by Luis, Maria
Throat absurdly dry—from nerves? Guilt? Lust?—I only nod. Then blurt, “Thanks for bringing Topher home.”
Fifteen-year-old boys are not known for their subtlety. Topher snickers under his breath. “Yeah, Mom, because he had such a far way to go.”
The twenty feet separating our two houses suddenly feels even smaller than normal. I meet Dominic’s dark gaze, surprised to find that he’s actually removed his ball cap. It’s dangling from a finger down at his side, but his attention is rooted on me.
“I thought you had plans?” I ask.
“He canceled them,” Topher butts in before ambling over to Willow. “Coach said he needs to talk with you, Ma.”
My eyes fly to the laptop, which is still perched on the Adirondack chair. It sits there like a beacon of impending disaster. Slowly, I move toward it. Only a step. Nothing too obvious. “About what?”
Did he hear the moaning coming from the laptop when he walked in the house?
I hope not.
Really, really hope not.
“Adult stuff, apparently,” Topher says, which does nothing at all to alleviate my anxiety. “I don’t know. Aunt Willow, want to grab some ice cream from Cookies and Joe?”
My younger sister narrows her eyes on her nephew. “Is this blackmail? I bring you to the diner and you forget about sitting on your buddy’s front stoop for an hour?”
“Sounds like a fair trade to me.”
Willow’s grumbling is belied by the wink she sends my way. “All right, fine. You’ve twisted my arm, nephew. Ice cream it is.”
“And then after you have to bring me to the video game store before it closes.”
My kid is nothing if not an expert at maneuvering people to act in his best interests. Hiding a grin behind my closed fist, I watch my sister and son bicker their way back into the house. Over the years, they’ve built more of a brother-sister bond, considering how young I was when I first learned I was pregnant.
Willow was even younger. By the time of Topher’s birth, she had only recently turned nineteen. I was a month shy of my twenty-second birthday.
“Your son’s a swindler.”
Jumping a little, I look swiftly to Dominic. “Figured that out already, did you?”
Without waiting for me to offer him a place to sit, he takes a seat on the Adirondack chair like he owns the damn thing. Long legs planted down on the brick patio on either side of the chair, arms crossed over his chest. He drops his head back, twisting it to the left so he can still get a read on me.
Lord, those eyes of his are the very definition of temptation.
Lips tipping up in a delicious grin, Dominic says, “He’s ruthless. He’d wait till I was about to nail a ball in the hole and then—”
“Cross-check you out of the way?” I take the chair next to his, folding my legs beneath me so that I’m sitting cross-legged. “My boy did me proud.”
Laughter greets my ears, the sound deep and husky and, boy, if he only laughed more often . . . he’d need sticks to keep the women away. “Like mother, like son?”
I bat my eyelashes innocently, much the same way Topher did, and it does the trick.
More gravel-pitched laughter that does something funny to my insides. And does way more for me than the pretend Dominic DaSilva going to town on that website. I’m not sure what this says about me, besides the obvious: the real Dominic intrigues me more than he should.
“Why am I not surprised?” he muses, sounding not the least bit put out about my kid screwing him over. “You were way too eager to have me take him mini-golfing. I should have known you were up to no good.”
“I taught him everything he knows.”
“And you said I have a big ego.”
I shift forward, forearms propped up on my thighs. “Newsflash, Coach, you do have a big ego.”
Letting out a low chuckle, Dominic shakes his head. Rubs a hand over his mouth like he’s determined to kill off his lingering smile.
“What?” I ask.
“Every time I think I’ve nailed you down, you surprise me all over again.”
It takes a lot of inner strength to ignore the more-than-obvious sexual euphemism in his words. At another time, in another world—in my dreams, if we’re being honest—I wouldn’t mind being nailed down by Dominic. Simply to scratch the itch, of course. Nothing more. Licking my lips, which suddenly feel dry, I murmur, “Is surprising you . . . is that a bad thing?”
“Nah.” Black eyes flit from my naked thighs and then up, up, up to my face. I squirm under his intense stare, and all but pluck at the hem of my shorts to tug them as far down as they can go. His stare makes me feel exposed in a way that standing naked in front of a crowd never could. “Predictability is overrated.”
Something in his tone piques my curiosity. It’s the bitterness, I realize a moment later. It drips like the most toxic poison, forming in the twist of his mouth and hardening the glint in his gaze.
I sit up a little straighter. “Do you really think that?”
Sharply, he averts his face. Stares out at the crystalline bay and the green island beyond it. This part of Mount Desert Island is tucked away from the Atlantic Ocean, which means the waters in London are usually warmer than in other parts of the state.
Has Dominic made use of his private pathway down to the beach yet? It’s just there, right over the four-foot hedge separating our small, individual courtyards.
Until this moment, I hadn’t really given much thought as to how intimately our backyards are positioned. All it would take is one crook of his finger to invite me onto his side of the property . . .
“Predictability kills ambition.”
I cut my attention away from the bay and revert it back to his face. “I don’t agree.”
I watch as his jaw clenches, then releases. Like he’s making a controlled effort to go here with me—to be vulnerable.
“Give yourself three months in my shoes, Levi. You’d see it, too.”
“Then take me there.” I don’t know what I’m suggesting, what exactly I’m inviting him to open up to me about. Feeling a pinch in my heart, I drop my bare feet to the patio, feeling the rough texture of the bricks graze my soles. “You want me to see it from your perspective? Then make me see.”
He spears his fingers through his thick hair.
Then twists on his chair, too, so that we’re facing each other. His legs, so much longer than my own, rest on the outside of mine. This close to him, it’s hard to miss the thickness of his throat, the soft fullness of his lips, the overall harshness of the rest of his features. Put together with the all-black ensemble, and Dominic DaSilva should be a man I run far, far away from.
Instead, I scoot my butt forward. Allow my feet to extend out under his chair, between the V of his legs. Get all up in his business because this . . . I want to hear this. I spent years living with a man I thought I knew, only to realize that I didn’t know him at all.
Didn’t know why he stopped wanting me in the bedroom.
Didn’t understand why he chose to spend his time with people who weren’t his family.
Could never piece together how a man who vowed to love me until the day he died suddenly made me feel like I was a hindrance to his long-term plans.
Rick made me feel like an extra in his life, and when he wasn’t making me feel like a secondary cast member, he simply made me feel miserable. Hopeless. Helpless.
And while Dominic and I aren’t dating—we aren’t even remotely together—I won’t lie and say that I’m not curious to understand what makes him him.
His chest inflates with a heavy breath. Then, as though he’s preparing himself to go there with me, he drops his forearms to his thighs and comes pretty close to letting his fingers skim my knees. He doesn’t make that final connection, much to my regret. Only keeps his head bowed when he says, “The only times in my life where I’ve felt true success have come after the rug has been ripped out from beneath me. In college . . .” He trails off, then lifts his h
ead so I can see all of him. “You know what? Let me put it this way: I do best when I’ve got something driving me forward.”
“So, what? You like having your world turned upside down?”
Dark eyes pin me in place. “I thrive on feeling like I’ve hit rock bottom and have come out of it alive.”
I don’t look away. Can’t, I don’t think, even if I wanted to.
Because the fervor in his voice has me locked all the way in.
“Say it.”
At his rough demand, I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, unable to find adequate words for the thoughts spinning through my head.
“Aspen.”
My first name off his tongue is like a jolt of electricity to my system. I twitch—honest to God twitch—and fold my hands under my thighs to keep them still. My skin is sticky from the sinking sun, but even the mid-afternoon warmth heating the top of my head and shoulders can’t strip away the pleasure sinking into my bones after hearing him say my name.
Aspen.
Other than my immediate family, everyone has always referred to me as Levi. Like it’s some sort of rite of passage with becoming the next generation of Levi football royalty. After thirty-seven years, I’ve long since given up trying to convince people to use Aspen instead. Hell, even Rick called me Levi, and I was his wife.
On second thought, that probably should have been my first clue that we were doomed.
Brilliant epiphany to have fifteen years after the fact.
Go, me.
Aware that my voice is lower, more intimate than it has any right to be, I give Dominic the answer he probably doesn’t want: “I think you feed off crushing people’s opinions of you.” When his eyes widen, ever so slightly, I take it as a thumbs-up to keep going, and recall exactly what I found online before Willow showed up. “If I had to guess, it’s probably a direct result of you growing up in foster care . . . at least, how you grew up in foster care. The poor kid. The one no one wanted.”
I slip one hand out from under my thigh and lay it on his knee, taking a risk when it’s clear as day that Dominic isn’t as hands-on as his public persona would suggest he is. “So, yeah, I think you get off on proving people wrong. It’s not that predictability kills ambition—it’s that predictability, for you, means that there’s no fire behind your every move while you show the world that their vision of Dominic DaSilva is wrong.”
The lines of his face sharpen.
“Predictability is an empty space for you, when all you have is time to think about your life, and what you’d change and all the ways you’ve taken the wrong path,” I continue, because he asked for my opinion and I’ve never been one to shy away from delivering when called upon. He wanted this. It’s what I remind myself when I add, “Isn’t that the reason you went on Put A Ring On It? Because you were done with the quiet? Because you were ready, once again, to come out on top and feel . . . how did you put it? Alive?”
Silence ticks by, only interspersed by the sound of our breathing and a boat’s rudder as it cuts through the choppy water out in the bay.
I bite down on my bottom lip. Internally curse myself out for speaking out of turn.
Dominic and I aren’t friends who trade secrets and feelings and hidden truths that no one else knows but the two of us. Remember that.
Unfortunately, since coming back to London, he also feels like my only friend.
Even if the friendship is a bit one-sided.
Nothing you aren’t used to in relationships with guys.
I shove the memories of Rick in a box, turning the key and visualizing it—and him—going up in flames. Take that, you cheating, rat bastard.
Dominic’s jean-clad knee shifts beneath my hand. To my surprise, he doesn’t shove me away as he scrubs a hand over the side of his face. Then, “There you go surprisin’ me again.”
And, like I said only minutes ago, I repeat the same words back: “Is that a bad thing?”
“It is when you’re calling me out on shit that I . . .” His hand moves to cup the back of his neck. “No. No, it’s not a bad thing.”
“Maybe you’re looking at the quiet times all wrong.”
He quirks a single brow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” When I pull my hand away from his leg, his gaze tracks my retreat, and I wish—seriously wish—his expressions were more transparent. I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now. “The quiet means safety,” I tell him, hands tucked together in my lap. “Predictability means you’ve reached a point in your life where you feel good about who you are, who you’re with.”
His lips part. “Levi . . .”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the disappointment of being back where we started this conversation.
Not friends.
Not anything more.
Levi.
You’d think I would be used to it all by now.
Eyes still closed, I go on, revealing more of myself than I have to anyone in years. “Predictability means not jumping every time you hear a door slam shut or see a number you don’t recognize calling your husband’s cell phone. It means that your son—the one person in your life who you would die to protect—no longer cries at night because his father is an asshole who wouldn’t know love if it bit him in the balls.”
“Jesus fuck.”
The first time I heard Dominic use that particular four-letter soundtrack in that cool, unfeeling voice of his, it shocked me right out of my skin. It’s not unfeeling right now. Not even a little. I hear the emotion quaking to life, like a volcano ready to erupt.
Ragged.
Angry.
I pop up off the Adirondack chair, needing space between us.
Space between me and the place of my confession.
You need to breathe. That too. Talking about Rick isn’t nearly the same as living in the same house as him—I don’t need to mind my opinionated tongue or look over my shoulder every time I hear his voice echo in the house. I don’t need to wait until I’m in my car, with the locks activated, until I give into the tears. No, talking about Rick isn’t nearly the same as being stuck with him but that doesn’t mean my heart isn’t racing or that I don’t feel the least bit lightheaded from the memories.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I’m grateful for divorce attorneys.
I’m grateful for little hometowns that feel like sanctuaries.
I’m grateful for being strong enough to have this conversation with Dominic and not outwardly break down.
“Thank you for hanging out with Topher today.” I glance at him over my shoulder before I tuck my laptop under my arm for safekeeping. “I know he probably appreciated it more than he’ll ever admit out loud.”
Because Rick never took Topher mini-golfing. Hell, he can barely remember to call his only son now that we’re well outside Pittsburgh city limits.
Slowly, like a panther unfurling in the wild just before it launches at its prey, Dominic rises to his full height. “The feeling’s mutual,” he husks out. “He’s a good kid.”
“He’s the best kid.”
“I won’t deny that. Levi, I—”
“It’s okay.” I flash him a bright grin that I so wish I felt to the depths of my soul. “I didn’t open up because I expected you to have something to add back, but I just . . . Well, I wanted you to step in my shoes, too. Predictability isn’t always bad. It doesn’t always mean that you’re somehow failing or that your ambition has taken a walk and left you out in the cold.”
“I see that.” He steps close, eliminating the distance between us until he’s not even a hand’s width away from me. “You made me see that.”
His fingers curl up, the backs of his knuckles hovering a hair’s breadth away from my face.
And I breathe.
In and out, like I haven’t sucked in real oxygen in years.
My gaze shoots up to meet his.
Behind the wide breadth of his shoulders, the sun has begun its descent. Pinks and mauves mar the ho
rizon, turning the sky into my favorite color-painted mural. The sunsets in Pittsburgh never once came close to those here in my hometown.
In and out.
More clean, crisp air filtering in and out of my lungs. Fueling my soul.
“Dominic?”
Disappointment is swift and merciless as his hand drops to his side and he falls back a step. “I had you all wrong,” is all he says cryptically, like that’s supposed to make sense to me.
It doesn’t.
I clutch my laptop to my chest. Turn away to head back into the house through the open French doors. “Topher said you wanted to talk to me about something?”
“It had to do with the team but . . . it can wait.”
I look over at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s not urgent.”
He only makes it a few steps before he whirls around, hips squared off and his Adam’s apple bobbing down the length of his throat. “I lied.”
I blink. “About . . .?”
“Having plans tonight. I didn’t—I don’t.”
My arms tighten around my laptop. “I mean, I figured that was the case.” I force a light chuckle in hope of easing his strained expression. “It’s okay, Dominic. We’re not going to hold it against you, even though I am a pretty good cook, if I do say so myself.”
“I needed today and your kid . . . you were right.” As if agitated, he rakes his fingers through his hair. “I came by because I wanted to say thank you. For giving me exactly what I needed when I didn’t even know.” With the smallest of smiles, he adds, “I hit a home run.”
I hit a home run.
I know exactly what he means—Topher did that for him, made Dominic laugh the way he’s always kept me seeing the good in people all these years.
Before I have the chance to respond, Dominic is striding through my living room to the front door like he’s some good civilian letting himself out when we both know he could have just hopped the hedge between our yards and called it a day.
And then I sit on my sofa and open my laptop. I’m quick to click out of the role-play porno, but hesitate over the next tab. The one with an article dated to 2014, a year before Dominic’s exit from the NFL.
