36. SUNRISE
DOMINIC
“FUCK!” I boom, projectiling my phone across the room and into the wall. My grandmother yelps like a wounded animal at my response to the conversation with Shannon, but I can’t comfort her right now.
Pandora’s gone. She’s in Deepsilver. Not only that, but she’s fucking shacked up with that domineering piece of shit.
Shannon told me everything. Now, I am floored with the knowledge that Pandora is stuck with someone she’s afraid of. Who knows what he’ll do to her? She’s lost her phone too, and here I thought she’d reverted to ignoring my texts altogether, which is bad enough considering my own stupid-ass feelings.
Above everything else, though, I need Pandora to be. Fucking. Safe!
She’s impossible. Unstable. I can’t even fathom…
SHIT!
I shove my hands into my hair, breathing out through my nostrils like a bull. I barely register my uncle entering Grandma’s new apartment at Sunrise. He stands there with the last moving boxes stacked in his arms.
“Son, are you okay?” he asks, and I just laugh—laugh—like the lunatic I am right now. I know she lost her phone. I still grab mine from the floor. Call Pandora for the thousandth time since she stopped returning even my texts. I growl as it sends me straight to voicemail again. Again.
Again!
Grandma’s scared but lucid. If I weren’t so enraged, I’d be happy that she’s like this while we get her settled into her new pad. Unfortunately, I’m not in a state where I can appreciate it.
“I’m not fucking okay!” I yell as Alan lowers the boxes, hands flopping useless along his body.
“It’s Pandora,” Grandma declares, surprising us both. I swing toward her, because it’s one thing for her to be somewhat herself and a whole other to have a complete overview of an entire situation the way she used to when I was little. Now, my grandma’s eyes survey me, and she—understands.
I let out a guttural sigh that sounds a whole lot like a sob. “She can’t be there alone,” I mumble.
“Where?” Alan asks awkwardly, and my grandma just hushes him. When she walks up to me, it’s with the slow sway of hips I remember from when she babysat the neighborhood kids. She stopped working because she wanted to be at home with me, and the only way to keep a roof over our heads was to supply my grandfather’s income from the slaughterhouse with her nanny services.
I slap my hands over my face. It’s all so much. I need to leave her behind, this woman whose life has revolved around me for the last twenty-six years, ever since my mother ditched me here and never returned. Despite my grandmother’s condition, there’s another woman who needs me more right now.
I don’t notice the tears until Grandma is close enough to dry them. “Remember what I told you, Dominic?” she whispers.
I am shattered.
I bob my head “yes” because how can I forget? Finally, I’m confessing what my body has screamed to me for months that I need. What I have to do.
“How do you know these things?” I begin from inside my own despair. Her advice—she’s right: I do need to try. It’s the solution, the only thing that can make me whole. Who am I if I don’t? Who would I be in the future, and could I reach any goal? “Grandma, how do you know when you’ve only been with Grandpa?”
As her pained gaze meets mine, for the first time from within my small, egocentric world, I realize that I’m wrong.
“I’ve been young too, little boy,” she says, and in her wise eyes I read memories of a passion—the taste of a long-gone love she’s never shared, from before my grandfather.
Despite the decades of life, of experience separating us, we’re not so different. My frustration and my rage, they wilt as I face my grandma’s untold story. Perhaps she gave up her chance. And perhaps I shouldn’t let mine slip away.
“Go get the girl, Dominic.” She supports my thoughts. “Bring her back here, so I can meet the one who has finally stolen my boy’s heart.”
Yes. My little lady always did make things sound simple.
LEON
Tonight I’d rather not have my club be a solid mass of frantic partiers. I don’t have enough staff with most taking the night off so they can rest up and be ready for the New Year’s party tomorrow. And tonight’s my last chance to shape Pandora into my perfect companion.
Pandora. She masters the fine line between fascination and disdain with me. She’s come so far since I met her, and whenever I surprise her with my requests, my demand for obedience, her enormous eyes arch even wider with incredulity. Oh yes, she’s made me smile more than I have in years. She’s made me hornier than I’ve been in months.
But earlier today, we had a setback in her development. Something tells me she’s distancing herself from me, and I don’t like it one bit. I’ve shielded her from outside influences, so I’m not sure what happened.
Despite her childish declaration of love for Dominic, she was giving herself to me. Slowly, she was becoming dependent on me, asking for my decisions, and she’d do it without losing her sass and the sexy-as-hell scorn brightening her gaze. Everything was going so well.
I stare at her now on the barstool Christian’s girlfriend usually occupies. Pandora is nursing two drinks at once, and I frown at the sight. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that she’s working to get shitfaced.
I snap my fingers at Christian and gather my index and thumb into an oval, showing him how little alcohol he is to pour into her drinks from now on.
Tomorrow her friends arrive. Tomorrow I’ll accidentally “find” her iPhone somewhere, probably in the ladies’ room. Which means I have twenty-four hours left to make her unequivocally hooked on me.