Epilogue #2
She reaches over and takes my hand. "I don’t know what you did to make him open that door. But I’m his mother, and I’m going to thank you for the rest of my life."
I can't answer. My eyes are wet, my throat is closed, and I just hold her hand and let her hold mine.
After a long moment, she pats my hand and lets go. "Now," she says, standing up. "I have pandebono. Come."
I follow her back inside.
We say goodbye to Carmen around ten.
She kisses Doom on both cheeks, then me on both cheeks.
She hands me a small foil package of pandebono for the road.
She tells Doom in Spanish to drive his bike like a man with something to protect, and he just nods.
The hotel is a few miles from her house.
Doom booked it weeks ago.
He won't sleep at his mother's—she'd offer the guest room and he'd take it, but he isn't going to bring his girlfriend into the bed his sister used to sleep in.
The room at the hotel is plain.
King bed, beige walls, a window that looks out at a parking lot. I don't care about any of it.
The second the door closes, I'm against him.
He laughs—actually laughs, a low sound in his chest—and his hands find my waist and lift me.
I wrap my legs around him, and he carries me to the bed without breaking the kiss.
"Eager much?" he murmurs against my mouth.
I bite his bottom lip. "Your mother just told me you've never brought a woman home before."
He sets me on the edge of the bed and steps back enough to hold my eyes. "I haven't."
I pull him toward me by his belt loops. "Then I think I deserve some celebrating."
He sets his hands on my thighs and slides them up under the hem of my t-shirt.. "You deserve a lot of things." His voice has gone rough. "Tell me what you want."
I help him as he drags my t-shirt over my head and his eyes go dark. "I want you to remember the first time."
"The clubhouse," I tell him. I unhook my bra and let it fall. "Your room. You barely said a word. You just looked at me like you wanted to eat me alive."
"You told me what you wanted." He bends until his mouth is at my ear. "I'd never had a woman tell me what she wanted."
"I want it now too." I lie back on the bed and reach for his belt and pull him down by it. "I want you to fuck me like you've got something to prove, Emiliano. And then I want you to do it again, slowly, because we have all night long."
His mouth crashes into mine.
He's vocal now in a way he wasn't that first time.
He tells me how he wants me, what he's going to do to me when he's got me where he wants me.
I'm still vocal because that hasn't changed and it never will.
The contrast that used to be silence-against-voice is now words-against-words, and I love every shift of it.
He fucks me hard the first time.
My back against the mattress, his hands gripping my hips, my legs around his waist.
The headboard knocks against the wall while he tells me in Spanish exactly what he's been wanting to do to me for the whole trip.
I come apart underneath him. He follows a minute later, biting my shoulder, groaning my name.
Then he keeps his word.
The second time is slow.
So slow I cry a little, halfway through, because of how he looks at me.
He goes still and brushes the tears off my cheeks with his thumb.
He doesn't ask.
He just kisses my forehead and keeps moving, and I keep crying because he's smiling at me, my Emiliano, the man who never used to smile.
He's smiling.
“Te amo,” he tells me, over and over. “Te amo, mi vida.”
“Te amo I tell him back with my whole chest.
When I come again it isn't loud.
It's quiet, almost soft, his forehead against mine, his hand laced with mine pressed into the mattress above my head.
He follows me a few seconds later and goes still inside me, lets his weight settle onto me—not enough to crush, just enough that I feel him everywhere.
He says nothing for a long time. Then he kisses me once, slowly, and pulls back, and I see his face.
He's still smiling.
* * *
His phone buzzes against the nightstand in the morning.
We're tangled together, my head on his chest, the sun coming through the blinds and striping the bed. He reaches for the phone without unwrapping his arm from my back.
He goes still.
I lift my head. "Who?"
He turns the screen toward me.
It's a photo. A young woman in a coffee shop somewhere with a window full of fall leaves behind her, holding a coffee mug that says something in French I can't read from this angle.
She has Doom's dark eyes and the small curl of his mouth when he's not quite smiling.
The text under the photo reads:
Working at the new café today. They have lavender lattes. You'd hate them.
Doom's thumb hovers over the screen.
He types back:
Sounds horrible. Send me one.
Three dots appear. They turn into:
Done. Pretentious as fuck. Love you.
He stares at the screen for a long second. Then he types:
Love you too, kid.
He sets the phone face down on the nightstand and pulls me back into him without saying a word.
I press my face against his chest and let him hold me.
We lie there for a long time and neither of us says anything, because there isn't anything to say.
We ride back to Chihuahua on Sunday.
The clubhouse is glowing when we pull through the gate.
String lights are still up from Doom's patching party—Oakleigh hasn't bothered to take them down because they look nice.
Music is coming from the courtyard.
Ruby's Sunday dinner is on the table.
The whole family is already gathered.
Lashes is on the couch in the main room with baby Hope asleep on her chest.
She lights up when she sees me.
I drop my bag and go straight to her.
I kiss the top of Hope's head, then the top of Lashes's head.
She squeezes my hand and tells me Hope slept four hours last night for the first time, and I tell her I'm so proud I could explode.
Doom comes up behind me and rests his hand on the small of my back.
He looks at Lashes and the baby with a softness on his face I'm not sure he knows is there.
It's a damn good night.
Brick laughs more than I've ever heard him while Mei helps Ruby in the kitchen. Imani is talking to Mateo in Spanish at the table, her hand on his arm.
Xiomara and Itzel are running between the courtyard and the main room, with Lyra trailing behind them.
Kelsey is sketching something in a notebook by the window.
Compass is showing Rex how to throw a punch out by the swing set.
Rooster is standing by the gate alone.
I notice it the second time I walk past the window.
He's standing in the dark out there, not on his phone, just looking out at the street.
I think about not going out. I think about minding my business.
Then I grab a beer from the kitchen and head outside.
I hand him one. He takes it.
"You okay?" I ask, leaning against the gate beside him.
He doesn't answer for a long moment. He's looking at something down the street. A car, maybe, or nothing. The dark.
"I think someone's coming for me, Nova."
I look at him.
His face is calm but his jaw is tight. His eyes don't leave the street.
"From where?" I ask quietly.
He takes a long pull from the beer. "From before."
I wait, but he doesn't say more. He keeps his eyes on the dark beyond the gate. I touch his shoulder once.
"Tell Amara, Rooster."
He nods. "I will."
I leave him there and go back inside.
Doom is waiting for me by the kitchen door, his hand on the frame, watching me come back from the gate.
He doesn't ask what Rooster said. He'll ask later, when we're alone, when it matters.
For now, he just opens his arm.
I walk into him. He wraps it around my shoulders and pulls me against his chest.
The bottom rocker presses against my cheek through his t-shirt.
The chain is cool against my temple.
In the kitchen, Ruby is laughing at something Zorro said.
In the main room, Hope is making small sleeping sounds from her place on Lashes' chest.
The gardenia by the gate is open and the night air smells like Sunday dinner and the desert and everything I almost didn't let myself have.
I close my eyes.
I chose this. I'll keep choosing it. Every Sunday, every storm, every door I have to walk through.
I chose him, and he chose me back.