My chair scrapes against the floor as I stand, slow enough to make them all sit up straighter. I smooth my shirt and force my mouth into something that isn’t a snarl.
“Send her my regards,” I say flatly. “Wish her the best with her sewing videos.”
A couple of them blink, confused. Tinnie doesn’t. She watches me with disappointment. I turn on my heel before they can try another angle.
I’m angry. Angry that she hasn’t left my head since last night. Angry that somehow this girl, this stranger, is now sitting at the heart of everything I’ve fought for. Angry that she’s out there smiling for strangers on a screen, accessible whenever anyone wants. Angry I can’t get the ghost of her touch off my skin.
Control is my oxygen. And for the first time in a long time, I feel like I don’t have it.
I push through the door with heat crawling under my skin. The fluorescent buzz in the corridor drills straight into my skull. I’m halfway back to the locker room when my phone lights up. I look down and almost snort out loud.
Clarissa Moreal.
Against my better judgment, I swipe green.
“Dominic.” Her voice is all sharp edges and ice.
“Clarissa,” I say flatly.
Not Mom. Never Mom. She lost that title a long time ago. Growing up, she and my father micromanaged every breath I took—what I ate, who I saw, where I went. And girls who weren’t approved by them? Outright forbidden.
No girl will ever take care of you like I do.
My father always nodded along like a second head of the same beast. A hydra, snapping from both sides.
“How could you do this while your father is running for senator?” she spits. “You with a nobody. A girl with no pedigree, no family name, no standing.”
“Good morning to you too.” I keep walking.
“Don’t you dare mock me.” Her pitch rises, venom dripping through the line. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Melody’s already lost her mind with that teammate of yours, and now you too? You parade some cheap little girl in front of cameras to humiliate us?”
I let her rant. Feigned boredom is the only shield I have left with them. This is exactly why I keep my private life private. I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. But they are the last people I want seeing what I do.
“Your father—”
“Your other head,” I correct her. “Tell him I said hello.”
For a second, I imagine the vein in her forehead pulsing, my father pacing behind her like the other jaw of the beast.
This is why I don’t let anyone see in. Why I don’t let cameras catch me with women. Because when they do, my parents crawl out of whatever political hole they’re hiding in to remind me why I packed my bags and left.
And for the first time in years, someone slipped through the cracks. A stranger with a smile that refuses to leave my head.
“If you’re ready to settle down, Dominic, then come home. We have women lined up for you. Women with names. Daughters of men who actually matter. Not this…this seamstress.” She spits the word like it’s dirt.
“You’ve done your research,” I say mildly, but my hand tightens around the phone.
A seamstress. That’s what they’ve reduced her to.
“Don’t you joke right now!” she snaps, voice cracking. “Melody with that…brute Jace is bad enough. But you, Dominic, you will carry on our name. “Whoever this girl is, you need to break it off. At least until your father becomes senator. After that, you can parade around whichever cheap whore you want, but not now.”
I wince at her words, rage boiling up my throat, hot and metallic.
And then it clicks. If a few photos from a five-minute interaction make them this angry… what would an actual relationship do to their nervous systems? Even if it’s fake? The thought sparks, clean and bright—spitting in their faces without ever raising my voice. I almost laugh.
“Don’t worry, Clarissa. She’ll sew us all real cute Christmas sweaters.” I keep my tone calm and polite.
“Dominic, don’t you dare hang—”
