by Julia Derek
“That was the idea, fuckhead,” I hissed at him between clenched teeth.
Now Jose seemed utterly confused. “Why don’t you want her to talk to you? I thought you liked this girl.”
I groaned. “I do like this girl. That’s why I have to cut her off. I don’t want her to end up like Lara.”
“Why would she end up like Lara? You’re not in the gang anymore.”
I sighed. “That doesn’t matter. I wasn’t in the gang when my mother died, either.”
Jose frowned. “What are you talking about? Your mother killed herself. What has that got to do with you?”
I gazed at the floor, my stomach heavy with sorrow at the thought of my mother’s fate. “It has everything to do with me. She wouldn’t have killed herself if it hadn’t been for me. She wouldn’t have been in deep shit if it wouldn’t have been for me. So that makes me responsible for her death.”
Jose shook his head. “That’s bullshit, Dante. Why do you keep blaming yourself like this for things you don’t have any control over?”
I ignored his question. “If she hadn’t been pregnant with me, her dad wouldn’t have thrown her out on the street. You know as well as me how hard it is to survive on the streets. Especially if you’re a woman.”
“Yeah, but you can’t blame yourself for what happened to your mother. You didn’t make her become pregnant.” Jose came closer and put a hand on my shoulder. “She did that on her own. Well, with your dad. Besides, we don’t even know if she wasn’t actually murdered. Damn, Dante. The one who should blame himself for what happened to your mother is your granddad for throwing her out. And maybe your grandma. But from what you told me, your grandma had little say in things, so I guess she gets a pass.”
I sank down on an upside down crate and buried my face in my hands. “Mom would never have been on the streets if it weren’t for me. She would have grown up in a safe home, finished school, gotten married to some nice dude.” I looked at him, taking a deep breath. “Every woman that means something to me dies, Jose. I can’t let what happened to mom and Lara happen to Ricki.”
“I can see why you feel responsible for what happened to Lara, but you need to stop assuming responsibility for you mom. That’s crazy, man. And you were in the gang when you were with Lara. You’re not in the gang anymore. Nothing will happen to Ricki. Don’t push her away, Dante. I know you like this chick. A lot. And from what you’ve told me, she obviously likes you a lot, too.”
I got to my feet and began pacing the length of the basement at the Whiskey, trying to think. Was I just making up excuses not to get serious with a girl again? Not that there had been any girl I’d wanted to get serious with since Lara. Ricki was the only one I had experienced feelings for.
Was Jose right that I seemed hell-bent on punishing myself for things that had been out of my control, like my mother jumping off a building after leaving me at the orphanage? Would she have killed herself anyway, even if I hadn’t been in the picture? It was impossible to know since I couldn’t really remember my mother and barely my grandmother. My grandmother, a weak woman with a good heart, had taken me in for a few days when I ran away from my first foster home. During my short time there, she had told me about my parents. Told me how my teenage mother had associated with a man my grandfather hated and gotten pregnant. When my grandfather found out, he’d thrown her out on the street and told her to never come back but to go live with my father. According to my grandmother, who’d stayed in touch with my mother, my father was murdered soon after I was born. My grandfather told my mother she could come back home if she left me with an orphanage. She refused and was forced to prostitute herself in order to survive.
Finally, she hadn’t been able to stand her life and had ended up leaving me with the orphanage anyway.
I stopped my pacing and gazed up the stairs that led up to the bar at the Whiskey. Yes, Jose was right that I shouldn’t blame myself for what had happened to my mother. The one who was to blame was my now-dead grandfather, maybe even my weak grandmother, who’d passed away only weeks after her husband’s death. She really had been unable to function without him. No wonder she had returned me to my foster home when he’d threatened to throw her out on the streets of Houston.
And it was true that what had happened to Lara wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t in the gang. If I had been like any other seventeen-year-old kid, I would have lived a normal life with normal friends and Lara would have been safe.
I was living a normal life now—well, on my way to a normal life. When I had proven to the court that I could behave and was worthy of a regular life, I would no longer be part of the criminal underworld. Ten more months and I was just like everyone else. I didn’t doubt that I’d stay the course and leave my shady past where it belonged—firmly in the past.
If I truly believed that—in myself—why couldn’t I let myself be with Ricki? As much as she pretended like she didn’t care, I knew that she did. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. Kisses and eyes don’t lie. That first night with her was all I had needed to be convinced of her feelings for me
I smiled, exhilaration filling me suddenly. What the hell am I doing? Jose is right. Nothing would happen to Ricki!
As soon as I was done with work tonight, I would ride over to her house and tell her I’d broken up with my girlfriend. I shook my head no. The fewer lies I told her, the better. I’d tell Ricki the truth, that there had been no one else. I’d tell her that I had just lied because I had been afraid of all the feelings I had for her and didn’t want to face them. Which was the truth, only not all of it. But I wouldn’t be able to tell her the entire truth about myself, my entire story, until Jose was safely out of the gang. I’d keep her in the dark until his fight. That way I could be sure I had no more attachments to the gang.
I turned to Jose, feeling like a new man. “Let’s get this over with. I have places to be afterward.”
Ricki
I was relieved that I didn’t spot Dante once during my first training session with Gabi later that evening. She turned out to be as good a trainer as he was, but different. She had me do more cardio intervals and lift fewer dumbbells than he had. The intervals had me so out of breath I could barely get a word out between sets, which was good, because I really only wanted to focus on training, not chitchatting with Gabi. This was something I spotted many of the other clients doing with their trainers. She seemed to be in silent agreement with me, because she kept me moving from exercise to exercise, barely giving me a break to drink water even.
But when it was time for Gabi to stretch me, my resolve to work out as hard as I possibly could vanished. Besides, I was super curious to find out what exactly Dante had told her about why he and I were no longer training together.
She began by stretching the back of my leg, straddling over me like Dante always used to do. She gazed down at me and smiled, and again I marveled over how gorgeous this girl was. I couldn’t believe she was going to become a cop soon.
“How does that feel?” she asked. “Enough of a stretch?”
I made a face. “Uh-huh. So what did Dante tell you?”
She looked confused. “About what?”
“Why he and I aren’t training any longer.” Duh, I thought. Was she really that dense?
“Oh.” Her eyes fluttered away from mine, and I could tell that she was debating what to tell me. Okay, so she did get it right away then. I put a hand on top of the one she had over my knee and gazed at her earnestly.
“Just tell me everything,” I said. “It’s okay. Really. I can take it. I’m a big girl. I already suspected he had a girlfriend anyway.”
Her mouth fell open and she looked genuinely surprised. “A girlfriend?” Her lips snapped shut the second those two words were out of her mouth and her shoulders stiffened.
“Yes, a girlfriend,” I said, putting my hands behind my neck. Why was she looking so taken aback by that? “Are you telling me you didn’t know he has a girlfriend?”
Gabi switched my leg into another position, threw a glance over her shoulder and then leaned closer to me. “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. I’m very surprised to hear that he has a girlfriend. I’ve known him for several months and we often talk between clients. You know, have lunch and stuff together here at the club. You’d think he’d have mentioned it to me if he had a girlfriend. He knows I have a fiancé.”
I frowned at her. “So you’re saying that you think he doesn’t have a girlfriend then?”
She shrugged. “I really don’t see how he’d have time for a girlfriend as much as he works. Especially not after they made him work twice as much as he did when he started at the club.”
“Who made him work twice as much?”
She bit her lips as though debating whether she should be telling me anything else.
“Who made him work twice as much, Gabi?” I repeated. “Please tell me. You’ve already begun, so why stop now?”
She sighed, defeated. “Crunch’s corporate board. They found out that he’s on probation for committing a burglary and are trying to get rid of him.”
I gasped. “Dante committed a burglary? So he’s a… a criminal then?”
She considered this. “Not exactly. He says he wasn’t really involved in the burglary, but took the blame for it anyway. And was lucky enough to only get two years of probation. “
I pondered what Gabi had just told me. It was a lot to process, to say the least. “Why would he take the blame if he wasn’t involved in the burglary?”
“I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” Gabi mumbled. “But I don’t see how I could have avoided it. But it’s over now anyway.”
“What is over?” I was thoroughly confused. And worried, too. Who was the guy I had fallen for? The more I learned about him, the worse it seemed to get.
“All I can tell you is that he used to be involved with bad guys, but now he is not.”
“Please be a little more specific, Gabi. Are you saying he was in a gang or something?”
“Shh,” Gabi hissed. “We don’t want people to find out.”
My mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God, so he actually was in a gang?” Damn, this is just getting worse and worse. “People who’re in gangs rarely get out, so he’s probably still in it,” I added in a low voice.
“No, he got out. I know that for a fact. Got beaten so badly he almost died for them to let him leave. But he survived and now he’s determined to live a normal life. He’s had it very rough. He’s a good guy who just got mixed up with some really bad people when he was younger.”
“Good guys are not unfaithful to their girlfriends,” I said bitterly. “I think he does have a girlfriend. Why else would he tell me he did?”
Gabi shrugged. “Maybe he does have one.” She gazed at me with compassion. “So I was right then when I suspected there’s something going on between you guys. Or was going on.”
“He said there wasn’t? What exactly did he tell you when he asked you to train me?”
“All he said was that he felt you’d do better with a female trainer and asked if I could train you.”
“And you bought that?”
“I could tell that he wasn’t about to divulge any more information, so I didn’t bother asking for more. I did suspect there was something else going on, but Dante is not the type of guy who kisses and tells.” She screwed up her face. “Maybe that’s why I don’t know if he actually has a girlfriend or not…”
I looked away, muttering under my breath, “I really need to seek help for my attraction to loser guys…”
“Ricki, it’s best that you keep quiet about all that I just told you about Dante. No one besides you, me and our manager know about his past. If the board members found out Dante used to be a gang member, they’d straight out fire him. That’s why he had to have the teardrop under his eye removed.”
I grabbed Gabi’s wrists and stared at her. “That scar under his right eye—are you saying it used to be a teardrop tattoo?”
Her eyes darted around us, then she released her arm from my grip and her index finger came up to her lips. “Shhh. Not so loud, Ricki. Yes, he had the teardrop removed, so no one could accuse him of being a gang member. The other tattoos aren’t as obvious.”
From what I’d learned when I researched gangs, a teardrop tattoo meant that you had killed someone. I sincerely hoped he’d had it done after killing someone in self-defense only. Not from shooting people in cold blood… Goosebumps spread over my arms and legs at the thought of this. I immediately brushed it away, wondering why I cared. He was a bad person on so many levels, someone I wasn’t going to have anything else to do with from now on anyway. At least now I knew the secret behind the scar I’d been so curious about. I supposed I couldn’t blame Dante for not wanting to discuss how he’d murdered a person to earn it, being generally reluctant to talk about his past. It wasn’t something to be proud of.
After deciding that I would see Gabi in two days for another session, we said good-bye and I went to my car to drive home.
As I sat behind my steering wheel, I didn’t mind for once that I was stuck in traffic on the 101 freeway. I had a lot to ponder. I thought about how gullible I’d been when I’d assumed Dante had called me every day to check in on me because he’d sincerely cared about me. Now I knew he’d only wanted to be sure that I’d continue to train with him. The worst part was that he’d seemed so real, like he’d meant every word he told me during our phone conversations. He was obviously a sociopath, and I should be glad he’d chosen to distance himself from me on his own. Imagine he’d been obsessed with me, hell-bent that I be his girlfriend. I shuddered at the thought. Yes, I should be thankful it had ended the way it had.
I made myself smile, even though I didn’t feel like smiling at all. Not every part of me was as convinced as I’d like them to be that Dante was a bad person. I was confident that eventually they would be, though, and if I kept smiling the pain in my stomach would go away.
I felt a little better as I drove on to my street, two hours after leaving Crunch. It was only when I’d found a parking spot that I spotted a man in front of my building seated on a Harley. He looked just like Dante.
Dante
Ricki exited her Honda and stared at me like she was terrified of me. As if she realized how she must look and she didn’t like it, she suddenly squared her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. The look of terror on her face was exchanged for one of annoyance.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I came to explain why I acted like a jerk to you the other day,” I said.
“That’s okay,” Ricki replied dryly. “I already know everything.”
“You do?” I stared at her, trying to figure out what exactly she’d meant by that statement.
“Yeah, so please spare me your explanations.” She glared at me. “I really don’t care.”
I felt something like a large knife being thrust into my innards. The way she was looking at me—with hard eyes—suggested that she’d meant those last words. But how was that possible? Had Gabi told her something? But why would Gabi do that? Gabi wasn’t one to blabber. Of course, given how persistent Ricki was with her questions—I, if anyone, knew how hard it was to resist her probing— maybe Gabi just hadn’t been able to stay completely mum about my background.
“I can totally see why you didn’t want to tell me about your teardrop tattoo,” she said, looking at me with a stony face. “And why you had it removed. I guess Crunch would never have hired you if they knew you used to be a gang member.”
Fuck. Gabi had definitely told Ricki one thing too many about me. As pissed as Ricki seemed, she probably also knew about my desperate need to fill up my schedule with as many clients as possible…Well, I might as well come clean about everything now then, instead of after Jose’s fight as planned. Come to think of it, I’d rather know right away if she had a problem with who I used to be than weeks later, when we’d been going out for a while. O
f course, based on the angry way Ricki was contemplating me, she and I would not be going out at all again.
Suddenly, I was filled with fury myself. All I was really guilty of was pretending to have been unfaithful to my imaginary girlfriend. So what that I had been pursuing Ricki as my client? She sure didn’t seem to have minded me calling her every day. The attraction I’d developed for her while doing it had been sincere. I didn’t deserve for her to be dismissing me in this way. I hadn’t promised her anything, yet here I was, wanting to explain why I’d chosen to bail. The least she could do was hear me out.
I gave her a cool look that matched her own. “Yeah, you’re right about that. They would never have hired me if I had that thing on my face. So I had it removed, even though it hurt like hell, on more levels than a privileged little brat like you can ever imagine. What the fuck else was I supposed to do? Leave it and go back to the gang I’d almost died to get out of?” I shook my head with disgust. “I didn’t realize I’d been longing all evening to pour my heart out to a chick made of stone. All I wanted was for you to hear me out for a few minutes. Tell you that I just lied about having a girlfriend. My mistake.”
With those words, I kick-started my bike and straddled it. But before I could drive off, I felt two hands slip around my waist and a warm, soft body pressed to mine, as Ricki sat behind me on the bike. She leaned her face close to my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I do want to hear what you have to say.”
I didn’t answer, just put my hand on top of hers and took off down her street. Her hands grasped tighter around my waist as I increased the speed. Air blew our hair back as we continued along Santa Monica Boulevard, zigzagging among the cars on the road. I could feel in the way she was holding me, her chin resting on my shoulder, that she trusted me, trusted that I wouldn’t ride so carelessly that she would be in danger.