“I want to finish this conversation.”
“It’s fine.”
“Are you fine?”
“Yes,” I laugh, peeking through the peephole. “Dom’s here. Let me call you back.”
“Fine, fine. Have fun with the man.”
I end the call and pull open the door. “Hey, babe.” My smile falters as I see the look on his face. “Dom, what’s wrong?”
His jaw is set, his eyes cold, as he storms in past me. He’s on the verge of exploding, barely containing the energy that’s threatening to boil over. I can see it. Feel it. Take a step backwards because of it.
“Dom?” I ask again, shutting the door. My stomach flips as I wait for some kind of inkling as to what’s happening. “What’s going on?”
With his eyes trained on a spot across the room, he speaks. “If you have something you want to tell me, now would be the time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Now, Cam.”
“I have nothing to tell you,” I say, bewildered. “Why . . . what . . . I’m so confused.”
At the pace of a snail, he pivots on his heel. His glare is a mixture of anger and resentment as it settles on me. “Did you loan money to Nate?”
The look in his eye has a new meaning and I feel my hands tremble. “Yes,” I say, clearing my throat. “I did.”
“Goddamn it,” he growls, running a hand through his hair. “Why in the hell did you do that?”
“He’s going to pay me back.”
“Don’t you get it?” he says, laughing through his teeth. “It isn’t about whether he pays you back or not, because he will. I know that. You know that. He knows that.”
There are too many words on the tip of my tongue to get one out. I just look up at him as he towers over me, his shoulders set back so he’s at full height, and try to wrap my brain around this.
“Then what’s the problem?” I ask, choosing my words with care. “He needed it. I have it. So what?”
“So what?” he asks, raising a brow. “It’s never occurred to you how abnormal it looks to just wire someone ten thousand dollars?
“No. I just helped your brother out. I—”
“Listen to me,” he says, taking a step my way, “you didn’t just help my brother out. You fucked yourself over.”
“What?” I stammer. “I . . . This is crazy. You’re crazy.”
Giving him a glare of my own, I push by him and head into the kitchen. The light is bright, streaming in from the window that overlooks the golf course behind my house. The sponge I just tossed in the sink still lies there and I wonder if there is a way to rewind the last few minutes and go back to talking to Sienna.
Instead, his footsteps ring through the hallway and into the room behind me. With a final look at the serenity outside, I turn to face him. He’s standing by the island watching me. His jaw is a little less clenched, but there’s no smile on his handsome face.
“I’m so mad right now . . .” He blows out a breath, his hand shaking as he runs it through his hair. “I shouldn’t even be here. I’m just gonna go.”
“No, wait,” I say as he turns away. “Stay. Please.”
“This isn’t something your little smile can fix.”
“But I don’t understand. What did I do that was so wrong?”
Looking at the ceiling, his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. His chest is rising and falling so quickly, I know he’s trying to calm himself. I’ve seen him like this one time before when a guy said something disgusting to me at The Gold Room. If it weren’t for Nate, I’m not sure he wouldn’t have ended up in jail that night.
“You just proved them right,” he says simply. I wait for more, but that’s it. That’s all he says.
“I proved who right?”
“Everyone.” His arms stretch to the sides, his eyes blazing. “You proved them all fucking right. Except, you know what? They aren’t fucking right.”
“What?” I shake my head, trying to make sense of this insanity as he just stares at me like he’s going to shoot fireballs my way. “What does being right and them—whoever they are—and my loan to Nate have to do with each other?”
“You’re not stupid. Think about it.”
“Um . . .”
He forces a smile, but it’s lethal. “If you’d given him a thousand, two, five—I would’ve been annoyed but not pissed. It’s ten thousand dollars, Cam. Is this normal behavior for you? To just shoot large sums of money to someone else’s account?”
“Of course not,” I huff.
He takes a deep, haggard breath before looking at me again. Blinking back tears, I stand immobilized in the kitchen and watch him struggle to find the words he wants to say.
“I know you think your family will hate me.”
“That’s not true,” I say, although it’s not completely false either.
“Nah, it is. That’s just the truth.” He looks around the kitchen before settling his gaze on me again. “I can’t say I blame you for thinking that or them for feeling that way. Look at me. Look at you.”
“I am looking at you,” I gulp. “And I know that even if they don’t . . . even if it takes a second for some of them to accept the idea, it won’t be because of you, Dominic.”
He nods. “I agree with that. It’ll be because of everything else. Of shit like this—of appearances and assumptions.”
Forcing a swallow, I watch the depth of the blues of his eyes swirl together. They’re a tidal wave of unnamed emotions that I could lose myself in . . . in more ways than one.
“When did you start caring about assumptions?” I ask through the dryness of my throat.
My question does nothing to stop the intensity etching his face or the way his eyes are dead-set on mine. “When I agreed to go with you to meet your brother.”
As the words come out, his hands go through his hair, lifting the silky locks and tugging them in frustration. It’s like he knows he’s opened a can of worms and now he has no choice but to take off the lid and let the contents spill, no matter how painful.
“I thought if I went that maybe, you know, this thing between us could . . .”
“What, Dom?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was going to be something for a while. Maybe I wasn’t going to wake up one morning and see you’d realized you’re better off without me.”
I can’t even respond to that. My heart tightens, physically paining me that he ever even considered that, while I’m speechless at the realization that maybe he’d hoped for that too.
Then reality hits. That was all in past tense.
“Do you still hope for that?” I ask, biting back a rush of emotion that will only complicate things.
“Can I? Really?” His shoulders lift, almost touching his ears, before falling. “Your family is everything to you. Here I am, about to meet them, and look at what I’m walking in to. They say you can’t make a first impression twice. You’ve just taken my ability to make a decent one.”
“No, I didn’t.”