You ride. I ride.

45. Listen to me

<Dom's POV>

As soon as Letty had stepped into the house again, I dragged her into our old room.

"What the hell Dom," she immediately swatted my hand away.

"I had an interesting conversation with Tony earlier," I stated calmly, trying to reason with her. I was enraged when I first found out, but the calm approach mostly worked better with people.

"Didn't I tell you to stay the hell away from my daughter?" She started yelling, the fear visible in her eyes. Now it all made sense. Why she didn't want me talking to Tony.

"Don't you mean our daughter?" I yelled back.

"How did you find out?"

"I can do simple math, Letty."

"Well, if you're so smart you can surely figure out why I don't want you near my daughter. So stay the hell away from us."

She wanted me to stay away from her. How dare she.

"That's not your call to make."

"Of course it is."

"I'm her father. She should know."

"She already has a father. You weren't there for the first four years we won't need you for the next either."

"I would have come back if I had known."

"If you had known what, Dom?" She was screaming bloody hell. Her pupils were dilated, she started gesturing wildly, she was close to a break down for sure.

"If you had known that there was someone you actually cared about at home. If there was someone you loved who needed you? Yeah, don't give me that bullshit Dom. You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew how much I would be hurting and you didn't care. So don't come back now pretending that you did."

-------------------

She has no idea. She has absolutely no idea.

<flashback>

"Who is she?" Elena asked. I had expected her to ask this question at some point. Everything else would have been weird. She knew that something was holding me back. That at night I was dreaming of someone else. That in my prayers I was wishing for my old life back and that when I looked at her I didn't see who I wanted to see.

"What do you mean?" I encountered. I really didn't want to talk about Letty. It had been three years since I left. A few months ago I had started seeing Elena with a little hope that she might distract me from Letty.

"You know what I mean. You're clearly in love with a girl but something is holding you back. And I think I deserve to know the truth."

"I think you should leave," I got up from the bed.

"Dom, if you keep living like this. You'll never be happy."

"After what I did I don't deserve to be happy."

"What did you do?" She kept pushing.

I couldn't tell her. She was a cop. She couldn't arrest me because she had no jurisdiction here, but still.

"Tell me, Dom. You can't lose her again," she said.

Something about that sentence struck a cord with me. She was right. What bad could come from telling her the truth? She could leave me. But in all honesty, I didn't care.

"I met this girl," God I hadn't talked about Letty in a long time. Honestly, I hadn't allowed myself to think about Letty in a long time. Usually, when I slipped up and my thoughts drifted off towards her, I forced myself back to reality again.

"We fell in love and started a relationship. It was messy and it was difficult but it worked. I don't know how but we worked. She loved me and I loved her. God, how much I loved her," I felt tears slowly stinging in my eyes.

"But I needed money and turned to crime. She told me to stop and I said that I would. A couple of weeks later the cops were looking for me. I had to leave the country, my family, my home, and her. Didn't even say goodbye."

I paused for a few seconds catching my breath again.

"I left her behind. Without a word. Just disappeared. I even stole her car."

"Why didn't you ask her to come with you?"

I laughed a sad laugh. Almost a giggle turning into a sob. I sometimes thought about what would have happened if I had asked her to come with me. We would be sitting somewhere on a beach, go swimming in the ocean, drive ridiculously slow cars and grow old together. Sometimes a scene like that would pop up in my dreams. I would wake up smiling only to be crushed a few moments later.

"Would she have said no?" Elena asked as she noticed that I was drifting off-topic again.

"She would have loved to come with me. She would have jumped into my car and never looked back. She would have loved the beaches here. And the people. All these cars. She would have loved it."

"So why didn't you ask?"

"Because it would have ruined me. I would have torn her away from her family. From her home. She would have to live as a criminal on the run. As a ghost. Never return back to the place she loved. I couldn't ask her to do that. She would have forgiven me but I wouldn't be able to forgive myself."

<flashback ends>

All I wished for those years away from home was that I would have a family with Letty. Live in our old home in LA, have kids, and get to spend time with the gang. I never imagined it would turn out this way. Me, looking through the windows of our house, seeing our daughter play with someone else who she calls Dad. I had to fix it. Somehow.

Letty came inside.

"Letty, please let's talk."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"You'll have to talk to me at some point."

"No, I really don't."

"What if I just told her myself!" I yelled. I would never have done this but I anticipated that Letty wouldn't call my bluff.

"You're blackmailing me, Toretto?" She turned around, fuming.

"No, all I'm saying is that I have a say in this. Tony is mine, too. Whether you like it or not."

"Oh, buhu," she fake pouted at me. "Did your plan to just leave without any consequences fire back, Dom? Maybe if you hadn't behaved like a complete asshole, the universe wouldn't have fucked this situation up so badly. But you did. You need to grow up, Dom. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do. So let this go."

She turned around but I grabbed her arm.

"You need to let me talk, Letty. I'm not done."

"But I am," she said, trying to slap my arm away, which didn't work.

"Just for once, Letty, listen to me!" As soon as those words left my mouth, I knew that I had made a huge mistake.

"For once? Are you serious Dom? You were the one that didn't listen. You were the one that left for four years and didn't have a minute to explain what happened. I tried to talk to you. I tried to tell you about what was happening. That you had a daughter. That I was pregnant. I tried. But you didn't listen. So, no. You didn't listen to me back then and I'm sure as hell am not going to listen to you now."