Chapter 11: The Shed Confession
The garage was the only place Dominic could breathe. Here, the world was reduced to torque specs and grease stains, to problems with solutions you could hold in your hand. The chemical stink of the garage—gasoline, old motor oil, the sharp tang of penetrating fluid—was a brutal perfume that scoured the other smells from his memory. For a few minutes, anyway.
He stood with his palms flat on the workbench, head bowed, watching a single drop of sweat fall from his brow and bloom dark on the dusty wood. His body ached with a profound, hollow fatigue. His knuckles were scraped raw. He’d been pulling apart the Corvette’s carburetor for an hour, not to fix it, just to have something to destroy.
The silence in the house behind him was worse than the noise had been. A judgement.
Then he heard it. A hitching, stifled breath from the far corner, behind the massive rolling tool chest. He knew the sound of her crying. He’d known it since she was an infant.
He didn’t want to go. Every cell in his body screamed to stay at the bench, to let the iron and the oil absorb him. But his feet were already moving, carrying him across the concrete floor, past the skeletal Mustang.
She was curled in the narrow gap between the chest and the wall, a shadow in the long, dusty light from the high window. Knees to her chest, face buried. Her shoulders jerked silently.
He lowered himself to a crouch, the old knees popping. The space was tight. His bulk filled it, made it feel like a confessional. He didn’t touch her. Not yet.
“Val.”
She flinched but didn’t look up. Her voice was muffled by her arms. “Go away.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Why?” She lifted her head then. Her eyes were swollen, her face blotchy and slick. The raw despair in them was a physical blow. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? You’ve done enough.”
He accepted the words. Nodded. “Yeah. I have.”
The simple agreement disarmed her. Her anger deflated, leaving only the hurt beneath. She stared at the grease-stained concrete between them. “Why does she want it so bad?” The question was a whisper, thin and broken. “Why does she need to see me… like that? Pregnant. With your baby.”
Dominic looked past her, at a faded poster for Pennzoil that his dad had tacked up decades ago. The answer was a knot of ugly truths. “It’s not just about a baby.”
“Then what?”
“It’s proof.” The word tasted like rust. “For her. That what we are… what we did to make you… that it wasn’t a mistake. That it was meant to be repeated. That it’s… natural.”
Valentina shook her head, a frantic, denying motion. “That’s insane.”
“I know.” He finally reached out, his calloused thumb wiping a tear from her cheek. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into the touch, starving for any comfort, even from him. “She’s scared, Val.”
“Of what? Losing us?” A bitter, choked sound escaped her. “We’re locked in this house. We’re never leaving. How can she lose us?”
Dominic’s jaw worked. The truth was a bullet he had to bite. “She’s scared of losing me. Of me waking up one day and deciding this is all… wrong. And walking out. You’re not the vessel, baby. You’re the chain.”
He saw the comprehension dawn, and with it, a fresh wave of devastation. She was the living, breathing bond that would forever tether him to Catalina. A child from them had done it once. A child from him and her would weld it shut for good.
“So I’m the anchor,” Valentina breathed. “Dragging you both down.”
“No.” The word came out too harsh. He softened his grip, cupped her face fully. “Listen to me. I won’t let her hurt you anymore. I won’t let this… procedure… whatever the hell it is, go any further. It stops.”
He meant it. In that moment, with her tear-streaked face in his hands, he meant it with every shattered piece of his soul.
But his body was a separate country with its own laws. The proximity. Her vulnerability. The scent of her tears and the underlying, familiar sweetness of her skin—a scent that was uniquely hers, yet carried echoes of Catalina from decades ago. The memory of how she’d felt around him, hot and clutching, just hours before, was not a memory. It was a live wire in his blood.
He felt the traitorous thickening at his crotch, a dull ache pressing against his zipper.
Valentina felt it too. Or she saw the shift in his eyes, the dilation of his pupils in the dim light. Her own breath caught. The air in the cramped space changed, growing heavier, charged. It wasn’t fear he saw flash across her face. It was a horrifying, mirrored recognition. And a flicker of something else—a confused, shameful heat that darkened her cheeks.
She tried to pull back. “Don’t.”
His hands fell from her face as if burned. He shifted to stand, to put distance between them, but his movement in the tight space brought his thigh against her folded knees. A simple point of contact.
It was enough.
A full-body tremor wracked her. She squeezed her eyes shut, but a fresh tear escaped. “I can still feel it,” she whispered, the confession torn from her. “My body feels… wrong. Different. It feels empty and it hurts. And I hate that it hurts. I hate that I want…”
She couldn’t finish. She didn’t have to.
Dominic’s resolve crumbled. It wasn’t a violent collapse, but a quiet, seismic surrender. The dam of his good intentions broke under the flood of her shared, awful truth.
He didn’t grab her. He didn’t command.