"Yeah. I figured." Marcus took a breath. "Pull over somewhere. I'm going to send you something. You need to see it."
* * *
Dominic watched it in the parking lot of a Love's Travel Stop outside Benson, Arizona, with the engine running and the air conditioner blowing.
He watched it once. Then he set the phone down on the dashboard and stared through the windshield at a family across the lot loading bags of ice into the back of a minivan.
Marcus was still on the line.
"Dom? You there?"
"I'm here."
"Twelve million views. As of this morning. It's on every fight page on the internet. There was a segment on one of the morning shows. My nephew showed it to me. He said, Uncle Marcus, is this the kind of thing you guys used to learn? And I took one look at it, at the way you dropped your hips and tucked your chin and came around that elbow, and I said, son, that's not the kind of thing we used to learn. That's the man who used to teach it."
Dominic didn't say anything.
"Are you okay?" Marcus asked, more quietly.
"I'm fine. Kid's fine. Nobody got hurt."
"I could see that. You were careful with him. More careful than he deserved." A pause. "That's not what I asked, though."
Dominic rubbed his face with one hand. The burn on his forearm had faded to a pink patch with a little peeling skin around the edges. It itched.
"I didn't want to do it," he said finally. "I tried to leave. I put money on the table and I tried to walk out."
"I saw."
"He wouldn't let me."
"I saw that too."
"I haven't put my hands on anybody in six years, Marcus. Not since I got out. I don't even raise my voice anymore. I've been—" He stopped. He didn't know how to finish the sentence. "I've been trying to be somebody else."
"I know you have."
"And it took about three seconds to find out I'm not."
Marcus was quiet for a long moment.
"Dom," he said, "can I tell you something, as your friend? Somebody who's known you since you were a skinny kid who couldn't do a rope climb to save his life?"
"You're going to anyway."
"You're right, I am." Marcus's voice softened. "You weren't somebody else in that diner. You were exactly who you've always been. You were a guy who saw somebody about to hurt somebody, and it happened to be you, and you stopped it with the least amount of force you could. And then you talked to that kid like a coach. Not like an enemy. Like a coach. You gave him something. I watched the whole thing, Dom. The long version. You didn't humiliate him. He humiliated himself. You just held up the mirror."
Dominic watched the family with the minivan pull out of the lot.
"That's who you are," Marcus said. "That's who you always were. Elena knew it. That's why she married you. It's the reason every guy on that team would have followed you through a wall. It wasn't because you could hurt people. It was because you knew exactly when not to."
Dominic closed his eyes.
"I miss her," he said. It was the first time he had said it out loud to anybody in years.
"I know, brother," Marcus said. "Me too."
* * *
Grace called that evening.
He had promised to call her on Wednesday afternoon and had forgotten, and she had texted twice, and he had felt guilty about it all day. He picked up on the first ring.
"Hi, kiddo."
"Dad." Her voice was strained. "Dad, are you okay?"
He closed his eyes again. "You saw it."
"Everybody saw it. One of the residents showed it to me in the break room. He said, Look at this old guy, isn't this insane? And I looked at it and I almost dropped my coffee. Dad, that's you. That's your truck. That's your shirt, the blue one I bought you for Christmas."
"I'm all right, Gracie. I promise."
"He burned you. I saw the coffee hit your arm."
"It's healing. It wasn't bad."
"Did you put anything on it?"
"Burn gel."
"Is it blistering?"
"Little bit. It's fine."
"Keep it covered. Don't pop the blisters. If it gets hot or starts spreading or you see red streaks, you go to an urgent care. I'm serious."
He smiled. "Yes, ma'am."
She was quiet for a moment, and he could hear the sounds of the hospital behind her. Monitors beeping. Somebody being paged over the intercom.
"Dad," she said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He didn't have an answer for that.