Page 195 of By A Thread

I did what I’d wanted to for so long. I hauled back and hit the man squarely in the face. His nose made a crunching noise that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped.

“You’re the damn liar,” I said, standing over him wishing I could keep hitting him until he felt a shred of the pain he’d inflicted.

“Is there a problem here?” A doorman hustled over from his post and helped my father to his feet, shooting me wary looks.

“Not anymore,” I said.

My father took a step toward me, holding a linen handkerchief under his bleeding nose.

“Believe this, Dominic. If you don’t get me what I want, I’ll be forced to remind you just how important I still am to you and your mother.”

“Try it, old man,” I said, daring him.

The doorman was debating whether or not to get in between us. Passersby were giving us a wide berth. That was the thing about normal people. They could sense evil. And between my father and me, there was a vortex of it swirling.

“You’ve made your bed,” he said. “I gave you a chance. Next time your father asks for something, you’ll remember this.”

“You were never a father to me.”

“What a coincidence. You were always a disappointment to me.”

He strode away, coat billowing in the wind, looking like the villain he was.

I was so angry I was shaking.

“Dom?”

Ally. How much had she seen? How much of him had she seen in me?

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I insisted, refusing to look at her. I didn’t want her anywhere near this. Anywhere near the feelings that my father brought out in me. I didn’t want to taint her.

She reached for my hand and squeezed it. But I pulled out of her grasp.

“Dominic, listen to me. You’re nothing like him,” she said quietly.

“I said I don’t want to discuss it,” I snapped, blindly looking over her head. I couldn’t look her in the eye. She’d seen us side by side. There was no way to deny the similarities.

“Let’s go back inside,” she said.

I followed her, careful not to touch her. And when we sat, I ordered a drink. A double.

If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.

64

Ally

Idecided to give Dominic some space that night. Sometimes time and space were the only things that could heal the hurt. So I used my time in my second favorite way. I ran my dance class through a challenging routine that left them all sweaty and gasping by the end. But we’d rocked it, and everyone, myself included, left grinning.

It was the last class of the night, and rather than hurrying home to Dominic as had become my habit, I cued up a new playlist.

The song started. And I let my hips and shoulders find the driving beat.

Dancing helped me physically move through the things that were bothering me. Like the fact that Dominic felt comfortable sweeping into my life and solving all my problems for me but wouldn’t or couldn’t share his own problems.

Yeah, okay. So there was the typical “I don’t want to talk about it” guy thing that seemed to come encoded in the Y chromosome. But his vault preset was something different. His “I don’t want to talk about it” came with a side of “I don’t trust you.”

I was hurt.