Page 56 of Blind Spot
“One.”
“A little over a couple of hours after me. I didn’t hear you.”
“I came in, grabbed something to eat, watched some of Joaquin’s videos, and fell asleep in my room.”
We had been sleeping in my room together lately. I had climbed into bed after showering, expecting that he would climb in with me when he got home.
“Where did you go after you left the meet-up spot?”
“My parents. Went to talk to my dad.”
I sat up in bed and pulled the covers up to my chest. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt the need to protect myself in some form. I had slept in the nude.
“About?”
He pushed off the doorframe where he had been standing since he first spoke to me. I watched as he walked to the bed and sat on the edge. “Us.”
My body grew tense with his answer. “About the things that Chopper said?”
“Nah. I’m not worried about that shit.”
“You should be, Dom. I don’t want to be that girl who costs you everything. I’m supposed to build you up, not cause you to lose what matters to you the most. And if I am your blind spot, then?—”
“Stop that,” he stated, reaching out and gripping my wrist.
“I’m serious, Dom.”
“And so am I. I told you to stop. If that’s what people want to call it, then so what? You’ve always been the most important thing to me, and I’ve always been ready to protect you at the drop of a dime. If people have a problem with that, then that’s their problem, not mine. I love you, Char, and nothing is going to change that.”
“But I don’t want you to lose your spot on the team for this.”
“Listen, shit jumps off at the track and meet-up spots all the time, you know this. I’m not the first one, and neither are you, and we won’t be the last. It’s time for us to get serious about our future, Char. That’s all I’ve been thinking about all night. The reason that I never wanted to get with you in the first place was that I knew that I had been bullshitting all these years. I wasn’t ready to give up the lifestyle I was leading because it didn’t place any demands on me. I never had to be accountable to anyone but me and the streets.”
“And now?”
“Now, I know that I have never wanted anything or anyone more than I have wanted you. Baby, I was always struggling with my feelings for you. But now that I’ve been with you, loving you, spending time together, and protecting you differently, I know that I don’t want to let that shit go, Char. You’re it for me, baby girl.”
My eyes watered, and I found it hard to hold back the tears. “For real?” I asked with a trembling bottom lip.
He chuckled and pulled me into his arms. “Big ass crybaby.”
“What are you going to do if you don’t have racing, Dom?”
“Racing is my passion, baby. But it doesn’t make or break me. You already know that I’ve got my sights set on NASCAR. Truth be told, if I keep street racing, I could land my black ass in jail again, and I ain’t trying to go that route. So I’m going to keep working for Uncle Chris, and in the interim, work on my NASCAR dreams. It’s not like I’m broke.”
“You get paid a decent salary with your uncle, but not all that.”
“My job with Uncle Chris is to keep my probation officer off my ass, and because this is what I have to do for a little while longer. Uncle Chris’s job doesn’t pay my bills. I take that money and dump it into my account.”
“Where does your money come from?”
He gave me a blank stare, and I recalled what he used to do before getting locked up. “Are you still in the streets, Dom?”
“Nah. If you’d asked me that about a month ago, the answer would have been yes. When I first got out, I was heavily in the streets again, but for the last several months, I had been working on a plan to pull back. I’m not in the streets anymore, baby. But I did stack my paper the way that I was supposed to before I went down, and when I got out. I can live comfortably for a while with no job at all.”
“What’s a while?”
“A few years.”
