As December Farmer braced herself in a New Mexican town she didn’t know and on the front stoop at an address she’d gone to incredible lengths to get, she swore.
She’d been doing that for five minutes—raising her hand to depress the doorbell, only to mutter, “Rat bastard,” or similar pejoratives before dropping her hand.
Shame knocked her courage back again and again and she’d needed the better part of three months to muster up what little bit of fortitude she had. Desperation had finally prompted her to make the drive up from Tucson. Hand-me-downs and a sofa bed weren’t enough for her daughter anymore. She needed more things—more space, more clothes, more money.
December raised her hand to the doorbell once more and, on a sigh, dropped it.
“Why is this so damn hard?”
She already knew the answer. She was turning into the beggar she’d never wanted to be.
In the almost ten years since she and her sister, Alicia, had been forced out of their parents’ home, she’d never begged for anything from anyone. When she couldn’t get a job, she’d found things to sell, and Alicia had always done the same.
They’d gotten by, but getting by had been so much easier before December had a baby by a frequent customer at the bar where she still worked.
She’d waited five years for Tito to return to Tucson. She’d given him her number and hadn’t thought to get his in return, because she’d never had to with any other man. When he didn’t call, she’d passed messages through his friends, but still didn’t hear a peep from him.
The time for discretion had passed. Tito couldn’t possibly ignore her if she was standing right on his doorstep. She’d tracked him down like a dog that hadn’t been microchipped, and she planned to let him know he was a dog, too. She simply hadn’t decided yet if she’d do that before or after she introduced him to his daughter.
She glanced over her shoulder at her little coupe parked at the curb. Cruz was in the backseat with her head against the window. The child had waged an admirable battle to stay awake but had finally succumbed to the combination of heat, boredom, and Benadryl. Her sinuses didn’t like New Mexico any more than December liked why they had to be there.
“Keep sleepin’, baby. We’re going home soon.”
She took a deep breath, brought her fist up to the weatherworn green door, and told herself to knock hard—that banging on the wood would be cathartic.
“Shit.” She pounded her thigh instead, took a step back, and paced.
She’d never been the confrontational sort. Alicia, older by four years, had always been the more aggressive of the two of them. They’d both had to finish growing up quickly, but Alicia had kept December safe after their parents told them to leave—after their parents had chosen to believe the lies of an outsider over their children’s pleas. They’d given up their parenting responsibilities too readily, but December wasn’t going to let Tito shirk his any longer.
Cruz wasn’t going to suffer the way December had.
She picked her fist up again, straightened her spine, and took a deep breath.
“You’re gonna do right by her. I swear, you will.” She banged on the door hard before she could change her mind, and then she paced while she waited.
Be home. After all this, please be home.
She’d taken the day off to make the eight-hour drive to Maria. She needed to be back at the bar earning tips to buy Cruz school supplies for the rapidly-impending start of kindergarten, not wasting gas driving through the desert again. Already, she’d burned so much money and energy tracking him down. Calling the number she’d found for him online ended with unceasing ringing every single time. After twenty or so attempts, she’d decided that he may have been like her—having a home phone number because a cable plan provided one in a package, but no actual phone plugged in. Left with the decision to either call him at work or show up in person, she picked the latter. The Internet had told her he’d become a sheriff’s deputy. Her sister had told her not to call him at work because that was creepy.
“As if stalking him is better,” December muttered.
She’d followed their mutual friend Sean Foye home following his last trip to Tucson. That was how she learned about the small town of Maria. She’d returned a week later to ask around. Apparently, Tito was something of an institution in the small town. Big man, big personality. She hadn’t even needed to say his last name. They all knew him and where he lived.
They didn’t know him the way she did, though.
Once more, she knocked. “Come on out, you good-for-nothing hustler.” She didn’t care anymore if she was loud. If his neighbors heard, he would be the one ashamed, not her. She was sick of being ashamed.
She knocked harder, alternating between knuckles and the fleshy heel of her palm.
“A’ight!” came a familiar, though muffled, voice from inside. “I’m coming.”
Her body went stiff and cold, and her hand froze. Breathing was out of the question.
Tito.
She hadn’t heard that voice in so long, and the sound still did unmentionable things to her. From the time he’d called her over to the bar and ordered those greasy chili fries, he’d held her in thrall. She didn’t know what about him was so intriguing, beyond the fact that he’d looked at her like she was the only person in the room, when in fact the bar had been at absolute capacity.
“Just wait. I’m coming,” he repeated.
The sorcery he had over her broke then, and she could breathe once more. Rolling her eyes, she muttered, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
She paced. Folding her arms over her chest, she looked back at the car again. The best she could tell, Cruz was still asleep, and oblivious. Cruz wasn’t the lightest of sleepers, but she was medicated, and December hoped she’d remain in Dreamland until December had a better idea of how the confrontation with Tito would play out.
“Gonna do this.” She nodded with finality, and planted herself on the doormat.
No more sweet, patient December, pining away over a man she’d known in the first place was too damned old for her. He’d said he was thirty. Alicia had warned her to steer clear, but December had been “grown” at eighteen, and Tito had been so damned charming.
“They’re all charming until they roll off of you,” Alicia had said.
“I should have believed her,” December muttered as the footsteps inside the house stopped and the inner door’s lock clicked.
She forced a swallow down her tight throat, tipped up her chin, and narrowed her eyes in preparation to engage.
Try me, Tito.
He pulled open the inner door, and she stood with her mouth agape, staring at him through white-painted iron bars of the outer door, stupefied just like she’d been all those years ago.
Same Tito. A little less of him, though. He’d lost weight. Also, he’d cut his hair and had apparently become more proficient with a razor. The tan shirt he wore—not the blue chambray uniform shirt of the trucking company he used to drive for—was untucked and unbuttoned. Over his heart was a deputy badge with a nametag beneath that read “Perez.”
Tito Perez.
She’d only known his last name for a month—since she’d done a reverse search in the Town of Maria’s property tax records.
He quickly opened the outer door, and though he hadn’t budged from his side of the threshold, suddenly she felt squeezed—like she’d invited him into her space and he’d held her in one of those hugs that were experiences, and not just common embraces.
She’d always felt that way around him, though. Being held by him ranked high on her list of experiences she wanted to repeat but shouldn’t.
“December?”
Her jaw flapped, but she couldn’t shape any words. “Uh … ”
“Man, what are you doing way up here?”
“Uh … ”
“How’d you find me? I mean, I was gonna call you, but … ” Cringing, he pressed a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed. “Been tied up a little. Career change and stuff.”
She dragged her tongue across her lips and stared.
A deputy. The laid-back trucker had changed careers, and to one she never would have imagined him in. His gentleness had been part of the reason she’d fallen for him. Of course, the sexy, bedroom eyes didn’t hurt, or the way he smiled at her kind of crookedly and made her head feel like she’d had three servings of the cheap frozen margaritas they served at the bar.
He’d stop in at the bar during his then-frequent trips to Tucson, and they’d talk and talk until he absolutely had to go.
He’d always promised to come back, and he had, until that last time. Instead of leaving her with a phone number, he’d left her pregnant.
She swallowed again, pressed her moistened lips together, and then shifted her weight. Spit it out, girl. “I … needed to talk to you, and I didn’t have a good number for you.”
But you had mine.
She should have said the words instead of just thinking them, but yet again, her courage had started to flee.
“Well, come in,” he said.
Still, he didn’t budge. Whether he expected her to squeeze past him in the doorway as if she had to pay a toll with her body or if he didn’t really want her inside, she didn’t care. Alicia had told her not to enter his lair, and for a change, December was going to listen.
“No. I can’t. I … ” The urge to look back at the car was too strong, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to Cruz just yet. The last thing she wanted was for the child to wake just in time to witness her father’s utter nonchalance. Cruz deserved the sun and the moon, not mere tolerance.
December’s chin had fallen, so she tilted her face up again and somehow met his pitch-black gaze. “No. Here’s fine.”
“You came all the way to Maria to talk to me on my stoop?” He stepped outside, barefoot, and a shameful little noise squeaked out of her chest at his proximity.
Her skin was prickling for nerves or some histamine reaction, December couldn’t tell which, but the feeling made her take a step down onto the walkway and wring her hands. If she didn’t do something with her hands, she was going to touch him, and touching led to trouble. If the past were any guide, smelling him might lead to trouble. He always smelled like what she imagined, for some reason, a jungle to smell like. Earthy, but sweet. Cloying, yet somehow masculine and dangerous.
She happened to know he tasted good, too. Every nip and lick of his skin had an aphrodisiac effect. Once she started, she didn’t want to get off him. Kissing him was torment.
Shouldn’t even be thinking about kissing him.
After more than five years, even thoughts of him made her breath go shallow.
She swallowed again. Licked her lips. Closed her eyes. “I … needed you to … ”
Whatever words she was going to force off her heavy tongue were preempted by the slamming of a nearby car door. She turned in time to see the old woman at the curb.
The woman waved her walking stick and called out, “So you’re home, mijo.”
“What are you doing out here this time of day?” Tito asked.
The woman who’d called Tito “my son” walked at a slow, uneven gait, her steps aided by a hand-carved cane that appeared to have the head of some sort of wildcat carved into the handle. Upon further observation, December saw that the beast’s entire body appeared to be wrapped around the cane, its long tail twined around the shaft.
The stick looked expensive, but nothing else about the hunched, miniscule woman did. Her cotton skirt and knit top were simple enough. Her “leather” walking shoes appeared to be the off-brand sorts that some elderly people ordered from coupon circulars. Perhaps the stick had been a gift, or had been purchased in richer times—maybe at the same time she’d come into the possession of her massive, gold and brown Lincoln Town Car.
Mijo, she’d said.
December squinted as the woman walked closer.
She had wide-set eyes darker than the night sky and pale brown skin, just like Tito’s. She pressed her lips together in the same way as him, and had the same high forehead and sharp cheekbones as Tito, too.
December had a habit of paying attention to small details, because in the bar where she worked, she needed to be aware of what people had in their hands and what they were doing with the things they held. The bar had long been a watering hole for a certain kind of bikers, and although the clientele had been gentrified in the past couple of years, there were still a few holdovers who thought they could take back the territory that had never really been theirs in the first place.
Is she his mother?
That would make her Cruz’s grandmother. December scrambled to make connections between the two in her brain, but she couldn’t concentrate. The woman was too old and Cruz was too young for December to see any notable similarities.
The woman’s gaze was pinned on December’s car as she idled near the bottom of the stoop. Then she looked up and fixed her deep, dark gaze on December.
December couldn’t hold the eye contact. It was too aggressive, somehow, or felt disrespectful to continue.
The woman didn’t say anything to December. She scaled the steps, slowly, her focus fully on Tito. “Hard to catch up to you lately.”
Tito grunted. “Got off an hour ago. Sat down on the sofa to take off my shoes and fell asleep.”
“You’ll get used to the hours, in time.”
“Hope so. Whoever said the graveyard shift was quiet lied. Went out on six different calls last night, and all for stupid shit. Need something? You’re usually out at the Foyes’ this time of day.”
Everyone in Maria knew the Foyes, just like they knew Tito. December had learned that during her snooping, too. Local opinions were decidedly mixed on the Foye clan. People had kind things to say about the women, but the men had reputations for mild misanthropy. That had sounded a lot like Sean to December. He was the most charming ass she’d ever had the pleasure of serving beer to. He was supposed to have passed on her requests for Tito to call. She wondered suddenly if he actually had.
I’ll strangle that ginger jerk if he didn’t …
“Everything all right?” Tito asked the woman who was presumably his mother.
She shifted her cane to her other hand, and hitched her purse up higher on her forearm. “Yes. The ranch is fine.”
“Yeah? How’s the … ” He pinched his lips together on whatever he’d been about to say, and looked to December, then quickly back to his mother. “The, uh … door. How’s it holding up? I haven’t been out there in a few weeks.”
The woman’s jaw grated a few beats, her gaze still locked straight ahead.
December almost wanted to excuse herself to let them have their obviously important and secret conversation in peace, but then she remembered why she was there, and that she’d been there first.
“The door is fine,” the woman said. “I met Steven as he was coming out with Belle. Nothing to report, I suppose. He was calm and heading to the sheriff’s department for his shift.”
“I’ll catch up with him later,” Tito said. “So, you’re here because … ”
“I just came to visit, mijo. A woman should see her son, and I haven’t seen mine in quite some time.”
She looked to December, again, her expression suspiciously grave. “Perhaps I picked a bad time.”
Things are about to get much worse, lady.
December spread on her “tolerant barmaid smile” and waved.
“Yeah. Ma, this is December. December, this is my ma, Lola Perez.”
December held out her hand to the woman to shake, but instead of speaking some suitably congenial greeting to the grandmother of her child, what actually came out of her mouth was, “Do you know my last name, Tito?”
The moment the words left her lips, she registered how petty the question was, but it had slipped out reflexively. He should have known what his daughter’s last name was, but then again, she’d always misjudged how close she and Tito actually were. He’d obviously meant more to her than she had to him.
He rubbed his eyes and leaned against the doorframe. “Farmer.”
All she could do was blink and then stare, because she’d convinced herself he wouldn’t know.
He did know.
How does he know?
“I never forget a name.” He cleared his throat and looked at his mother again. “You want a cup of coffee or something?”
Mrs. Perez’s stare was coolly assessing in the same way that lady at Cruz’s preschool had been when December had waited until the last possible day to apply for a discounted rate. She hadn’t wanted the subsidy, but without it, she couldn’t afford the tuition.
“You know what? It’s hot,” December said in a rush of overwhelm. “You should get her in out of the sun, and I’ll just … I’ll come back.” She backed away from the door, waving slightly. “I’ll come back in an hour.”
“You shouldn’t fret over me,” Mrs. Perez said in a quiet voice. “The sun is the least of my worries.”
“True.” Tito passed an impatient hand through his short hair and glared at his mother.
She glared back.
What’s going on with them?
If they had drama, December wanted no part of it. She had enough of her own to offload.
“You sure you don’t want to come in, December?” Tito asked. “The place is a mess but clean enough for you to sit down, I guess.”
“No, I—”
“I’ll watch your car,” Mrs. Perez said.
“Ma, the neighborhood ain’t that bad,” Tito said. “Haven’t had a theft report in two, three months.”
She shifted her cane again, and tapped the rubber end a few times against the stoop’s concrete.
“What?” Tito asked.
“I said I’ll watch her car.”
“I heard you. I just don’t see why you would need to.”
“Perhaps December has cargo she doesn’t wish to have molested.”
Tito pushed up one dark eyebrow and turned to December. “That it? You worried about your stereo being stolen or something?”
“Um … ”
Mrs. Perez gave December an eloquent look. She couldn’t have been plainer if she’d said aloud, “I see what you have.”
December nodded. She couldn’t shape words, but she could nod, and then she squeezed past Tito and into his cluttered living room—into the mess he’d promised.
The room was crammed with bric-a-brac and mismatched furniture, and the dark violet paint job probably contributed a great deal to the immediate feeling of crowding. The space was homey, but claustrophobic.
Instinctively, she put her hand over her chest and forced herself to breathe.
Too much stuff.
She didn’t like that. She needed room to walk and pace. Being at work and squeezing between the tables in a crowded room was one thing. She’d pretty much grown up in bars and restaurants. Her parents had owned a tiny seafood shack back in Rhode Island, and maybe still did. Even in the off-season, the place had always been full of hungry people, and sometimes December and Alicia were sent out to fill drink orders. When December wasn’t at work, being cramped made her nervous—made her worry about finding exit routes, because, far too many times since, she and Alicia had run when had they felt unsafe. Two young girls who hadn’t been able to fight worth a damn, and still couldn’t, really, but at least Alicia had gained a husband who fought most of her battles for her.
December had lost hope of ever having such a champion of her own.
The storm door slammed shut, and the floorboards creaked under Tito’s weight.
Closer.
And closer still.
The hairs on her neck stood on end, making her crane her head to the side and rub her nape. His presence made her spine curve, prickling as if her back had been bombarded by sand spurs carried on the wind.
Can’t turn. Can’t look.
She kept rubbing, kept breathing.
If she looked at him, her tongue would probably go dumb again.
“Sorry about Ma,” Tito said. “She’s hard to figure out, even on the best of days. Most folks around here are used to her ways, though. You’d think she’d have a harder time sneaking up on people, but I guess she has stealth in her DNA.”
December huffed a nervous scoff. She knew something of stealth. Too many times, she’d opened her eyes in the middle of the night to find Cruz leaning over the bedside and staring down at her. Every time, December would scream, because that was what normal people did when they were startled. And every time, Cruz would blink big hazel eyes in that innocent way she always did, and ask, “What’s wrong, Mommy?” as if the fact wasn’t perfectly obvious she’d just scared the ever-loving piss out of her sleeping mother.
“Right,” December said softly. “Stealth.”
Almost as bad was how the child could quietly enter a room and be sitting there for an hour while December was otherwise distracted. Too many times, Cruz had sneaked into the living room long after she should have been in bed. December would be watching television, and suddenly a little voice would pipe up some unsolicited opinion about the shows. December fully expected to be at the doctor’s office begging for anti-anxiety drugs within the next few months. The child was going to give her a heart attack.
December snapped her fingers and propped her hands on to her hips.
Cruz.
Cruz was why she was there.
She turned rapidly on the heels of her boots and opened her mouth to just spit out the words already, but his smile unhinged her, the same way it always had.
The noise that came out of her mouth was more croak than language.
“Weird seeing you here,” he said. “I mean, I’m glad to see you. I just didn’t expect to.”
She nodded. Swallowed. “Uh.”
“I meant to get back down that way, but things have been so busy here. Got a new job and stuff.”
“Yeah. I saw.” She rocked back on her boot heels. “So, when’d you stop driving trucks?”
“About a year ago.”
“Oh.”
So what was he doing to be so busy during the four years before that?
She didn’t ask, just nodded again, and licked her lips. Bad habit. They were starting to crack.
“Plus, Maria is a hotbed of drama in general,” he said. “We’ve got biker gangs here, just like what used to bother you at the bar. And also drunk cowboys. Lots of small-town politics to wade through.”
“It’s … cute.” December’s voice was half croak and half rasp, so she swallowed and took a deep breath. Then she closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him. The confrontation might have been easier if he, like the mop head she’d been practicing her “pay up” speech on, hadn’t had a face. “Maria, I mean. I drove through downtown.”
December had driven through downtown three times that morning, and had even parked in front of the diner for a while. She’d considered calling Sean and using him as a sounding board before showing up at Tito’s. She’d had Sean’s number. His family owned a woodworking business that was well publicized. She could have called and asked him to play intermediary, but in the end, decided that she needed to confront Tito on her own, which was probably for the best if he hadn’t been passing on her messages. Anyway, she’d made the choice to sleep with Tito, and she would be an adult and tell him what the consequence was.
And she was going to tell him.
“I—”
“You want a cup of coffee?” he asked. “No, no. Scratch that. You don’t drink coffee.”
Her mouth opened and closed, but her brain hadn’t caught up and she didn’t know what to say. He’d remembered. She’d told him that one night at the bar—just a throwaway comment when she’d been pouring some for him.
“Tea? I think I have some bags left, but they might be old. Pretty sure there’s some juice in the fridge, too, but I’m almost certain that carton is expired. I get most of my meals either at the diner or out at the ranch.”
“The ranch?”
“Yeah, the Double B. Sean’s ma owns the spread. Folks just show up sniffing around for food, and she begrudgingly feeds us all. She’s used to the hassle, though.” He chuckled and rubbed his eyes.
He’d been asleep when she’d knocked. Graveyard shift, he’d said, because he’d become a deputy, of all things.
“Why did you become a deputy?”
“Kinda got drafted into the gig. Never saw myself being a cop, but the sheriff needed to clean house last year and he recruited folks he knew he could trust. Hey, you want a bowl of cereal or something? I know the milk is good. I just bought that yesterday when I got off work.”
“No, thank you.”
But Cruz needed to eat soon, and December couldn’t imagine her happily chomping on cereal in the kitchen of the father she didn’t know December was in Maria to see.
“Listen, I came here to—”
“Tito.” A woman in a brightly patterned skirt and flowy white blouse that fluttered from a rare desert breeze rapped on the screen door.
Tito groaned impatiently and peered at the door.
December waved him on. “Go ahead. Talk to your guest.”
Let me work up my nerve again.
Tito walked to the door, but the woman waved him away and craned her neck, leaning to see December.
“She’s awake,” she said.
“You mean … ”
“Woke sneezing.”
Damn.
December unglued her feet from the floor and then hurried through the door. “Where did Mrs. Perez go?” she asked no one in particular as she trekked down the walkway with the lady at her heels.
The big boat of a car Mrs. Perez had pulled up in was no longer at the curb.
“She had an emergency,” the stranger said.
Cruz was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open and her legs dangling out the side of the car.
“You feeling better?”
Smiling, she nodded. “You didn’t tell me Mrs. Estobal lived here.”
“Mrs. Estobal?” December knelt beside the car and tried to remember why that name was familiar. Cruz had mentioned it before, but she couldn’t remember in what context. But then again, Cruz had a tendency to say a lot.
Period.
“She works at my preschool, Mommy. She said she was in the neighborhood visiting her friend here and saw me in the car.”
December turned to the woman, who was smiling serenely at Cruz. “I volunteer a day a week at the school. I used to live in Tucson. I still get down there pretty often because it’s on my sales route. I’m a rep for a very small pharmaceutical company. My territory sprawls a bit more every day.”
“Ah, that explains it,” December murmured. “I was going to say that’s quite a drive.”
“Yes, my time at the school is important to me. Hard to be everywhere at once, though.”
“I’ll say,” Tito muttered uncharitably as he joined them at the curb.
He gave Mrs. Estobal a hostile side-eye and then fixed his face before looking at Cruz.
December pondered how the two knew each other and if their relationship was always so contentious. They’d never had a chance to talk about any of his friends, besides Sean, and that was only because Sean had sometimes accompanied him.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Cruz,” Cruz said.
December rubbed her throbbing temples and muttered, “Here we go.”
“That’s a nice name,” Tito said.
Cruz shrugged. “I didn’t pick it.”
“Who did, then?”
Cruz shrugged again. “Mommy, probably. Mommy, did you pick my name?”
December rubbed her temples harder, lifted her eyebrows, and then tried to put on a smile for the child. “Mm-hmm. Yep. I did. Named you after my grandfather.”
She could feel Tito’s gaze boring into the side of her face, but she didn’t dare look until she caught him turning in her periphery.
He looked at Mrs. Estobal again, who had her chin cocked daringly at him.
“You got somethin’ you wanna say?” he asked her.
“Do you have something to say to me?” she asked.
“Yeah. A lot of somethings, maybe.”
December cleared her throat loudly. Maybe Tito was an absentee jerk, but she’d never known him to be a jackass. She didn’t know how much more she could bear to witness.
“Maybe I should find Cruz some lunch.” Mrs. Estobal leaned around Tito and smiled at Cruz. “Would you like to walk to the diner with me? They have quesadillas, though they are a little bland.”
“Can I go, Mommy?”
December cringed, uncertain. She didn’t know the lady, but obviously Cruz did, and Tito, too. Although he and the lady seemed to be at an impasse over something, that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t trustworthy. And the conversation she needed to have with Tito would certainly be better done without an audience.
“She won’t let nothin’ happen to her,” Tito said.
“No, I’d die first.” Mrs. Estobal took Cruz’s hand before December could respond one way or another to the odd comment, and got Cruz moving.
And Cruz got talking, broaching three different subjects before they even got as far as the end of the block, and then they turned the corner.
December turned to Tito.
He leaned an elbow atop the car’s roof and pinned a questioning gaze on her. “You never told me you had a daughter.”
“You never gave me a chance to.”
“How old is she?”
“Five.”
“So, you were pregnant when … ”
December gave her head a hard shake and slammed the car door shut. “No. I wasn’t pregnant back when we were doing whatever we were doing.”
“So, you met someone after?”
“I’ve been meeting a lot of someones for a few minutes at a time. That’s my social life in a nutshell lately. If you’re asking if I dated anyone else in almost six years? Not really, not that my private life is any of your business.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“You’re not trying hard enough, for god’s sake, or maybe you’re trying hard not to put the pieces together. That’s your daughter. Cruz is your daughter. I’ve been trying to find you for all this time to tell you. You never came back. You never called, so I had to drive up here stalking you like a madwoman, because it’s not fair for her to only have one parent. I didn’t sign up for that!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut tight. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t shriek, and she’d shrieked.
Damn it. Way to go.
He took a deep breath and drawled, rebuking her, “December—”
She dropped her hand, opened her eyes, and shook her head hard. “This isn’t going the way I planned. This isn’t how I wanted this to go. You were supposed—no, I was going to say … ” She growled and closed her eyes again. “Just … tell me what you’re going to do about it!”
“What I’m going to do? You just dropped a hell of a bomb on me, and you’re expecting me to have a plan of action?”
She opened her eyes once more, promising herself she’d keep them open for good. He was still so damned hard to look at. She wanted to be angry with him, but couldn’t be. Not when he was close enough for her to see his dimples.
She took three big steps backward and put up her hands, hoping he wouldn’t take that space away from her. “I’ve been the one doing all the planning for the past five years. Maybe it’s your turn now.”
“What do you expect me to do? Is this about money? Because if you want money, we can work something out.”
She clamped her lips shut and shook her head again. Alicia had told her to take what she could get and go—she’d said that December shouldn’t expect anything after all that time, and that she’d be lucky if she could get twenty bucks out of him.
But she’d hoped for more than that. She’d hoped Tito would be happier. She’d thought he’d be eager to connect and would want to have a relationship with his little girl, but he was standing there with his hands in his pockets wearing the blankest expression she’d ever seen on a human face. He should have been running after Cruz. If he had a shit to give, he certainly wasn’t showing it.
“You know what?” She shrugged. “I don’t know why I bothered. I know where you are now, so we can just deal with this through the court system.”
If that threat scared him, he sure as hell didn’t show that, either.
He didn’t say anything, and didn’t move an inch when she walked past him toward the corner Mrs. Estobal had rounded with Cruz.
She was going to get her kid and go home.
“Shouldn’t have come in the first place.” She clamped her arms over her chest and rubbed her arms, chafing against the sudden chill on the breeze. “Stupid truckers in stupid bars.”
She looked back over her shoulder as she stepped off the curb and saw that Tito had gone. She didn’t know where he’d gone—maybe into his house—but the fact he hadn’t followed was all that mattered. Being a little tongue-tied was expected, given the news she’d delivered to him, but she hadn’t expected him to not care.
Cruz had too few people caring about her already.
She was about to cross the dotted yellow line in the road when a newer full-sized SUV careened around the corner and nearly into her.
She was frozen like a deer in headlights; gaze pinned on the opening rear door and the man leaning out of it.
“Whoa, babe!” A man yanked her by the back of her shirt and onto the sidewalk.
The SUV continued past, and she saw the vicious knife the passenger held, and also his wicked grin and numerous facial piercings before he rolled up the tinted window.
They sped away before she could even think to look at a license plate or try to memorize the vehicle’s make and model. She’d watched enough crime dramas to guess that was what she was supposed to know, but real life seemed to move in fast-forward in comparison to those overwrought plots.
“Like, you all right?” her savior asked.
“I … ” Rubbing her chest over her pounding heart, she forced down a swallow and tried to take a few deep breaths. “Um. Yes. Yes, thank you.”
“No worries. Listen, you gotta be careful around here. Crazy stuff happens like that all the time. Be safe.”
She nodded and looked in the direction of the disappearing SUV. It was gone, and when she turned back to the man, she found that he’d disappeared just that quickly, too. She’d barely gotten a look at him beyond the shaggy blond mop on the head.
“Okay. Well, then.” She took one more bolstering breath, swatted her hair away from her sweaty face, and turned right back in the direction she’d come. “Should have driven in the first place.” Keys at the ready, she jogged as fast as she could toward Tito’s house and her car.
She could start moving on with her life and maybe, just maybe, she could extinguish the flame she’d kept stoked for Tito for too damned long.