A few minutes later, Kelsey reached her building. The instant she got inside the lobby, she yanked off her shoes and carried them into the elevator. As the doors were closing, a hand snaked between them and they opened again. Edwin got onto the elevator. He wore a plaid cotton shirt and jeans with paint stains on one thigh. A Snickers bar peeked out of his shirt pocket.

“What’s up with you?” Edwin said, looking her up and down as the elevator doors closed.

“What you mean?”

“You look like hell. I mean, the dress is hot, but you look like you wanna kill somebody.”

Yeah, she kinda did. And Edwin was always near the top of her list. If he messed with her tonight, she couldn’t guarantee a homicide wasn’t going to happen.

A few moments later, the doors opened on the fifth floor, and she heard a baby crying. She sighed with frustration. Ricky. Again.

Edwin followed her off the elevator. As Kelsey headed for her apartment, he headed for Gloria’s. As he banged on her door, Kelsey stopped and turned back, watching as Sofia came to the door holding Ricky, who took the opportunity to let out a bellowing scream. Edwin had barely opened his mouth to chastise Sofia before Kelsey opened hers.

“Edwin!”

He spun around.

“Not one word,” she said, coming back up the hall, stabbing her finger in the air at him. “Don’t you say one word to her!”

“I was just—”

“I want to kill somebody, remember? Do you want it to be you?”

“Uh—“

“That’s what I thought. Now beat it!”

For once, Edwin knew what was good for him. As he hurried back to the elevator, Kelsey turned to Sofia. Judging from her red eyes, she very well might have been crying, too.

“What’s the matter?” Kelsey asked.

Sofia turned away. “Nothing.”

No. It was definitely something. “You look upset.”

She was silent.

“Can I come in for a minute?”

Sofia gave her an offhand shrug, then backed away and sat down on the sofa with the baby. As Kelsey came inside and closed the door behind her, Sofia jiggled him on her knee, and his cries wound down to whimpers. Rosa sat cross-legged on the floor with a Barbie and all her accessories. She gave Kelsey a cheery hello and went back to tugging a stretchy top over Barbie’s impossibly huge boobs.

Sofia looked at Kelsey’s dress, and then her gaze drifted down to the shoes she held. “You’re all dressed up. Where have you been?”

Kelsey tossed the shoes on the floor, hating them more with every moment that passed. “Out to dinner. Is your Mom at work?”

“No. She’s out with Eduardo.”

The look on Sofia’s face made those warning bells inside Kelsey’s head clang all over again. “You sound upset about that.”

Sofia handed Ricky a teething ring, saying nothing. The less she talked, the more worried Kelsey became. “Sofia. Please tell me what’s going on.”

Sofia’s lips tightened, as if she was going to cry all over again. “I had a big fight with my mom before she left.”

”What about?”

“I told her I wanted Eduardo to stop coming around, and she told me I was being selfish. She won’t listen to me!”

Now Kelsey was really worried. A kid didn’t feel that way unless something was terribly wrong. How could Gloria not see the handwriting on the wall and stop dragging her kids through one more bad relationship?

“My mom believes everything he tells her,” Sofia said, her mouth set in a stubborn frown. “She thinks he’s so wonderful. But it won’t be long before she sees that he’s just like all the rest of them.”

“You say you don’t like him,” Kelsey said. “Is he…is he doing anything he shouldn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

Kelsey didn’t want to go there, but what choice did she have? It was time to get to the bottom of this situation. “Does he say or do mean things?

Sofia looked away. “No.”

“Do anything mean to your mother?”

“No.”

“To you or the other kids?”

“No! It's nothing like that!"

Kelsey drew back. “Then why don’t you like him?”

Sofia sniffed, then wiped her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was a near whisper. “I do like him.”

Now Kelsey was really confused. “I don’t understand. If you like him, then why do you want him to leave?”

For a long time, Sofia stared down at Ricky without speaking. Then slowly she lifted her head. “Because he will sooner or later. So I wish he’d just go away now.”

It took a moment for Kelsey to understand what Sofia was saying, and when she did, her heart nearly broke.

“They always leave,” Sofia said, her voice faltering. “My father. Rosa and Ricky’s father. Everything’s always great in the beginning, and they act like they’re going to hang around, but they never do. Then it’s just us again. But I don’t care. We don’t need them. My mom makes enough money if she works some extra shifts, and I can take care of my brother and sister.” A look of determination came over her face. “We don’t need any of them!”

Kelsey felt a sudden flash of awareness. That was me, she thought, as she heard the echo of herself at that age, sounding so angry and determined. Men had come and gone, and every time it happened, her wariness grew. She’d grown up with the certainty that she needed to keep men at arm’s length, because even if they were good, they were never there to stay. Whether they left because they just didn’t give a damn, or her mother had driven them away, the effect had been the same. Kelsey had learned early that any love she allowed to seep out of her to give to them or to her mother or anyone else would be hurled right back in her face.

So she quit giving it.

Just then Kelsey heard a commotion in the hall. The apartment door opened. Gloria came inside, and Eduardo followed. Gloria had barely said hello to Kelsey before Sofia stood up, handed Ricky to her, and tried to leave the room.

“Sofia, please,” Gloria said.

The girl stopped and turned back, wearing an expression that looked like insolence, but Kelsey could see the pain behind it. The sad thing was that Sofia was probably right. Sooner or later Eduardo would be gone, and then it would be just her and her mother and the other kids again, struggling from one day to the next. How many times could that happen to a kid before they didn’t trust anyone anymore?

“Could we show you something before you go?” Eduardo asked.

Sofia folded her arms defiantly. Eduardo motioned to Rosa. “Come on. You need to see this, too.”

All smiles, Rosa leaped up and ran to Eduardo’s side. She clearly wasn’t old enough yet to worry about the things her older sister did.

Kelsey stood. “I should go.”

“No, stay,” Gloria said. “I want you to see this, too.”

Eduardo took the baby from Gloria. She smiled and held out her left hand. For the first time, Kelsey noticed the glint of a diamond.

A diamond?

Rosa grabbed her mother’s hand. “It’s so pretty!”

“Eduardo gave it to me,” Gloria told her.

“Is it your birthday?”

“No. It’s an engagement ring. Do you know what that is?”

Rosa shook her head.

“It means we’re getting married,” she said. “Eduardo is going to be my husband.”

Kelsey was stunned. She glanced at Sofia, who looked equally shocked. Then Kelsey looked at Eduardo. He was holding the baby and staring down at Gloria, a happy smile on that craggy face, looking for all the world like a man in love.

In love.

“I told Eduardo it was too extravagant,” Gloria said, even as she tilted the ring back and forth, watching the glint of the diamond.

“I told you I have money from the business,” Eduardo said.

Kelsey blinked. “Business?”

“I worked for my brother. He had to sell his business. He said I deserved some of the profit for working there for so long.”

That’s why he has money. In that instant, every assumption Kelsey had ever made about him turned upside down.

Then Gloria turned to Sofia, her bright smile fading a little. “So what do you think?”

Sofia swallowed hard. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. A look of disappointment came over Gloria’s face. “Look, I know we’ve had some problems lately, but—”

“No,” Sofia said. “No. It’s okay.”

She took a few tentative steps forward and stared at the ring. Then slowly she turned her gaze to Eduardo, her eyes glistening with tears. Ricky reached up and grabbed his ear, practically pulling it off the side of his head, but Eduardo never flinched. He just kept looking at Sofia. It was clear babies were no problem for him, but he had a few fears about a certain thirteen-year-old girl.

“Does this mean…” Sofia’s voice choked up. She put her hand to her throat. “Does this mean you’re staying?”

“Yeah,” Eduardo said. “How do you feel about that?”

Sofia blinked, and a tear slid down her cheek. “It’s okay. You know…if you want to.”

Gloria slipped her arm around Eduardo’s waist, squashing Rosa between them. The little girl looked up at them and grinned, even though she probably still wasn’t too sure what she was smiling about. She just knew everybody seemed happy.

Then Eduardo held out his hand to Sofia.

Sofia stared down at it, then took a few steps forward. She slipped her hand inside his, and he pulled her next to him. Then Gloria turned to wrap her arm around Sofia. Rosa ended up in the middle of the group, and then everyone was hugging and smiling. Even Ricky seemed content in Eduardo’s arms.

As Kelsey looked at the glow of happiness everyone’s faces, confusion filled her mind, scrambling her thoughts until she didn’t know which way to turn. All this time, she’d assumed Gloria’s family was shattered and always would be, and that Eduardo was a bad guy, or at the very least he’d break everybody’s heart when he revealed his true colors and decided to leave.

Now everything had changed. He was staying.

No. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it foolish to assume that? He could still leave. In fact, he probably would. And when he did, Gloria would be really sorry for taking that ring, for putting her faith in a man so easily, for putting her children through that horrible cycle of high hopes and their eventual crashes back to earth.

In a daze, Kelsey walked over to admire Gloria’s ring and congratulate the couple. What else could she do? Tell Gloria right then and there what a fool she was? Instead she said goodbye, grabbed her shoes, and left the apartment, feeling sorry for Gloria and resolute in her opinion that there was just no changing some people.

But as she strode down the hall, her certainty about the situation faded. In the past few weeks, she’d discovered what it felt like to look at the bright side. Those feelings trickled through her again, and by the time she reached her apartment door, she felt more confused than ever. Was it possible Gloria had finally gotten it right? That she’d finally found happiness? When Kelsey thought about the look of joy on all of their faces…

Wait a minute. What was she saying? She sounded like Brett. Brett and all his rainbows and unicorns. Well, you couldn’t have rainbows without rain, and unicorns weren’t even real.

Kelsey took out her keys, only to look over her shoulder at Brett’s door. If he’d had to deal with her mother, he probably wasn’t home yet. But what did it matter whether he was or not? He was bad for her. He and his pie-in-the-sky assumptions that everything was going to turn out just peachy. The fact that he couldn’t be remotely realistic about anything told her just how wrong he was for her.

She put her key in the lock and turned it, but nothing happened. She rattled the knob and tried again, jiggling the key. Finally she gave it a hard twist. Nothing. Then she tried to pull it out to give it another try.

It was stuck.

She was tempted to twist it really hard, but she didn’t want to break it the way she had the last time this had happened.

Crap, crap, crap!

She didn’t need this right now. She already felt unsettled. Irritated. Confused. Upset. She didn’t need this hundred-year-old lock being a pain in the ass on top of everything else. Frustration welled up inside her, making every nerve so tense and irritated that she had to let it out somehow. So she backed away and kicked the door with the flat of her foot.

Whap!

She knew she’d never get through the damned thing, but it sure felt good to try, so she kicked it again. She thought about how she’d played it right all these years with her mother by distancing herself as much as she could. But not Brett. Oh, no. Mr. Positivity thought you could take a thirty-year addict and fix her overnight.

Whap! Whap!

Kelsey stopped for a moment, breathing hard, a sudden sense of desolation washing over her. In spite of everything, there was something about Brett she wanted. Needed. Was desperate to have. It was as if there was a gigantic hole in her life, and only Brett could fill it.

No, she thought, feeling resolute all over again. That was impossible. They were night and day. Black and white. Oil and water. And that was the way it would always be.

She looked down at the shoes in her hand, then hauled off and smacked the door with them, too. Since she hated her shoes and the door, that felt particularly satisfying.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

As the sounds from her door assault echoed down the hall, one door opened, then another, and another. Her neighbors stuck their heads out, but evidently she looked just crazed enough that they knew what was good for them and went back inside.

Finally she took a breath, called Edwin, and told him to find a way to get her into her apartment. He chastised her for screwing up the only key he had left for that door. She told him she still wouldn’t mind killing somebody, so he might want to haul his ass up there. He asked if that was a threat. She asked him if he wanted to end up facedown on the floor with a chalk outline around him.

He said he’d be right there.

She stuck her phone back in her purse, then swung around and gave the door another couple of swift kicks for good measure. Ah, that felt good. Forget Pilates. Door kickboxing was a way better workout.

“Kelsey? What are you doing?”

She spun around to see Brett coming up the hall, his eyes wide with surprise. He slowed as he approached her, his gaze going from her door, to the shoes she held, then back to her face again. She hated that he looked so incredibly handsome, and that just the sight of him made her want him all over again. Damn him for doing something unforgiveable. Totally unforgiveable.

“My key’s stuck in the lock,” she muttered.

“Oh.”

“I called Edwin. He says he’s coming up. But he lies a lot.”

“Then you should kick the door again.”

“Why?”

“To keep from kicking Edwin. One’s destructive. The other’s criminal.”

She looked at the door and considered his suggestion, but all at once she felt exhausted, as if she’d run out of gas. She swallowed hard, then turned back to Brett, searching for the anger she felt justified in having. But for some reason, tears sprang to her eyes instead. What the hell? She hadn’t cried since she was a kid, and she didn’t want to start now. And she sure didn’t want to do it in front of Brett.

He inched closer to her. “Kelsey?”

She turned away and waved her hand. “Go away. No more talking. We have nothing to say to each other.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to say I’m sorry, even though I am, because you’ve heard that before.”

“Exactly.”

“And I’m not going to tell you I won’t do something like that again, because you’ve heard that before, too, and the truth is that I probably will.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“But there’s something else.”

She turned back impatiently. “What?”

“I just wanted to tell you—” He stopped short, looking a little lost.

“Tell me what?” she asked.

“That I…”

“That you what?”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“What?”

More silence.

This was a man who yapped so much sometimes that she was tempted to slap a piece of duct tape over his mouth. So why in the hell was he silent now?

“Brett,” she snapped. “If you have something to say, for the love of God would you just—“

“Oh, all right! I love you!”