Chapter 17
17
C amila came out of the bathroom dressed in a white sleeveless top and white panties. Alejandro was lying on the bed and let his eyes trail down her luscious body, a smile affixed to his face.
She stopped and rested her hands on her hips. “Why are you smiling?”
Sitting up against the pillows, he folded his arms behind his head. “I am remembering the first time I saw you in a bathing suit back in Jalisco, and we went swimming in the river. You wore a white suit. You were fifteen.”
She laughed softly. “Oh yeah, I worked up the courage to wear a suit around you boys. Before that, I always wore old shorts and a tank top. Did you like what you saw?”
“ Por supuesto ,” Alejandro said adamantly.
Her cheeks turned a rosy hue at his vehemence. “Do you know what I remember? You didn’t say anything. You stared at me, and I was so self-conscious those first few minutes.”
“I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious, but I couldn’t talk. I had swallowed my tongue.” He remembered the day like it was yesterday. He, Emilio, and her had gone down to the river to cool off. When she removed her pants and pulled off her top, it was like his every fantasy had come true. His body reacted, and he had to dive into the water to cool off.
Camila padded over and straddled him on the bed. She flattened her palm against the silky hairs on his bare chest. “Those were good times,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
They had been young, with no clue of the changes that would rock their lives as they became older.
“I looked forward to those summers,” Alejandro said.
“Me too.” Then she lowered her eyes, as if hiding something.
“ ?Qué pasa , hmm?” He titled up her chin with his middle finger, forcing her to look at him again.
She swallowed deeply. “There’s something I have to tell you, about me and Emilio.”
His stomach knotted. He didn’t want to talk about Emilio.
“Tell me,” he said, though he worried what she was about to say would crack the newly established peace between them.
Camila breathed out slowly through her mouth. “Things weren’t great between Emilio and I before he died.”
Granted, he hadn’t been as close with his old friend as when they were younger, but this was news to him. “What do you mean?”
She bent her head again. “We were having problems. We hadn’t gotten along for a long time. He was seeing someone else.”
“Are you sure?” Emilio had been cheating on Camila? His brain couldn’t compute behavior so outrageous.
She nodded. “I confronted him, and he admitted it.”
“How long had—” The question broke off in disbelief.
She shrugged. “He said only a few months, but I believe the affair went on much longer.”
“Did you know the woman?”
“Yes. She was someone he worked with in the cash room at the casino.”
Alejandro ran a hand over his head in disbelief. “Camila, I’m sorry. I am in shock. What you’re saying does not sound like Emilio. I don’t understand why he would do that.”
Fury emerged beneath the shock. How dare he cheat on her? How dare he hurt her in that way?
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“I know you’re not blaming yourself.”
“It was my fault, Alejandro?—”
“No!” He sat up, enraged she blamed herself for Emilio’s actions. “There is no excuse for cheating.”
She fell quiet, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. “You don’t understand,” she said in a low voice.
“What don’t I understand? You were married. You made vows to each other.”
She rolled off him and onto the floor. Wrapping her arms around herself, she faced away from him, as if gathering strength to speak.
When she finally faced him again, he recognized a combination of grief and guilt in her expression. “I was wrong to accept his proposal when I didn’t love him the way I should have, and I’m the reason he’s dead.”
Alejandro flung his legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t know why you’re saying this, but unless you were driving the truck that hit him when he ran through the stop sign, you had nothing to do with his death.”
“He wouldn’t have been in the car if not for me . We fought that night. We argued about his cheating.”
“How is the argument your fault?” Alejandro demanded.
“Listen!” she pleaded. “H-he said he wouldn’t have been involved with the other woman if I were a better wife. An honest wife. If—if he didn’t know about my feelings for you. He called me a cheater, in my heart.”
Alejandro couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“He guessed my feelings for you and was jealous. Jealous of you and what I felt for you. He said he saw it every time you came to visit. The big stud. I think he resented the fact that you were bigger than him and stronger. He complained about when you were kids and the other kids messed with him, and you had to jump in.”
Alejandro was bigger and stronger than most of the other children in their neighborhood. When they bullied Emilio, he stepped in. After a while, no one messed with him because he had his own personal security.
“I protected him because he was my friend.”
“I know, and I believe at the time he appreciated your help. But later, as we grew older, those memories became embarrassing instances of his weakness and inability to defend himself.”
Alejandro ran a hand over his head again. “ Jesús Cristo , what you’re telling me…”
“I know. It’s hard to accept. Emilio wasn’t the same person we knew as children. He changed, and the truth is, I wanted to be free of him. We used to be friends, but at some point in the marriage, I lost my friend, and then I lost him permanently in the worst possible way. For good.”
Alejandro extended a hand to her, and she took it. “You should not blame yourself for what happened to Emilio. Whatever he felt about me, was his problem. I did not know you had feelings for me, Camila. Had I known…” Then a day, long ago, came back to him, and disappointment tightened his chest. “The summer you turned sixteen, I told Emilio about my feelings for you.”
Her eyes widened. “You did?”
He nodded. “I was worried about telling you—worried my confession would affect our relationship. I confided in him, and he said he would talk to you for me. Then the next thing I know, you were a couple. He told me, with regret, that when he spoke to you, you expressed your feelings for him.”
She stepped back, shock on her face. “Wait, I remember when he came to me, but he said he had feelings for me, and you had encouraged him to tell me about his feelings.”
Alejandro muttered a curse. “That is not what happened.”
Her eyes widened again, and she put a hand to her mouth. “He lied to keep us apart,” she said softly.
Alejandro didn’t want to believe what she was saying, but it was the only explanation that made sense. Emilio couldn’t have misunderstood what he had said to him.
“Then you started dating,” he said, the pain as fresh as ever.
“When we told you, you didn’t react. You behaved as if you didn’t care.”
“What could I do except pretend I was happy for the two of you? His family had been good to me and my grandmother. I remember times when we struggled, and they invited us into their home to eat. Emilio was like a brother to me, and as far as I was concerned, you had chosen the better man.”
“ You were the better man, and I thought you didn’t want me the way I wanted you.”
Alejandro’s jaw tightened, and he pulled her close again. “No,” he said, the word torn from between tight lips. “I wanted you. I have always wanted you.”
She straddled his thighs and placed her hands on his shoulders. Neither of them spoke for a while, but anger, disappointment, and a maddening sense of betrayal rolled through him. For so long, he’d believed he had no right to touch this woman. A woman he had longed for, and who for years he had tried to exorcise from his thoughts with the bodies of other women. To no avail.
Casual sex, while quenching the thirst of his body, had always left him empty because none of the dozens of women he’d slept with had come close to giving him the satisfaction he achieved tonight with Camila.
To think, all this time, she could have been his. They could have been together, but his so-called friend, his so-called brother, had kept them apart.
“ Pinche cabrón ,” he muttered.
Camila stroked his bearded jaw. “I feel sorry for him. He must have been hurting and terribly insecure.”
“I do not feel sorry for him,” Alejandro said, barely able to suppress his rage.
“I’ve had time to think about the past in a way you haven’t.”
“You should have told me before what he said and what he did.”
“I should have, but I didn’t know how. Your relationship with him was always different from mine with you.”
“Don’t think about it anymore. It’s in the past.” Alejandro cupped her bottom. He would not allow his anger to shift to her. It should remain on Emilio where it belonged.
“Do you think he’s the reason you went to prison?” she whispered. “What if he was the person who told the police what you did?”
“It’s possible, but we will never know for sure.”
He’d thought the same thing at one time because Camila and Emilio were the only people who knew what he’d done. No way his friend could have—would have—turned him in. At least, he hadn’t wanted to believe that, and so he’d dismissed the idea and accepted his fate.
“I’m going downstairs to get some water. Do you want anything from the kitchen?” Camila asked.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Be right back.” Camila kissed him briefly and left him in the bedroom with his thoughts.
Alejandro rested his elbows on his knees and recalled “the incident” that occurred when he was seventeen and changed the trajectory of his life. Losing Camila had made him restless, and he’d been looking for a reason to get into trouble. The local church was robbed by a gang who had been terrorizing the community for years, and Father Gonzalez—Emilio’s father—said he was praying about it. Alejandro decided to do more and plotted to get the money and goods back. And he did, all by himself, anonymously returning what the gang hadn’t spent or distributed among themselves.
Then he decided to teach the thugs a lesson. He waited until the house that served as the base for their operations was empty, and he planted homemade bombs, using Tang as an accelerant with hydrogen peroxide. Except the house wasn’t empty like he thought. The gang’s leader was asleep inside and died in the explosion.
At first, Alejandro had been horrified that he’d killed someone, but the town celebrated the gang leader’s demise. Alejandro became a hero, but no one knew. He confided in Emilio and Camila. Within two weeks, he was arrested and thrown into prison. But for some reason, he was kept separate from the other inmates, and he soon learned why.
A top-secret U.S. government organization, Plan B, was recruiting internationally and learned about his situation. They offered a way out if he came to work for them. Otherwise, he’d be thrown into gen pop and would have to fend for himself against the gang’s incarcerated members.
He joined Plan B.
He said goodbye to his grandmother, Emilio, and had an especially emotional conversation with Camila, who had already returned to the States. For more than two years, he disappeared as he was trained. His specialty became engineering and explosives. He learned how much explosives to use to bring down a building, where to plant them for the best structural collapse, how to make his own homemade devices, and much more—making him a lethal adversary who could cause major destruction.
Having to disappear for such a long period of time never upset him. Knowing Emilio and Camila were in a relationship made leaving easy. He threw himself into his training and didn’t see his friends again until he was almost twenty.
Friends. He didn’t have many of those, and trust didn’t come easy, but that’s what he’d thought of Camila and Emilio. He had no doubt Camila was genuine, but now he knew Emilio was a liar, a backstabber, and probably the traitor who’d turned him in to the police at seventeen.
That hijo de puta was lucky he was already dead because, if he was still alive, Alejandro would have killed him.