CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S ilas was at Wyatt’s house when Dom got up the hill, his anger hanging over his head like a heavy, dark cloud. He didn’t bother knocking and just entered the house, his heart instantly lifted by the sound of his son’s laugh.

It was still that full belly-laugh that toddlers did, and it always pulled Dom from whatever funk he was in.

The kids were in the kitchen with Vica making handmade pasta.

This was not the first time Dom had found them here, all of them wearing flour and smiles on their faces.

“What are we making today?” he asked, coming to the counter to stand across from Silas—wearing a blue and brown checkered kid’s apron—who was busy taking thin strips of raw pasta dough and rolling them spiral-like on a thin metal rod.

“I’m making b … boosi …” He wrinkled his little nose in confusion, then glanced at Vica. “What’s it called again?”

“ Busiate ,” she said with her beautiful, thick Italian accent.

Silas nodded solemnly, then tried saying it again. “ Bu-si-a-te .”

“ Bravissimo , Silas,” she said, planting a kiss to the top of his head, which just made Dom’s little boy beam even brighter.

“I’m making … trofie ,” Griffon said, carefully sliding his hand along the counter to create different shaped spirals with the raw dough beneath his palm. They were all coming out different shapes and sizes, but that was how you learned.

“And I’m making cavatelli,” Jake added. His brows were pinched together tight as he focused on his task of using his thumb to roll little rounds of dough until they folded up on each side to create what reminded Dom of a cannelloni for a doll, or a pasta dough taco.

“It was a good thing I packed my rain pants today,” Silas said. “They made us go out for both big and little recess, and it rained hard both times. I stayed mostly dry.” He concentrated hard on what he was doing for a moment. “Forecast says eighty percent of the area should expect rain and wind tomorrow too. With a temperature high of forty-eight, but feels like thirty-six with the windchill. So Uncle Wyatt hung my wet rain pants up over the heater so they’re dry for tomorrow.”

Vica and Dom exchanged amused expressions. Dom nodded. “Well, I’ll make sure to thank Uncle Wyatt.”

Silas nodded, but didn’t look up. “Are you done for the day, Dad?”

“I still have another hour or so, but I just wanted to see how your day was.”

Dom’s son shrugged a boney shoulder. “It was fine.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Griffon said, glancing over at Silas with confusion. “Carnation wouldn’t leave you alone.”

Silas shot his cousin a look.

Griffon gave zero fucks and gave Silas a look right back.

“What happened with Carnation?” Dom asked, going into instant protector-mode. He was doing that a lot today. First with Chloe, and now with his son.

Silas sighed. “Nothing. Griffon is just being—”

“No, I’m not,” Griff shot back. “She grabbed you by the back of your shirt, hauled you backward so you fell onto your back, then she sat on your chest and said if you didn’t kiss her, she’d rub dirt in your face until you cried.”

Dom and Vica’s mouths both dropped open in disbelief. They met each other’s gazes briefly over the tops of the boys’ heads. Heat flashed up like wildfire through Dom’s insides, but he stowed any immediate reaction as quickly as he could and dropped his gaze back to Silas.

Fuck.

His kid was watching him the whole time with fear on his face. Then those gentle, innocent eyes began to water. “I’m sorry I lied, Dad,” he started to blubber.

“Oh, tesoro mio, ” Vica said, pressing another kiss to Silas’s head.

Silas’s bottom lip wobbled as more tears fell.

Vica helped him down from the step stool he stood on to better access the counter, and he flung himself into Dom’s arms as Dom crouched down to better embrace his child.

Silas buried his face in Dom’s neck, little sniffles and snorts echoing through the room.

“Am I in trouble now?” Griffon asked.

“No, lupetto . It’s okay. You are just protecting your cousin.” Vica ruffled Griff’s hair to reassure him.

Dom stayed in a crouched position, but peeled his kid off of him a little and set Silas on his knee. “Can you tell me what happened from your point of view, please?”

Still sniffling, Silas wiped his hand beneath his nose and nodded. “Carnation was chasing me at little recess. She said she wanted to kiss me. I said ‘no, thank you’ so many times. So many times. The duty teacher even told her to leave me alone. But then on big recess, she did it again. It was a different duty teacher, and she chased me around the side of the school where there weren’t any teachers.”

“We chased after them to protect him,” Griff said, but Vica gently shushed him.

Silas nodded. “She grabbed the back of my rain jacket, which hurt my throat, then I fell backward onto the ground where the four-square was. And, Dad,” he looked up in Dom’s eyes, “it really hurt. When my head hit the ground, I thought I was going to die from how badly it hurt.”

Red filled Dom’s vision.

“Then she sat on my chest … like Griffon said, and she said if I didn’t kiss her, she would rub dirt in my face. Then she picked up a big pile of mud and held it above me.”

“And then what happened?” Dom asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer either way.

“Aya ran up and shoved Carnation to the ground and off of Silas,” Griffon cut it. “She said to leave her cousin alone and if she didn’t, Aya was going to go all Kung Fu Panda on her ass.” His eyes went wide. “And she actually said ‘ass.’”

Dom’s brain whirred with information. “So you didn’t kiss her? And she didn’t rub mud in your face?”

Silas shook his head. “Aya saved me. But the duty saw her push Carnation and now Aya is in trouble at school.” He shuddered from the echoes of his earlier tears. “I’m sorry I got Aya in trouble.”

Dom hugged his son tight to his chest not caring that Silas’s flour-covered hands were getting all over Dom’s shirt. “Oh, buddy. You’re not to blame for any of this. Not at all.”

“I don’t want to go back to school,” Silas whimpered. “Carnation is so mean. And what if Griffon, Jake, and Aya aren’t there next time? I don’t want to kiss her. Why would I want to kiss someone who is mean to me?”

“Why, indeed,” Vica said softly.

Dom’s gaze flicked to hers briefly and they shared an unspoken conversation. He rubbed his son’s back. “I’ll make you a deal, hmm?”

With new tears on his cheeks, Silas blinked watery eyes at Dom. “What’s that?”

“We’ll play hooky tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

Silas lit up. “For real life?”

Oh Bluey. The way that animated blue heeler from Australia had woven her vernacular into all the children. He smirked. “For real life.” Then he held up his index finger. “But …”

Silas did the same and held up his index finger. “But …”

That made Dom smile. “I still need to work. Which means, you’re not just staying home eating saltines and watching The Price is Right. ”

“What’s that?” Griffon asked.

Dom ignored the question because he didn’t feel like being reminded of how old he was. “You’re going to be put to work. You’re coming down to the pub and you will roll cutlery, wipe tables, and help out wherever we need you. Deal?”

Silas loved coming to the pub to help Dom. Dom knew this was a no-brainer offer. “Deal! I wasn’t looking forward to that eighty percent chance of rain anyway. The school is almost always hit with it because it’s behind the mountain.” He glanced at Vica and his cousins like they should totally understand what he was saying. “Orographics. You know.”

“Nobody knows that besides you,” Griffon said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

Dom and Vica both snorted with mirth.

Dom sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “On Monday, I’m going to go to the school and have a little chat with the principal, the teacher, and if I have to, Carnation’s parents as well. Because this is getting out of hand. That child needs to be stopped.”

“Aya tried,” Griffon said off-handedly. “And look what happened there. She was sent to the principal’s office because when she pushed Carnation, Carnation skinned her elbow.”

“Because she wasn’t wearing a coat,” Silas added. “And it was cold out and raining. Seventy percent chance today with gusts up to twenty miles an hour. I don’t know what she was smoking.”

That last bit made Vica and Dom both snort again.

“Where’d you hear that?” Dom asked his kid.

“Uncle Jagger said it one time and I thought it was funny.”

“Good old Uncle Jagger,” Dom muttered. He inspected the back of Silas’s head. “How’s your head after she yanked you to the ground?”

“I had a headache for the rest of the day. And when I told the teacher about it, she just told me to drink more water.”

Dom fiddled with Silas’s hair, pushing it to the sides to see. Sure enough, there was a big cut, now dried with blood, on the back of his kid’s head.

Fresh, angry heat bubbled up through his veins until his fists bunched and his nostrils flared.

And Aya was the one to get in trouble?

Fucking hell.

“Did Carnation get in trouble at all?” Vica asked, voicing the question on the tip of Dom’s tongue, he was just too irate to get out.

All three boys shook their heads.

“They didn’t even take Silas to the first aid room,” Jake added. “Even when we told them what Carnation did. They thought we were lying. That because we’re family, we’re going to gang up and stick together.”

“Because you fucking are,” Dom spat out. “But you’re still telling the goddamn truth.” He motioned for Silas to stand up, and Dom slid to his knees. “Let’s check the rest of you, seeing as nobody at the school fucking did.”

“Uncle Dom is really mad,” Griffon whispered. “He never swears this much. Dad does, but not Uncle Dom.”

“Shhhh,” Jake admonished.

Dom gently pulled up Silas’s shirt to inspect his back where there were scabbed over—but not even day-old—scratches and road rash. “Can I check your butt, buddy?”

Silas craned his neck around, his cheeks going pink. But then he nodded.

“We won’t pull your pants down all the way. Just enough for me to check to see if there are any bruises. Does it hurt to sit down?” He carefully, discreetly slid the back portion of Silas’s elastic-waist cargo pants down a little to reveal blue and purple bruises across his sacrum and right where his tailbone was.

“Yeah,” Silas said softly as Dom pulled his pants back up. “It hurts to sit. My teacher got mad at me when I wouldn’t sit still in class … because it hurt to sit.”

“Fuck,” Dom growled, raking his fingers through his hair and tearing out the elastic.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

Fuck waiting until Monday.

Dom hauled his son against him once more. “No, buddy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry the adults at the school let you down.”

He met Vica’s gaze. “Can you—”

“Of course.”

Dom nodded and stood up. “Thanks.” Then he brought his hand to Silas’s head. “I’ll be right back, buddy. I just need to go do a few things okay?”

Silas nodded, confusion swimming in his sad eyes.

Dom kissed his son on the top of his head, then left, fueled by a rage he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He fired off a text to Wyatt so he could relay a message to Logan at the bar. Then he shot off another one to Chloe, asking her if she could start sooner because something came up.

She said that it wouldn’t be a problem.

Vibrating, he climbed into his truck and nearly tore the security gate off its hinges as the impatience gnawed at him like a rabid raccoon. Then his tires launched gravel skyward when the gate finally opened, and he peeled off down the laneway toward the main road.

The school wasn’t too far from the property.

Nothing on the island was more than twenty minutes away, and he recognized the principal’s car in the parking lot when he pulled in.

He wasn’t even sure he completely shut his truck door, he was out and running to the main doors of the school so fast.

The secretary recognized him through the window and buzzed open the door for him before he needed to raise a clenched fist and break the glass.

“Mr. McEvoy,” Sierra greeted, standing up from her desk, “did Silas forget something?”

“Where’s Pickford?” Dom asked, ignoring pleasantries. He had no time or patience for them. Not after what happened to his kid today.

Sierra went to open her mouth, but Principal Otto Pickford came waltzing out of his office before she could. The man should have retired eons ago. He was as old as fucking dirt and tended to err on the side of old-school everything than embrace change. If it wasn’t for the younger teachers and the extremely involved parents pushing for progression, equity, diversity, and inclusion, Otto probably would still be teaching the kids about creationism, and that Sally couldn’t have two dads because that was a sin. He was a preacher’s kid and had grown up in the South, landing the principal gig, and a house on the island because of his wife’s generational land. Just because he’d been at the school for the last ten years, didn’t mean he fit in with the rest of the island. In fact, whenever Dom saw the man out in public he stuck out like a gangrenous limb.

“Hello, Dominic,” Otto said, smiling beneath his thick, yellow-tinged, white mustache. “How can I help you?”

Dom pivoted his attention to the tall man in the mustard-colored button-up and brown slacks. “You can help me understand why my son came home with a giant gash on the back of his head, bruises, scratches, and road rash all over his back and down to his sacrum and tailbone. He can’t sit down without pain. And I checked my phone and email, and there are absolutely no messages or calls from the school regarding this. Why?”

Otto and Sierra exchanged curious looks.

Otto cleared his throat. “Those must have happened on the bus home. This is the first I’ve heard—”

“Bullshit,” Dom snapped back. “Aya was sent to your office earlier today because she pushed Carnation off Silas because Carnation threw my kid to the ground, sat on top of him, and threatened to rub mud in his face if he didn’t kiss her. And when Griffon, Jake, Aya, and Silas tried to tell you all this, you said they were ganging up on Carnation because they’re family. And Aya got reprimanded. Nobody else. What the fuck kind of protect-the-bullies institution are you running here, Pickford?”

At Dom’s use of profanity, the ever-so-pious Pickford visibly got his plumage ruffled. “Dominic, there is no need for such language—”

“The fuck there isn’t,” Dom hollered. “My kid is afraid to come back to school because of this girl. And all you’ve done is punish the person who stood up to her. Who, from what I understand, repeatedly stands up to her. Because she is a bully and a menace.”

“Aya used physical force. She was violent and we don’t condone violence at this school,” Pickford said haughtily, glancing at Sierra for confirmation.

“What about Carnation’s violence toward my kid? You seem to be condoning that.”

Pickford hoisted up his pants with his fingers looped around his worn brown belt, but they sagged right down below his gut almost immediately. “Well … no teacher saw it. A recess duty teacher saw Aya physically assault Carnation.”

“And ignored the fact that Silas was on the ground and injured, apparently.” Dom shook his head, his entire body trembling from bottled rage. He was a shaken coke bottle, and Otto was the sleeve of Mentos. “We talk about consent, and how boys need to ask for consent. And I absolutely agree. But consent is a two-way street. If my son doesn’t want to kiss a girl, he absolutely doesn’t fucking have to.”

Color filled in the gaps of Otto’s cheeks among the patches of already burst capillaries. “Dominic, if you don’t calm down, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

Dom scoffed. “Okay. Do it. Then I’ll report your school—and you—to the school board. And take this shit to the news. You think my nephews and niece were ganging up on that kid with Silas? They were defending him. Because my brothers and I are teaching our children to look out for each other.” He snorted in disgust. “Which is the right thing to do, especially since this school doesn’t have a single fucking adult that will do it.” He shook his head. “Fucking pathetic. You should retire. Let somebody with a fresh perspective run this school. You’re washed up and so out of touch.”

Apparently, it wasn’t the multitude of curse words that Dom spewed at the old codger that caused Otto Pickford to finally snap, but telling him he should retire and that he was washed up.

Otto’s face went even redder, and he stomped like a cartoon character out from behind the counter and grabbed Dom by the arm. “That’s enough, Dominic. I will not stand here in my school and be insulted like this. You are banned from San Camanez Elementary. How do you like that?”

Dom shot the old man a look. “We’ll see about that.” He wrenched his arm free from Otto’s grip. “You really going to pick a fight with me, Otto?”

“It’s Mr. Pickford .”

Dom shook his head. “I reserve prefixes for people I respect. Do you plan to hire around-the-clock security to keep me from setting foot on my son’s school grounds? Really? What an absolute waste of school money and resources. I think the other parents would love to know about that. And why.”

They stood on the threshold of the door now, nose to nose. Otto inside, Dom outside.

Otto looked close to exploding.

“And how about the fact that you just got physical with me, hmm?”

Terror and fury filled Otto’s pale blue eyes. “Why you—”

“Don’t mess with a fucking McEvoy,” Dom warned. “Aya’s already teaching people that. I guess it’s time the rest of us did the same. We can be your greatest ally, or your worst fucking nightmare. Your choice.” Then he glanced back at Sierra who was watching everything with wide, terrified eyes. “Silas will be taking a personal day tomorrow after the trauma and neglect he experienced here today. Please mark him absent. Have a great weekend.” Then he flipped off Otto with both middle fingers and spun around, not nearly as satisfied with that exchange as he hoped he’d be.

He never liked Pickford, but he’d also never had a true problem with him. Until now.

Would this make his kid’s life even more miserable at school? Would Pickford take his distaste for Dom out on Silas?

When he got into his truck, he rested his forehead against the steering wheel and gripped the wheel hard to keep his hands from shaking.

Ever since the Nadine fiasco, Dom hadn’t trusted his gut or been able to make a decent decision about anything. He messed up big time with Chloe, his kid was clearly suffering, and now he’d probably done more harm than good at the school.

How was he going to fix this?

A hot tear slid down his cheek at the memory of all the scrapes, scratches, and bruises on his child’s body.

He’d never felt more like a failure in his life.

He also knew he couldn’t go back to the house feeling like this. Not without letting out some of this pent-up rage. Hell, all the pent-up emotions that were threatening to burst the seams of his sanity.

He drove up the mountain—Mount Madrona—that was behind the school. There was a fantastic look out point at the top, and they’d just paved the road to the summit a couple of years ago.

It was a popular mountain among hikers and mountain bikers, but even those who weren’t keen to get their sweat on could still appreciate the view.

Based on the weather and the time of day, he didn’t anticipate there being anybody else up there, and he was right. The normal postcard-worthy view was unavailable due to the fog. Which also typically acted like soundproofing. Silencing everything. Tuning out the buzz and din of the world.

Dom relished the quiet—until the voices in his head took over, that is.

His head pounded like a jackhammer of unrelenting guilt and shame against his skull as he pulled into the small dirt parking lot, eyes fixed on where he needed to go to hopefully find some solace.

He needed to drown out the voices in his head. The cacophony of anger, uncertainty, and guilt, all had something to say. They all had something to berate, and blame, and ridicule him about.

Climbing out of his truck, he zipped up his hoodie and stalked down to the path which would lead him up to the highest point, a bare rockface with nothing but moss, lichen, and groundcover. The trees—most of them oaks and madronas—skirted the bottom, but the “peak” was bald.

Everything was wet and slippery from the endless rain and drizzle today, so he was careful where he put his feet. Once he reached the top, he let his shoulders sag, and he huffed out a deep exhale.

Then, closing his eyes, he spread his arms wide, his palms facing forward, took a deep breath, and let out a primal scream. As long, loud, and soul-awakening as he could.

Then he did it again.

And again.

Until the voices in his head blaming him for Nadine, Ginny, Silas, Remy, and Chloe could no longer get a word in edgewise, and finally shut the fuck up.

He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the earth, his chest rising and falling like he’d just sprinted up the mountain.

This wasn’t the first time he’d come up here and screamed. He did it a lot after Remy died. It was the only way he could get through looking into his son’s eyes everyday and reconciling with the fact that Silas would never see his mother again.

Once his heartrate returned to normal and the voices knew he’d just drown them out again if they started up, he lifted his head, tears running down his cheeks. He embraced the silence. Pulled in deep breaths of fresh, forest air and allowed the fog to wrap around him. Closing his eyes, he tuned into his body and his surroundings. The way the cool, wet rock and earth beneath his knees seeped through the denim and onto his skin. Cooling his heated rage from speaking with Otto Pickford. The way the heavy fog blew against his face like a frigid, wet whisper, coating his stubble and eyelashes. Most of all though, it was the way his thoughts remained still. Peaceful. And the quiet of the mountaintop wrapped around him like a mantle of protection, keeping those intrusive voices from penetrating, and throttling him once more with guilt, rage and shame.

Up there, on the mountain, he was free.

He knew it was only temporary. That he couldn’t live up there forever. But it was enough to reset his mind, and remind him what was important. What his priorities were.

And that was his kid, his family, and his business.

He couldn’t allow himself to be sidetracked or distracted.

Not even by a pretty employee who managed to crack him open and get him to feel in ways he never thought he could feel again.

They were friends . And as much as he hated that word, that had to be enough.