never a father to me.”
“What a coincidence. You were always a disappointment to me.”
He strode away, coat billowing in the wind, looking like the villain he was.
I was so angry I was shaking.
“Dom?”
Ally. How much had she seen? How much of him had she seen in me?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I insisted, refusing to look at her. I didn’t want her anywhere near this. Anywhere near the feelings that my father brought out in me. I didn’t want to taint her.
She reached for my hand and squeezed it. But I pulled out of her grasp.
“Dominic, listen to me. You’re nothing like him,” she said quietly.
“I said I don’t want to discuss it,” I snapped, blindly looking over her head. I couldn’t look her in the eye. She’d seen us side by side. There was no way to deny the similarities.
“Let’s go back inside,” she said.
I followed her, careful not to touch her. And when we sat, I ordered a drink. A double.
If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
64
Ally
I decided to give Dominic some space that night. Sometimes time and space were the only things that could heal the hurt. So I used my time in my second favorite way. I ran my dance class through a challenging routine that left them all sweaty and gasping by the end. But we’d rocked it, and everyone, myself included, left grinning.
It was the last class of the night, and rather than hurrying home to Dominic as had become my habit, I cued up a new playlist.
The song started. And I let my hips and shoulders find the driving beat.
Dancing helped me physically move through the things that were bothering me. Like the fact that Dominic felt comfortable sweeping into my life and solving all my problems for me but wouldn’t or couldn’t share his own problems.
Yeah, okay. So there was the typical “I don’t want to talk about it” guy thing that seemed to come encoded in the Y chromosome. But his vault preset was something different. His “I don’t want to talk about it” came with a side of “I don’t trust you.”
I was hurt.
More importantly, I was worried.
I knew as well as anyone what scars parents could leave on children. But I also wasn’t in the position to start a conversation about the future. Not yet.
Spinning around, I kicked high to the right. I danced and moved and crawled my way through the song and then another and another until my shirt was soaked in sweat and my muscles sang.
I kept going until I felt loose and strong. Until I felt happy again.
I took that happy home with me. The door to Dominic’s office on the second floor was closed, so I headed up to the bedroom and showered. Brownie was nowhere to be found, which meant he was probably staring lovingly at his grumpy dad.
The door was still closed when I came down in my robe. So I warmed up some dinner and ate alone in the kitchen. I gave it another ten minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I knocked and then opened the door on his terse, “Yeah?”
He looked troubled. Brownie was sprawled at his feet, eyes mournful.
“Dom?” I paused in the doorway.
He looked up, and I saw the brightening in his eyes.
He patted his desk, and I crossed the room to him. I stepped between his open legs, and he dropped his forehead to my stomach, his fingers toying with the belt of my robe.
The knuckles on his right hand were split and bruised. But I knew it was his heart that had taken the most damage.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked softly.
He looked up at me. His eyes and that shadow of a smile were sad. “Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
He gripped my hips and lifted me onto his desk. “You can ask me for something.”
“Anything in particular?”
“I want you to ask me for something only I can give you. Something you need. I want you to need me.”
If I’d had a shot at Paul Russo, I wouldn’t stop until his face looked like ground beef. Then I’d wax his entire head, toss a stick of dynamite down his pants, and kick him off a pier into shark-infested waters.
“What’s that look mean?” he asked, his smile warming now.
“You probably don’t want to know.”
His hands slipped inside the robe and skimmed up my outer thighs. That tiny, butterfly-light touch sent my attention-whore lady parts into a tizzy.
What could I