by Debbie Civil
Chapter 42
Carmen
I’m pacing with the phone pressed to my ear. I’m not sure why I bother. The same thing has been happening, and I’ve been getting nothing but voice mail greetings.
“Hey, you’ve reached me, Eli, and don’t just leave me an ordinary voice mail. Leave me something crazy after the beep!” Her stupid greeting is grating on my nerves. I clutch my jaw and of course, at the beep, I, in fact, leave something crazy.
“Eli, this is the fifteenth voice mail that I’ve left you. Do you have your phone off? Maybe you’re ignoring me. If you don’t want to be heard from, send me an e-mail or a text. At least, then I’ll know that you’re alive. A lot of stuff is going down and I didn’t want to tell you by voice mail. But now, I don’t have a choice. Uncle Ian has been arrested for Amy’s murder. I’ll give you more details when you contact me,” I hiss and then hit end. Without pause, I select Peter’s number and call him.
“Hi Carmen.” The fact that the guy has answered is throwing me off. I plop down on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what to say.
“Sorry,” is all I can manage.
“It’s okay, Carmen. Chelsea will come around. Believe me. She’s just being irrational at the moment.
“Are you all right?” He pauses and then lets out a sigh.
“No. But I will be. When I chose to marry your cousin, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. How about you?”
“What about me?” It baffles me that Peter’s even bothering to ask how I’ve been.
“Carmen, this must be hard for you. How is your father?”
“Cranky. He came home today. We want to go back to Connecticut, but my parents don’t want to leave Grandma.”
“And you refused to go back without them,” Peter guesses.
“No. I don’t want to. And besides I…” I lose my train of thought when someone knocks on the door.
“Carmen?” Peter seems confused by my silence. Before I can tell him to hold on, a key is placed in the lock, and the door is swung open. Dom swaggers in, confidence written all over his face.
“Dom’s here. I’ll call you back,” I tell Peter before hanging up. The idiot is dressed in blue jeans, a button down, and a pair of black sandals. His hair is damp from the shower that he probably just took, and his face is drawn. It looks as if Dom hasn’t slept since his mother birthed him.
“Carmen, I figured that we could talk,” he begins.
“About what?”
“I want you to go back to Connecticut,” he bluntly confesses, which makes me angry.
“Excuse me! I can’t believe that you would…”
“Hear me out. I don’t think that all of this drama is good for you. Danny’s parents are staying because they are loyal best friends. But the rest of the Jones family is clearing out. Max has to go back for football camp, Kailey is vacationing with a group of friends in Spain, and Danny is visiting a college friend in Maine. I think that Jake’s heading back to work. Since Chelsea and Peter aren’t here, why bother sticking around? Anyone that could possibly keep you company is gone,” Dom argues.
“Let me guess, you want to parade another girlfriend around here. Are you afraid that I’m going to get hurt? Dom, I don’t love you, so you don’t need to worry about my feelings,” I snap and hurt flashes across the guy’s face, which confuses me. What other reaction did he think I was going to have? He should have braced himself before coming in here.
“Carmen, what if Kate comes back? You’ll be one of her targets. She knows that you know. Just think about it. Your father is a grown man and even he was taken down by her. You are fragile. Just…”
“I handled her just fine,” I say, not liking that Dom’s trying to call me weak. “Besides, Grandma had all of the locks changed along with the security code. No one who left could come back in. Since I haven’t gone blabbing to the police, she isn’t going to bother going after me,” I reason.
“Carmen, I love you.” His words are filled with the passion that I had longed for once upon a time. His eyes are intense, and the only thing I feel is guilt because he clearly is broken up about me not feeling the same way. “Carmen, I should have told you how I felt. But I made a few mistakes that I can’t take back. I knew that I could never be good enough for you. That’s why I pushed you away. You have to know that I always loved you. Please, go back home. You’ll be safer there, and I won’t have to worry about you. Please, go,” Dom pleads. I honestly don’t know what to say to Dom. Okay, there is plenty that needs to be said. The number one thing about this is that Dom should have told me how he felt. He shouldn’t have hidden his feelings away from me. What mistakes did he make that made him unworthy of me? I have to know why he rejected me.
“I’ll leave,’” I begin, feeling a bit reluctant about gambling with this.
“Really?”
“If you tell me why you insisted on rejecting me so many times.” He downright humiliated me. I hadn’t been upfront about liking Dom to everyone, but people knew and laughed at me. They all thought that I was chasing Dom for no reason. Dom groans, as if telling me what he did is downright painful. Before he can utter a word, Jake waltzes in, his eyes locking on me. Despite it all, I can’t help myself. I run into his arms and give him a tight squeeze. I had heard everything that he said to Jill. As I was about to go to bed, I overheard Jill telling Danny that she was going to have a conversation with Jake on the patio. After Jill and Danny entered the elevator, I slipped into a pair of socks and walked out of one of the rarely used side doors and walked around the house toward the Patio. I was careful to stay out of sight. When Jake had described what I meant to him, I started crying. No one had ever said so many nice things about me before. Since I was supposed to be sleeping, I didn’t meet up with Jake after his talk.
“Am I interrupting something?” Jake asked me after I disengaged myself from him. I sigh.
“Dom was just going to tell us what he did that was so sinful. Evidently, he has been in love with me for some time. But he didn’t go for me because he screwed up bad and doesn’t think that he’s good enough for me,” I paraphrase. Jake frowns.
“Why do you want to hear this?” Jake seems put out by this.
“Because, he made me look like an idiot for years. When, he could have put me out of my misery. I don’t love Dom. But I still want to know why he did what he did,” I explain.
“Does Jake have to be here for this?” Dom whines.
“Hey, you really want me to go home, don’t you?” Dom sits on my bed, and Jake pulls me over to the couch and we sit side by side. I grab his hand and entwine our fingers, and he seems pleased by that.
“Fair enough,” Dom says, but I have the sense that he’s talking about my choosing to be with Jake.
“Get on with it,” Jake urges and Dom sighs.
“Carmen, I’m not going to lie to you. I wish that Jake wasn’t here. But I understand why he has to be,” Dom begins. “He’s smart. I think that I would have kissed you if he hadn’t been here. By the way, I shouldn’t have kissed you. I was just so angry and wanted to prove that you were still into me,” he explains. Dom pauses and this is where I’m supposed to except his apology.
“I forgive you,” I say, only because I suspect that he wouldn’t continue otherwise.
“Carmen, I’ve always wanted to be with you. But your father and my mother were opposed to the idea. Your father doesn’t like me. He made that clear during your eighteenth birthday party. My mother wanted me with Danny. Kailey is too weird for her liking. So I asked her out. But… This is hard for me to get out. Give me a minute,” Dom tells us. Then, he closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. “Carmen, the reason I never pursued a relationship with you is because Tia and I have a thing. I’m Alec’s real father. I begged her not to tell anyone, so she made up a bogus story about a fake gym teacher. I’m crazy about her, Carmen. And I’m also crazy about you, which is twisted. But I left Tia all alone to raise Alec because I didn’t want to be
a father. I have to make things right,” Dom decides. I glance down at the ground, not wanting to meet his eyes. So this is why Dom insists on hanging around. I wonder why Tia tried to invite Donald to a tea party. Maybe it was a ploy to get him jealous.
“So you love them both at the same time?” Jake asks, confused.
“I think so. Though, I’m leaning toward being with Tia. I want us to be a family. I will win her back. After I get you out of here, I’m going to convince her to bring Alec to my house. It’s time that my parents met their grandchild,” Dom tells us.
“She isn’t going to go,” I warn him. “Not after you abandoned Alec.”
