Chapter 22: The First Wave
The Charger’s engine clicked and sighed as it cooled in the garage, the silence it left behind absolute. Dom killed the headlights, plunging them into a dim world lit only by the orange glow of the workshop lamp. He hadn’t moved. Izzy hadn’t unbuckled her belt.
The reality was a physical thing, a seventh passenger in the car, dense and unignorable.
“I feel sick,” Izzy whispered, not from nausea, but from the sheer scale of it.
“I know.” Dom’s voice was rough. He finally moved, undoing his seatbelt with a sharp snap. He came around to her side, opened her door, and simply lifted her out, cradling her against his chest. She buried her face in the leather of his jacket, breathing in the familiar scents of motor oil and his skin. He carried her through the cluttered garage, past the silent skeletons of projects, and into the house.
He didn’t put her down in the living room. He carried her straight to their bedroom, the sanctuary of warm leather and glowing embers from the night before. He laid her gently on the rumpled sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, his large hand settling once more on her abdomen, as if taking inventory.
“Five,” he said again, the word losing none of its terrifying weight.
“Do you think it was the last night?” she asked, her voice small. “When you… when it was so much. You said you were trying to fill me up forever.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Must have been. I didn’t count the shots, baby. I just fired until I was empty.” His thumb rubbed slow circles through the thin fabric of her shirt. “Guess I overdid it.”
She managed a weak smile. “You never do anything by halves.”
He leaned down, resting his forehead against hers. Their breaths mingled. The protective, almost violent love she saw in his eyes was the only thing that made the fear recede, even an inch. “You said yes to all of them. You sure? Really sure? That doctor wasn’t lying about the risks. You heard her.”
Izzy reached up, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, rough with stubble. “The biggest risk I ever took was with you. Everything else is just logistics.” She pulled his face down and kissed him, a soft, lingering press of lips that held a promise and a plea. “We’re in this. All the way.”
He kissed her back, deepening it for a moment, a silent vow. Then he pulled away, the practical part of his brain, the builder, kicking into gear. “Logistics,” he repeated, standing up. He paced the length of the room, a caged tiger. “We need a new place. This house has two bedrooms. We need… six. A minivan.” He said the word like it was a curse.
Izzy giggled, propping herself up on her elbows. “You, in a minivan.”
“Don’t,” he growled, pointing a finger at her. “Don’t start. It’ll have a supercharged V8. I’ll weld one in myself.” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “Your diet. The doc said high protein, like a linebacker. We’re converting the spare room. It’s a nutrition station. I’m building a bed. A special one, for later, when you can’t get up.”
He was talking faster, planning aloud, constructing a fortress of practicality around the sheer biological miracle of it. It was how he loved. Not just with his body, but with his hands, his tools, his relentless will to provide and protect.
“Dom,” she said softly.
“We’ll need help. After. A night nurse, maybe two. I’ll handle the cars, but the feeding…” He trailed off, finally hearing her.
“Come here,” she said.
He stopped pacing and came back to the bed, sinking down beside her. She took his face in both her hands. “Breathe. We have time. I’m only a few weeks along. We’ll figure it out. Together.”
He nodded, letting out a long, controlled breath. He turned his head and kissed her palm. “I’m scared, Izzy,” he admitted, the words gravelly and low. “Not of the work. Of something happening to you. Of you hurting.”
“I know,” she said. “Me too. But we’ve survived everything else by being one thing. A team. This just makes the team bigger, that’s all.”
He hugged her then, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping her up so completely she disappeared into his embrace. She felt the frantic beat of his heart against her cheek, gradually slowing to match her own.
Later, after he’d made her a protein shake that tasted like chalk and almonds and watched her drink every drop, they lay tangled in the dark. The embers in the hearth were just faint, red sighs.
“We have to tell people,” Izzy murmured into his chest. “Soon. I’m going to start showing fast. Like, really fast.”
Dom’s arm tightened around her. He was thinking of the crew, his friends, the only family they had outside this room. He knew how it looked. A twenty-year-old girl, pregnant. Her forty-four-year-old father, the obvious father. They’d accepted the closeness, the unusual bond, with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell silence born of loyalty. This would blast through that silence like a nitro burst.
“Let them think what they want,” he said, his voice a rumble in the dark. “The truth is ours. The family is ours. They can be in or they can be out.”
“They’ll be in,” she said with certainty. “They’re family too. They’ll help.”
He knew she was right. But he also knew the world outside their garage, outside their chosen few, would not be kind. The stares. The whispers. The outright condemnation. He would become a shield for her, for all of them. He’d done it before.
Izzy’s hand slid down his stomach, her touch igniting a familiar path. Her fingers dipped beneath the waistband of his boxers, circling him, feeling him stir and harden under her deliberate touch. It was a question, a comfort, a reclaiming.
“Hey,” she whispered, her lips against his collarbone. “We made life. Five lives. That’s a hell of a thing to celebrate.”
He rolled over, pinning her beneath him, his weight a delicious anchor. He looked down at her, her eyes glittering in the faint light. All the fear, the planning, the future chaos, receded into a single point of focus: her. His girl. The mother of his children.
He kissed her, not with the frantic passion of the fertile week, but with a deep, solemn tenderness that made her throat tight. “Yeah,” he whispered against her mouth. “It is.”
And for a while, in the warm, quiet dark, there was no count of five, no doctors, no minivans. There was only the two of them, building a different kind of sanctuary, one touch at a time. The future, vast and frightening, waited at the door. But for now, it was locked out.