Page 42 of Blind Spot
I pulled back and stared up into Dominic’s angry brown glare. “Hey,” I stated softly, gripping his face in my hands. I turned his head so that he could meet my gaze. “Please don’t think that I’m trying to deny you or that I’m ashamed of you.”
“I don’t think that, Char.”
“What do you think?”
“That I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to crush you, baby girl. And I’m just as capable of doing that as my brother is.”
“You have never put your hands on me in your life, Dominic.”
“And I never plan to do it. That’s not shit that you have to worry about.”
“Then how could you possibly hurt me?”
He gazed down at me. “By not being the man you thought that I was, or the man that you need me to be.”
“I simply want you to be the man you are. You have nothing to prove to me, baby. I have known you almost all our lives,” I stated with a nervous giggle. “I know the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I love them all.”
“Shiidd, ain’t nothing ugly about me. I’m a sexy muthafucka,” he joked with a sad smile.
I smiled, grateful that he felt good enough to tease me. “That you are indeed.”
“I love you, Charly. I love you with my whole muthafuckin’ heart and chest, girl.”
“I know that you do.”
“Just want you to be good and to be happy. And I want to make sure that I’m the one making you feel that way. I don’t want this bullshit to tear us down or wear us down. All I want is to protect you and to protect what we have and what we’re building.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I whispered with my head against his chest. “Everything will be fine.” I prayed that I was right.
Chapter 14
Dominic
“Hello?”
“Wassup, li’l bro?”
“Nothing much. Wassup with you, Quin?” I greeted my oldest brother, Joaquin.
“Trying to figure out what’s going on with you two knuckleheads.”
“Oh, what? He ran crying to you?”
He chuckled on the other end of the call. There had been a running joke amongst the three of us that Ramon was really the baby of the family, with all the whining he did and the way everyone protected him.
“Nah, you know he called Mamá, and she called me when she and Daddy couldn’t get you on the phone. She says that you’ve been avoiding her calls and that she’s about to pop up on you if no one answers any time soon.”
“Well, I hope like hell that’s not tonight.”
“What you got going on tonight?”
“Fixing a romantic dinner for Charly tonight. Date night in.”
“So that shit is true.”
“I mean, what do you want me to tell you?”
Joaquin chuckled again. “Y’all boys be wildin’. All I’m gonna say on the subject is don’t hurt sis. If you do, I’ma fuck you up.”
