Chapter 10 - Marisol
He’s making his terrible military coffee when the memory hits me. His voice, rough with want: “I wanted to pin you against the refrigerator and find out what sounds you make when you come.”
I freeze in the doorway of the kitchen, one hand gripping the frame for support.
The words echo in my head, sending heat pooling low in my belly despite the tequila still poisoning my system.
My mouth tastes like death. My head pounds with each heartbeat.
But my traitorous body doesn't care about the hangover.
It only cares that this man, this impossible man, confessed to wanting me while I was drunk enough to grab his cock.
Oh God. I grabbed his dick.
The full memory crashes through me: my hand closing around him through fabric, feeling him hard, actually hard, for me. "You DO want me," I'd said, like some drunk detective solving the world's most mortifying case.
Nico looks up from pouring coffee, and his face gives away nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like last night didn't happen. Like he didn't carry me over his shoulder. Like I didn't molest him on a boat.
I don't know what to say. "So about groping you" seems too direct. "Good morning" pretends too much. I go with cowardly silence, moving toward the coffee maker like it requires all my concentration.
"There's aspirin on the counter."
I look. Two pills, a glass of water. Set out for me like he knew exactly when I'd emerge from my shame cave.
"And toast. You need to eat."
There's toast too. Slightly burned, because apparently that's how tactical bananas cook everything.
I'm just wearing panties under this oversized sweater, the scratchy fabric a constant reminder of my poor life choices.
At least I managed to shower. The glitter that swirled down the drain looked like liquified magic.
I take the aspirin. Eat the toast. The silence between us could suffocate a whale.
"Last night," I begin. He sets down his phone, giving me his full attention. My stomach flips. "What… how much of it actually happened?"
"How much do you remember?"
Fragments assault me: the yacht, dancing, some guy's hand on my waist. Then Nico appearing like an avenging angel in human form. Being thrown over his shoulder like a bag of groceries. A boat. Wind. Yelling. My hand on him. That confession about the refrigerator.
"Fragments. You showed up at the yacht. There was a boat. We… talked."
"Is that what you'd call it?"
"I don't know what I'd call it, that's why I'm asking."
He looks at me fully, and something in his eyes makes my stomach flip again. Not nausea this time. Something worse. Something that has to do with the way he's studying me.
"You were drunk. You grabbed me."
Heat floods my cheeks. "I remember that part."
"You asked if I wanted you."
"I remember that too."
"I told you I did."
My breath catches. So that part was real. The refrigerator confession. The way his voice went rough when he said it. All of it real.
"And then?"
"And then I said not like that. Not when you were drunk."
Of course he did. Even with me grabbing his cock, even confessing he wanted to find out what sounds I make, he still said no. The rejection stings fresh, even though I understand it. Even though it's the right thing.
"And then?"
I watch something shift in his expression. It's subtle. His eyes flicking slightly left, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. He's about to lie to me.
"You fell asleep."
Liar. There's more. Something hovers at the edge of memory like smoke I can't quite grasp. But I can't push without admitting I suspect there's more. Can't ask "did I confess feelings?" without basically confessing them now.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
It's not okay. We both know it's not okay. But I eat my terrible toast while he cleans his Glock, and we marinate in unbearable tension.
The next hour is agony. We orbit each other like binary stars, pretending to do normal things while hyperaware of every movement. The apartment feels too small, the air too thick. My body is a battlefield. Hangover warring with arousal, nausea competing with want.
He reaches past me for a glass, his chest barely brushing my shoulder.
We both freeze. The contact lasts maybe half a second, but my whole body lights up like I've been electrocuted.
I can smell him. Gun oil and cinnamon and that underlying warmth that's just him.
He steps back quickly, too quickly, and I know he felt it too.
I escape to the couch, curling into the corner while pretending to scroll my phone. But I'm watching him in my peripheral vision. The way his hands move as he reassembles his weapon. Precise. Capable. The same hands that could pin me against that refrigerator he mentioned.
Jesus. I need to stop thinking about the refrigerator.
God, I was sober for what, three days? Four? The longest stretch in months. And then last night I threw it all away.
"You tracked my phone," I say, needing to fill the silence with something other than my shame spiral. "On the boat, you said you'd been tracking me since day one."
He doesn't look up from his gun. "Yes."
"I'm still processing that. The violation of privacy. The creepiness. The fact that you watched me destroy three days of sobriety to go to that yacht."
Now he does look up. "Four days."
"What?"
"You were sober four days. Since the night I arrived."
He was counting. Of course he was counting. Just like he counts pull-ups and drinks and every other measurement of control or its absence.
"Well. Four days down the drain then."
"You'll start again."
"Will I? Because right now I feel like what's the point? My father's dying, I'm a disappointment, and I can't even…"
His phone rings.
He glances at the screen, frowns. "Unknown number." He answers anyway, listens for a moment, then holds it out to me. "It's for you."
I take the phone, confused. "Hello?"
"Marisol." Cesar's voice floods through, warm but strained. "Finally. I've been calling your phone all morning."
"Tío? How did you…" I trail off, realizing I don't even know how to ask how he got this number. "Sorry, my phone is dead. Is everything okay?"
"Your father gave me the Rosetti's contact when he arranged protection for you. Smart man, keeping tabs." He pauses, and I hear him take a breath. "It's Jorge, mija. He's asking for you. The doctors… They're not optimistic."
The warmth drains from my body, replaced by ice water. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that you should come today. Now, if you can."
My hand tightens on the phone. "I… yes. Of course. I'll be there."
"Good girl. I'll tell him you're coming. He'll be glad."
Good girl. The phrase sits wrong somehow, condescending in a way I can't quite identify. But my father is dying, and I don't have time to analyze why Cesar's pet names suddenly feel different. Maybe because I'd rather hear them from Nico.
I hand the phone back to Nico. My hands are shaking. Not from the hangover this time.
"I have to go. My father…"
"I heard. I'll drive you."
"You don't have to…"
"I'm not letting you go alone."
The certainty in his voice breaks something in me. Not letting me go alone. Like it's already decided. Like my well-being is his responsibility even when I'm just visiting my dying father.
"Nico…"
"Get dressed. We leave in ten minutes."
It's an order, not a request. Right now, with my world tilting sideways, I'm grateful for someone who knows how to take charge.
He reassembles his gun efficiently, checks the magazine, slides it into the holster at his hip. Even visiting my dying father requires being armed. The thought should disturb me. Instead, it makes me feel safer.
I change quickly, peeling off the massive sweater that's been scratching me like penance. It pools on the floor. I pull on something appropriate for visiting a dying father. A simple dark dress that hopefully says "dutiful daughter" instead of "hungover disappointment."
The woman in the mirror looks hollow. Dark circles under honey eyes. Skin too pale. Last night she was dancing on a yacht, grabbing her bodyguard's cock, trying to forget everything. Now she's about to watch her father die.
I think about my mother's death, how I was too young to disappoint her properly.
At least she died thinking I might become something.
My father gets the full show. Twenty-six years of spectacular failure.
Eight years of self-destruction. Tabloid headlines and public embarrassments and a daughter who can't even stay sober long enough to visit him.
When I emerge, Nico's waiting by the door. He's added a jacket that conceals his weapon, but I know it's there. The knowledge comforts me when it shouldn't.
We take my car. Carlo has the morning off, so Nico drives while I sit in the passenger seat watching Miami stream past, trying not to think about how my father will look at me.
How he always looks at me. Like evidence of his failures as a parent.
Like the disaster that survived while the good one fled to God.
"Tell me about him. Your father."
I'm surprised he asked. "Jorge Delgado. Built an empire from nothing. Hospitality, real estate, other things no one talks about. He's smart. Hard. Disappointed in his disaster of a daughter."
"Why disappointed?"
"Because I'm not the good one. I'm not Gabriel. I'm not a priest or a saint or whatever perfect thing my brother became." The words taste bitter. "I'm the mess. The party girl who makes headlines for all the wrong reasons."
"That's not all you are."
"It's all he sees."
Silence stretches between us. Not uncomfortable this time. Just… weighted. Then: "When someone's dying, every minute matters. Even the messy ones."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Yes."
The single word carries weight, stories he won't tell, ghosts he won't name. I think about him in Afghanistan, the things that make him do pull-ups until his hands bleed. The people he couldn't save. The ones he could.