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“I’m sorry. I didn—”

“You’re not ready.” His father shook his head and started to walk away.

“I am!” Dominic yelled at his back, promising he was. How was he supposed to know he wasn’t allowed to shoot it?

“First lesson you’re going to learn the hard way.” Lucifer stormed back, snatching Dominic’s hand and placing the pistol in it correctly. “When you put your finger on the trigger, you have to be prepared for the consequences, whether you think the gun is loaded or not.”

Dominic’s hand shook when Lucifer lifted the pistol, making him point it at his father’s chest. Staring up at the barrel that pointed right at his father’s heart, every death scene he had seen in the Wild West movies played through his mind, but instead of the dead cowboys, he saw his father in a puddle of blood.

“Your finger rests here”—Lucifer touched Dom’s pointer finger that was resting along the bottom of the barrel—“until you’re ready to shoot, and only until then do you place your finger on the trigger.”

Dominic felt tears well up in his eyes as his father forced his finger to the trigger.

“Because you have to be certain of what’s on the other side when you pull it.”

CLICK.

When his father forced his finger to pull the trigger, wet tears fell to his cheeks and not because he was scared of killing him, but because he liked the thought of it.

“Now.” Lucifer made him point the gun back at the soda can, then properly fixed his stance, showing him how to hold the gun while looking through the sight. “You’re gonna stand there until I say you can move.”

Dominic didn’t say a word as his father walked back in the house, and no matter how tired his little body got or how badly his arms shook from holding the heavy weapon, he stayed perfectly in place without his finger on the trigger. Because one good thing actually happened—he finally got to hold the gun he’d been dreaming about.

Staring down the barrel at the scrunched-up aluminum can, he prepared himself for the day it would be loaded.

It wasn’t until the last bit of sun was about to fall did his father come back outside to take the gun from him, telling him he could go back inside.

When his arms dropped to his sides, they felt like they had fallen off. He had to make sure when he was running back into the house they were still attached.

Going back in, he watched DeeDee place the twin called Matthias back into the carrier before propping a bottle in his mouth. The only reason he was sure it was him was because when DeeDee got up to meet Lucifer in the kitchen, he saw Angel sitting happily.

Dominic took a peek at the kitchen, making sure Lucifer wasn’t coming, before he went to sit between his brothers, then grabbed the bottle to hold it for Matthias.

Sitting there, he fed his baby brother while he rocked the other one to sleep.

He supposed two good things happened today.

He got to hold a gun …

And he was no longer alone.

Two

Patience

Dominic, Age 6

Dominic stood in the same spot he always stood outside, the dirt now slightly dipped from his constant weight. Going through the drills his father had trained him to do, he pulled the gun from his waist, loaded it, racked it, aimed, then pulled the trigger before he placed it back at his waist, then repeated it again and again until the sun went down. The only problem was … there was no gun.

It had been one whole year since he touched the gun, twelve months of Lucifer’s gun-less drills and his father telling him to be patient. At first, Dominic thought it would only be a week before he could get the gun back in his hands, and when that didn’t happen, he was sure he’d get it in a month. When that still didn’t happen, time started to blur, and the only thing that kept him going was that he’d held it in his hands once. Hope was all he had to keep himself going, to be able to touch that precious metal again.

Dominic’s six-year-old body had grown a lot in a year. His arms had toned from the motions, even though his hands had been weightless. Not knowing what he was training for, he looked like a dancer with how gracefully precise he moved. It was almost … beautiful.

The thing he hated the most was the stupid scrunched-up soda can he had to look at that his father had nailed into the stump. For twelve months he stared at that thing, wanting to blow it to smithereens, like Jesse James would have. The dirty can was his constant reminder of how he hadn’t come any closer to becoming the great outlaw he wanted to be.