Chapter 10: Blood & Promises
The furious gale of the kiss was a shelter and a storm. Catalina felt herself dissolving into the raw taste of him—salt from her tears, the faint, familiar sting of his mouthwash, the deeper, frightening warmth that was just Dom. Her nails, which had bitten into the hard muscle of his forearms, uncurled. Her hands rose to his shoulders, then to the corded back of his neck, holding on as the ground seemed to tilt beneath her. The wind ripped at them, a futile referee.
He broke the kiss first, but didn't let her go. His breath was ragged against her cheek. His eyes, inches from hers, were a dark, turbulent sea. "We're not talking about this with cliffs at our backs," he growled, his voice scraped raw. It wasn't a question. It was a command.
He took her hand, his grip almost painful, and pulled her towards the cars. Not the Subaru. The Charger. He opened the passenger door for her, a gesture that felt jarringly formal and protective. She slid in. The interior was pure Dominic—the scent of leather, motor oil, and a trace of gasoline. A lifeline of dangling wires from a recent stereo install brushed her thigh. It felt more like home than her sterile apartment ever had. He slammed her door, the solid thunk sealing them into the heavy, potent silence of the machine.
He walked around the hood, a silhouette against the dying, bloody sun. When he got in, he didn't start the engine immediately. He just sat there, both hands braced on the steering wheel, staring at the knot of city lights beginning to prick the deep indigo distance. The muscles in his jaw worked.
"The house," he said finally. It wasn't his house. He'd been renting a craftsman bungalow on a quiet street since Letty walked out six months ago. A placeholder. But it was his space. More real than a cliffside or a doctor's office.
She nodded, the movement slight. "Okay."
He fired the engine. The sound was a contained explosion that vibrated through the chassis and through the soles of her feet. It felt honest. He didn't peel out, didn't unleash the beast. He drove with a terrifying, focused restraint, the big car purring down the winding road from the overlook, each gear shift a precise, controlled thunk.
Catalina watched the world blur past her window. The last golden light caught in the dry chaparral, making it look like it was burning. The awful, clarifying horror of telling him was gone. In its place was a strange, numb suspension. He knew. He was here. And the world had not, in fact, ended. It had simply narrowed to the confines of this fast-moving car, the dashboard's soft green glow, the heat of his body just a foot away.
Twenty silent minutes later, he turned into the driveway of the bungalow. It was dark, no lights on. He killed the engine. The quiet was sudden and profound, broken only by the tink-tink-tink of the cooling engine. He got out.She followed.
Inside, the house smelled like lemon wood polish and the ghost of coffee from that morning. A single recliner faced a large, blank television. A stack of car magazines teetered on the floor beside it. A half-dismantled carburetor sat on a spread of newspaper on the dining table, gleaming dully in the faint ambient light from the streetlamp outside. A bachelor's space, functional and lonely.
Dominic flicked a switch, and a single lamp in the corner cast a warm, inadequate pool of light across the worn hardwood floor. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and threw it over the back of a chair. He still hadn't looked at her stomach again. He moved to the small, open kitchen, yanked open the fridge, and pulled out two bottles of water. He held one out to her.
She took it. The plastic was cold, beading with condensation. She didn't open it.
He cracked his open, took a long pull, and then finally turned to face her, leaning his hips against the kitchen counter. The distance felt necessary, a no-man's-land across the bare floor.
"I'm not walking away." His voice was low, final. He said it like he was stating the direction of the sun. "That's not an option.So scratch it."
"Dom—"
"It's not an option," he repeated, a harder edge now. He took another drink. "You asked what I wanted. I'm telling you. You don't do this alone. That's done."
The simplicity of it stole her breath. It wasn't flowery. It wasn't a promise of forever or a declaration of love. It was a territorial claim, as fundamental as gravity. You're mine. It's mine. The same possessiveness that had fueled the garden, but now aimed at a new, terrible purpose: protection.
"And what's this, exactly?" she asked, her voice husky. "You move me in here? We tell Mia we're… what, together? That we're having a baby that just happened to look exactly like her uncle and her aunt? That we fell in love after she knew I was in a clinic for… for us?" Her words gained speed, frantic. "Do we tell the kid the truth on its eighteenth birthday? 'Happy adulthood, your dad is also your uncle, hope that doesn't screw you up too bad'?"
He flinched, a barely perceptible tightening around his eyes. He set the water bottle down on the counter with a solid clack. "I don't have the answers, Cat. But I know the first one is no one finds out.Not Mia. Not Brian. Not the crew. No one." He pushed off the counter and walked a few paces into the living room, then turned back, a caged animal. "We handle it. We deal. But we do it together, behind closed doors. You have the baby. We raise it. We figure out the story as we go."
"A story built on a lie that big will collapse, Dom. It's a house on sand." She finally opened her water, took a sip to wet her desert-dry throat. "And what about you? What about… your life? Finding someone? A real…" She couldn't finish. The word wife felt like broken glass in her mouth.
A harsh, bitter sound escaped him, almost a laugh. "My life? You think that's on the table for me now?After you? After this?" He gestured sharply between them, a slash of his hand in the lamplight. "You were the line, Cat. The one I couldn't cross. And I crossed it. There's no going back from that for me. This," he said, his gaze dropping pointedly, finally, to her midsection, "is just making it permanent."
The sheer, devastating acceptance in his voice was more shocking than any anger. He wasn't fighting the fate. He was submitting to it. Embracing it as his due punishment and his only possible path forward. The finality was absolute.
She walked towards him, stopping a few feet away. The carburetor parts on the table glinted between them like strange, mechanical offerings. "I saw Dr. Albright today. Before I called you."
His eyes narrowed, wary. "What did she say?"
"She said biology isn't morality. She said the kid won't be a sin. It'll be a person. Our job is to make sure that's the only story it carries." Catalina hugged herself, the cold bottle pressed between her arm and her ribs. "She made me see I could… separate it. In time. Love it for itself. That's the only reason I'm standing here."
He processed this, his gaze fixed on a point over her shoulder. "She's right," he said, the words gruff. "It's not the kid's fault. It's ours. So our problem."
"Our problem," she echoed softly. The words, for the first time, didn'tt feel like a death sentence. They felt like a foundation, however cracked and ill-laid. A shared burden.
He stepped closer, invading the careful space she'd kept. He didn't touch her. "You're staying here."
It wasn't a request. It was logistics.
"I have an apartment," she said, but the protest was weak.
"This isn't a discussion. You shouldn't be alone.Not now." His eyes swept over her face, assessing, possessive. "You need to eat. Real food. Not that takeout crap you live on." A flicker of the old Dom, the one who’d taken care of her since their mom died, surfaced through the chaos.
The domesticity of it—you need to eat—was so absurdly normal it cracked the awful tension. A small, hysterical bubble of laughter rose in her throat. She choked it back. "You're going to cook?"
"I can make eggs," he said, a ghost of a defensive smirk touching his lips. It was gone as quickly as it came. "And I can get takeout that isn't crap."
She just looked at him, this man, her twin, the father of the unseen life inside her. The map of their future was a terrifying blank, but he was a fixed point on it.An immutable truth. The fear was still there, a cold stone in her gut, but it was now ringed with a fragile, desperate sense of… not hope. Resolution.
"Okay," she whispered.
"Okay," he echoed. He moved past her, back into the kitchen. She heard the metallic scrape of a pan being pulled from a cupboard. The mundane sound of him preparing to feed her was more intimate than the kiss on the cliff.
She walked to the recliner and sank into it. The leather was cool. She watched his back as he moved in the small kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl with more force than necessary. The rigid set of his shoulders spoke of a world of emotion he was forcibly funneling into the simple task.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.Mia again.
Mia: Just making sure you're alright. Brian made a huge mess with the pancakes. Miss you.
Guilt, thick and acidic, washed over her. She typed a reply, her fingers clumsy.
Cat: I'm alright. Just… needed a night to myself. Tell Brian I expect improvements. Love you.
She hit send and immediately powered the phone off. The screen went black. She placed it on the arm of the chair, face down. A tiny act of treason.
The smell of butter browning in the pan began to fill the room, a simple, comforting aroma. Dominic turned the stove off, scraped the scrambled eggs onto a single plate, and brought it over to her with a fork. He didn't make a plate for himself. He just stood there, watching as she took the first bite.
"They're not terrible," she said after she swallowed.
A grunt was his only reply. He watched her eat a few more mouthfuls, his presence a palpable weight in the quiet room. Then he spoke, his voice low and rough.
"We'll get a doctor.Someone discreet. Start… whatever it is you start. Appointments.Vitamins. Whatever you need." He was planning. Building a scaffold of practicalities over the abyss. "You don't go back to your apartment except to get your stuff. We'll go together.Tomorrow."
She just nodded, pushing the eggs around the plate. The reality of it was settling in, layer by layer. The secrecy. The cohabitation. The medical secrecy. A hidden life growing inside a hidden life.
He finally moved, going to the sofa and sitting heavily on the far end. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head hanging. The lamp light gleamed on the smooth dome of his skull. He looked exhausted in a way she’d never seen before—not from pulling an all-nighter on an engine, but from a soul-deep fatigue.
"Get some sleep," he said, not looking up. "Take my bed. I'll take the couch."
His decree hung in the air, a practical line drawn in the quiet. Sleep felt impossible, a distant country. The eggs sat like cement in her stomach. She placed the fork down on the plate with a soft clink, the sound absurdly loud. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to shift, holding the day’s accumulated dread.
Her gaze remained fixed on the window, on the vague, dark shapes of the oak trees in his yard. The truth, the one she’d tried to bury beneath practicality and his blunt directives, rose from her gut like a slow, toxic vapor.
“I’m scared, Dom.” The words were flat, stripped bare.
He didn’t move from the couch. “About Mia finding out? We’ll handle it.”
“No.” She finally turned her head to look at him. His profile was etched against the lamplight, a statue of endurance. “Not about that. I’m scared… what if our child isn’t healthy? Because we fucked.”
There it was. The black root of every fear she’d felt since staring at the twin pink lines in her bathroom. It wasn’t just about morality or secrecy. It was about consequence written in malformed cells, in a silent, suffering body. Biology isn’t morality.Dr. Albright’s words rang hollow now. Biology had rules, brutal and statistical, and they had shattered the most fundamental one.
Dominic went very still. The only movement was the slight, rhythmic flex of the large hand resting on his knee. He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at the blank, dark television screen as if an answer might scroll there. The air in the room thickened, became difficult to pull into her lungs.
“That’s not… it doesn’t work like that.” His voice was low, but it lacked its earlier certainty. It was the voice of a man trying to convince himself. “Not for sure.”
“How do you know?” she pushed, the fear sharpening her tone. “You think our… particular brand of fucked-up comes with a guarantee? That the universe winks and says ‘close enough, carry on’? We broke the biggest rule there is.” She stood up abruptly, the plate forgotten on the chair. She paced the few steps to the cold fireplace and back, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “What if it’s born and it’s in pain? What if it can’t think right, or its heart is wrong, or it’s just… broken? And it’s broken because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other in a garden.” She was spiraling, the images forming in her mind, vivid and monstrous.
“Don’t.” He stood now, too, a mirror of her restless energy. He cut the air with his hand. “Don’t do that. You can’t think like that.”
“How can I not?!” Her voice cracked. “You’re talking about vitamins and doctors and moving in like we’re planning a fucking nursery, Dom! But what if the nursery needs specialized equipment? What if it needs a lifetime of care we can’t give? What if we made a life that’s just… suffering?” The final word dissolved into a choked whisper. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to push the visions back.
He crossed the space between them in two long strides. He didn’t embrace her this time. He grasped her upper arms, his grip firm, anchoring. “Look at me.”
She forced her hands down, meeting his gaze. His eyes were dark pools of a turmoil so deep it was terrifying.
“We get the best doctor,” he said, each word punched out with a terrifying intensity. “We do every test they have. We know.Early. We deal with what we know, not what we’re afraid of.” His thumbs moved, a rough, almost unconscious stroke against her skin. “And no matter what, Cat. No matter what it is… it’s ours. We don’t run from it. We don’t hide from it. We face it. Together.” He gave her a small, hard shake. “You hear me? Together. That’s the only way any of this gets borne.”
He was building his code around this disaster, brick by brutal brick. No running. Facing it. It was the only language he had. In the face of her formless, sprawling terror, his concrete pronouncements were a lifeline, even if they led into a storm.
A shuddering breath escaped her. The panicked imagery receded, not gone, but pushed back behind the wall of his resolve. He was right. They would know. They had to know. The not-knowing was a torture chamber.
“Okay,” she breathed, her body slumping slightly in his hold.
“Okay,” he echoed, his grip easing, becoming less of a restraint and more of a support. He released one arm, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, his palm calloused and warm. It was a gesture so tender it made her eyes burn anew. “You’re taking the bed. Now. Your brain needs to shut off for a few hours.”
She didn’t argue. He guided her down the short hallway to his bedroom. It was stark—a queen-sized bed with a navy comforter, a dresser, a closet door slightly ajar revealing a line of hanging shirts. It smelled like him, like soap and that particular, clean musk of his skin. He clicked on a small lamp on the nightstand.
“I’ll be on the couch,” he said, lingering in the doorway. “You need anything, you yell.”
She just nodded, sitting on the edge of the mattress. The springs creaked faintly. He watched her for another second, his silhouette filling the frame, then pulled the door closed until it was open just a crack. A sliver of hallway light cut across the floor.
The hum of the refrigerator, the sigh of the house settling. She changed into one of his t-shirts she found in a drawer, the soft, worn cotton swallowing her, smelling intimately of him. She slipped under the covers. The pillowcase was cool.
She stared at the crack of light, listening. She heard the soft thump of him sitting back on the couch, the rustle of fabric. Then silence. They were both awake in the dark, separated by a wall and a few yards of hallway, bound by a shared, terrifying orbit around an unseen, forming star. The fear was still there, a cold companion under the blankets. But his words—We face it. Together.—were a low, steady pulse in the quiet, the first real rhythm in the chaos since the test shattered on her bathroom floor.
Chapter 10 —cont.
—were a low, steady pulse in the quiet, the first real rhythm in the chaos since the test shattered on her bathroom floor. Sleep, when it came, was a black, dreamless vacuum. It felt like being switched off, a mercy. She woke to the grey, predawn light seeping around the edges of the window shade. The room was alien. The hum of a distant lawnmower. The heavy, unfamiliar weight of a man’s comforter. The reality of the previous day reassembled itself in her mind with the cold precision of a trap locking shut.
She was here. She was pregnant.
A low, greasy churn started deep in her gut. She dismissed it as residual anxiety, the ghost of last night’s eggs. She sat up, the t-shirt she’d borrowed from his drawer twisting around her hips. The smell of him was everywhere. She pushed the covers back and stood. The room tilted slightly. A wave of something warmer, more insistent, rolled through her. She took a slow breath, hand on the dresser for balance.
In the hallway, the air was still. The living room was a tableau of suspended reality. Dominic was sprawled on the sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes, a throw blanket tangled around his legs. He looked younger in sleep, the permanent furrow between his brows smoothed out. The sight of him, vulnerable and stranded on his own couch, twisted something inside her. She moved quietly past, into the bathroom.
She splashed cold water on her face, avoiding her reflection in the mirror. The churning intensified, coiling into a specific, rising heat in her throat. She braced her hands on the cool porcelain of the sink and waited for it to pass. It didn’t. It bloomed. A sudden, violent salivation flooded her mouth.
She barely made it to the toilet. The meager contents of her stomach came up in a bitter, acidic rush. It was over quickly, leaving her shaking and sweaty, kneeling on the cold tile floor. She flushed, resting her forehead against the seat, the sterile ceramic smell filling her nostrils. This was new. This was different.
The bathroom door creaked open. She didn't look up. His bare feet appeared in her peripheral vision, toes curling against the tile."Cat?"
"Yeah." Her voice was a croak.
He didn't ask if she was okay. He crouched down beside her, his large frame making the small space feel even smaller. His hand, tentative, settled on the damp back of the t-shirt. "Is this…?"
"Probably." She pushed herself up, her legs wobbly. He stood with her, a steadying presence. She moved to the sink, rinsed her mouth, and drank directly from the tap. The water was tinny and lukewarm. She caught his eye in the mirror. He looked pale, his own face a mask of stricken concern. It wasn't fear of a rival or anger at a broken part. It was helplessness. An enemy he couldn't fight with his hands or a wrench.
"Did the eggs do it?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep and worry.
"It's not the eggs." She turned, leaning back against the sink. The nausea was receding, leaving a hollow, trembling aftermath. "It's just… morning. It's a thing that happens."
He absorbed this, his gaze dropping to her stomach as if he could see the tiny, relentless cause. "What do you need?Crackers? Ginger ale? They say that, right? Ginger ale."
The image of Dominic Toretto, street legend, anxiously reciting old wives' tales about morning sickness was so profoundly surreal it almost made her laugh. Almost. "I don't know. Maybe. It just… it just started."
He nodded, already shifting into operational mode. The helplessness vanished, replaced by a focused intensity."Get dressed. We're going out."
"Where?"
"To get what you need." He was already moving, heading for the hallway. "And to see about finding that doctor. Today.No waiting."
Twenty minutes later, she was in the Charger wearing her clothes from yesterday. He drove with the same contained force, but the destination was a sprawling, anonymous supermarket in a neighborhood where no one knew them. The fluorescent lights were aggressively bright, the Muzak a cheerful insult. He grabbed a cart.
"Point," he said, his hand on the handle.
She felt absurdly self-conscious. This was a clandestine mission for supplies in a war they couldn't name. "The aisle with the tea and crackers, I guess."
He navigated the wide aisles with a predatory grace, ignoring the other early-morning shoppers. He stopped at the shelf, a wall of boxes and bottles. He surveyed it like it was an engine schematic."Which one?"
"I have no idea, Dom." The bland packaging, the smiling, healthy mothers pictured on some of the boxes, felt like they were mocking her. "Just… something plain."
He reached out and grabbed a box of saltine crackers, a family-sized pack. Then another. He selected a bottle of ginger chews, then a different brand of ginger tea. He threw in a pack of plain rice cakes for good measure. His approach was brute force: acquire all potential solutions. He moved down to the drinks cooler and pulled out a four-pack of premium ginger beer. "This is better than ginger ale," he stated, as if he'd just decoded a universal truth.
She didn't argue. The cart was becoming a monument to her condition. He paused at the pharmacy section, his eyes scanning the brightly labeled prenatal vitamins. His hand hovered, then retracted. "We'll get the ones the doctor says." He wasn't leaving anything to chance.
The cashier was a tired-looking woman who didn't glance up. Dominic paid in cash, stuffing the groceries into two sturdy paper bags. The entire transaction felt clandestine, a purchase of contraband. Back in the car, he handed her the bag with the crackers and ginger chews. "Eat one."
"I'm not hungry."Do it anyway." His tone brooked no argument. It was the same voice he used when telling her to check her oil or brace for impact.
She opened the box, the crinkle of the inner wrapper loud in the quiet car. The cracker was dry and tasteless, sawdust on her tongue. She forced it down. They sat in the parked car for a moment, the engine off. The mundane reality of it was settling in his mind, too, she could tell. This wasn't about grand declarations or cliffside kisses. It was about crackers and nausea and secret doctor appointments.
He started the car. "I made a call while you were getting dressed. Friend of a guy who knows a guy. There's a doctor. Private practice. Discreet. We have an appointment at eleven."
The speed of it, the efficient, underground network he’d mobilized in the space of an hour, was staggering. "You got a prenatal appointment just like that?"
"He understands the need for privacy," Dom said, his eyes on the road. His meaning was clear: the doctor was used to clients who required absolute confidentiality for other, less complicated reasons. Money, or Dom's particular reputation, had smoothed the path.
She just nodded, looking out the window. The cracker was sitting like a lump in her stomach, but the urgent nausea had retreated, for now. He was building the scaffold, just as he’d said he would. Appointments.Vitamins. A closed loop of care. A hidden pipeline for their hidden problem.
The medical office was in a mid-century building downtown, the kind with faded glamour in its marble lobby and humming elevator. The plaque on the door simply said "A. Vance, M.D." No obstetrics mentioned. Dominic knocked, a firm rap. The door was opened by a woman in her fifties with sharp, intelligent eyes and a no-nonsense grey bob. She assessed them both in a single glance, lingering on Catalina’s face, then Dominic's.
"Mr.Torrance? Come in." The alias was smooth. She stepped back, ushering them into a tastefully bland waiting room with two chairs and a silent television. It felt like a safe house. "I'm Dr.Vance. Let's go straight through."
The exam room was standard, chilly, smelling of antiseptic. The stirrups were an accusation. Dr. Vance was efficient. "I understand the need for discretion. All records are physical, kept here.No digital trail. Payment is cash, at the close of each visit." She directed Catalina to change into a gown. Dominic stood near the door, a sentinel, his arms crossed. His presence was a wall.
The exam was brisk, professional. Dr. Vance asked basic medical history, her questions careful, circling their shared genetics without ever naming it. Catalina answered in monosyllables. The cold speculum. The pressure. The quiet click of instruments. Dominic's stare was fixed on a point on the wall above the doctor's head, his jaw clenched.
"The ultrasound will give us confirmation and a better idea of dating," Dr. Vance said, wheeling a machine over. She squeezed clear gel onto Catalina's lower abdomen. The probe was cold. Dominic took a half-step forward, then stopped himself. The screen flickered to life, a storm of staticky grey and black. The doctor moved the probe, her eyes on the monitor.
Then, a shape coalesced. A small, pulsing grain of light. A rapid, rhythmic flicker at its center. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
"That's the fetal pole," Dr. Vance said, her voice calm, clinical. "And that flashing is the heart rate.Strong. Perfectly normal for seven weeks."
Catalina's breath caught. She’d expected a blob, an ambiguous shadow. But this was a distinct form. A tiny seahorse clinging to the screen. And the heartbeat was a frantic, luminous star, blinking its insistent, undeniable here I am. The sound filled the room, a swift, wet gallop. She turned her head, seeking Dominic.
His face had lost all its color. He was staring at the screen, utterly transfixed. The hard lines of his expression had dissolved into something raw and unguarded. He looked terrified. He looked awestruck. His hand, which had been fisted at his side, slowly unclenched. He took the final step to the exam table, his eyes never leaving that flickering light.Dr. Vance moved the probe slightly, taking measurements, typing quietly on a keyboard. The heartbeat thrummed on, the most powerful sound Catalina had ever heard. It wasn't the idea of a child anymore. It was this. This specific, beating thing. Her eyes swam. She reached out blindly, her fingers finding Dominic's wrist. His skin was warm. He turned his hand and grasped hers, his grip iron-tight.
"Everything looks textbook," Dr. Vance said, turning off the sound. The image remained, the silent heartbeat still visible in its rhythmic pulse. "No signs of any issues at this stage. I'll print an image for you."
The loss of the sound felt like a physical amputation. The room was suddenly, sterilely quiet again.Dr. Vance wiped the gel away and helped Catalina sit up. She handed her a black-and-white printout, the grainy image of the fetal pole floating in a sea of grey static. Dominic finally looked away from the screen, his gaze dropping to the paper in Catalina's hand. He reached out, his fingers brushing the edge of the printout, tracing the outline of the shape as if he could touch it.
He didn't speak.His throat worked. Dr. Vance gave them a moment, then handed Catalina a prescription for prenatal vitamins and a list of labs to get drawn. She reiterated the cash-only policy, the discreet phone number. Dominic nodded mutely, taking the papers. He helped Catalina down from the table, his hand under her elbow, a gesture of startling tenderness.
Back in the car, the printout lay on the dashboard like a sacred relic. The silence between them was different now, filled with the phantom echo of that whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. Dominic didn't start the engine. He just sat, staring through the windshield at the downtown traffic.
His fingers tapped once, twice, on the steering wheel. He finally spoke, his voice graveled with an emotion too large for the word. "It has a heartbeat." He said it not to her, but to the air, to the universe, making it real for himself.
"It does," she whispered, picking up the image. The tiny, bean-shaped thing. Their secret was no longer a concept. It was a pulse.
He turned to her then, his dark eyes holding hers. The awe was still there, but underneath it, the iron of his will had reforged itself around this new, undeniable fact. "Okay," he said, the single word heavy with a universe of commitment. "Let's go get your stuff from the apartment. You're moving in. For real."