Chapter 34
“I’m going to punch that pendejo in his too-perfect nose,” Mateo says as he stares at Stone’s social media page. He shifts in his place in the chair in front of my desk. “Did you know he was doing this?”
Lowering my phone, I’m not sure what to say to that. Not only did Stone post that video of him and Easton talking about HTL and some weird toothbrushing thing I’ve never seen, but he’s added fourteen pictures of Easton kissing people from the show. And now that it’s dark out, he’s posted one of me and Easton, kissing on the beach. It looks like it was just taken, like it just happened, but Mateo knows it didn’t, because we are literally sitting here together.
How did he get that photo? Why would he post it? Why would Easton let him post it?
I have no idea what to make of this. And I have no information to use to defend Easton. If I told Mateo the truth—that Easton kissed me and let Stone post a picture of it—and that, not only did I know nothing about the bet, but that I would never have agreed to be photographed like that… Yeah, that would be bad. “Everyone is doing it.”
Not a lie.
He gapes at me. “So, you knew? Because…” He holds up his phone and the shadowed picture of me and Easton. “This doesn’t look like everyone else’s.”
Verdad. “What about that one with Parker? That was full lip on lips.”
My stomach dips at my pronouncement, but Easton didn’t look like he was enjoying it. He actually looked shocked. Still, it made jealousy, surely some ancestral throwback, rise up like a screaming monkey. All I wanted to do when I first saw it was pull Parker’s hair out from the roots. Thankfully, it was a passing mania.
Mateo shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” He scoots forward in his seat, leans across the desk, and holds his phone so I can clearly see the screen and the photo of me and Easton kissing. “In all of the other photos, Easton is the one being kissed. In this photo, it looks as if he is kissing you. He obviously had this bet with Stone, so I’m asking you if you knew about it? If this kiss was part of it?”
I can’t lie to my brother. And that’s not a moral thing; that’s a physical thing. It’s like there’s some weird twin connection between us. Whenever I try to lie to him, he can see straight through me. How am I going to explain this? There’s a knock on my office door. I jump at the opportunity for a reprieve. “Entrada.”
Easton walks into the room. Mierda.
Mateo’s still staring at his phone, but the silence of the moment stretches out, and he looks up. He stands. “The pendejo of the hour.” He moves from his seat and stalks over to Easton. “What are you doing here, cabron?”
“I’m here to talk with Yolanda.”
“You’ll talk to her over my dead body.”
Easton squares his shoulders. “I’ve had a really shit day, Mateo, so if that’s what it’ll fucking take…”
Ay. No. I whisk around my desk put myself between them. With my back to Mateo, I stare up at Easton. “Please take a seat, Easton. I’ll be with you in one moment.”
His eyebrows rise at the formal dismissal, and that dangerous look in his eyes says he has no intention of complying.
I grind my teeth and say bitterly, “Or if you’d like to get back to your kissing booth bet, feel free to leave.”
With a flex in his jaw, he nods and moves like an iceberg toward my desk.
Spinning, I grab Mateo’s forearm and whisper, “Let me handle this, and I promise I will tell you everything when I’m done.”
“You want me to leave you here with him?” A muscle flutters at the corner of his right eye, telling me exactly what he thinks of that idea.
“Sí. I am a grown and capable woman. Now get out of my office.”
“Carajo,” Mateo grits through his teeth. “I’m waiting right outside that door.”
He says this last loud enough that Easton can hear him. Ay, Díos. How did my life turn into a telenovela?
As soon as Mateo shuts the door behind him, I race over and lock it. I doubt he’d enter without permission, but his overprotective brother routine isn’t something I’m taking a chance on.
Plus, it gives me a minute to compose myself. I stride across my office, cognizant that this is the first time Easton has ever been here. I notice him taking in the cream bookcases with physiology textbooks, anatomical models of muscles, heart, and human skeletons on the shelves, along with family photos, my long terracotta couch bookended by mosaic floor lamps, and the meditation cushion nestling a singing bowl.
“We have the same office,” he says quietly.
My eyebrows go up as I round the other side of my desk. Is he saying he has a terracotta couch?
“?Que?” I cock my head in question, before sitting, and placing my hands on my desk blotter.
He waves around. “My office is the exact same tidy combination of function and interests. I’m guessing this is the place you do the least amount of work.”
I’ve never really thought about that before. “You’re right. I usually work on the go, creating routines in my head, dipping into email here and there, solving problems while interacting with staff and guests. My office is where I go when I’ve exhausted what I can do outside my office.”
We fall into silence. It’s obvious neither of us wants to broach the subject that most needs talking about.
“Mira—”
“Yolanda—”
He opens his palm in my direction, an invitation for me to speak first, but the set of his jaw says that he has a lot to say.
I lick my lips. “Where did that photo of us kissing come from?”
“Funny,” he says. “That’s why I’m here. To ask you about that photo.” He holds out his phone and scrolls through images of us on the beach and a text that reads: Pay up. Or prepare to pay a higher price.
I have to read it twice and absorb the time stamp before I recognize what’s been happening today with the other photos and why it’s been happening. “Someone tried to blackmail you?”
He nods, a blue vein becomes visible in his temple. He stares at me, assessing, it seems, my reaction.
“Stone devised that HTL thing so he could counteract the blackmail by releasing the most graphic of the photos taken of us by posting it alongside the others?’
“Yeah,” he says. “You’ve caught on pretty quickly.”
He sounds so angry. Angry at… me?
“Wait. You think I sent this text?”
He shoots to his feet, leans across the desk. “Did you?”
I suck in air. The hurt is stinging and instant. “How could you even think that?”
He lets out a frustrated breath. “That’s not an answer, Yolanda. I mean, you’ve signed up for this contest for a reason. You’ve admitted to needing the money. You asked me to walk on the beach, instructed me where to sit, offered me your lips to kiss.” He slaps his hands against his thighs. “Who else would know we’d be out there? Who else would know where we were going to sit? If I were to say, pay you money, would this blackmail go away?”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry in my entire life. I am literally fighting to breathe right now. “You pendejo!” I shout, jumping to my feet.
“What’s going on in there?” Mateo bangs on the door.
“Go away!” Easton and I yell together.
Mateo bangs on the door again, but I can tell by the swish of clothes that he’s moving off.
Easton and I stare at each other. I can see the anger, confusion, and hope in his eyes. It’s the last that pisses me off the most.
“Yolanda?” he says when I don’t say anything else. “Breathe.”
Realizing, I’m holding my breath, I let out a gust of air. “Easton.” My voice is a whisper. “I’m trying very hard to see this from your view. I know you were hurt.” A lump rises into my throat. I can’t do it. “But that’s not me. Would never be me. I’m sorry about Cecily, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat me like this. I need you to leave. Now.”
“You’re good,” he says. “If I hadn’t seen it before, in someone much better at playing this game than you, I might believe you’re actually hurt.”
There’s an ache running through my heart that feels a lot like tragedy. “I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ve only given. Myself. My heart. My resort when you needed it. The truth is, I don’t need the famous Easton Blake to win FTW; I can do it myself.”
He flinches.
“I’m sorry that she hurt you. I’m sorry that your faith in your own judgment is as flimsy as the wings of a butterfly, but there’s no need for doubts about me to keep you up at night. We are done. Now, get out.”
I am breathing heavily. He is breathing heavily.
His eyes crease at the edges in a struggle between doubt and hope that I can feel in my bones. One I so want to make right, fix, but I can’t. I know he’s been hurt, but, right now, so am I.
If he can’t see me for me, really see me, then there’s no point in me telling him otherwise. He has to know I’m not that type of person. He has to have faith in me—faith greater than his fear.
“Fuck.” He pushes off the desk and charges around it. He grabs me by my upper arms, holding on to me as if a life raft. “Tell me it’s not true, Yolanda. Tell me and make me believe it.”
“You tell me,” I say, glaring up at him as a train of emotions charge through my body. “Because, eso…” I point between us. “Isn’t about me. It’s about you trusting you. It’s about you forgiving yourself for Cecily. It’s about you accepting the possibility of happiness. Or clinging to your pain, punishing yourself, like you did twelve years ago, when you left and never called. What’s your choice, Easton? What do you believe about me?”
His glistening blue eyes fixate on me. His grip tightens. “It’s not true.” His voice breaks on the last word, and he clears his throat, before growling, “It’s not fucking true. I know you, Yolanda.”
His gaze darkens, then darts to my lips. He kisses me, deep and possessive.
And I kiss him back, rocked by a feeling of wonder and surrender. I’m done trying to resist him.