8. Dominic
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Dominic
“We’re going out on the boat today, all three of us, right now.”
Liana looked up from the book she wasn’t actually reading, her fingers frozen on a page she hadn’t turned in the last hour.
I had been watching her from the doorway, pretending to be absorbed in something other than the cold war happening between us.
“You want to take us on the boat.” Her voice was flat, giving me nothing. “You, who hasn’t been home before dark in weeks, suddenly want to spend an afternoon on the water.”
“I cleared my schedule because I want to be with my family.” I pushed off the doorframe and walked toward her, watching her stiffen with every step I took. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Given recent evidence, yes, it’s very hard to believe.”
“Then let me give you new evidence.” I stopped in front of her chair and looked down at her, at this woman who had walked away from me and slept in the guest room and made me feel her absence like a missing limb. “Let me show you that I meant what I said.”
“You say a lot of things, Dominic.” She closed the book and set it aside, finally meeting my eyes.
I reached for her hand and she let me take it, which felt like more than I deserved. “I know I’ve been absent. I know I’ve been blind. And I’m trying to fix it, Liana. I’m trying to show you that I see what I did wrong.”
“By taking us on a boat ride.”
“By being here.” I squeezed her hand. “By choosing you and Bianca over everything else that’s screaming for my attention.”
She stared at me for a long moment, her dark eyes searching my face for the lie.
“PAPA!”
The shriek came from upstairs, followed by thundering footsteps, and then Bianca came flying down the stairs in her bathing suit with her life vest already half on.
“Papa, I heard you say boat!” She crashed into me hard enough to knock me off balance, her small arms wrapping around my neck. “Are we really going? Can I be the captain? Can I steer?”
“We’re really going, and yes you can be the captain, and yes you can steer.” I scooped her up and settled her on my hip. “How did you even hear me from upstairs?”
“I hear everything, Papa.” She said it with complete seriousness. “My ears are very powerful.”
“Clearly they are.” I looked at Liana over Bianca’s head. “What do you say? Will you come with us?”
She looked at Bianca’s hopeful face, at the excitement radiating off our daughter, and I watched her resistance crumble. She couldn’t say no to Bianca. She had never been able to say no to Bianca.
“Fine.” She stood up and smoothed down her dress. “But I’m still angry with you.”
“I’ll take what I can get.” I grinned at her and she scowled back, but there was less ice in it now. “Go get changed. We leave in ten minutes.”
“You don’t get to give me a timeline, Dominic.”
“Fifteen minutes, then.”
“I’ll take as long as I want and you’ll wait for me.”
“I’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes.”
She rolled her eyes and headed for the stairs, but I caught the way her mouth twitched, the almost-smile she was fighting. Progress. Small, incremental, but progress.
“Papa, Mama’s still mad at you.” Bianca patted my cheek with her small hand. “You must have done something really bad.”
“I did do something really bad.” I kissed her forehead. “But I’m going to fix it.”
“How?”
“By reminding her why she fell in love with me in the first place.”
“Did she fall in love with you because you’re handsome?” Bianca tilted her head. “That’s what people on TV do. They fall in love because the man is handsome.”
“I’d like to think there was more to it than that.”
“Maybe it was your muscles.” She squeezed my arm through my shirt. “You have very big muscles, Papa. Mama probably liked those.”
“Thank you for the analysis.”
“You’re welcome.” She squirmed to get down. “I need to get my captain hat. A captain needs a hat or nobody respects them.”
She ran off and I stood in the empty living room, listening to the sounds of my family getting ready, feeling something loosen in my chest for the first time in weeks.
I was going to fix this. I had to fix this.
Because the alternative was losing her, and that was not something I could survive.
***
The boat was ready by the time we got to the dock, the crew having prepped it when I called ahead. I helped Bianca aboard first, watching her scramble toward the wheel with single-minded determination, and then I turned back to offer Liana my hand.
She looked at it for a moment before taking it.
“I meant what I said.” I pulled her aboard and held on when she tried to let go. “This is me trying.”
“I know it’s you trying.” She finally extracted her hand. “I’m just not sure trying is enough anymore.”
“Then tell me what would be enough.”
“I don’t know.” She walked past me toward the stern, her wine already in hand. “That’s part of the problem.”
I watched her settle into the cushioned seat at the back of the boat, her face turned toward the water, her shoulders still carrying that tension I had put there. Then I went to the wheel where Bianca was waiting impatiently.
“Papa, we need to go, the dolphins are waiting for us.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the captain’s chair. “I’m the captain but you have to help because my arms aren’t long enough for the big wheel.”
We pulled away from the dock with Bianca’s hands on the wheel and mine guiding from behind, and I watched Newport shrink in the distance as we headed out into open water. The afternoon sun was warm on my face.
And behind me, Liana sat with her wine and her anger, and I told myself that I would find a way to reach her before this day was done.
When we were far enough out that the coastline was just a glittering line on the horizon, I cut the engine and let us drift.
“Captain, I think it’s time for a break.” I ruffled Bianca’s hair. “Why don’t you go to the bow and keep watch for dolphins while I talk to Mama?”
“Are you going to apologize to her again?” Bianca looked up at me with those sharp eyes that missed nothing. “You should apologize a lot. That’s what you do when you make someone sad.”
“I’m going to apologize as many times as it takes.”
“Good.” She nodded firmly. “Mama deserves lots of apologies.”
She ran off toward the front of the boat, her life vest bouncing with each step, and I walked back to where Liana was sitting alone.
I dropped down beside her, close enough that our shoulders touched. She didn’t move away, which I took as permission to stay.
“Last time we were out here, do you remember what happened?” I kept my voice low, for her ears only. “Right here on this boat, under the stars, just the two of us.”
The blush started at her chest and worked its way up to her cheeks. She took a long sip of wine and didn’t look at me.
“I remember you making promises you didn’t keep.”
“I kept some promises that night.” I leaned closer, letting my mouth brush her ear. “I kept the ones that mattered.”
“Sex isn’t a promise, Dominic.”
“It was that night.” I let my hand rest on her thigh, feeling the warmth of her through the thin fabric of her dress. “That night was me promising you that no matter how busy I got, no matter how distracted, I would always come back to this. To us. To the way you sound when I’m inside you.”
“You’re trying to charm me into forgiving you.”
“Is it working?”
“No.” But her breath had quickened, and she still hadn’t moved my hand off her thigh.
“Just because I let you fuck me doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you.” She finally turned to look at me, her dark eyes fierce even as her body betrayed her. “Sex is not a solution to our problems.”
“I know sex isn’t a solution.” I squeezed her thigh gently. “But you let me fuck you. That means something.”
“It means I have a weakness I need to work on.”
“A weakness.” I laughed softly. “Is that what I am now?”
“You’ve always been a weakness.” She set her wine glass down and turned to face me more fully.
“From the very first moment I walked into your house and you looked at me like I was the most interesting thing you’d ever seen.
You’ve always been the thing I couldn’t resist, no matter how much I wanted to. ”
“Then stop resisting.” I cupped her face in my hand, my thumb tracing along her cheekbone. “Let me back in. Let me remind you why you chose me.”
“I know why I chose you.” Her voice was quieter now, the anger fading into something sadder. “I just don’t know if that man still exists.”
“He exists.” I leaned in, my forehead touching hers. “He’s right here. He’s been here the whole time, buried under all the bullshit, waiting for you to pull him back out.”
“That’s a pretty speech.”
“It’s the truth.”
I closed the distance between us and kissed her.
She didn’t kiss me back at first. Just sat there with my mouth on hers, neither responding nor pulling away, making me work for it.
So I worked for it. I kissed her deeper, slower, putting everything I felt into it, every apology and every promise and every desperate hope that I hadn’t destroyed us beyond repair.
And then her hand came up to grip the back of my neck, and her mouth opened under mine, and she kissed me back with a hunger that matched my own.
“MAMA, PAPA, I SEE A DOLPHIN! I REALLY SEE ONE THIS TIME, COME LOOK!”
We broke apart, both of us breathing hard. Liana laughed, and pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Your daughter has incredible timing.”
“Our daughter has terrible timing.” I dropped my forehead to her shoulder and groaned. “Absolutely terrible.”
“PAPA, IT’S DOING JUMPS!”
“We should go look at the dolphin.” Liana pushed at my chest gently. “She’ll never forgive us if we miss the jumps.”
“I’ll look at the dolphin in a minute.” I lifted my head and looked at her, at her flushed cheeks and swollen lips and the softness that had crept back into her eyes. “First tell me we’re okay. Tell me we’re going to be okay.”
“I can’t tell you that yet.” She reached up and smoothed my hair back from my forehead, a gesture so tender it made my chest ache. “But I can tell you that I’m willing to try.”
“That’s enough.” I caught her hand and pressed my lips to her palm. “That’s more than enough.”