Page 107 of One Last Rainy Day
Because the Giant didn’t appear.
No, Tobias waited three agonizing weeks to come home. Weeks in which we pleaded with him to return our calls and texts. Weeks where Sean and I lost our goddamned minds, completely unaware of where his own cognizance was at—along with his whereabouts and intentions for us—Tyler included.
Tobias either figured it out before he made the bird I charged to watch him or spotted his feathered tail just after—because he dropped off the radar. This left us scrambling in his wake, only to imagine and prepare for the worst.
For two of those weeks, Cecelia fled to Georgia with abroken heart—a heart that we shattered by design in an attempt to get a message to him. The mystery of who spilled our secret remains unknown. It was a bird outside of our inner circle, of that much we were certain as we formulated a plan.
Said plan was as much of a fool’s plot as the one we used to betray Tobias. Which, in turn, cleaved me in two—leaving me in dual, measured pieces burning in the aftermath. One part was on fire for her, the other, sifting through the singed remnants for any remaining bond with my brother.
Watching Cecelia crumble in the garage while realizing what vindictive actions we’re capable of was one of the most brutal experiences I’ve ever endured.
I broke my own vow to guard her immaculate heart in a stupid fucking attempt to distance her from our deceit and keep her safely away from my brother’s wrath.
Witnessing her spiral—which felt like it played out in slow motion—further widened the fracture inside me, especially when her deep blues beseeched us for any sign it wasn’t the truth. Sean had given me the ammo to make it convincing, and it was.Too convincing.
For me, at the time, it was the only way to try to distance her from the path of destruction coming our way. While also attempting to mask the truth until we had a chance to explain ourselves.
When Sean broke at the sight of it, his punch felt like a bee sting compared to the gutting I felt as she cried openly—which further drove the slow sink of the knife into my chest as it pierced her own due to our gift of precision. Every agonizing second of watching her fall apart in that garage will forever be ingrained in my memory.
Those weeks of torment have only led to more in those that followed, heading up to the minutes that now haunt my every waking hour.
“Please, Dom. Please don’t go.”
After two weeks of deserved silence from the two people we annihilated for our selfish gain, Sean and I decided that when and if Cecelia returned to the plant, Sean would come clean about Roman. Thus revealing him as the prime suspect in my parents’ death and our revenge plans while omitting Tobias. A way to further prepare her while giving her leverage in an effort to gain some of her trust back.
A risk we decided was worth taking if we only implicated ourselves. We’d already given her access to the club, how we worked, and our trust.
Decision made, when she returned from Georgia, we kept our distance from Roman’s house. We were flying blind, unknowing if he was already back in the States or who might be watching and reporting our every move.
The mindfuck of my missing brother felt like a punishment in and of itself. Despite the burn her absence caused, I hoped Cecelia would stay in Georgia to avoid being on a collision course with whatever was coming until we could do some damage control. Her reason for returning was selfless, and I knew it had everything to do with her mother—which only intensified my guilt.
The day after her return, I lost my shit and went AWOL, straying from every thought-out decision Sean, Tyler, and I had agreed upon. Sean was set to intercept her first with parts of the truth, but I allowed my need to take over—starving for the sight of her. I knew my behavior was fucking borderline as I drove like the four-letter cursed man I’dbecome. I was driving down the road next to Roman’s mansion, hoping she would hear my engine before idling nearby on the off chance she came out of hiding.
Eventually, she did, spotting me on the side of the road before leading me on a street chase, intent on losing me.
After realizing it was a pointless crusade I was not backing away from, she pulled over and came out swinging with war in her eyes. Delivering death blow after death blow, her stinging heart voicing every brutal delivery. My emotions were so all over the fucking place that I acted a fool by allowing them to cloud my judgment. Instead of behaving or saying what I should have, I was apologizing one second, filled with pride the next for her fiery return, and rock fucking hard after her wicked display of backbone and voicing as much.“You’ve come a long way.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
It was, and admittedly ill-timed. Her reception pulled me in and drove me to kiss her venom away, while her vicious backlash fueled me to try and bridge the separation.
During that exchange, I knew I would love her through every bit of whatever our future brought—owning it to Tobias and taking any penalty my brother doled out. I told her as much with my declaration.“I have to let you go for now, but I don’t fucking want to...I don’t have a choice, but everything I do now, it’s for you.”
She fought me brutally, but in the end, I knew there was forgiveness there—in both our hearts, we were far from over. Even with the hard-edged, internal change in her makeup from the damage Sean and I caused, it was evident she was ready to face my brother—if it happened—and whatever hell he brought with him.
That I wasready for, that I wasprepared for.What I wasn’t prepared for was the complete and utter devastation that greeted Sean and me when Tobias finally arrived back in Triple Falls before he, too, openly cracked in front of us.
“This was for Maman and Papa, Dom. We were so close, brother. Why?”
His voice was ragged and broken—decimating. Even as we stood, lined up like the soldiers he raised us to be—chins lifted to accept our fate while determined to plead our case—in seeing the damage we’d done, we both faltered. The more he unraveled, the more our argument paled, our fight lessening as he leapt between agony and fury—both devastating.“Tell me, brothers...word for word, how you deceived me for three months.”
Our sentence passed? Ten months. Ten fucking months.
Three times as many as I admitted we’d been deceiving him, adding another to ensure we knew just how much his faith in us had been destroyed.
“Tell me every single thing you did, every purposeful lie you told me, every move you made to betray me this way, to keep me in the dark, and then...tell me how you love...tell me you love me.”
With our every objection refused and dismissed—even after openly admitting we loved her—we agreed to his soul-crushing sentence.
