8. Gio #2
Stepping back, I move until my spine hits the wall. When it does, I sink down and my ass hits the concrete floor of the storage room. Juliet follows.
“Are you okay now?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond right away, but one of her hands comes up and plays at the hem of my t-shirt.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I try again.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, probably a response from the guys. I don’t pull it out, though. They know where we are. Instead, I focus my attention on the strange creature in my arms. Both fragile and strong, she’s a complicated mix of brave and reckless.
When still she doesn’t speak, I let my head thunk back against the wall. One hand releases her and I rub the back of my neck. I’m not good at these things. I never have been, but right now I’m what she’s got and I want to apologize for my inadequacy.
A grimace twists my mouth and I blow out a breath. Talk, idiot, I command myself. Say something . If the silence is suffocating for me, I can only imagine how it is for her.
“When I was seven, my dad went on a business trip,” I begin. Her head tips up, the glide along my pec alerting me to her interest, but I don’t look at her. If I’m going to tell this story, then I can’t.
“I didn’t realize what my dad did then,” I continue.
“I just knew he had a lot of friends who came over—sometimes during the day, but more often than not, they came at night. This business trip, though, was different. He didn’t leave town often and even when he did, it was rare for him to be gone more than a few nights. ”
Those few nights where it was just my mom and I were the best. She wouldn’t even notice the changes I saw in her. I’d come home from school on a Friday afternoon and if she was singing along to one of her favorite Selena songs in the kitchen, I knew Dad would be gone for the weekend.
“This time, Dad was gone for weeks. At the start, my mom was happy to spend time with me without him in the house. She would dance around the kitchen as she cooked breakfast or taught me how to make empanadas.”
A smile comes to my lips at the memory. Her unlined features grinning as the smell of hot oil and cooking meat lingers in my head. When was the last time she was that excited to cook something Abuela taught her to make. I’d been young too when Abuela passed. I can’t remember her anymore.
“Dad hated it when she cooked that ‘garbage’, as he called it,” I say, my smile fading. Why he married her when he was such a fucking ass about her heritage, I’ll never understand. “So when he was gone, she would make a ton and we would eat it all before he came back.”
Juliet’s hand touches my chest and I suck in a breath.
Still not looking down, I keep going. The words spill from me as if I’ve lanced a wound so deep that I didn’t even realize it’d been infected.
All of the gross fluid that kept it there, locked me in a cycle of pain and sickness, floods out, releasing me from its clutches.
“By the third day, Mom started to get worried. She knew he didn’t like her to call when he was away on business, but she risked his anger. He didn’t answer.” My jaw hardens.
“I thought it was great. If Dad was gone then he wouldn’t hurt her anymore.
But every night that he didn’t come home after those first few days, she would call and he would never pick up.
She cried herself to sleep. By the end of the first week, she didn’t want to cook anymore.
I’d leave for school in the morning and come home to find her still in bed.
No more Selena. No more empanadas. Just… silence.”
My chest stings and I reach up, rubbing against a spot that’s slightly off center, bumping into Juliet. When I leave my hand there, she quietly slips her fingers against mine. I flip over and squeeze the digits, warming them. Touching her makes the words come easier.
“He eventually came back. He didn’t explain where he’d been or why he’d been gone for so long.
Mom eventually went back to normal too, but after that whenever he announced he was going on another trip, she’d get depressed.
She’d call him every night he was away even if she knew he’d get mad. That’s when I realized the truth.”
Finally, I turn my gaze down to meet Juliet’s. “She was never going to leave him,” I say, my voice dropping. “No matter how many times he left and came back. No matter how many times he yelled at her, belittled her, hit her—she loved him, and she would die loving him.”
Moments pass in silence. Juliet’s head leans against my chest, her hand tangled with mine. I bite down on my lower lip, a fresh surge of old anger rising to the surface. My muscles tense.
“I love her,” I say. “I do, but… sometimes, I fucking hate her too.” Those words burn in my throat.
They feel so fucking wrong. I wasn’t raised to hate her.
She sacrificed for me. Sleep. Food. Comfort.
She gave me as much as she could. The only thing she couldn’t do was the one thing I ever wanted to beg for.
She wouldn’t leave him and it feels like a betrayal to resent her for that.
Outside of the building, the sounds of buses pulling away fade into the background.
The two of us are quiet for a long stretch, nothing but the near-absent sound of our breaths and beating hearts taking up space.
My phone buzzes a second time and I close my eyes, knowing we’re about to be interrupted.
I close both of my arms around her once more, wishing I could keep her to myself for a little longer. Lex and Nolan get her all the time. I want my own space for just the two of us. Juliet sucks in a breath and blows it out across my collarbone as she sighs.
“I was called to the principal’s office,” she admits. “I texted you guys, but…”
When had she sent the message? I could pull out my phone and check now, but I’d rather hear it from her lips. “What did Principal Long say?”
“Morpheus is trying to gain guardianship of me.”
The words punch through my chest and bite into my heart, nearly ripping it from my rib cage. Anger swells, expands, releases toxins into my bloodstream that make me tense all over as if the asshole is about to burst through the storage room door right then and there. I tighten my hold on her.
“Ms. Beck apparently wrote a report after I walked out on our last session and I haven’t gone back.” Juliet’s voice is even, as if she’s distanced herself from what she’s saying just so she can get it out. “Her fiancé killed himself because of my dad.”
“Hey.” I stop her right there, pulling away and gripping her by the shoulders.
“We’re pretty sure your dad didn’t embezzle that money,” I remind her.
“So no, whatever her fiancé did or didn’t do, it had nothing to do with your dad.
Even if he is guilty, though, you are not him. You are not your fucking parents.”
She doesn’t look at me. Her face is pale, her cheeks dotted with the lightest dusting of freckles that normally wouldn’t even be visible, but I’m so close that I can pick out each and every one of them. I want to kiss them. Instead, I shake her lightly until she’s forced to return my gaze.
Sharp blue eyes like crystal skies land on mine. “Do you understand?” It takes a bit for her to nod her ascent, and only then do I relax and drag her back into my chest and let her continue her story.
“I thought because I’m eighteen he couldn’t force me to be with him,” she says, her voice quieter than ever. “But apparently, if a court deems me mentally or physically unfit to take care of myself, they can award him guardianship. He was here.”
I’ve never had the self-control that both Lex and Nolan exude.
I’m the reckless one. The dipshit that fucks up because it’s hilarious or because I can.
It takes all of my nonexistent discipline not to jump to my feet and stalk after the motherfucker that sent kidnappers to steal Juliet away then changed his fucking mind and told them to get rid of her.
If he gets his hands on her the way he’s trying to, she’ll disappear, and we can’t— we won’t —let that happen.
“We’ll kill him.”
I don’t even realize I’ve spoken the words aloud until Juliet pushes against my chest and sits back, gaping at me. Once I become aware of them, though, I don’t take them back. I mean it.
“I’m serious,” I inform her. “You will never be forced to do anything you don’t want to. He won’t fucking take you from us again.”
She blinks and finally, twin spots of color dot her cheeks. The paleness recedes and she shoves a hand through her hair, fingers tangling in the locks.
“You’re an idiot.” There’s no heat in the insult and it makes me grin.
“Maybe,” I agree. “But I’ve already killed for you once, so you know I’ll do it again.”
Her gaze finds mine and the tension bleeds out of her shoulders. The sight is a goddamn blessing. I don’t even care that I’m going to be late to practice. Coach is going to either strangle me or kill me with suicides and I’ll run those drills with a smile on my face. All because of her.
With the fading light at her back casting her in an outline of white and yellow, she appears ethereal. A fallen angel dipped in darkness. She’s running with demons now and her secrets are ours. Her war is ours. She is ours.