Dom winds up staying out all night for the first time in a long time, for the first time since Letty turns sixteen and he falls, when he sleeps through the night in his car waiting for the patrol cop circling his hiding spot to fuck off and die. Letty doesn't know this, won't believe this, says she saw that Maria skank hanging by the garage too much, and starts ripping whatever she can out of the engine of the Charger.
It's super effective. It feels just like she's turning Dom himself, not just his treasured car, inside out and he knows it's not alright under any circumstances to not come home to his girlfriend when that girlfriend is Letty.
Call. Don't call. Be on time. Be late. It doesn't matter. Just get home before the sunrise.
"Or bad things will happen," Letty says as he's trying to gather all the parts she'd scattered, and it's not a threat so much as it is a promise.
(It's not completely bad, Dom doesn't tell her. He's given the chance to show her everything about the Charger as they work together at putting all the pieces back together. Given the chance to fall even more head over heels in love.)
Two months later, Vince is in a lot of trouble in San Diego and there's only one person he thinks to call. Dom bolts from work an hour before closing time and breaks the speed limit until he's there.
Drive down, get Vince, drive back up. No problem. Back before bedtime, he calls Letty to say.
Except Vince is in a lot a trouble, the bleeding to death kind of trouble, and they're going to have to risk the hospital.
Letty has changed all the locks by the time they manage to get back to Los Angeles. Dom has to squat in the abandoned warehouse next to the garage he works at for half a month before she lets him back in.
"Bad things," she reminds him.
(It wasn't all bad this time, either. He meets Leon and Jesse in those weeks, and they officially have a team.)
Dom doesn't spend a night away from Letty again for years.
The next time, it isn't that Dom doesn't get home. It's the Dom leaves, and leaves with the intention of not coming back. He takes only the few things he might need and all the heat with him. No more cops. No more running. Not for Letty because Dom can't do that to her any longer.
He takes all the heat, too, and Letty spends a winter in Mexico that summer before she knows what she must do. She goes home. She calls 'him'. And she thinks, as she lies broken and dying, Bad things happen when you aren't home, Dom.
This is what Dom hears, bad things bad things bad things the worst thing, when he stands at the crash site and imagines. And sees. And tries to swear to always come home from then on, but it's a little too late for that now.
It isn't that there isn't a silver lining to this cloud. He gets to go home, breathe Los Angeles. He gets to see Mia, see her baby sister eyes. And he ultimately gets Brian O'Conner, gets the death of Detective Brian O'Conner.
But Dom loses Letty, and no good will ever balance that bad.
He can't swear to always come home. He can never swear, because
he can never go home.