No Regrets

Chapter Seventy - Fading Light

***LONG CHAPTER ALERT - ALSO TRIGGER WARNING, SEXUAL TRIGGER! If you will be trigger, skip Aria's testimony or click the link below - a part of Aria's testimony is cut out - or click on the part titled "TRIGGER FREE - Chapter Seventy - Fading Light

http://my.w.tt/UiNb/vywXUE8ndA
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KATIE'S POV

   I have to tell him. I think to myself as I look at myself in the mirror. My hair is tied up in a bun and I am dressed in a navy blue pantsuit. This is not the time. The custody hearing is today, Dominick was out late and when he got back, my parents were ready to call it a night. I doubt anyone got any real sleep, I certainly didn't, my nerves are killing me.

"Champ." Dad says knocking on the bathroom door.

"Be right out." I reply. I splash my face with some water and pat it try with our hand towel. One last look at myself in the mirror. Tell him right now.

   Dad enters the bathroom after me. "You look very nice." He says before shutting the bathroom door. Mom is downstairs in her office on the phone, last-minute business related call has had her in her office since eight this morning. It's nearly noon now. The hearing is at three o'clock. Judge Hopkins. Mom says the name is familiar but she struggles to place it. I tried to look up the judge; but all I could find was the filed they work in along with a picture. Don't know what I was looking for, no one simply rates a judge on a five-star scale.

"Katie, you okay?" Dominick asks walking out of his room. He is wearing a new suit, dark-gray with a red tie, his hair is combed down, and he has black leather shoes on. "Do I look stupid?" He asks. I suddenly realize I'm standing frozen in the hallway staring at him.

   I shake my head. "No." I answer. "And I'm fine. I actually was hoping we could talk."

"Yeah, of course. Come in and help me with my cuff-links." He says gesturing for me to come into his room. I follow him inside. He hands me the gold colored cuff-links and sits down on the edge of his bed.

"I haven't been purposely ignoring you." I say as I work on the first sleeve. "I have just have had a lot of schoolwork." I add.

"You've always been studious." Dominick says. He stares off in the direction of his bookshelf. "You didn't deserve to be treated that way in grade school. I know how much it sucks to be on your own... I wasn't very comforting or a good big brother, so that probably made things really crappy." He says.

I prefer not to think or talk much about what happen then anymore. "It made me who I am, I'm still working on growing a thicker skin." I say.

"Having thick skin doesn't mean you don't get hurt." Dominick says turning to look at me. "It only means you don't show it." I finish the first sleeve and go to work on the next. I listen as my brother continues. "Nikki dying broke my heart and even the knowledge of her finding peace can't stop her absence from hurting. It will always hurt. And then losing custody of Mollie, having  to let her go, knowing that I'd only get to see her for two more years, it... it was f*cking excruciating. Having to grieve for someone who was still alive, it's a total mindf*ck."

"How do you stay clean?" I vomit the question up before I can stop myself.

   Dominick seems taken aback by the question. He is silent for a while, I finish the second sleeve. I step away and start to leave when he says, "I had to prove to myself that I wasn't him."

    I turn back around, Dominick stares at something in his room and keeps his gaze locked there. I walk towards him and sit down beside him. "For as long as I can remember, I have always felt I was going to turn into my father. So much to the point that I found comfort in knowing that if I crashed and burned, I wouldn't shock anyone. Disappoint, sure, but everyone had been expecting it."