Chapter One

“You gonna stick by me?”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe,” I say, but he and I both know I’m not really serious. There’s no way I could ever leave Dom. I owe him too much. I love him too much. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to let him go.

Dom saved my life, and he doesn’t even know it.

I used to idolize Dom, when I was little. When I was about ten, my mom met this guy and moved him into our house. Ray. He was the biggest asshole. My mom always did attract guys like that, for some reason. She always surrounded herself with them. Like they were a drug she couldn’t get enough of. I couldn’t do enough to stay out of the house that summer. Pretty soon, I found Dom and his dad.

They lived down the street from me, about three blocks away. Just far enough that I was safe from Ray seeing me if he happened to go outside looking for me, but close enough that I could get myself home quickly if I had to. Dom had just turned fifteen and Mr. Toretto had promised to help him build a car. Not that I knew any of that at the time. What I did know was, it was interesting to watch them as they worked, interesting to see Mr. Toretto interact with Dom. I’d never seen any father just hang out with their kid before; never even knew my own father, just that he was from the Dominican Republic and the reason my skin was so brown and my mom could barely stand to even look at me.

There was a huge tree in Dom’s front yard, right next to the garage. An elm, I think - it’s not there any more. But it was big enough for me to hide behind without being noticed. Or at least I thought it was.

I watched them for almost a week before either one said anything to me. I nearly had a heart attack when Mr. Toretto sidled up to me one day and asked, “You here to see Mia?” I just shook my head, scared to death he’d make me leave. But he didn’t say anything else. I guess Mr. Toretto knew about needing to get away from things.

Anyways, he didn’t make me leave, and so I kept coming back, day after day. Mr. Toretto didn’t let me just watch for long, though. “If you’re going to hang around, you might as well help out,” he said. Dom just laughed at me. Eventually, I was right there, working on the car with them, wearing one of Mr. Toretto’s old shirts so my clothes wouldn’t get too dirty.

It took nearly six months to finish that car, and I loved every second of it. The day it was done, we drove out to the beach. I thought I was going to die - not only because Mr. Toretto let Dom drive. With the car being done, I didn’t have any excuse to hang around the Toretto house. Mr. Toretto saw my disappointment, though, and kept coming up with reasons for me to come over. He claimed to want my opinion on ways to improve the car, or to need my small hands to poke into some mechanism and help fix it. I never said much about Ray, or my mom, but Mr. Toretto knew. He knew that I desperately needed something to keep me away from my house, and so he provided it. He was the first adult who ever really showed any affection towards me on a regular basis.

Over the next three years, I practically lived at the Toretto house. I was happy there; for the first time in my life I felt like I belonged somewhere. It didn’t last long enough, though.

Mr. Toretto raced cars on the semi-pro circuit. Usually, Dom, Vince and I went with him, sometimes Mia did too. Mia was always kind of a girly girl, pretending she hated the cars. She didn’t really, though. She loved the adrenaline rush as much as the rest of us. Every time we went out, she’d beg whoever was driving to go faster.

We didn’t always all go to the races, but I never missed a single one. At least, not until Mr. Toretto’s last. It was my mom’s birthday; I couldn’t get away from the house. I remember, I was so mad. She didn’t even really want me there, she just wanted company because she’d just kicked Ray out - found him fucking some high school girl in their bedroom. My mom never was very good at being alone. She preferred the company of men, but I would do if there was no one better around. I screamed at her for hours that day, telling her she didn’t understand, that she had to let me go. It didn’t do any good, though. I was stuck at home.

I heard about the accident on the radio. They said Mr. Toretto’s car had hit the wall at the track, that it exploded and he died. I didn’t believe it was true, and I immediately snuck through my window and ran over to the house. It wasn’t real to me, not until I saw all the cop cars parked outside. Mia was sitting on the front porch, tears streaming down her face. I’d never seen her cry before, not once. Vince was there too, trying to comfort her. He wasn’t doing a very good job of it, though. Dom was nowhere to be found. No one knew where he’d gone after the race. He just disappeared - didn’t even show up at the funeral.

I didn’t see Dom for almost a week. By that time, Mia had gone to stay with their grandmother. The house was empty. He finally showed up at my place Friday night, I guess because he couldn’t find anyone else. I was shocked; I didn’t think he even knew where exactly I lived. I could tell as soon as I saw him that something was wrong. Very wrong. He looked like the world had ended. He grabbed me, squeezed me until I thought I would break, and the blood that was all over him got all over me, but all I could think was that it was the first time he’d really touched me. I was thirteen, and I’d been in love with him for over two years.

“Where’s Mia?” he asked, shaking me a bit. There was a look in his eyes…it scared me. His face was hard, his voice gravelly…he looked crazy.

“She went to stay with your grandma,” I whispered in reply.

“Good,” he nodded, letting go of my shoulders. I wished he hadn’t. “I fucked up, Letty, did something really dumb. I’m gonna have to go away for a while,” he told me. He started crying, and that scared me to death but I tried to comfort him, tried to tell him everything would be okay, tried to tell him that I loved him. Before I could ask him what’d happened, though, three cop cars pulled up in front of the house. He grabbed me again, pulled me behind him like he was trying to protect me. Yep, I was in love.