She looked into deep brown eyes, feeling herself swallow thickly.
Damn it … how does he do that?
“It’s … I know what it’s like … to lose someone. Family.”
He nodded, encouraging her to continue. She looked out the windows again, not wanting to face his warm and compassionate eyes. “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that it’s just my sister and me.” She let out a short laugh. “As I said, I took over as her guardian when I was just a teenager.”
“What happened to your parents?”
Pilar wrapped her arms around herself again. “They … well … everyone really. They all died. Our whole pride did besides my sister and me.”
His stunned silence made her turn and look at him.
Maverick’s eyes were widened, his mouth slack from the shock. If she didn’t feel so sad about reliving the memories of her family, she would’ve found his expression kind of funny.
“There was a disease. Really contagious. I’m not sure why Lydia or I never caught it, but it left us orphans. I didn’t want us to be separated when we were put in the foster care system, so I fought for a whole year to be declared a legal adult through the courts.”
“Wow,” he mumbled.
She nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let my baby sister grow up with a family that I didn’t know. People who could potentially take her out of state where I’d never find her again. So I said, fuck it. I’ll just do it myself. So I took over custody, got a job, and I’ve been supporting us ever since.”
“Pilar, that’s incredible.”
She didn’t know how to accept his words, so she just plowed on, the words flowing through her mouth like acid.
“It’s been damn hard doing it all by myself. But I don’t regret anything. If I could do it all over again, I would. Lydia is the one thing I know I’ve done right in my life. That girl may be a pain in my ass sometimes, but she’s brilliant. She really is. Our parents …”
Pilar slapped a hand over her mouth, swallowing back the choking sound that threatened to bubble up her throat. She felt her eyes begin to sting, memories of her parents flooding into her mind like a fast-paced slideshow.
Maverick’s hand tightened over her arm, squeezing her in a comforting way that surprised her.
“They’d be really proud of her” was what she managed to say after a few long moments of trying to collect herself. “I know they would.”
“I think they’d be proud ofbothof you.”
Pilar squeezed her eyes shut, her shoulders shaking from the force of trying to hold her tears back.
“Hey.” An arm came around her from behind, pulling her back away from the window. “It’s okay to miss them. I still miss my sister every single day.”
She sucked in a breath, tears leaking down her cheeks as she stared at him. “It’s stupid.”
He shook his head at her. “It’s not stupid. You miss them, and that’s okay. They really would be proud of both of you.”
She let out a small sob without meaning to, her cheeks heating from embarrassment while she started to crumble in front of him.
Maverick pulled her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hold. She couldn’t help but cry on his shoulder, the comfort of his tight hug giving her a weird sense of home that she’d been missing for a long time.
He rubbed her back gently, soothing her through her tears and all of the memories of her parents that came flooding back. Sometimes life wasn’t fair. She’d give anything to see her parents again … her pride … but she knew that deep down, he was right.
They would be proud of both her and Lydia.
Pilar sniffled and wiped her face with a hand. “Do you want a different bodyguard? Someone that’s a little more emotionally stable than me?”
He chuckled. The sound rumbled in her ear pleasantly.
“I wouldn’t dare trade you for the world.”
CHAPTERTEN