Chapter 14 #2
“So, you’re Catholic then?” She rested her cheek against his back. “You don’t seem very Catholic.”
“Don’t I?” He grinned. “And here’s me thinking I was going straight to heaven.”
She laughed, snaking both her arms around his torso. He could feel her breasts pressing into his back and he felt damn close to heaven right then.
She pressed her palm against the hand print tattoo that lay over his heart. As if she could feel it on his skin without even seeing it. Her touch posed a question, despite her silence.
His answer was to place his hand over hers and gently pry it away. He curled his hand around hers, hoping she understood that one didn’t have a simple explanation.
She propped her chin on his shoulder. ‘Do you ever want to go back there?’ she said.
He realized she was looking at la Bandera de México that hung above the door. “No puedo volver,” he said softly. “I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get back here again.”
There was a long pause. She lifted her head from his shoulder, and he could practically hear her mind working.
“It scares me a little.”
He frowned. “What does?”
“That you keep things from me. About your life. Your past.”
He squeezed her hand. “Before I met you, I was someone else. Someone worse.”
She studied him, like she could pull the truth straight from his skin. “Worse how?”
There was a loud banging on his trailer door. Terry’s voice came from right outside. “Daniel! You in there?”
He leaped up, head snapped from the door to Julia sitting naked on his bed and back to the door again. “Jesus. Fuck.”
Terry pounded again.
He didn’t have time to come up with a plan. So, he just ripped the sheet off the bed, bundled Julia up in it, then unlocked his wardrobe and pushed her into it.
“Daniel, what—”
He silenced her by stamping a kiss on her lips. “Just stay in here a minute, okay? While I get rid of him.”
She nodded mutely.
Terry had gotten fed up with waiting and pushed open the trailer door.
Daniel slammed the wardrobe door shut and whirled around. He grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on. “Ever heard of a little privacy, güey?”
Terry shrugged. “I tried knocking, man.”
Daniel finished buttoning his jeans. “Yeah, you nearly took the fucking door off.”
He grabbed his singlet off the floor and his phone from the table and, with a last look behind him at the wardrobe, headed for the door.
Terry climbed down the steps ahead of him. When he stepped onto the grass, the trailer visibly groaned in relief. Daniel always needed to reset the wheel chocks after Terry came calling.
He crossed his arms and peered up at Daniel through his sunglasses. “Paq said you never showed back up last night to finish that last drop.”
Daniel scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I, uh, had —”
“Personal stuff,” Terry cut in. He turned his mirrored gaze to the trailer, as if he could see through its walls, its doors, right into his wardrobe.
Daniel didn’t know what would anger Terry more: knowing that Daniel had broken his cardinal rule about getting involved with a woman or knowing that the woman in question was the same one who could go to the cops anytime she wanted and report what had happened in his trailer that night.
Daniel had trusted Julia when she’d said she wouldn’t do that. But Terry trusted no one.
Daniel lifted one shoulder but said nothing. He could feel his heart beating a steady drip of adrenaline into his veins. He ran through all the scenarios in his mind, imagining what lengths he’d go to protect Julia.
Any length, he realized.
Any fucking one.
He tried to keep his expression neutral. A confrontation wasn’t something he could deal with right now. He had to stay calm and hope like hell the big man was bluffing.
Terry looked back at him. Took his cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth. Then he turned his head toward the ’Cuda. Tequila, relaxed but alert, was tied up beside the car.
“Fuck, that thing’s ugly,” Terry said.
Daniel didn’t know if he was talking about his car or his dog, but he let the insult slide.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything.
“Your old man was a mechanic, right?”
Daniel nodded.
Terry stuck the cigarette in his mouth and fumbled in his pockets for a lighter. “Pushed some stuff for the cartel too back in the day, no?”
Daniel shoved his hands in his pocket and didn’t reply. Since they both knew the answer to that question, there seemed little point.
Terry gave another grunt that might have been a laugh. “Until he didn’t no more.”
He waited to see if Daniel had any kind of response to that.
Daniel didn’t. He knew this game. The smiles and easy laughs that always punctuated Terry’s conversations were part of the act, too.
In the same way that he was slow until he was fast, the big man was always friendly until he really, really wasn’t.
He was your best friend until he was distributing your body parts in so many dumpsters.
For all the years Daniel had known him, he’d managed to stay in the gap between his two extremes.
Terry smiled, making the cigarette stick out the side of his mouth at a jaunty angle. “I don’t give a fuck who you fuck, Daniel.”
Daniel’s blood seemed to have stalled in his veins. And he knew now, without a doubt, that Terry knew about Julia. Whether because Milo had told him, or by some other means.
The guy was still patting and poking at his pockets, looking for the lighter that he could never find. He stopped and looked at Daniel, as if expecting him to supply him with his lighter, as he usually did. Daniel kept his hands in his pockets.
He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and stuck it back behind his ear. “What I do give a fuck about is if you don’t show when you say you’re gonna show up. It’s just basic manners. You know what I’m saying?”
Abruptly, he turned and started ambling toward his car parked on the street.
Daniel glanced behind him again at the trailer, but he had no choice: he had to follow.
Maybe it was the reminder of his dad’s choices, and where they had gotten them all.
Or maybe it was something he had always known deep down.
But it occurred to him now with the clarity it hadn’t before: there was no running away from this life. It always found you.
And it was always really fucking angry when it did.
* * *
Julia heard the ’Cuda’s engine rumble to life, gravel crunching beneath its tires as it reversed down the drive. She waited, listening, until the sound faded completely. Only then did she push open the cupboard door, the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
As she stepped out, her foot caught on something, dragging it out with her. A gym bag.
Her phone chirped from the beer crate. She snatched it up, her fingers cold despite the midday heat.
Sorry baby. B back soon to take u home xx.
She sank onto the edge of the bed, her mind circling back to the other man she’d glimpsed before Daniel had slammed the door shut. The one with the spiderweb tattoo stretched over most of his scalp. He was big. Rough-looking. Dangerous.
Sebastián’s voice echoed in her head: Daniel has friends. The sort of friends that, if they ever become enemies, well, your life expectancy goes down a lot.
Was that man one of them?
She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers against her temples. Her mind reeled back to their earlier conversation—Daniel’s face hardening when she’d asked if he ever wanted to go back to Mexico. I can’t, he’d said. If I leave, I can’t come back.
He hadn’t spelled it out, but she’d understood anyway.
He was undocumented. Sebastián, too.
A tight, aching feeling bloomed in her chest.
God.
She thought of all the things they must go without, the doors that were slammed shut before they could even knock. The risks they carried just by existing in a country that didn’t want them. The ordinary, everyday indignities they had to endure.
And yet, Daniel never talked about it. Never let her see that weight on his shoulders.
Did he think she wouldn’t understand? That she couldn’t understand?
Maybe it was worse than that. Maybe, deep down, he didn’t trust her.
The thought stung more than she wanted to admit.
She wiped her face with the edge of the blanket and stood up, pulling her panties and camisole back on.
Her gaze drifted over the inside of the trailer. Bare walls. No pictures. No trinkets or souvenirs. Just the Mexican flag tacked over the door. It was like he’d made no effort to carve out a space that was his own.
Did he even have photos of his family? Did he ever let himself have anything that felt like home?
She thought about all the things she’d told him about her own life—her childhood, her family, the things that shaped her. And how little he had shared in return.
This relationship—it wasn’t equal. Not even close.
Her eyes flicked down to the gym bag she’d kicked earlier, still slumped on the floor.
She bent to pick it up, intending to shove it back into the wardrobe where it belonged. But when she lifted it, she noticed something off.
It was heavy. Too heavy for gym clothes. And oddly bulky.
A strange prickle crawled up her spine.
Slowly, she set it back down and unzipped it.
Her breath caught. The air inside the trailer seemed to shrink.
It wasn’t gym clothes.
Sebastián’s voice surfaced in her mind again, low and serious. How well do you know my brother?
Apparently, not well at all.
* * *
Daniel froze in the doorway of his trailer, pulse spiking as the sight registered.
Julia was curled up on his bed, barely dressed, with his life savings scattered in a messy pile by her knees. His loaded Beretta lay on the pillow beside her, a stark contrast against the soft, crumpled sheets.
Heat flared in his chest, anger, panic, betrayal all tangled up. She’d discovered the bag. The cash. Pieces of him he never meant for her to see.
He slammed the door so hard the walls rattled. The bang made her jolt awake.