“Unless you decided that you were sick of sharing your bed and food with me and you’re taking me someplace to kill me,” I said, more to distract myself than anything else.
Hector barked out a laugh and for the hundredth time, I cursed this blindfold. After his laughter ceased, he squeezed my leg. Yes, most definitely trying to kill me. “Should I remind you, bonita,” he said and I could just picture his lips tilting up into a smirk, “of how many times you have tried to kill me?”
I knew exactly how many times and if he wasn’t careful, the last time wouldn’t be the last. I told him so and his laughter, once again, filled the car and my heart.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but when Hector stopped and the ignition cut off, I knew we were here. “Can I take this thing off yet?” I asked impatiently as I let my hands out from underneath my thighs.
His hand moved from my thigh and I barely held back a protest. I heard his car door open and close but I wasn’t too eager to make an ass out of myself by attempting to get out of the car without his help. I felt the hot summer air on my bare arms and legs when he opened the door. Then, Hector’s hands were on me again and if I had any talented vocal cords, I would have started singing his praises. His intertwined one of my hands with his and his other hand grabbed me by the waist, helping me lower on to a sidewalk. I could hear people talking among themselves, but it was too quiet for us to be in the city.
“Where are we?” I asked him not for the first time. He ignored me as he guided me down the street. He paused and a second later, we walked into somewhere. I only knew that because the heat I felt from the beating sun changed into a cool breeze. Then the smell hit me. Food. Not just any food, Mexican food. I could smell peppers and onions and so many of the spices I have grown accustomed to Hector cooking with.
“Where are we?” I asked again. Hector answered me this time but with no words. He untied the blindfold and I blinked a few times as my vision returned to me. We were in a restaurant. As I took in the sight in front of me, one word came to mind. Romantic. That’s how it felt. The room had a dark, sensual glow to it. The walls were a light brown while the tables and booths were a deep, darker shade of brown. Candlelight on each table and along all of the walls lit up the room but it wasn’t bright. More of a glow than anything. It was beautiful.
A young woman rushed out onto the floor from a wall that I swore was just a plain wall but must have been a door. “I’m so sorry,” she said, smiling once seeing us standing just inside the door. When she looked from me to the man beside me, her body straightened and the smile on her face disappeared in an instant. “Mr. Rivera,” she said, half-bowing to him.
I couldn’t control my reaction. My eyebrows drew together and a laugh bubbled up inside of my throat and I couldn’t catch it in time. This girl was bowing at his presence like he was a king. He was a king of my heart but he didn’t know that and even if he did, hell would have to freeze over before I greeted him like that. The girl looked at me frantically like my outburst was going to get us both in trouble. I tilted my head to look up at him. His jaw was clenched and he wouldn’t meet my eyes but the edge of his lips were tilted, barely containing his own amusement. I reached back and hit him in the stomach. He caught my hand and tucked it into his.
“We’ll be in the back. Send a waiter.” He urged me forward without a second glance at the girl who scurried back to where she came from. He led me past the tables where couples and families were eating, each one of them acknowledging him with a nod.
I felt like I was a newborn and I was opening my eyes for the very first time after being secluded in darkness for nine months. I knew Hector. I knew the dangerous man. I knew the vigilante side of him from what Matt had told me just days ago. This version of him I did not know. He didn’t smile. His face warned you of fucking with him and the way he spoke was clipped. I didn’t say a word as we walked through the dining room. Hector stopped us when we reached a table that was out of view of the other guests; we could see them but they couldn’t see us.
He pulled out my chair for me before he took his right next to me. I rested my elbows on the table, placing my face in my hands, and stared at him. It took him a while but when he locked eyes with me, the slowest, sexiest smirk I’d ever seen took over his face.
For the second time in less than ten minutes, laughter spurted out of me. “Who was that back there?” I asked, placing my hand over my aching stomach.
He shrugged. “Dominique.”
“Not the girl. You.” He only frowned. “That wasn’t my Hector back there,” I told him quietly.
“Your Hector,” he mused, scooting his chair closer and grabbing a tendril of my hair before wrapping it around his fingers and tugging me close so our faces were almost touching. In that moment, I forgot how to breathe. “He’s yours for a reason, bonita. No one else gets him. Only you.”
A throat clearing made me jump and breathe again. A waiter stood a safe distance away and greeted Hector the same way Dominique had. This time I only rolled my eyes. “What can I get for you, sir? Ma’am?”
As Hector told the waiter to go grab me a menu, I shut my eyes. This was my fault. I was the one who had the great idea of roping him into public dates. Tonight was so different because he was the one who planned this. The idea of us was just that: an idea. It was in my head for so long. Yes, we went on dates. Yes, he always showed up when I needed him. Yes, I was always wrapped in him at night. Yes, I pictured him naked at least a million times a day. But the idea that we were something more always seemed like it was all in my head. We didn’t talk about it. The kissing, the hand-holding, the I miss you’s every evening when he picked me up from work. We never talked about it. We weren’t talking about it now but it felt like it.
“Where are we?” I asked him, yet again.
“A restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because we haven’t had a date night in over a week.”
I perked up at his response. It had been over a week. “You noticed that,” I whispered.
He bit his lip before he answered. “Yes. When it comes to you, I notice everything.”
“I thought you couldn’t be seen with me in public.”
“That’s why I brought you here.”
“Where is here?” I was starting to sound like a broken record. He didn’t answer me until the waiter returned with a menu for me. I took it after thanking him. The front of the menu read, “Welcome to Maria’s.”
That was his mom’s name. My gaze snapped up to Hector. “This—this is yours?”
He hummed a yes. I flipped open the menu and every item featured on the menu was something I had eaten over the past couple of months. “What do you want, bonita?” he asked me softly when I shut the menu and simply stared at him.
You. I didn’t say that and I hid my eyes so he couldn’t see the real answer in my eyes. I turned in my seat to where the waiter stood. I motioned him forward. “I want everything.”
He chuckled nervously and looked to Hector which would have pissed me off if Hector didn’t just show me a part of him I didn’t know about. He nodded his head. “Have Joseph cook a sample of each dish but bring out a taco platter. And bring us two a pitchers, water and a Corona.” He looked to me, a silent question in his eyes. I nodded my approval and then, we were alone again.
I looked around the restaurant again. “This really is yours,” I said in awe. “How long?”
“This was my mama’s dream. As soon as me and Nolan were eighteen, this was her plan. I’ve told you she’s the one who taught me how to cook. I learned how to make her signature meals before I learned how to kiss a girl. My papa always argued with her that I didn’t need to waste time in the kitchen. She would roll her eyes at him and remind him that he, too had to learn how to cook before she agreed to marry him. She always said, ‘A woman’s place is wherever she damn well wants it to be. I love to cook for my family but when I don’t, someone else is going to pick up the slack.’”
I loved his mom. I felt like I knew her even though I’d never get the chance to meet her and my heart hurt for him, for losing his mom so early. I reached across the table for his hand. “Moms are the best.”
He sat back in his chair, lost in his own thoughts. “Are you sad that Samuel didn’t have a mother figure growing up?”
His eyebrows drew together. “Yes. I had my dad who never showed me anything but discipline and tough love but my mother, she allowed and encouraged me to be soft. Too soft if you were to ask my father. She taught me how to treat women and to be a gentleman. I learned from my dad how to use my body as a weapon and from my mama, I learned how to use my heart. Samuel doesn’t remember his mom. He was only three when she left. I did my best with him and I think he turned out okay.”
From what I knew about Samuel, I was sure Hector did more than okay. I asked him the one question I had been dying to for a while now. “What happened to her?”
He sighed and looked away from me. “I told you what happened to her, Annie. She couldn’t handle being in my life.”
There was a hardness to his tone, almost daring me to follow her lead. I didn’t know her but I did know that she and I weren’t the same and neither was our relationship with the man sitting across from me, a broody look I hadn’t seen in a long time taking over his face. I leaned forward and rubbed the pad of my thumb across the creases in his forehead until he gave me his eyes.
“I’m not her,” I whispered and his face immediately softened. “I knew what kind of man you were the moment we met. I’m still here.” And not because I have to be, but that part I kept to myself. He lifted our hands to his mouth, placing a tender kiss on the edge of my palm.
Our dinner arrived moments later but I still needed my answers. “Where is she, Hector?”
“I thought we were done discussing this.”
“You were. I wasn’t. Where is she?”
“Gone,” he said like I knew he would.
“Hector Rivera,” I grumbled.
He groaned but relented. “She’s dead. At least her old life is. I bought her a new alias and set her up with a monthly account. Last I knew, she was living in Tennessee, settled down with an investment banker and was working on her white picket house fence dream.”
“You’re still giving her money?” I asked incredulously. He nodded, stuffing food in his face. I suspected he didn’t particularly want to have this conversation. “For what reason?”
“She’s the mother of my child, Annie,” he said, his voice holding a warning in it. A warning I decided to ignore.
“Exactly! The mother who hasn’t seen her son in fifteen years. If anything, she should be paying you.”
He waved me off. “That was the deal. I promised to compensate her in case Samuel ever wanted to get in contact with her.”
“You paid her, are continuing to pay her, so she will be nice to her son if ever he should call,” I said slowly, hoping it would make more sense to my own ears.
“It’s for my son, Annie. I don’t care if you don’t like it. It’s what I had to do to make sure my son was going to be okay if it turned out that I wasn’t what he wanted, either.”
I looked at him and for the first time, I could see the man behind the walls he had built up. The man who struggled to be enough for every person in his life. He wanted to be the type of man his mom was proud of. He wanted to be the son his father wanted. He wanted to be the perfect husband and a good dad.
I didn’t know who moved first but before I could even blink, I was sitting atop his thighs, my arms thrown around his neck and his head sought comfort against my chest. I didn’t care that we were out in public. I didn’t care that we just had our first real fight since I got over trying to kill him. He was a man who needed love, who was begging for it and even though I wasn’t sure what would happen in three months’ time, I was all too eager to give him my touch, my heart, my everything.
* * *
I never touched drugs. Not as a teenager and not once through my adult life.
Part of it had to do with Nolan. How his parents completely disregarded the fact that they had a son. How they acted while they were going through withdrawals. Many times, Nolan would disappear from school before my mom officially adopted him and they’d use him to syphon money out of my mom.
Part of it was because I became a father at an early age. And a single father only a couple of years later. I couldn’t do anything in fear of someone swooping away my reason to live. I did everything by the book.
It wasn’t until the age of thirty-four, three months ago, that I got my first taste of a soul consuming drug. Except she wasn’t something you could buy. She was something that gave herself willingly to me and me only.
Annie Miller was my drug. She was my weakness. Outside of my son, she was the best goddamn thing that’s ever happened to me.
Every time she was in my sight, I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her. Touching her. Making her smile. Hell, even her frown did things to me.
But just like a drug when I couldn’t feel her, the doubts crept into my head. I hadn’t been in love with a woman in a very long time. Not since Samuel’s mom. I knew because of the life that was forced upon me, I would never get a real shot at love. Women loved their men bad; what they didn’t love was the lifestyle that came with it. I learned that lesson when I was still in my teenage years. I accepted it. I accepted that the family business and raising my son to not be a complete dickhead were the only things that could be important to me as a man. Annie, or any other woman, weren’t in the cards. At least long term.
Annie couldn’t be long term. She’d been living on fumes since that piece of shit father of hers killed her mom. She saw one thing, blind to everything else. I didn’t get a choice over my life. I was born a Rivera, my destiny was sealed before my parents even knew what my name would be. I knew what it was like to not have a choice. Just like I have with Samuel, I gave Annie a choice. A choice to be something more than the dirty deeds you thought were your destiny.
She fought me at first, but over the past couple of weeks, I have watched her become her own person. The poetry that she reads and watches make her happy and I’ve watched from the crack in the door as she wrote her own, bent over the desk in my study, pencil to paper, writing so intensely I was surprised she didn’t rip the paper. She may have found her passion, but there were small changes that I noticed that absolutely fucking thrilled me. She laughed more than she frowned. Just weeks ago, she wouldn’t so much as grunt a laugh if I had Kevin Hart play a live show in the living room, and now I was growing obsessed with the way she would throw her head back and laugh at something. Her weight changed, too. When I first met her, she was all bones. She was strong, she trained herself to be, but there was nothing to her. She informed me she was on a ramen diet for years preparing for her next life. Watching her become healthy, especially given how much I’ve noticed she loves food has been the greatest thing for me to see.
She didn’t share the same opinion. “Hector,” she groaned this morning, padding down the stairs while I made us breakfast.
“Hmm?” I asked around a swig of coffee.
“I’m fat,” she declared, that frown of hers making an appearance.
I didn’t bother dignifying that statement with a response. She walked over to me, not stopping until our arms brushed, hot stove be damned.
“Did you hear me?” she pressed.
I looked down at her. “I heard you,” I told her. Our eyes locked and her pupils grew wider and wider until she threw her hands up in the air, frustrated with my lack of response or something else entirely, I wasn’t sure.
“My jeans don’t fit anymore. My shirts are too tight. I need to go shopping.”
I brought our plates to the table and we sat down. She was already digging in before I could grab a fork. I kept my laughter at bay, not wanting to face her wrath. “We’ll go shopping. Do you work today?”
She sighed in exhaustion. “Yeah. I’m off t
omorrow. We can go then.”
We spent the next half hour eating in comfortable silence until she grabbed both of our plates, taking them into the kitchen. She announced she was going to get a shower and I nodded, awaiting my morning call from Samuel who would be going on break.
I felt Annie’s hands in my hair as soon as Samuel’s name flashed across the phone. I answered it at the same time Annie tugged the hair at the nape of my neck, tilting my face up. Her lips found mine in a second as Samuel launched into a story from the night before. She kissed me softly, slowly like that was going to drive me less crazy than our deep, desperate kisses. She was wrong. She pulled back and smiled down at me. That fucking smile. As the thought of watching her walk up the stairs popped in my head, she leaned back down, showering me with quick pecks on the lips. She lightly smacked the side of my face after she delivered me with one last kiss.
I stopped her from killing me when we first met, and here she was, making it her mission to kill me.
After her shower and a very long, very detailed description of the women my son shared the night with last night, we were on our way to the city. “You really need to stop kissing me,” I said just before the city came into view.
I felt her gaze on me immediately but I was too preoccupied veering onto the ramp to spare her a glance. “I would,” she said solemnly. “If I knew you didn’t like it so much.”
When I chanced a glance at her, a smirk bloomed upon her lips. I shook my head at her, trying like hell to fight my own grin.
Hours later, in between meetings in the city, Annie crept back into my mind. My mind kept going back to that poetry reading. To the woman with the brightest smile and the ugliest scar. To the women’s shelter who aided women who have been domestically abused. To Annie’s reaction. She tried to remain calm, but I had a feeling that that night was the scariest thing Annie has done in years. When she had Cameron tied up in his living room, she was eerily calm. She wasn’t even scared when I showed up and ruined her plans. But that night she spent in a café on my lap, she showed me a weakness. The tiniest of flinches. The clearing of her throat when I knew she was fighting her emotions from showing. The way her arms would tighten around my neck when the poet’s words were just a little bit too graphic.
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