“Fine,” he guttered out. “That might be for the best.”
Chapter Nineteen
Luke
I sat on the edge of the bed while Dominic stood with his back to me, pulling his shirt on over his head. We’d reached Boston too late the night before to go to the convention center, and neither kid was answering their phones. The choice had been either to attempt sleeping in the truck or getting a hotel room before searching first thing in the morning—a decision that had not required much thought. However, our first time sharing a hotel room had been anything but sexy. Tension was fraught between us, and we’d barely spoken.
Dominic’s face was back to military-grade, an expression I hadn’t seen on him since the first time we’d fucked and I’d told him to take his sandwich to go. Our conversation in the car had gotten out of hand quickly, and looking back, I couldn’t explain my rage or what I’d said. Anything endangering my kids was a surefire way to make me homicidal.
I just hadn’t wanted Dominic to be a casualty.
The muscles in his back shifted beneath his shirt as he bent over to slip on his boots. Yesterday, I would have grabbed him and pulled him into my lap. Pressed my lips behind his ear before unzipping his jeans and shoving my hand inside as his breathing got ragged.
Today he was very obviously not in the mood to flirt or joke. He looked ready for this little trip to be over. I couldn’t agree more. I was pissed that Micah had snuck off with Adriana, but I was even more angry at myself. I’d been spending more time thinking about Dominic and less time paying attention to my kids. If I’d been more attentive, this wouldn’t have happened.
I rose to my feet. “Ready?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded to my phone. “Did you get your ticket?”
That was another thing I was pissed about. Sinking money into a ticket so I could get into this con. “Yes. You?”
“Yep.” He strode toward the door and opened it, waving a stiff hand. “After you.”
“Dom—”
“Just forget it. I want to get this over with.”
It wasn’t a sentiment I had any desire to argue with, so I just followed him out the door.
Boston streets were a joke. Signs were non-existent and the air was filled with constant horn blasts. At least we’d had the foresight to take a cab rather than deal with parking. Still, by the time the driver dropped us off at the convention center, I had a splitting headache.
As soon as we walked inside, a female cosplayer dressed in a costume that showed a lot of leg smiled at Dominic. I glared and she turned away.
Dominic shook his head. “Seriously?”
“She was checking you out.”
“She wasn’t humping my leg. Chill out.”
That was easier said than done. “Fine. Where should we look first? This feels fucking hopeless.”
Dominic studied the schedule and map he’d grabbed on the way in. He pointed to a spot on the paper. “The Twitch panel is in five minutes. That’s the one Kai is Skyping in on.”
“Who the hell is Kai?”
“Garrett’s boyfriend, the famous streamer.”
“Oh.”
“I’m guessing they’re there. Seeing Kai was the main reason they wanted to go.”
I squinted at the map. “So, we need to go to Ballroom B on the third floor.”
“Yeah.” He pointed across the exhibit hall floor. “Elevators are there.”
We rode up with an orc and a fairy with a six-foot wingspan. I didn’t know what was going on, all I knew was that I wanted out of here as fast as goddamn possible with my kid.
When we reached the ballroom, the panel was already in session. We slipped in the doors and stood at the lone bare space along the side wall. My gaze immediately began to sweep the crowd, hoping to see my son’s afro next to a head of blond hair.
Dominic elbowed me. “That’s Kai.”
“Where?”
Dominic pointed to a large screen where a young, dark-haired guy with big blue eyes was waving at the crowd. A ripple of chatter blew through the audience immediately.
“Hi.” He fluttered slim fingers with a knee hugged to his chest. “I’m Kai.”
A couple of cameras flashed and some guy shouted, “I love you, Kai!”
Kai flushed and ducked his head, darting his eyes to something off-camera beside him. Another voice murmured something and then Kai looked back at the audience.
“Love you guys too. Sorry I can’t be there but, um, I’m just more comfortable on camera. Thanks so much to FallenCon for allowing me to participate this way.”
The kid was cute. I leaned down and whispered to Dominic, “This is your friend’s boyfriend?”
“Yeah, they met online.”
Kai pointed to someone off camera. “Say hi, Garrett.”
There were a couple of squeals as a dark-haired guy with a square jaw leaned into the camera. Fuck, he was hot. ’Course. And there was that flare of possession over Dominic in my chest. I was going to have to work on getting over that.
“Hey,” said that hot bastard Garrett. “Happy FallenCon everyone.”
I glanced at Dominic, and for the first time that day, his eyes flickered with affection. At Garrett. Not me.
I focused on the task at hand, scanning the crowd for my kid. But as the panel continued, I couldn’t spot them. The place was standing-room only. Some people were in costume and it was nearly impossible to see past all the fabric and props.
Once the question and answer session began, I was ready to tell Dominic that we could just wait outside or look elsewhere, but he pointed to a girl standing up with a microphone.
Adriana. Well, Adriana in an extremely uncharacteristic elf costume. The only times I’d seen the girl she’d been wearing jeans and black band T-shirts, but now her hair was put up in some complicated mix of braids and curls, and she wore a skimpy green and brown suede outfit with a bow strapped to her back. She even had long elf ears. I didn’t play video games, but it didn’t take much to figure out she was supposed to be an archer.
When a boy stood up next to her, my knees threatened to buckle with relief when I recognized my son’s Fallen World Online hoodie.
They whispered something to each other before Adriana raised the microphone to her lips. When she spoke, her voice wavered. “This question is for Kai.”
“Hi,” Kai said. “What’s your name?”
“Adriana,” she said, a smile creeping into her tone. “And this is Micah.” My son raised his hand in greeting, and Kai waved back. “Micah is my best friend. My only friend, I guess. And we met online. In your chat, to be honest.”
Kai clapped his hands. “No way! Awww. That’s so awesome.”
Adriana’s smile lit up her entire face. In that moment, she looked just like her older brother. “Sometimes it’s hard because even though we live near each other and hang out all the time—in person—people still seem to act like… what we have isn’t real. Because it started online and because we’re so different…”
Beside me, Dominic crossed his arms over his chest. I placed a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.
Micah grabbed the microphone from her. “We were just wondering if you could talk about that since you met Garrett online. How do you deal with other people and their judgments?”
Kai’s brow furrowed and he gnawed on a fingernail before dropping his hand in his lap. “Well, it’s kinda common knowledge I don’t really do public.” A hand entered the frame and lightly smacked the back of his head. Kai laughed. “Okay, so I do more public than I used to. But, I’ll be honest. I don’t pay attention to the people who don’t understand. I don’t need their permission to love Garrett. We understand it and we believe in our relationship and that’s what matters.”
Adriana took back the microphone. “Well, we’re teenagers, so we do kinda need our parents to give the okay when we see each other. We’re actually here without permission.”
I scowled and Dominic sighed loudly. A couple people gla
nced at us, but my glare had them turning back around.
Kai cocked his head. “Well, that’s not good. How can you expect your parents to understand if you’re sneaking around behind their backs?”
Jesus, this gamer kid was now parenting my son. I felt like the ultimate failure.
“Here’s the thing,” Kai said. “Give them a chance to see you two together. How you interact and how you respect each other and treat each other. They’ll see it’s real. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, some of the most real relationships I have are purely online. And there’s no shame in that. It’s the twenty-first century!” He snapped his fingers. “Everyone needs to catch up.”
The rest of the Q&A passed in a blur. I ignored the panelists who were saying words like “parasocial” and “online community” and focused on the pair of chairs where Micah and Adriana sat. They hadn’t seen us yet, but they were about to.
The panel was over when Kai blew a kiss at his “darlings” in the crowd, and then I was on the move. Dominic was at my heels as I cut through the crowd to get my hands on my kid.
Micah stood up, his hand on Adriana’s back, and the moment he saw me, his entire body stiffened. He mouthed the words, “Oh shit.”
Oh shit was right.
Adriana looked terrified, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of me or Dominic, or a combination of both. Before I could get a word out, Dominic brushed past me. “What the hell, Adri? You’re going to give Pops a heart attack.”
She gripped Micah’s arm. “How are you here?”
“We drove,” Dominic snapped. “How the hell are you here? Because you’re supposed to be home, not sneaking off to fucking Boston.”
“I’m sorry. I know this was wrong but we wanted to see Kai.” She glanced at me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlings. It’s my fault.”
Micah’s head jerked to her. “What? No it wasn’t.”
“Mic—”
My son looked at me. “Dad, I know she’s trying to say it was her fault because she’ll get in trouble no matter what, but that’s not true. This was my idea. She tried to talk me out of it.”
If looks could kill, Dominic’s cutting glare would have been a bullet in my head.
“We’ll talk later,” I said. “We’re going home.”
Micah dug in his heels. “Okay, but we got passes to meet Kai’s moderators. Can we just do that? Right now? Then we’ll go home.”
Adriana was nodding her head eagerly, her gaze darting between Dominic and I.
I should have said no. They’d didn’t deserve to do what they wanted. But after hearing Adriana speak about her online friendships, I couldn’t do it.
“Fine.” I glanced at my watch. “Thirty minutes.”
Micah shot me a wobbly smile, then he took Adriana’s hand and towed her toward the stage.
Dominic waited until they were out of earshot to say, “My sister’s a horrible influence, huh?”
I gritted my teeth. “Not now, Dominic.”
“Yeah, I forgot. Everything we do is on your terms.”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“Not now, Luke,” he said flatly.
I clenched my fists, but it did no good. He was still slipping through my fingers.
* * *
Dominic
The private meet-and-greet was longer than I’d expected. They set up shop in a conference room with Kai and Garrett once again projected on a screen, while Kai’s attending moderators sat nearby. It mostly amounted to eager fans getting to have actual conversations with their gaming hero, and Luke and me hanging at the back while avoiding each other’s eyes.
Part of me knew I needed to calm down and have a real conversation about what had happened on the drive to Boston. He wasn’t used to his kids not listening to him, and he wasn’t used to them sneaking off. For my family, it was old fucking hat. Adriana did what she wanted when she wanted, and she never got into much trouble while doing it, so I was already in the habit of letting it slide. But Luke expected his kids to be perfect, and his brain had practically imploded after realizing that wasn’t the case. His level of stress should have been expected. Especially considering the reason he was so overprotective was because of that idiot Jake—a guy who’d been so desperate to cling to Luke that he’d basically kidnapped the twins.
And yet I couldn’t get his words out of my mind.
Luke’s elbow dug into my side, and I snapped back to awareness and out of my somber thoughts. I started to snarl at him, but realized everyone in the room was staring at me.
“The fuck?”
“What the hell are you doing here, Costigan?”
My eyes flew to the screen, and I realized Garrett was focused on me.
“’Sup Reid,” I said coolly, like it was totally normal for me to be crashing this party. “I’m collecting my runaway sister.”
He grunted, still eyeballing me, before his gaze moved to Luke. He didn’t say anything, because he was Garrett Reid, but I could already tell the gears in his brain were churning and he was putting puzzle pieces together. Judging by the way he frowned at me once his attention returned, he’d also picked up on the tension between me and Luke.
“This is the famous Costigan?” Kai demanded. He leaned in and shoved Garrett out of the way of the screen. “What a hottie.”
The others in the room murmured in agreement. Normally, I would have preened at the attention and hammed it up, but I was overly aware of Luke inching away from me. The last thing he wanted was a billion sets of eyes on him during a livestream.
“Uh. I guess,” I muttered.
“You guess?” Kai leaned his face against his fist, still grinning with mischief. “I would have been more paranoid while Garrett was on base if I’d have known you were this attractive. Cherry, Garvy, isn’t he a total fox?”
I vaguely recognized the names as being his two main moderators from the chat, but I only spotted Garvy. He was the blond, blue-eyed California boy that his profile had proclaimed him to be, but Cherry was…
“He’s okay,” a deep voice rumbled. “I’m not really into blonds.”
I gawked at the dude who’d just made that shitty comment. Cherrycakes, the upbeat cheerleader of Kai, was not what I’d expected. I’d honestly assumed Cherry was a super-friendly girl who wore anime T-shirts and drew on her arms, but Cherry was apparently a twenty-something dude with pale skin, dark hair, tattoos, and probably belonged in a rock band. He was the polar opposite of Garvy. Who was currently red-faced and glaring at Cherry.
Ho-okay. The drama was strong on this panel.
Instead of coming up with a witty retort, I snorted and leaned against the wall. Thankfully, Kai redirected the conversation and began cheerfully chatting with his viewers. Garrett, however, kept frowning in my direction. Somehow he could tell something was wrong. And judging by the serious frown he kept aiming at Luke, he knew my silver fox was the culprit. If he stayed mine. If this worked out given how much he distrusted my family.
All of a sudden, I wanted out of the room and away from this scrutiny. It was awesome that Garrett’s broship was flaring up out of a sense of loyalty and protectiveness, but I didn’t need the kids picking up on our bullshit.
I made eye contact with Adriana from across the room and jerked my head at the door. Worry had already slid across her expression, but I ignored it and slipped out of the room. I wasn’t surprised that Luke wasn’t too far behind.
He came up behind me, big and warm and strong, and put his hands on my shoulders. That touch was enough to melt me, but I shrugged them off.
“Dominic, we need to talk.”
“Not now,” I said. “I honestly just need to get out of here. This weekend has fucked with my head, dude.”
Luke nodded slowly, and for a breath, I thought he would say something to reassure me. Admit that we’d both been tense and on edge. Maybe make a joke about making up for the wasted time and making up for his harshness with a Sunday full of sex.
But all
he said was, “We’ll be home soon.”
Chapter Twenty
Luke
The ride home was my version of hell. Adriana and Micah silently sat in the backseat of the truck’s cab while Dominic stole glances at me from the passenger seat. I knew we needed to talk, but I was worried about saying more words I couldn’t take back. I was hanging on by a thread—tired, stressed, hungry, and frustrated that my weekend with Dominic turned into this shit show.
He sat leaning against his door, like he wanted to get as far away from me as possible. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to get away from me. Ever since we’d gotten in the truck, I’d asked myself the same questions.
Could I really do this? Could I move forward in my life with Dominic, accepting his opinions on my life and how I raised my kids? Would he accept me into his life even if I were critical of his family?
Instead of examining the potential answers to those questions, I directed my attention to Micah.
“Where did you stay last night?” My loud voice in the confines of the cab startled everyone.
Micah met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “A friend we know. From Kai’s chat.”
“So a stranger.”
“Did you even listen to what Kai said? These are real people—”
“I know they’re real,” I shot back. “That’s the whole point. These are real people you are talking to, not harmless names on a computer screen. You want me to respect what you do online, then you need to also prove to me that you’re taking it seriously. It’s easy to get swept up in talking to someone you met online. It’s easy to open up, to spill secrets, to tell them things you wouldn’t tell anyone else.” I risked a glance at Dominic who was now watching me. “But these are still real people with lives and problems, and you can’t just assume they’ll act the same online as they do in person. Do you understand me?”
Fast Connection (Cyberlove #2) Page 20