Dom wins.
He carries me through the fucking snow. Singing. Only for the last quarter mile, but still.
“Damn,” I mutter when he sets me down at the edge of the parking lot, my teeth clicking with shivers now that I don’t have his delicious warmth pressed up against me. “I really wanted that jacket.”
The man gives me a cocky smile and a deep chuckle as he scoops up my hand and draws me across the gravel toward our car. It’s the last one left in the lot.
“Maybe I’ll let you borrow it.” Dom holds my door open for me, and once again I notice I don’t instinctively prickle at the caretaking gesture.
Because we’re friends. I’m being a good friend, like Josh wanted.
I should’ve known that even snow wouldn’t be able to force Dom to lose control of a car. As we leave the trailhead, the flakes start to fall in heavy clumps, but he simply turns on the four-wheel drive and guides us through the storm.
A trip to North Dakota isn’t going to happen today, and we decide to try our luck at the bed and breakfast I booked us last night. As I’m entering the address into Dom’s phone’s GPS, an incoming message pops up.
“You have a text from Adam.”
“Read it to me.” He keeps his focus on the road that’s quickly turning white.
I dramatically clear my throat and try to sound like Dom’s younger brother.
Adam: I need some advice about an opportunity.
The message goes into detail about how some big-name artisanal furniture designer offered him a full-time paid gig working in his shop after graduation, but Adam is worried about giving up on swimming when it was always the plan to pursue the Olympics.
I’ve seen some of Adam’s work when he posts pictures and videos on his socials, but I didn’t realize woodworking was anything more than a hobby. Guilt scratches at my heart. I should have kept up with him all these years. Now Adam and Carter are practically strangers. There’s so much to rebuild between us, so much I missed while hiding away on the other side of the country.
“What should I text back?” I ask.
Dom rests his left elbow on the car door and pinches his bottom lip, appearing thoughtful. And my traitorous body starts tingling and growing overly warm as I stare at the contemplating man.
“Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow to talk it through.”
“Got it.” I start typing. “How many emojis should I use?”
“None.”
“Three it is. The thoughtful face lets him know you’re thinking deeply about what he asked. And then the smiling one with hearts tells him you appreciate that he came to you with such an important question. What should the third one be?”
“Maddie.” His warning tone doesn’t intimidate me.
“I’m a fan of the kissy face—”
“I’m pulling over.”
“Fine! Fine, no emojis. But don’t blame me if your message reads like nonsense without them.”
Even as I teased Dom, I had already sent off his basic text and got a thumbs-up from Adam in response. I settle the phone back on the dashboard mount so Dom knows where to go, and hope we arrive before the snow picks up. After a handful of mile markers pass, I voice a question that’s been nagging me.
“Why do you think Adam texted you, and not your parents? To ask about the apprenticeship?”
Mr. Perry might have a busy work schedule, but I know he loves his kids and makes time for them. And Emilia is one of the sweetest women I know. I bet she’d love to hear about Adam’s job offer.
I never called Cecilia, because she never cared about my life.
I always called Josh.
Or I figured things out on my own.
I guess that second one is my only option now.
Dom tilts his head side to side, letting out a delicious joint crack with each movement. “Mom and Dad are supportive of whatever, but they also have this expectation that we figure things out on our own. Especially with the twins being adults now.” He grimaces. “In theory, it might sound like a good parenting technique. Let your kids try, fail, learn, and make sure they take responsibility for their mistakes.”
“You don’t agree?”
Dom scratches the back of his neck. “To an extent. But I would’ve appreciated advice sometimes. From someone who’d lived life longer than me. From someone I trusted.”
“And that’s what you do for Adam and Carter?”
“When they let me.”
Not for the first time, I think back on their family dynamic. The Perry parents were always fun, and buoyant, and happy to cheer whoever on. They were kind and loving.
But Mr. Perry also spent a lot of hours working at the hospital and Emilia’s nonprofit demanded way more than a forty-hour workweek. Dom was the responsible one at home, taking on a parent-like role for his younger siblings.
“They look up to you,” I say.
Dom huffs a laugh. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean they listen to me.”
“Sure they do.” I keep going when Dom throws me a skeptical side-eye. “Okay, maybe not one hundred percent of the time. But they listen to you more than anyone else.”
“Not more than you.”
I open my mouth to argue, but all that comes out is “What?”
Dom keeps his eyes on the snowy road. “You’re the one they listen to. You’re the Perry twins whisperer.” His lips tick up in a smirk that immediately fades as his fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “With everything that happened, I never got a chance to thank you. For how you helped us out. That summer.”
That summer.
The one after my freshman year of college, when I saw Dom for the first time in months. He’d always had an air of responsibility, but the first few days of that summer, I was afraid he was going to combust from repressed anxiety.
His mother’s car accident almost destroyed him.
I’ve always thought of it as the summer Dom discarded me. But it’s also the summer when an illegal left turn plowed into the side of Mrs. Perry’s Prius and sent the woman to the hospital. The same one where her husband worked.
How must that have felt, for Nathanial to learn his wife was a few floors down in the ER, battered, bruised, and bleeding?
I never talked with Dom’s dad about it—we weren’t close like that—but I do know he took off work for maybe the first time in his whole life. Emilia was laid up in bed for weeks, needing help with everything, then she had to go to PT. Dom was supposed to start a full-time internship, but Josh told me Mr. Perry wanted him to turn it down and take care of his brothers and help with his mom when the surgeon had to return to work.
Yes, I helped, but it was selfish, really. I wanted to escape my grandmother and spend more time around the Perrys. I wanted to pretend their family was mine as much as I could.
“I spent the summer poolside.” I shrug. “Not a hardship.”
“Just you being around made everything easier.” He taps a random rhythm on the wheel with his thumbs. “Adam had a huge crush on you.”
I snort. “You were a fan of your teenage brother lusting after me? Didn’t seem so happy about it at the funeral.”
Dom stares straight ahead, but I spy the corner quiver that tells me he’s fighting against a smile.
“You know…” I adopt a contemplative tone. “Maybe I should be making these trips with Adam. Since I was so pivotal in his life.”
“Not happening,” Dom grumbles without an ounce of heat. He reaches over and claims my hand, his long fingers interlocking with mine.
For a moment, I sit motionless, trying to come to terms with the casually affectionate touch.
Is this what friends do? They hold hands?
Even if they do, I don’t think the heat of a friend’s palm is supposed to send achy flutters shooting through my body.
Still, I manage to breathe normally. No stutters or gasps to have Dom questioning the move.
He also tried to hold my hand on the glow worm trip. Maybe Dom just likes to grasp things.
“Let’s get back to why Adam having a crush was a good thing,” I press, resolving to ponder friendship hand-holding later. “In your opinion.”
Dom sighs but relents. “He did anything you told him. If Mom or Dad or I asked him to take out the garbage, it would’ve been fifteen minutes of complaining followed by a half-assed job.” His eyes sweep over me before returning to the road. “You’d come over and say, ‘Adam, stop being lazy and go take out the trash.’ He sprinted. Chore done in record time. No complaints. Back again asking for more.”
Now that I think about it, I do recall Emilia and Dom asking me to convey a lot of simple requests to Adam. At the time, I was happy to help in any way, even if that meant being a courier pigeon. But apparently, I was also acting as a buffer against teenage rebellion. The thought has me fighting another snort of laughter.
“Did you know Carter is dyslexic?” The random piece of information throws me out of my humorous mood.
“I-I…No. I didn’t.” Another detail I might have known if I hadn’t disappeared from their lives.
The half of Dom’s smile I can see looks pained. “None of us did for a while. What we did know was that he was smart but doing bad in school. Mom would let out these hopeless sighs whenever report cards came out. Dad would get so frustrated. I mean, the man was all about hands-free, figure it out, but then got aggravated when you didn’t figure it out. Carter…he couldn’t do anything. He didn’t know what was wrong. He would just shut down.” Dom rubs a thumb over my knuckles. “I think that’s why Adam started acting out. To take the pressure off Carter. Yeah, maybe his grades were bad, but he didn’t fill all the locker-room drains with bubble bath.”
“What happened?” I feel like complete shit that I don’t know any of this. All I know is that Carter was in that graduation photo alongside Adam, so something must have changed.
“The entire locker room exploded with suds after the homecoming football game.”
“No. Not that. Though that sounds amazing, and I want to circle back later.” Adam, you evil genius. “What happened with Carter?”
Dom squeezes my hand. A comforting pressure.
“You remember those graphic novels you were always checking out from the library for him?”
I nod. Sometimes Carter would sit under my umbrella with me and flip through them, lacking the daylong social stamina of Adam.
“He kept getting them. Even after you…” Dom clears his throat. “After you were gone. He read them all the time. Started sneaking them into class, reading them there, too. One of his teachers saw how he always had them and asked why he liked them so much. He told her that with the pictures he could read the story even when the words didn’t make sense.” Dom’s voice is thick now. “She figured it out. Fourteen years old and no one else had. Some public school education. He could barely read and was going to get pushed straight through to high school. Guess it goes to show how clever he was, though, huh? That he still got by. Was able to hide how much he was struggling.”
My heart aches for the quiet teenager I used to know. “But he’s doing better now?”
“Once Mom and Dad knew, they talked to the school and set him up with a specialist tutor. He wants to be a writer now. Did you know that? Wants to tell stories. He’s studying creative writing with a minor in design.” His thumb strokes the length of mine. “One more way you helped that summer. The twins were obsessed with you. Mom adored you. Dad kept trying to give you money just so you’d stick around. And I…”
Silence descends in the car, and I try not to let resentment into my voice when I finally fill it.
“You were grateful for my help,” I finish for him.
His grip tightens. “Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?”
Dom’s jaw firms, then relaxes. “When you helped me, I could breathe. When I could breathe, I could see you.”
My stomach bottoms out as if we just tilted over the top of a roller coaster. But we’re actually slowing down, turning into the parking lot for the B&B. The wild ride is all with this man at my side who I’m not sure I’ve ever truly known.
“And do you see me now?” I whisper, the sound more vulnerable than I ever thought I’d let myself be with Dominic Perry again.
He doesn’t hesitate on his answer.
“You’re all I see.”