Chapter 12
Diablo
“If you do want to talk about it, I’ll listen, I’m here, if you want to,” Elizabeth says, and I know she means it.
She would sit here and listen to me talk about what an asshole Frank is, and she wouldn’t judge me, or think less of me. But I don’t want to burden her with that, she doesn’t need to be tainted with my fucked-up family history.
“Not today, another time maybe. Tell me about your folks, what are they like?” I ask.
Her face drops, her expression becoming anxious and worried.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I wasn’t sure if Donovan had told you or not, I’m guessing not…” she says, “my parents passed away, a few years ago.”
“Shit, Elizabeth, I’m sorry. I had no idea, I wouldn’t have said anything—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. How would you have known?”
“Donovan never mentioned it,” I say.
Why didn’t he say anything? I’d always assumed her parents were alive, and rich, and that she had this perfect family. I cringe when I think of the things I said to her that night in the supply closet, about her living in a perfect little world, with her perfect little life… fuck.
“It wasn’t a secret,” she says, “but, he had no reason to tell you. It’s not like it’s something you needed to know.”
“No, I guess not. I wish I’d known though, I’d have never said any of that stuff to you. I’ve been so wrong about you all this time.”
“I guess it makes more sense now,” she says, “why I live in Midtown Apartments and not Radbury Heights, or ‘the rich side of town’ as you call it.”
“Actually no, not really. You don’t have to talk about it, but, Midtown Apartments, shit, that’s a rough area, even for me.”
“Hmm… I want to tell you; Donovan knows all about it, but I don’t want to ruin our day.”
Even though we’re talking about difficult stuff, I can’t help but focus on the fact that she doesn’t want to ruin our day, which in fact means that she’s enjoying spending time with me like this, and that thought makes something flutter in my chest.
“Alright,” I say, “how about this. I tell you mine if you tell me yours. What’s said on the pier, stays on the pier, and when we get back on the bike, it’s done.”
Her smile softens as she looks at me.
“Shit,” I say, “that was too corny wasn’t it.”
“Not at all,” she says, leaning in to kiss me. “I like getting to know you like this.”
“Me too. Alright, who’s gonna go first?”
“You go, if that’s okay?” she asks.
“Sure,” I take a breath; I’ve never really talked about this before. “Frank is a piece of shit, always has been, always will be.” I look at her and she nods, letting me know it’s okay to continue. “He used to beat my mom, for as long as I can remember, probably started before I was even born.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, taking my hand.
“Yeah, it was rough. That’s why I liked coming here with him, it meant I knew my mom was okay as he was out of the house, and I’d get to spend time with him while he was actually being a father, you know?
” I glance at her again, and she nods, reassuring me.
“He stopped bringing me here when I was twelve, because… well, that’s when I first stood up to him. ”
“When you were twelve?” she says, “You were just a kid.”
“Yeah, but by then I’d seen how other families were, and I knew what he was doing was wrong.
Shit, I just didn’t want him hurting my mom anymore.
One night, I could tell he was getting ready to hurt her…
I don’t know how I knew, I just knew… so I went and stood in front of her, and I stared at him, straight in his eyes.
“I didn’t need to say anything, he knew… And from that day on, he took it all out on me and left her alone. Shit, can you imagine my scrawny twelve-year-old ass standing up to a grown man like that, just staring him down.”
Elizabeth’s hand gently touches my face as she turns me towards her, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I’m so sorry you had to do that, Angel…”
She gently kisses my cheek.
“I’m sorry that your father did that to you and Sofía…”
She kisses my other cheek before resting her forehead against mine.
“Too much was put on you as a child, and you shouldn’t have had to deal with that.”
She kisses me on the lips and I feel my own eyes water for a moment, before blinking and shaking my head.
“Yeah, well, like I said, Frank’s an asshole. ”
“He’s a piece of shit, and it sounds like he always will be,” she says, echoing my earlier words. “I’m glad he’s out of your lives.”
I nod. I can’t bring myself to tell her that he’s not, and that I’m stuck with him.
“So that’s my shitty story,” I say, “your turn.”
She clears her throat.
“Okay. So, you weren’t wrong when you accused me of having a perfect little life, I did.
” She nudges me and smiles. “I was lucky, until I wasn’t.
You were right, I grew up in Radbury Heights and we were well off, we had everything we wanted and more.
I’d been accepted into college, my parents were still happily married, everything was, well, perfect.
“Then my parents were in a car accident. I remember being pulled out of class at high school and being told about the accident by one of the teachers. I have no idea how I got to the hospital, but I must have because the next thing I remember, I’m standing in a room, and they’re both in beds in front of me, hooked up to life support.
It was all such a blur, I don’t actually remember the time passing, and I don’t recall what any of the doctors said to me. ”
She pauses and takes a deep breath. I bring her hand to my lips and give it a soft kiss, holding it to me for a moment.
“We were waiting to see if they’d be able to come out of the medically induced comas they were in, which in the end they weren’t, and as I didn’t have any grandparents, or aunts and uncles, it was up to me to make the decision to end their life support.”
“Fuck. I’m so sorry.” I rub my hand down my face. “How long were they on life support?”
The thought of her going through all that without any family makes my heart hurt .
“Eight days, fifteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes.” She gives a sad chuckle, tears threatening to roll down her cheeks. “And the reason I know that so precisely, is because it’s all listed, in great detail, on the medical bills… that I’m currently trying to pay off.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she sighs, “when I phoned the company my dad worked for to ask them for his insurance details for the hospital, I found out that he’d been let go six months earlier.”
“And you had no idea?”
“None,” she says, “he’d been unemployed for six months without me even knowing; and we’d stayed in our house, kept the cars, kept living and spending as we always had, and I had no idea.
They’d racked up so much debt, when it came to settling the estate, I had to sell everything to pay it off—the house, the cars, any savings they had.
I was left with nothing, and even then, I only just managed to pay everything off. ”
“Fuck.”
“And of course, his previous employer had canceled his health insurance when he was let go, and my dad never arranged a new policy. So the day after I had to make the decision to end their life support, I got sent a medical bill for just over two-hundred-thousand dollars.”
“Shit, how much?” I instantly regret blurting it out like that, but I’m just so shocked.
“Yeah… turns out it costs about ten thousand dollars a day to keep someone on life support. That combined with the emergency care straight after the accident, what can I say, it adds up. I mean, I could have chosen not to pay it, declared bankruptcy, but you know, who wants to be declared bankrupt at eighteen. Besides, it would have made life on my own even harder. ”
“So that’s why you live at Midtown Apartments,” I say, “and work a graveyard diner shift; at the same time as going to college.”
She nods. “I know going to college is a luxury, and that it would’ve been smarter to find a full-time job and focus on that; but I felt like so much had been taken from me, I wanted to keep hold of at least one thing. I don’t know, that probably doesn’t make any sense.” She looks down at her lap.
“It makes perfect sense,” I say, pulling her in for a hug.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“For what?”
“For listening, for sharing, it means a lot.”
I lean down to kiss her, it’s not passionate or intense, but it feels more intimate somehow, maybe because we’ve shared things with each other that not many people know, or maybe it’s because we’ve decided that it’s just going to be us.
Something has switched inside us both, we know that this is more than just sex.
“Come on, let’s go home,” I murmur against her hair, inhaling her vanilla scent and knowing that no matter what, I never want her to go through anything alone again.
Elizabeth
My front door is still locked, which is always a good feeling; I’ve come home so often to find it busted open and my stuff thrown everywhere, then abandoned when no valuables were found. I close the door behind Angel before locking it and applying the chain.
“I’m staying long enough to need the chain on?” he asks.
“If it didn’t cause me more issues to have one, you’d be staying long enough to lock the deadlock. ”
He chuckles. “You planning on keeping me locked in your tower, princess?”
I look around my apartment. “Hmm… more like dungeon than tower, but, yeah, I’m keeping you here till tomorrow morning. And you can only escape then because I have class.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll willingly stay here as long as you’ll have me.”
Nerves flutter through my stomach. The sex we’d had at Miguel’s house had been different, but after sharing what we did on the pier, it feels like it’s going to be different again, it’s exciting, but new… scary.
“Do you want something to drink?” I ask, trying to distract myself.
He looks at me and licks his lips in a way that makes my knees weak.
“Nah, I’m not thirsty,” he says, his voice husky and so fucking sexy.
“Anything to eat?”
“I’m not hungry either… for food anyway.”