I don’t turn my head when she slaps me across the face. In fact, she should’ve done it sooner.
Getting into her pants was a bonus, and if she wasn’t so angry, my lies wouldn’t make sense to her right now. I held back, unwilling to take that step with her until I knew I had a hundred percent of her heart. I was the one fearful of getting hurt.
It seems waiting doesn’t make much of a difference in the end.
“Take me home,” she snaps.
The drive back to her grandmother’s house is so silent, I wonder if she can hear the tiny pieces of my heart breaking away and filling the rest of my body. The heat in my face from her hit isn’t nearly enough pain. I deserve her wrath, all of her animosity, and as much as I want to pull over and beg her forgiveness, I know I can’t.
I refuse to put her in a situation like the one my parents were in. I won’t be her downfall. I won’t punish her for the rest of her life just because I’m selfish. I won’t tie her down and pray the little hearts in our eyes will make all the difference because I know they won’t.
Love is never enough.
My fingers itch to reach for her when I drive up to the curb outside the run-down house uncaring if her father sees me. When she shoves open the passenger side door, I can’t help but reach for her one last time.
“What?” she snaps, her tears long gone and replaced with a hatred I’ve never seen mar her beautiful face.
“You said you had several things to tell me tonight.”
She glares at me, her mouth refusing to open. Then, she tugs her arm away and slams the door without another word.
Little did I know I left more than my heart with her that day.
Chapter 1
Ignacio
“There hasn’t been a change in two days, Mr. Torres.”
I look up into the fresh face of the day nurse as she checks the machines near my grandfather’s bed.
“You should take some time for yourself.”
I scrub my hands over my face, wondering just how rough I must look if the medical staff are urging me to get out of here for a while. The bristle of hair against my hands has transformed from stubble to a wiry softness, making me realize I haven’t shaved in the better part of a week, something that never happens.
“Some people have to be forced out because they’re unable to give themselves permission to take a break,” she says as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you need that, Mr. Torres?”
If I weren’t exhausted from sitting at his bedside feeling empty for the last five days, I might smile at this tiny woman, since I imagine she’s got a little more bark than bite.
“Hmm?” I ask, just to get a rise out of her.
She breathes a long sigh, her upper lip twitching, making her look more like a cute squirrel rather than angry chihuahua. She’s honestly adorable and looking at her makes me realize there are a few things I’d be down with, included in the time for myself, she’s suggested.
I give her a smile I know has worked wonders in the past, but instead of the smile I expect, she merely cocks an eyebrow at me.
“You’re gorgeous,” I tell her, making sure to keep my voice low and husky.
We are in an ICU room, after all.
“I’ll tell my wife you said so. Now, do I have to have security escort you out, or are you willing to take a couple hours off from your vigil?”
“What if he wakes up?” I ask, my eyes darting to the man in the bed.
He may not look like much right now due to the stroke, but that man is the meanest person I ever laid eyes on. His fists, now lined with bruises from IVs, were once hard, powered by strong arms earned from the industrial work he did for most of his life. His words were few but scathing when he opened his mouth.
When I left Houston nearly thirteen years ago, I never looked back. I never came home, never visited, never gave him another opportunity to cut me with his words or hurt me with his hands. I told myself if I ever got out, I wouldn’t look back, and I held true to that promise until I got the call days ago that he’d collapsed at the grocery store. How the old man knew my information is beyond me, but the bigger question is why was I listed as his emergency contact in the first place. Granted, I know I’m the only living relative he has left, but there’s not much love lost between the two of us.
Mateo Costa saw me as my father, the very man who stole his daughter from him and forced him into raising a grandson he never wanted in the first place. He never let me forget I was an unwanted burden and look how the tables have turned.