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He thought she still shocked herself at times too, especially when she had to give him trouble for things. Like coloring on the wall the day before. He still wasn’t sure who cried more when she sent him for a time out. Case was still in the doghouse for laughing at how upset she was.

An hour after the incident, she’d sent the two of them to the hardware store to get chalk board paint for half of a wall in his room. Now Jax was happy as a clam to have somewhere to be more artistic, as he’d told them.

She worried she was doing everything wrong, but the difference they’d all seen in Jax since she’d arrived amazed them. He was slowing down while talking to sound out his words. He named the colors of his crayons as he grabbed them. She had him practicing tying his shoes for crying out loud. Something Angela had been trying to do for a few months now.

He was eating better, too. Trying new foods and helping her when she cooked. Choosing things for meals he never would have otherwise. She didn’t understand why they were all blown away because Jax did damn near everything she said.

When he’d asked Jaxson why, Dom had been floored.

“Because I want her to want to be my mommy. And she won’t want to if I’m a bad boy,” was what he’d told Dom.

When he told Deedee what he’d said, she’d been so upset about Jax thinking he had to be perfect for her to want him. They’d cuddled the entire afternoon watching every Lego movie known to man. If he weren’t so sick of those movies, he’d have been jealous.

Now she was in the kitchen making healthy snacks for Jax to grab on the go when he was playing and didn’t want to sit and eat. She read books to him at bed time. Told him stories to get him to lay down for a nap. She was everything he ever wanted his son to have in a mother.

When Dom had been growing up, his parents were absent on the best of days. They hadn’t paid much attention to him or his older sister Jesse. They were both lawyers and always had one case or another to get ready for; therefore, their children fell to the low side of importance until one day, when he was ten and his sister, then sixteen, had just gotten her driver’s license. While their parents were busy at the office la

te that night, she had decided the two of them would go for pizza. Little did anyone know they’d never get it.

A drunk driver had slammed into them so hard from behind at a red light. Their car had been pushed into the middle of traffic and right into an oncoming big rig truck going sixty miles per hour, hitting the driver’s side door.

Jesse died on impact, and he’d been touch and go for a couple of days. His sister had been full of life, always looking for the next big adventure. She was an optimist through and through. For years, Dom had suffered survivor’s guilt. Never understanding why he had lived and she died. To a ten-year-old, it just didn’t make sense. He wanted answers to questions that no one could give him, so he started acting out. He drank, smoked pot, and started stealing. It wasn’t long before his parents finally came out of their own grief and guilt to notice he was in a downward spiral.

When he was fourteen, he got caught vandalizing the high school with his friends; Casey included. Lucky for him, his folks worked in criminal law and were able to get the two of them community service. Dom was also forced to go into counselling.

His counselor understood him far better than anyone else because she’d suffered the same fate—losing a sibling in an accident they were both in. Only she’d turned to hard drugs and selling herself. He remembered being fascinated with her tales of hardship.

It hadn’t taken long before he understood why she was telling him such personal things. She at one time had become a statistic. No longer a victim of a random accident. She had turned herself into a victim of her own circumstances instead. From the day she realized what was happening to her, she worked hard to bring herself out of the gutter. But not before she contracted the HIV virus from a dirty, used needle. He’d been heartbroken upon hearing that and let the bitterness enter him again. She had been someone he started to look up to, and yet, she could be taken from him any day.

Two years later she was...

By a drive-by shooting.

*****

“Deep thoughts?” Deedee asked Dom as she walked up to find him staring off into the air. Turning, he smiled at seeing her. Opening his comforting arms, she went to him. With him wrapped around her so securely, she felt wanted and worthy for the first time in years. Things she hadn’t felt since her mom left.

“Tell me something, Dee…”

“Anything.”

“Do you want to be here? Do you want to go back to Ireland?” She was taken aback by his questions. He’d basically forced her to come to Maryland with him. Looking deeply into his eyes, she wondered what his questions were really about. There was something there…

“What’s going on in your mind, Dom?”

Sighing, he looked out over the fields of grass in the distance before answering. “I need to know if I’m doing you more harm than good by making you stay here.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? That’s it. Do you want to leave, Deedee?” His voice was harder, more demanding.

“It’s not that I want to leave, it’s just…” It was her turn to look away. “I have no idea what I want. For as long as I can remember, my only goal has been to get to my mam, and now…”

“Now?” he prompted.

“Now, there’s you…There’s Jaxson…There’s so many new opportunities, and I’m confused,” she told him bluntly.

He smiled at her answer. Happy that she was thinking about a future there with them but could understand her conflicting thoughts. For a while they stood in silence, enjoying the feel of being in each other’s arms. Knowing that they would figure things out in their own way.