by Cecy Robson
Mateo opened my car door when I unlocked it by hand. The key fob hadn’t worked since even before I bought the old wreck. “Do you have any idea how much everything will cost?” I asked before stepping in.
He tapped his fingers against the roof. “I’ll have a better idea when I take a look. But don’t worry about it. I won’t charge you for labor, and I know a guy who can find me parts for cheap.”
I angled my chin up so I could see him better. God, he was so tall. And Noelle was right, he was beautiful. “Why are you being like this?”
“Being like what?”
“Nice. You barely know me.”
Mateo placed his elbow on the doorframe and leaned forward, analyzing me closely. “I could say the same. You didn’t have to say shit when the cops showed.”
“Yes I did. I couldn’t let you be treated that way.” I glanced down. “I mean, we’re friends, right?”
He smiled. “Yeah. That’s right.”
We are? It’s not like I should have expected a different response, but the “friends” remark totally reduced the heat between us to a tepid temperature. Way to go, Evelyn. Next time, kick him in the nuts.
I sighed and climbed in before I could make another stupid remark. He tapped on the window. I started my Cherokee―with a roar and a whine and some other spinny noise that made Mateo cringe again―and hit the button to lower the glass.
“I have a fight Wednesday night at ten. Do you want to go with me?”
“To watch you, like, beat someone up?”
His lips pressed tight for a moment, the same way they had when I’d asked him about life in the big house. “I don’t plan on losing.”
I stuck my head out just to glance at his torn pants where the blade had pierced through. “Do you think that’s wise in your condition?”
He bowed his head and chuckled hard enough to shake his broad shoulders. “I’m not knocked up, Evie. And I’ve fought in matches a lot more hurt than this. Besides, it’ll be a good fight. Last time my opponent and me tied, so the pot’s high. If I win, I’ll make a good amount of cash.”
But what happens if you lose? I thought about how hard it was to see him go blow for blow with that dealer. “Do I have to watch?”
He traced his finger down my cheek. “I won’t make you. But I’d like you there with me.”
That made me smile; so did the way his touch lingered on my skin even after he pulled away. “Okay. I’ll come.”
He had me text him so he’d have my number. I didn’t want to admit how much I wanted him to call.
His hazel eyes searched mine, holding me in place. “Want to know something?” he asked, his voice so gruff I could feel it. I nodded, but just barely. “Noelle was right about one thing. I do want to kiss you.” His hand reached in through the car window, gliding along my shoulder, massaging my neck until his long fingers found my hair fastener. He fumbled with the clip, releasing my thick hair so that it fell all around me. “Will you let me?” he asked, his eyes locked on mine as he played with the strands.
I leaned forward, drawn by every part of Mateo—his voice, his body, everything pulled me to him. He tilted his head and lowered his lids, pressing his lips tight against mine.
Jesus.
His tongue pushed into me, parting my mouth and teasing me with gentle sweeps. My fists clenched the collar of his shirt, inciting him to crush his lips harder against me. I didn’t want him to stop. The way his fingers dug into my hair while his opposite arm circled my shoulders, he wasn’t in a rush to finish either.
Mateo kissed like a real man, rough, sure, and sexy. It was one hell of a first kiss. I wasn’t sure how long it lasted before my sweet little ride made another god-awful noise.
We broke apart, laughing a little but panting a lot. “You’re a good kisser,” he murmured, returning to play with my hair.
I watched him through lowered lashes, not sure what would have happened if the Cherokee’s door hadn’t served as a barrier. As much as I had enjoyed our moment, for now, I was grateful for the protection. He brushed his lips against mine. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
Mateo watched me until I pulled out of Elaine’s driveway and turned down the long street.
Chapter Six
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I do remember my last thought. Mateo. I’d kissed Mateo.
What I didn’t remember was my dream, the one that tangled me in my sheets and made me wake up screaming.
“Evelyn. Evelyn!”
Lourdes shook me hard until I sat up with a jolt. Cold sweat dripped down my back; my tangled hair hung in my face. I pushed it out of the way and rubbed my sternum, where a dull pain seemed to be digging its way into my heart. “What happened?”
Lourdes’s hold on my shoulders softened. “I don’t know, nena. You tell me. I was making dinner and you freaked out. Shit. It was like someone was trying to kill you.”
I rubbed my arms. No, maybe not kill me…Images like those from an old blurred movie reel tried to shove their way through. I remembered hands, wandering, disgusting hands yanking at my clothes, and an awful pain between my legs that made my stomach roll. “I can’t remember.” What little I could recall didn’t make sense, but the stuttering visuals sickened me enough that I forced them away. “I remember being scared.”
Lourdes wrapped her arms around me. I couldn’t hug her back, but I let my head fall against her shoulder. Lourdes was good about showing me she cared, even though I seemed to lack that gene. She released me after a moment and held me at arm’s length. “You’re safe here. You know that, right, nena?”
I wiped my trailing tears. “Yeah. I do. Thanks, Lourdes.” I paused when my mind latched on to what she’d said. “Did you say you were making dinner?”
She raised her thin brows at me. “Girl, you’ve been asleep the whole day.”
“Shit.” I struggled out of bed. My backpack and open books lay strewn on the floor. I’d tried to do a little work after driving home, but sleep deprivation and thoughts of Mateo hadn’t allowed me to finish even one damn chapter. “I still have a hundred pages to read on eating disorders.”
Lourdes stood, eyeing the pile on the floor. “Look at it this way: you slept enough to start now and make it long into the night. What time is your first lecture tomorrow?”
“Not until eleven.”
“Good. Even if you stay up late, you can still get some sleep.”
“You don’t understand. I meant to get ahead in my care plans and lab work.” I couldn’t suppress my smile. “I actually have plans Wednesday night.”
“Do you?” When I kept my head down, Lourdes bent and twisted her body so her round face shoved into mine. “With who?” she asked, knowing damn well who it was.
I shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Mateo invited me to watch him fight.”
Silence. Nothing but silence. Lourdes stood with her mouth hanging open. “Nena, how the hell do you go from no date, no sex, no anything, to attending illegal fight clubs with some hot guy whose ass you want to chew on like Snickers? Seriously, I’d kill to be blond.”
“How do you know Mateo is even good-looking?”
She laughed, throwing her head back. “Because any time you’ve ever talked about the boy, your face turns all red.” She laughed again and pointed at me. “Just like it is now. What is it about the brother that makes you all, like, interested? I was starting to think you played for my team.”
I stopped smiling. “He’s nice to me.”
Lourdes’s grin softened to something kinder. “Good. That’s a good thing, Evelyn.” She motioned to the phone. “You better check that. It’s buzzed more than once today.” She giggled like a little kid when my eyes widened. “I’m making stuffed chiles. They’ll be ready in a few.”
“Thanks, Lourdes.” I waited until she shut the door and dove for my phone. Three texts over the course of several hours. All from Mateo.
Hey.
Thanks for taking care of me.<
br />
Did you make it home okay?
I muttered a curse when I realized he probably thought I’d blown him off. I was about to call him when the phone buzzed in my hand. My thoughts automatically went to him, and I didn’t look at the screen before sliding my finger across it to answer.
“Hello?”
There was a pause. “Hi, pretty girl.”
Donovan. Shit. My lungs fell to the pit of my stomach.
“Evelyn?”
“What do you want?”
Another pause. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.” And just like that his initial soft voice turned defensive. “God damn it. You don’t return my texts, and you fucking block my calls. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”
He was trying to turn it around on me. Just like he always had when we were together and I’d get mad at him for flirting with another girl, or for canceling our plans and going drinking with his buddies instead. “I don’t know. What do assholes feel like?”
“What? What the hell is wrong with you, Evelyn? I’m trying to make an effort here!”
“Don’t bother, and don’t call. Consider yourself blocked―again.”
I disconnected and pulled out the chair that went with my battered desk. My hands shook so hard I could barely flip open my laptop. The phone buzzed over and over and over again as I waited for my slower-than-hell computer to boot. I couldn’t block him without gaining access to my provider’s website. In the meantime, Donovan became more persistent.
Lourdes walked in with two stuffed peppers on a plate and a paper towel folded around a fork. She lowered both onto my tiny desk while she watched my iPhone vibrate and me not answer. “Is that Mateo?”
I blinked away my angry tears. “No, Donovan.”
“Oh,” Lourdes said, and left the room. When she returned, she had her air horn in her hands. My eyes widened as she unlocked the phone when Donovan called again. I ducked, covering my ears as the best roomie in the world blasted the horn at my iPhone.
We both waited in the silence that followed, and yeah, the phone stopped ringing then.
“I so owe you for this, Lourdes.”
“Do my towels and sheets the next time you do yours and consider us even, nena.” She thought about it. “Also, let me borrow your med-surg care plan from last semester.”
I opened the nursing files on my laptop. “Yeah, sure. Which one?”
“The one on third-degree burns.”
“Okay. Hey, could I borrow one of your psych ones on eating disorders? That’s the first rotation we’ll have next week.”
“Sure. I’ll give you the one on bulimia. I have to warn you, nena. It’s going to be a hard semester to work through. Most of those disorders are really dark.” She shuddered. “Still, I can barely stomach the chapters on burns. I started reading last night and was almost too scared to turn on the stove.”
“Oh, I hear you.” I scrolled through the screen and clicked on the folder. My browser may have been slow, but thankfully my Word documents were easy to access. I skimmed through the old plan. “It’s mostly on infection prevention and cleaning. I’m emailing it to you now.”
“Thanks, nena. I just need a base so I can come up with my own. Let me know if the little bitch calls again.” She started to leave the room, then paused in the doorway. “You want anything to drink?”
I thought about how thirsty I was. “Water and a big glass of iced tea would be great.”
“You got it.”
I smiled as she walked away. Lourdes was many things: a friend, a mother when I needed one, and my personal defender. Her grandmother used to be one of our maids. At times, Lourdes would accompany her and help her with the cleaning.
Shame nudged me hard. I never noticed Lourdes then. But her grandmother noticed me, especially when it mattered.
When I lost everything, it was her grandmother who came for me. She hauled me away from my screaming uncles and gave me a place to stay. When it became clear I was on my own, she helped me form a plan. Nursing. That was the career her granddaughter was headed for―the one with the fastest track, the one that paid the most, and the one that would secure my future. She was right, and she was kind.
Neither me nor Lourdes could stop crying when she died of a heart attack a year later.
I deleted the texts Donovan had sent before I started my work. He was a part of my past I didn’t need reminding of.
Although I didn’t intend to read them, I caught a few words here and there―the texts were angry at first, insisting I call him back; the last one was an apology. It had likely come before Lourdes made his eardrum her bitch.
My fingers swept over the keyboard as I added Donovan, once more, to my “blocked” list. My provider probably thought I had a stalker. Nope, just an overbearing idiot of an ex.
I jumped when my phone buzzed again, prepared for it to be Donovan, knowing the block wouldn’t take immediate effect. A smile found its way to my lips when I saw it was Mateo.
“Hi.”
“Hey. Did you just wake up?” His voice sounded sleepy.
“Yeah. I didn’t realize how tired I was.”
“Me neither. I went back to bed after Ant and I brought my wheels back. What time are you stopping by tomorrow?”
“Around three, after my lecture. Is that still okay?”
“It is, but I won’t be here. Elaine has dental surgery tomorrow. She has to be put under since she can’t stomach anyone drilling into her teeth and won’t be able to drive after. I’m her ride. Can you wait for me? I’ll only be about an hour.”
My eyes settled over the mound of assignments piled in careful stacks on the floor. I liked Mateo. But I couldn’t blow off school for him.
“Evie?”
“Sorry, I have a lot of work to do. I won’t be able to go to your fight if I don’t finish it.”
“Do you want to do it here?”
I stared at my laptop screen without really looking at it. “At your place?”
“Why not? I’ll leave you the key beneath the mat. You can work while you wait and when I take a look at your car.”
“What about the fight? Don’t you have to prepare?”
“I’ll train in the morning and over the next few days.”
“And what about your leg, Mateo?”
He chuckled. “Jesus, Evie. It’s just a scratch. No biggie.”
“Scratches don’t typically involve blades and dealers.”
“Trust me, I’ve been through worse.”
Something in his words told me he had. For a moment, I couldn’t move, distracted by what could have happened to him.
“So, you comin’? It’ll give us some time alone.”
My fingers tapped the desk. I’d gone from barely speaking to Mateo to being invited back to his place. For a moment, the thought of being there alone with him scared the unholy hell out of me. But then I reminded myself I’d been alone with him once before. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What’s going to happen if I come over?”
Mateo waited before speaking, suspecting, I imagined, what I really meant to ask. “Nothing you don’t want.” His rough voice hardened. “Ever.”
The brutal honesty in his tone said more than his actual words. I smiled into the phone. “Okay. I’ll be there after class.”
—
It was ten of three when I pulled into Elaine’s driveway. All was quiet except, of course, my pissed-off engine. It was almost like the monster was angry Mateo wasn’t there waiting to tend to its needs. I slipped out of the car, careful to keep my legs together despite knowing the willow tree to my left didn’t care if I flashed it my thong.
I usually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt to attend lecture. Not today. A blue Donna Karan sundress donated to Goodwill hugged my small curves. Lourdes had bought it for my birthday a few months back. I’d originally thought of wearing it to my pinning ceremony when I graduated, but after the disastrous ensemble Elaine had first seen
me in, I wanted to make a better impression.
My air-conditioning system had died a miserable death last summer, so I’d driven here this afternoon with the windows down. Mateo was wrong. There was still a bit of summer left. I left my car running and punched the keypad, opening the garage door without a hitch. Mateo’s black Explorer was noticeably absent. Despite how embarrassing it was to hear my engine’s groans echo from all sides, I had secretly hoped he was there. It seemed odd to be at his home without him.
I cut the engine and hefted my backpack and purse, closing the garage door before heading toward the wooden steps that led to Mateo’s pad. His place. Where he slept. In his bed. Naked.
Men in their twenties slept naked all the time, right?
I paused at the bottom of the steps before marching up. My silver ballet flats slapped against the wood, threatening to slip off, but I wouldn’t let it slow me. If I stopped, I’d likely turn around and chicken out. So I continued forward, bending when I reached the top.
I laughed at his “Solicitors will be beaten senseless and eaten by mutants” doormat and reached for the key underneath it. Although he clearly wasn’t home, I knocked anyway. A small row of windowpanes ran along the top of the door, but it was too high for me to see inside. Seeing how there were no step stools around, I waited for a moment, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. I poked my head into the place where he slept naked, with no sheets, and a teddy bear tucked between his―
Just walk into the damn apartment!
Sometimes, it took all I had not to slap myself.
The door opened to a kitchen. Large tan, blue, and gold tiles covered the floor. A smaller checkered pattern in the same colors served as a backsplash. The island held an electric range and stretched long and wide enough for four bar stools. Behind it was a small living room, only slightly bigger than mine, with a brown leather couch and matching recliner that faced a flat screen. French doors to the right of the couch opened to another room. Without walking in, I could see a small bathroom in the corner, and the edge of a bed near the door.
I jumped when my phone rang, and dug into my purse to fish it out.