Page 99 of Wreckage and Rain

"Mm," Summer says.

"I got every idea."

"Yeah you did."

He looks up. The ears haven't come down yet. He looks at Summer, and then at me, and then back at Summer, and what passes across his face isn't the face of Dominic Vargas, venture capitalist. It is the face of a man who has been holding a folded piece of construction paper against his back pocket for days and has just been seen doing it.

"Don't tell anyone," he says.

"No one," Summer says.

"I mean it, Sam. Don't tell anyone."

"No one, Dom."

He nods. Drinks. The ears begin, finally, to retreat.

I pick the glass back up and resume polishing it. Summer drinks her bourbon. Dom drinks his. Nobody says another word for ten minutes, and the silence is the most affectionate silence I have sat inside in years.

***

I'm closing up at midnight, the club dark around me, when my phone buzzes with an Instagram follow request.

Autumn Hayes.

I stare at it. Summer's best friend. The one who screamed from the front row. Held Lucia on her lap through the second act and didn't put her down. Came into Vibes trailing glitter and enoughenergy to power the block and then went quiet during the first number, watching it like she knew what it cost. I noticed her, and I haven't stopped noticing her. I'm not ready. Not yet. I'm still learning to let go of the hurt, but I'm close. I accept the follow request. For the first time in three years, the walk home doesn't feel like a retreat. It feels like a beginning.

Chapter 30: The Plan

Summer

Colt texts in the morning.

Colt

Can I come by? We should talk about the timeline.

Me

Yes

He shows up at two with two coffees and the stillness he gets when he's carrying something he's eager to execute. He's been staying over, sleeping on the bed with all our clothes on, both of us careful, like we haven't worked out the rules yet. It feels natural and unnatural at the same time. We take the hard conversations at the kitchen table. We talk about Colt branching off with Bennet Ventures, the SEC filings and criminal complaints. He's kept much of the details to himself at the request of the DA and his attorney, but he shares what he can.

"We're close," he says. "Bennet Ventures splits off from the holding company by the end of the month. My own board, my own attorneys. My division stands clean and separate before any of the SEC or criminal filings go public."

"And then?"

"Then the DA moves. The FBI has the file. My father, three of his people, Cheyenne, all in the same week. It'll be everywhere. The name on every screen in the country for a week. Maybe two."

"And you."

"On every screen with it. They'll want to know what the son knew." He turns the coffee cup a quarter so the seam faces him, his father's gesture, the quarter-turn Sonny does to every object on his desk, and Colt has no idea his hands learned it. "I draftedmy statement. I worked with the DA. There is no way around it. My father will know it was me the morning they take him."

I wait for the rest of it. I've watched this man build a deck. I know what his face does when he's getting to the moment he built the whole thing around.

"It's done," he says. "All of it. The structure, the timing, the statement. Dade and Dom and I have been on it for weeks."

"Colt, I want you to know that I see you. I see the work that you are doing. Before you destroyed us, you would build your whole life with somebody else in the room. The deal, the late nights, the war you fought every single day, Cheyenne would be at your elbow for all of it, and I was at the far end of the table finding out how your day went from a text that said don't wait up. You didn't keep secrets from me. You just turned toward her to build everything that mattered and turned toward me to tell me about it after. I was just there. Now, I'm with you, as much as you can allow it."