Fast Connection (Cyberlove #2) (26 page)

“Okay but…” Micah seemed to weight whether he should press on, and ultimately did so. “I know I shouldn’t be asking for favors, but can you make more of an effort to talk to her? Rather than just assuming she’s some delinquent? She thinks you despise her.”

“I don’t think she’s a delinquent.” He gave me a look. “Honestly, I don’t. I think she makes bad choices, because she’s trying to rebel against her family.”

“That’s true, but she’s not a bad person. She can’t help it that her family is a mess. They weren’t always this bad either. But she said the shop is losing money and there’s a chance they might lose their house.”

I curled my fingers around the steering wheel as my chest tightened. Fuck. I knew about that. I’d been willing to help them too, but there was no way Duffy would accept my help now. Maybe Dominic wouldn’t either.

I wanted to go back to simple, when I wasn’t trying to mesh my life with someone else’s. When I wasn’t in love.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Micah said softly. “I know it was wrong, but I promise I won’t do it again.”

Right, focus on parenting. “Get out of the truck. Go to your room. And stay there until I calm down.” And
have a drink.

Micah nodded and paused halfway getting out of the car. “What about Nicky?”

“What about him?” I demanded.

“Are you two… gonna be okay?”

“That’s for me to figure out.”

He nodded and inched closer to the door. “If you stay together, is he going to move in with us?”

It took my brain a minute to catch up. “Uh.”

“Because Chelle and I wouldn’t mind.”

Why was this conversation happening? “How do you know?”

“We talked about it.”

Great. “Well I don’t think that’s happening.” At least not now.

Micah nodded and slid out of his seat.

Once I stepped into the house, I made a beeline for the refrigerator. It was before dinner but fuck it. The cold beer tasted damn good sliding down my throat. I grabbed a bag of peas out of the fridge and held them to my jaw as I waited for Nadia to arrive.

Dominic

The house was completely silent except for the large wall clock ticking and the sound of my mother’s muffled sobs. She’d taken one look at my father’s busted up face and had lost it. We hadn’t even been able to explain before he’d hustled her into the bedroom to calm her down.

I’d never seen my mother this upset, and it had crushed the last remaining bit of my own self-control. Grabbing some hard liquor from the living room cabinet had seemed like a good idea, as well as grabbing a pack from my mother’s secret cigarette stash. Except instead of drinking and smoking, I was sitting in the backyard with my head in my hands replaying that fight over and over in my head.

When a hand fell on my shoulder, I spun around with wild eyes and raised fists. Adriana stood there staring at me like I was a lunatic.

“Are you melting down too?”

Deflating, I slumped down to the steps again to stare at the yard. It wasn’t anything special, but my mother had the same obsession with gardening as Luke, so there were shrubs and flowers everywhere. She said it helped to calm her.

“Nah. Not really.”

“Are you sure?” Adriana pointed to the box of cigarettes and bottle of Jack Daniel’s by my feet. “I haven’t seen this version of Nicky since before you went to the army. When I was little and you’d get in fights all over the neighborhood after talking too much trash while drunk or high.”

“Yeah, well, there were reasons for that.”

“What was the reason?” she asked, joining me on the steps. She’d finally changed into her customary mostly black ensemble, but her hair was messy and her eyes were bloodshot. “You just liked to fight?”

“Heh. No. It was just easier to talk shit to random people since I was always too scared to defend myself to Mom or Dad once they started in on me.”

Adriana chewed on that for a moment, and then haltingly asked, “Dad never used to hit you, did he?”

“No. Everyone thought he did because he was a scary mofo, but our only physical fight was on Thanksgiving.”

She nodded slowly and looked at her bare toes. “Do you think he wanted to hurt Micah?”

I snorted. “No. He shouldn’t have laid hands on the kid, but I think he was reacting to Micah grabbing you the same way Micah reacted to Pops grabbing you. They were both being protective. Dad just has no fucking self-control and doesn’t think.”

“Yeah…” Her eyes narrowed. “That was stupid. All of it. I don’t need Micah and Dad acting like I need men defending my honor.”

“Dudes like feeling like grand protectors when it comes to women.”

“So what was the deal with Micah’s dad?”

Fuck. She had me there. I still couldn’t stop picturing him trying his best to crush my father’s face, but I managed to cobble together a reasonable response.

“Same deal as Dad. All he saw was some guy laying a hand on his kid, and he lost it. It’s just instincts, I guess.”

“Right.”

I sneaked a look at her and worried that she was doing what Luke had expected me to do—choose a side instead of trying to see both points of view.

“Look, I know it sucks on both their parts, but you don’t need to feel obligated to pick a side. They both acted like idiots, if you want my opinion. And I’m saying that while loving them both.”

Her head whipped over to me so fast, hair slapped my face. “You’re in love with Micah’s dad?”

“I’m in love with Luke Rawlings,” I muttered. “Anyway, they both made mistakes, but this isn’t Romeo and Juliet. No one’s going to keep you apart. I think. And you don’t have to hate either of them.”

“I don’t,” she said. “But do you think they’ll hate each other?”

Definitely. Dad would never come back from Luke pounding him, especially in front of his neighbors, without some kind of elaborate apology or meeting of the minds. And judging by Luke’s parting snarl, that would never happen.

“I don’t know. I think they both need to apologize to each other.” Sighing, I slumped on the steps. The wood dug into the small of my back, but I ignored the discomfort. It was almost grounding. “Dad never used to be this bad. He was always a big-mouth who… had no idea how to be, you know, sweet or loving. And he was always so fucking hard on me, but this money thing has turned him into a real nightmare. I dunno how you’ve put up with it for all these years.”

“Video games.” She seemed to wait for me to mock her and smiled slightly when I didn’t. “A lot of people don’t get it, but… playing
Fallen World
has kept me sane. When I play, I’m not me anymore—I’m a badass elf hawkeye. And there are dicks in the game, plenty of them, but I can take them out because I’m strong. Or if I’m not strong enough, I can get there. There’s so much to do, and so many people to interact with, that it takes me away from everything at home.”

“It makes sense.”

Adriana looked at me with surprise. “It does?”

“Yup. People do all kinds of things to lose themselves and escape real life.” I nudged a foot at the unopened bottle of Jack. “A video game is a pretty damn healthy alternative to some other shit.”

“Wow. I didn’t expect you to get it. Micah is the first person to understand.”

“Heh. Nah, I get it. Trust me.” For me, partying, fighting, and fucking had been my outlet. Video games were way better. “Is it the same for Micah?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. His home life is basically perfect. He gets into the game, but he gets involved with every game. He’s not as… emotionally invested as me, or whatever.”

“Gotcha.” Her entire demeanor had changed at the mention of Micah’s home life, and I couldn’t help poking at it more. “Why aren’t you two dating?”

“Luke Rawlings doesn’t like me.”

“So what?”

“So what’s the point? Family will always be more important than some random girl down the block. When it comes down to it, he’ll do what his father says as he gets older. And also…” She shrugged. “I hate not feeling good enough. I don’t want to be someone’s charity case.”

“Oh come on, Ad—”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “What happens when he goes off to some amazing college and I’m stuck at home going to a city college on the island? I’d rather we just… be friends rather than him feeling obligated to be with me because he feels bad.”

It hit far too close to home, and that tightened the fist around my heart. My thoughts flew back to Luke.

“You don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

“I know,” she said. “But me thinking it is almost as bad as it being true. Sometimes it’s hard to even talk about my life because I know I sound pathetic compared to him. I hate not feeling good enough.”

And wasn’t that the goddamn truth.

I swallowed the knot swelling in my throat and put an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll be fine, baby girl. We both will.”

She sighed but didn’t pull away. We sat together on the porch until the late fall chill penetrated her clothes and she went back inside. I knew I should do the same, but my thoughts were spinning between the fight, Luke’s words, and the future.

This weekend should have been a turning point for us. No more quickies or stolen moments. It had almost felt like a test drive for whether we could handle being around each other for longer periods of time, and I knew that we would have passed it with flying colors had the convention nonsense not happened.

But did the “could have” count for shit when we’d totally failed to come out unscathed from that bump in the road? A couple of moments of unease and worry, and we’d gone right back to being two strangers who had nothing to do with each other’s lives outside the bedroom.

I uncoiled myself from the cramped sitting position and strode out of the backyard and to the front of the house. I was walking to Luke’s house before I could stop myself, and before I knew it, I was at his front door.

Instead of knocking, I texted him to open up, and he did a few minutes later.

Luke was wearing the same clothes he’d had on a couple of hours earlier, but the shadow of a bruise was growing on his jaw. Yesterday, I would have kissed the bruise before trailing my lips down his strong body, but now I shifted from foot to foot.

“We need to talk.”

His face went grim. He took a step back, but I shook my head.

“No, just come out here.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to discuss it with your kids home.”

He looked close to protesting, but his gaze flicked over his shoulder. One step and we were nearly chest-to-chest in the gloom of the night with only a faint streetlight illuminating the world. He looked bigger like this—cast in shadows and silent.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” I said in a low rush. “About everything that happened since yesterday.”

Luke nodded. “So have I.”

“Good.” I rubbed my hands together, trying to force myself to stop fidgeting. It was like my hands were searching for a way to distract me from the twisting in my chest. “I don’t think we fit the way we want to.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means as it stands right now we don’t fit into each other’s lives.” My heart squeezed tighter, but I swallowed the growing lump in my throat and forced my eyes away, focusing on anything but him. Because somehow it hurt more that he didn’t look surprised. Unhappy, but definitely not surprised. “I was thinking about what you said about having separate boxes and what happens when they overlap, and it’s starting to look like ours will never fit together correctly, you know? You don’t want me to say anything when something goes down with your kids, and you clearly have absolutely… no desire to function when it comes to my family. And that’s not something either of us can ignore.”

“Dominic.” Luke took a step forward, forcing me to retreat. Even in the darkness, his blue eyes glittered. “He put his hands on Micah, and I snapped.”

“Yeah, I get it. And I know about snapping. My father takes me there too. But… I think you would have been less likely to wail on someone if you didn’t already have this preconceived notion that they’re trash. And I kind of think that if you weren’t so fucking quick to tell me to step aside and put me back into the fuck-buddy-from-Grindr role, maybe you’d have thought twice before slugging my father. Maybe you would have been a little more worried about how I’d react. And whether I’d forgive you.”

“You’re reading a hell of a lot into this,” Luke rasped. “I snapped. I’m sorry. It doesn’t have anything to do with you—”

“It has everything to do with me,” I said harshly.

Luke kept going. “—and you’re right, I don’t have a lot of respect for your family. But that
doesn’t
have anything to do with you. You breaking up with me over your family—”

“Dude, just think about how you reacted as soon as something happened with the kids. I was your first scapegoat. The reason why you were too distracted to be able to have tabs on Micah at all times. I wasn’t the guy you care about—I was a fucking obstacle. A problem.”

And to that, Luke didn’t have an immediate reply. He inhaled deeply, looked back at the house again, and then released a slow exhale. It was shakier than usual, and his hands were fisted at his sides.

“Maybe you’re right. Our lives are too different.”

I’d wanted him to understand, but the sound of his agreement cracked my heart in two. It was a struggle not to buckle in front of him, but it felt like every drop of light in the past couple of months was being yanked away from me and now the world would be forever dark.

“And…” I cleared my throat. “And I have my own hang-ups, you know. I’m so worried about what you think of me and how I can work my way into your life, that I don’t focus enough on fixing my own. Because I’m quick to accept that something feels good enough for now. I’m always so busy trying to get people to want me or like me or listen to me, and nothing else gets done for the long term. I’m still floating aimlessly, man. And that makes it so I’ll never feel like I could be good enough for you.”

“You being good enough was never in question.” Luke shifted forward as if he wanted to grab me, but his hands faltered and dropped. “Don’t ever think that. And don’t ever give up on your goals. I know you want to help your father but you need to fucking worry about yourself. Go to the EMT classes.”