Chapter 31: Backseat Confirmation
The world shrunk to the backseat of the Charger, the leather groaning under their weight. Dominic’s teeth had shredded the cardboard flap of the pregnancy test box, spitting the wet fragment onto the floor mat. The plastic stick felt alien in his palm. He stared at it, his breath fogging the window.
“Look at me,” Catalina whispered.
He didn’t. His gaze was locked on her bare thigh, on the way his own large, grease-stained hand looked against her skin. His other hand, the one holding the test, was shaking. He willed it to stop. It didn’t listen.
“Dom.”
He moved then. A shift, a re-focus. His fingers, still inside her, curled gently. A shockwave went through her, a full-body shudder that had nothing to do with the cold vinyl against her back. She arched, a sharp gasp stolen by the closed, private air of the car. The test clattered onto the seat beside her hip.
“Focus,” he grunted, but it was a command for himself as much as for her. He withdrew his fingers, slick and gleaming in the dashboard’s weak green glow. He didn’t wipe them on his jeans. He brought them to his mouth, his dark eyes never leaving hers, and tasted. Salt.Her. A history written in a single, brutal gesture.
Catalina watched, her chest heaving. “You’re a bastard.”
“Yeah.” He reached for the test, tearing open the foil with a swift, precise rip. His hands were steady now. The moment of unsteadiness was gone, buried under a layer of forged control. “Now. Do it.”
He handed her the stick. The mundanity of it was the most obscene part. A plastic wand, bought under the buzzing fluorescence of a 24-hour pharmacy while the pimpled kid at the register refused to make eye contact. This was their sacrament.
Catalina took it, her fingers brushing his. She shifted, awkward in the confined space, her jeans around her ankles. The Charger was their temple, their haven, but in this act, it felt like a confession booth. She positioned the stick, her face a mask of fierce concentration.
The sound was small. A trickle against plastic.
Dominic looked away, out through the windshield. The parking lot was empty except for a beat-up pickup in the far corner. The flickering streetlight painted the asphalt in strobes of jaundiced yellow. He counted his heartbeats.One. Two. The engine ticked as it cooled. He could still smell her on his fingers.
She finished, recapping the test with a definitive click. She placed it on the dashboard, propped against the base of the speedometer where they could both watch it. The little result window was a blank, white desert.
Silence flooded the car, thick and heavy. It was a different silence than before. The frantic energy had bled out, leaving only a dreadful, pregnant wait. He pulled her jeans up for her, his movements strangely tender, then guided her to sit up, to lean against him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his body a solid wall of heat against the creeping night chill.
They stared at the little window.
“If it’s positive,” he began, his voice low, a rumble in his chest she felt more than heard.
“Don’t,” she cut him off, her head on his shoulder. “Just don’t talk.”
Minutes stretched. The digital clock on the dash changed: 2:17 AM. A distant siren warbled, then faded.
He thought about the last time. The secret they’d kept for seven years, a living, breathing secret with Mina’s eyes and Catalina’s smile. The way the crew, his family, had accepted her without question, a story of a fleeting romance with a drifter conveniently gone. The lie sat in their house, at their dinner table, a permanent ghost. Could they do it again? Build another lie on top of the crumbling foundation of the first?
“Remember the canyon run?” Catalina said softly, her voice dreamy, detached. “The night we first… you know. Really knew.”
He nodded against her hair. “The ‘71 Hemi ‘Cuda. You beat me by half a length.”
“You let me win.”
“I did not.” A faint smirk touched his lips. “Your line was better. Aggressive.Reckless. It was beautiful.”
“It was the same blood,” she whispered. “The same mind. Of course I knew your line.”
The first hint of color bloomed in the test window. A faint, tentative pink. Dominic’s arm tightened around her. His breathing stopped.
A second line began to form, bleeding into existence beside the first. It was slower, a shy ghost of color. Then, decisively, it darkened. Two solid, parallel pink lines.
The confirmation hit him not like a wave, but like a deep, subterranean shift. The ground beneath him, the very bedrock of his world, re-solidified into a new, terrifying shape.
Catalina made a sound. A tiny, choked exhale. She sat up straight, pulling away from him to stare at the proof.
Dominic reached out, took the stick from the dashboard. He held it up, turning it slowly in the light. The lines were undeniable. A fact. A future.
He looked at his sister. Her eyes were wide, luminous with unshed tears and a wild, defiant fire. In her face, he saw his own fear, his own desire, reflected back at him infinitely.
A slow, raw smile spread across his face, one that didn’t touch the torment in his eyes. “Well,” he said, his voice gravel. “Guess we’re going to need a bigger garage.”
He crushed the test in his fist, the plastic snapping. He didn’t throw it away. He shoved the pieces into the pocket of his jacket, a relic to be buried later. He turned the key. The Charger roared to life, the sudden vibration a shock to the silence.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice steadier now.
“Home,” he said, throwing the car into reverse. The tires squealed against the asphalt as he swung them out of the lot and onto the empty boulevard. “We’re telling Mina a story about how much Mommy and Daddy love each other.” He glanced at her, his hand finding hers on the seat between them, lacing their fingers together in a vise grip. “And then we’re figuring out how the hell we build a family out of this.”
The car accelerated, swallowing the yellow lines of the road. The city lights blurred into streaks. He drove the way he did everything: straight into the storm, one hand on the wheel, the other holding onto the only thing that had ever made sense, even when it made no sense at all.
He drove the way he did everything: straight into the storm, one hand on the wheel, the other holding onto the only thing that had ever made sense, even when it made no sense at all.
The city lights bled into the gray haze of the Valley, the Charger’s engine a constant, soothing thunder. Catalina watched his profile, the sharp line of his jaw clenched tight. Her hand was still in his, their palms fused by sweat and a shared, silent vow.
“She’s gonna know,” Catalina said, the words barely audible over the road noise.
“She’s seven.”
“She knew last time. In her way.” Catalina pulled her hand free, running it through her tangled hair. “She asked me last week why her eyes are the same as yours. Not like yours. The same.”
Dominic’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, the leather creaking. He took the turn into their neighborhood too fast, the tires protesting against the smooth asphalt of their own street. The house was dark except for the porch light, a single yellow eye watching them pull into the driveway.
They sat for a moment in the dying rumble of the engine. The pieces of the test in his pocket felt like they were burning a hole through the lining, through his skin.
“We just act normal,” he said, more to himself.
“We’re not normal, Dom.”
He killed the lights. “For her, we are.”
The house was too quiet. The hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the hallway clock—every sound was amplified. They moved through the dark living room, a familiar dance of avoidance around the toy clutter on the floor.
Mina’s nightlight cast a soft blue glow from her half-open doorway. Dominic peered in. She was asleep, a small lump under the dinosaur comforter, one arm flung over her stuffed dog. The sight of her, peaceful and innocent, hit him in the throat. He backed away quietly.
In their bedroom—their bedroom, a fact that still felt illicit after all these years—Catalina finally stripped off her jacket. She threw it onto the worn armchair in the corner. Dominic did the same, his movements stiff.
The jacket landed with a soft thump. And a faint, plastic crinkle.
A tiny, disembodied piece of white plastic, snapped from the pregnancy test, skittered out of his pocket and across the hardwood floor. It spun to a stop near the leg of the dresser, a miniature bone in the moonlight.
They both stared at it. A shared, frozen moment of dread.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Dominic’s head snapped up. Catalina’s breath caught. The door, which they’d left ajar, pushed open wider.
The door, which they’d left ajar, pushed open wider.
Mia stood in the hallway’s shadow, backlit by the dim nightlight from Mina’s room. She was still dressed in her work clothes—grease-stained cargo pants and a faded tank top—her dark hair piled in a messy knot. Her eyes weren’t sleepy. They were sharp, scanning the scene: the jackets on the floor, their disheveled clothes, the electric tension crackling between them.
Her gaze dropped. It landed on the sliver of white plastic by the dresser leg. It held there. A long, silent second stretched thin enough to snap.
Catalina took a half-step forward, her body angling as if to block the view. “Mia, it’s late.”
“Is it.” Mia’s voice was flat. She pushed the door fully open and walked in, her movements deliberate. She didn’t look at either of them. She went straight for the plastic fragment, crouching down. She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, holding it to the window’s moonlight.
Dominic felt his muscles lock. He could explain a lot of things.A broken part. Trash. But the shape was too specific, the little plastic window unmistakable even in pieces. He saw the recognition click in Mia’s posture, a subtle stiffening of her spine.
She stood up slowly. She turned the piece over in her palm.
“You went out,” she stated, finally looking at Dominic. Her eyes were like shattered glass. “After you put Mina down. Said you needed air.”
“I did,” he said, the lie tasting like ash.
“You needed a test.” Mia’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper, fraying at the edges. She looked from him to Catalina, then back to the plastic. “Again?”
“Mia, don’t,” Catalina started, but the plea was weak, already defeated.
“Don’t?” Mia’s head jerked up. She flung the plastic piece onto the bed where it bounced once, a tiny, accusatory tick. “Don’t what? Don’t say what we’re all thinking? What I said last time when you showed me the first one in this same fucking room?”
“Keep your voice down,” Dominic growled, his own control slipping.
“Why?” Mia shot back, not lowering it. “So you don’t wake up the first kid you made together? The one you told everyone was from some guy who skipped town?” She took a step toward Catalina, her hands shaking. “Tell me it’s negative. Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
Catalina met her sister’s gaze. Her jaw was set, but her lower lip trembled. The silence was her answer.
Mia’s face crumpled for a second before hardening into something colder, more permanent. “No. Oh, no.”
“Mia,” Dominic tried, reaching out a hand.
She batted it away. “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare.” She backed toward the door, shaking her head slowly, a terrible disbelief dawning in her eyes. “It was a mistake the first time. A tragedy. But you… you kept her. You built this whole life on it. I accepted it.For her. For Mina. But this?”
Her voice broke. “You’re doing it again. On purpose.”
“It’s not like that,” Catalina said, her own voice rising.
“It’s exactly like that!” Mia’s shout was raw, torn from her chest. “You think another baby makes it more normal? It makes it more sick. You are breeding this.”
The word hung in the air, vile and final.
Dominic felt a white-hot rage ignite in his gut, a reflex to protect what was his, but beneath it was a cold, hollow shame that muffled the fire before it could burst out. He just stood there.
“Get out,” Catalina whispered, tears now streaming freely down her face. “Just get out of our room.”
Mia nodded, a sharp, bitter motion. “Gladly. This room makes me want to burn the whole house down.” She stopped at the threshold, looking at them both, her eyes shining with tears of pure, unadulterated fury and grief. “You want to destroy this family? You’re doing a great job. But leave Mina out of it. She deserves better than to be a prop in your twisted little fantasy.”
She turned and left. Her footsteps down the hall were hard, swift, and final.
The bedroom felt cavernous, hollowed out by her words. Catalina sank onto the edge of the bed, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Dominic didn’t go to her. He walked to the window, staring out at the empty driveway, his hands braced on the sill. The wood was cool and solid under his palms. He focused on that feeling. He could hear Mia’s car door slam outside, the engine roar to life, the angry screech of tires as she peeled away into the night.
His own reflection stared back at him from the dark glass—a ghost overlaid on the peaceful, sleeping street. Behind him, the broken piece of the test lay on the rumpled comforter. A tiny monument. Mia was right. They were building something, alright.
Laying another brick on a foundation of lies so deep he couldn't even see the bottom anymore.