges of his heart melting ever so slightly at the way his mother cared for him without fail. She’d dedicated her entire life to making sure he had everything he needed and wanted—including driving him to baseball practice and away games and trainings so often that she barely had time to do anything other than be his chauffeur as he was growing up. Once he had a driver’s license, she still never missed a game—home or away—and was always the loudest person on the sidelines.
There’s nothing fiercer than the love and dedication of a single mom.
When he hung up the phone, he found himself reflecting on his mother’s new career journey and considering the fact that he needed to do the same for himself. Up until earlier this year, a baseball career had been the sole plan for his life.
Play baseball. Keep playing baseball. The end.
There was no backup plan, and there was nothing else he found much interest in aside from his secret passion for World War II history. But watching yet another documentary on the invasion of Normandy beach was not going to give him a purpose or path forward. He needed an actual plan, one that excited him at least half as much as baseball once had. Still did, honestly. The grief over losing that career path was something he was still grappling with, and he didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to go there today.
Heart Lake was going to give him a second chance. This entire summer was meant to give him the time and space to figure out who he wanted to be in this next phase of his life. But until then, he had seven or eight history books queued up on his audiobook playlist and a beautiful dock to sit on and listen to them, he could take naps whenever he wanted to, and would eat every possible carbohydrate he could find for the next two months without interruption.
Definitely without interruption from the girl next door.