Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
VALENTINA
Walking into the house, I beeline straight for the hot shower screaming my name. Dirt and sweat coat my skin, and there’s a thick paste of it beneath my fingernails. I’ve never been so dirty, and my back aches from the labor.
Yet, I can’t help the smile playing across my lips.
I’ve always been a hard worker—doing the things no one else is willing to do in order to get the job done—but I’ve never worked like this, and I’m secretly proud of myself.
Not that I’d ever admit it. Doing so would mean Mateo was right, and I can’t even fathom the thought.
“V?” McCrae sounds surprised from behind me, and I reluctantly turn around.
“Yeah?” I cross my arms.
“You’re—” He licks his lips, his sandy eyebrows scrunching together as he looks for the words. “I mean, what’d you—”
I roll my eyes. “I was helping Santos clean the stalls.”
“You were what?” he growls, his confusion evaporating.
For once, I feel irritation instead of triumph at his jealous demeanor. I didn’t even want him to know I was working with Santos—it wasn’t about him at all. For the first time, it was about me, about wanting to do something that made me feel good, strong, worthy.
But now, seeing McCrae’s face, I know he thinks I did it all to make him mad. It sucks the joy I was feeling only moments ago out right out of my body.
Does he really think everything I do revolves around wanting him?
“He needed help, and I helped him.”
“You’re fucking kidding? After what I told you this morning? After everything I’ve done for you—”
“It wasn’t about you. It wasn’t even about him.
” I feel the anger pouring through me now, like an open faucet with a broken handle—it’s started, and I’ve no way of stopping it.
It just pumps into me, filling me until I no longer know where my rage begins and I end—like that’s all I am and ever will be.
I feel betrayed, belittled.
And McCrae’s never once made me feel like this until now.
“He’s using you, Valentina.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I bite back. “What makes him worse than anyone else using me? Why can’t I at least choose who I do and don’t get used by? Don’t you use me, McCrae?”
His face falls, the red heat of his own anger dissipating almost instantly.
And it only makes me more furious.
“I’m useless. I’m weak. I’m breakable—” I take a step back, feeling like my anger’s moments away from exploding out of my chest.
I never know how to deal with it, how to make it go away when I’m like this. I’ve always been able to rely on McCrae to help ease it, but when it’s him that’s causing it—him who’s making me see red?
I’ve nothing and no one to pull me back from the depths of my own despair.
I’m sinking into a frozen lake, bricks tied around my ankles.
“V, you’re more—”
“Then treat me like it!” I scream and stomp away, slamming my bedroom door behind me.
“Valentina? Are you going to come out, or am I going to have to eat this pizza and drink these margaritas alone?” Faith’s voice filters through the closed door.
I roll my head to the side, the plush rug beneath my head filling my nostrils as I try to see beneath the wood.
I slowly return my gaze to the ceiling, blinking away the tears pebbling in the corners.
As I release the breath I’d been holding, the last tendril of smoke spirals toward the ceiling. I watch the small cloud float into the wooden slats above, fading until they're nonexistent, and I close my eyes, willing the last of my bitter anger and regret to go with it.
Another knock fills the room, this one louder and faster, but I continue to stare at the ceiling, hoping to find some kind of answer or absolution in the grooves and knots littering the boards.
To my surprise, Faith pushes open my door with a unintelligible grumble. I refuse to look at her, far too afraid what she might see on my face.
Instead of berating me for ignoring her, she just sighs and lays down beside me.
“Are the answers up there?”
I hate that she always seems to read my mind.
“Not that I’ve found,” I admit.
She huffs a small laugh. “Does the weed help?”
“Want to try?” I offer, fully expecting her to act appalled and leave me, just like everyone else does.
“Sure, why not?” I look incredulously at her, completely shocked by her nonchalance. “What? If something’s going to kill me, it’s not going to be your expensive ass weed.”
I snort at that. I can’t help it—it’s the effects of the marijuana settling over my skin, making everything a little less sharp, a little less painful.
She smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and then she extends her hand, motioning with her fingers in a come here movement.
I eye her hand. “I don’t want to be responsible for corrupting you. Everyone already hates me for ruining everything else. I don’t need to add you to that list.”
She smirks, her fingers wiggling again, and against my better judgement, I extend the nearly burnt out joint. “I promise, you couldn’t corrupt me if you wanted to.”
She takes a deep drag, one that speaks of experience, and I eye her with questions.
Faith just winks and takes a second inhale before extending it back to me, all while holding her breath.
Finally, she exhales, a grand plume filling the space around our faces, and she giggles.
It’s a girly sound, one that sounds like children on a playground, and the hairs all but jump off my arms.
“You’re fucking creepy sometimes.” I take the joint back.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Does it bother you? People saying it?”
“Why would it?” She giggles again, finding amusement in my question. I don’t understand it.
“It doesn’t feel bad, knowing people find you strange or different or creepy?” I can’t contain the insecure note that fills my voice.
“Words don’t hurt me, Valentina. I don’t give them the power to, not anymore.”
My eyes find the ceiling again, and I begin blinking rapidly as fresh tears build at the corners. “I wish I was more like that. Words always hurt me.”
“You have to choose differently, V. You hold all the power; you just have to reach out and take it.” Her finger taps against the side of my head.
I know I should pull away from her skin, but I find no threat in her touch, much less her words. There’s a power in them, one I want to bask in.
“I want to have the control,” I confess, not for the first time.
“And control, you will have. We’ll make sure of it.” She’s filled with conviction, and it brings me a small speck of peace.
After several moments, I face her. She’s staring at me, something both warm and sad in her expression. I want to ask her about it, but I still don’t know how—I don’t know the words one uses to be there for someone else, ones that can comfort them the way she’s comforted me.
So instead, I ask, “Did you need something when you came here?”
Her eyes turn to the ceiling, a giant smile raising her rosy cheeks. “Just a friend.”
We’re a hysterical heap of laughter when Santos later finds us. My cheeks ache and tears stream down my face, but for the first time in what feels like my entire adult life, it’s not from sadness or anger.
“I feel left out.” His voice draws my attention away from the penis shape we were just staring at in the knots and lines of the wooden ceiling boards.
My laughter instantly dies at the sight of him leaning in the doorway in a fresh grey t-shirt and light washed jeans, his skin slightly pink from hours spent in the sun, the veins bulging beneath.
With arms crossed over his chest, his pecs pressed tightly against the fabric, he’s a hard sight not to gawk at.
With the tiny amount of dignity I still have, I raise my gaze to his and wink. Power shoots through me as I’m met with a heated gaze that burns straight to my toes, and I secretly love how much I affect him.
“You are,” I say.
He nods, his smirk growing. And then he drops his arms and raises one above his head, leaning against the top of the doorframe—only a few inches above his head—and his muscles go from bulging to damn near bursting.
My panties instantly go wet.
Any person with eyes would be turned on by him like this, and by his full-watt grin, he knows it.
“Geesh. Leave some sex appeal for the rest of us.” Faith rolls over to her stomach, pushing up to a sitting position. Even though I’m enjoying the sight of Santos and this silent battle of wills we seem to keep finding ourselves in, I hate that he’s ruined this moment for me.
He shrugs, his arm falling to cross back across his chest. “Faith, what brings you by today?”
I don’t know why he asks the question, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. “Is it so strange I’d have friends, Santos?”
His smile doesn’t so much as falter. “Just seem like more of the loner type. You and McCrae—a couple of outlaws or something.”
Faith cuts into my line of sight right as something bitter and sharp forms on my tongue, and she extends her hand to me. “I like it. I’ll be an outlaw too,” she teases, but there’s no teasing in her voice, only sincerity that makes my anger dissipate as quickly as it formed.
I take her hand. “Too bad you’re a Saint and can’t join the bad side, Santos. It’s more fun.”
I walk past him, pulling Faith behind me. I don’t mean to, but as I pass him, I inhale, sucking in his fresh scent—the smell of horse and dirt still present—and I can’t help but wonder if that’s just part of him now.
I hate that I want to bottle it up and keep it.
“Oh yeah, I’m a Saint alright,” he jokes, following behind us.
“Go away,” I bite out, finding I want to have Faith’s attention all to myself.
“Let him stay,” Faith says, and I face her, already feeling hurt by her betrayal. “What? I enjoy seeing you squirm.”
“I do not squirm!” I hiss, rummaging through the freezer for the tequila.
“Yes, you do. Now pour me one of those—I need it,” McCrae grumbles from the bar, and I jump at his voice.
But I do as he says, pouring us all a glass, and allow myself to enjoy their company more than I know I should—just for tonight.