AFTER A FEW more days at the hospital with Bea by my side, taking our relationship further every night we spent together in the hotel while keeping the lights off to appease Bea, Grandma insisted that we had to leave her.
“You’ve both got jobs to do. You’ve got lives to live. Can’t do that while sitting on your asses and watching me die.”
I’d tried to argue with them, but to no avail. Eventually, Bea and Grandma had ganged up on me. They’d even gotten Brett—the male nurse Grandma kept harassing—in on it. It seemed Bea had to return home for her niece’s quinceañera.
Before I was ready, Bea and I had given Grandma our hugs, and we were on a late-night flight back to Portland together. Bea spent most of the flight working on her laptop, doing some lesson plans or grading or something, so I took out my phone and played Sudoku until my battery was almost dead, wishing I had some of those coloring books—the special ones I’d ordered—to fill the rest of the time. Granted, I supposed I could color some mandalas, but whatever.
It was after midnight in Portland by the time we landed, which meant it was the middle of the night for Grandma. Hoping it wouldn’t wake her, I shot off a quick text message to let her know we’d gotten back safely, checked my other messages—including one from Mia with a link to the unedited photos from our shoot—and then I gathered our bags off the carousel.
I’d left my car at the airport, but Bea had taken an Uber to get there so she wouldn’t have to pay for parking over an undetermined period. I hauled our bags to my car and loaded them into the trunk before helping her in the passenger side.
Exhaustion might as well be my middle name right now. Too bad I’d never mastered the art of sleeping on a plane—I just couldn’t relax up there—maybe it was the altitude or something. Whatever it was, I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, even though Bea hadn’t been any sort of company for me, since she’d worked the entire flight.
In the time I’d been with Grandma, my body had started to adjust to East Coast time and to not getting the workouts I was used to. Jetlag was going to kick my ass; practice and games would kick it even harder.
“Guess you need to get home to Neville and Luna, hmm?” I said, unable to stifle a yawn as I started the ignition.
She nodded, but there was a question in her arched eyebrow.
“What?” I asked, unable to stifle my grin.
“Just surprised you remembered their names.”
“I remember shit when I make a point to remember it. When it’s something to do with you,” I said, barely stopping myself from saying when I care. “So I’m taking you home, then?” I asked as I backed out of my parking spot and navigated my way out of the PDX lot.
“My neighbor checked on them after she got home from work today. They’ll be all right on their own for one more night.”
“Yeah?” My pulse kicked into high gear. I shot a glance in her direction. She was blushing, which was barely visible on her skin, especially with the darkness surrounding us, but it was sexy as fuck. That blush had to be as hot as anything to do with her had ever been.
We’d explored each other every night since that first one. No lights, but still.
I couldn’t get enough of her. And it wasn’t purely physical. For a long time, I’d thought I would never love anyone but Grandma—not really love them. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was absolutely in love with Bea Castillo, only I didn’t know how to convince her of it. More than that, I wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to love me. Putting up with me was one thing—loving me was a lot to ask of anyone.
“I just don’t think you should be alone tonight,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “I mean, we can go back to my place if you’d rather…”
“Mine’s good.” Mine was better than good, actually, because I had condoms there, and I was ninety-nine percent sure we could make use of them, given the change in our relationship over the last few days we were in New York. Plus, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Bea wouldn’t have any handy.
Her inexperience was both endearing and sexy as all hell.
I glanced in her direction when I pulled up to a stoplight. She bit her lower lip and nodded, once again proving how innocent she was. My house it was, then.
“We can look at the pictures together when we get there,” I said.
“The pictures? She sent them already?” Somehow, Bea’s voice had gone up an octave or so. She dug out her phone and powered it on. “I don’t have anything.”
“She sent them to me.”
“Let me see.”
“We’ll look together,” I insisted. “Once we get back to my condo.”
Bea pouted, but the light turned green so I couldn’t exactly whip out my phone and pull them up for her just now, anyway. I chuckled at her indignation.
When we went inside twenty minutes later, I took a quick look through the massive pile of mail that had accumulated while I’d been gone. Bills, junk, more bills, lots more junk, and a couple of packages at the bottom… I took the junk straight to the trash can in my kitchen and grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the fridge.
“Can we look at them now?” she called out from the living room.
I set my packages and bills on the counter for a moment. I could go through them later. “Impatient much?” I teased, but I knew exactly how anxious she was to see them. Hell, I was pretty anxious to see them, myself, because I had high hopes this would be exactly the impetus she needed to help her see herself the way I saw her. Granted, there was every possibility it could have the opposite effect, but I was choosing not to allow my thoughts to go there.
“Hmph,” she said.
“I’m coming,” I said, my arms laden with water and some snacks for us both, as well as the mail I intended to open. “We’ll look at them together.”
Her phone rang just as I joined her again on the couch. She glanced at the screen, and then her expression dropped.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, opening both of our water bottles and setting hers on the coffee table in front of her.
“I’m sorry. Have to take this. It’s my mother,” Bea grumbled.
“At this hour?”
“She knew when our flight was due.” But when she swiped her thumb across the screen and placed the phone at her ear, her tone immediately turned syrupy-sweet. “Hi, Mama.” For a long time, she just listened, her face dropping by degrees until it was nothing but a mask of annoyance—an expression I was all too familiar with, as she’d often sent that same look in my direction. And when she finally spoke, it was all in Spanish, so I didn’t understand a lick of it. But there was no hiding the agitation in her tone.
Five minutes later, she hung up and looked like she wanted to toss her phone through my wall.
“What was that all about?” I asked cautiously, tearing into the first bill and starting to sort them into piles.
“I missed the dress fitting Mama had arranged for.”
“And that’s bad because…?”
“Because Mama says it’s bad,” she bit off, pressing her eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” she said when she opened them again. “I shouldn’t be taking this out on you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not okay at all. Mama just—”
“You don’t get along with her?” I scanned another bill, but this one was just an invoice—the payment was set up to pay out of my bank account automatically—so I set it in a separate pile.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. She just wants to run my life for me. My family—they’re not like your grandmother.”
“No one’s like Grandma,” I readily agreed.
“No.” Bea’s sigh was palpable. “So any chance you’re busy on the eighteenth? Do you have a game, or better yet, a road trip?”
“Why do you want me gone?” I asked, unsure whether I should laugh or be concerned.
“Because if you’re gone, then I have an excellent excuse for why you can’t come with me to Paola’s quinceañera.”
“What’s a quinceañera again? I still don’t get it.”
“It’s like a Sweet Sixteen party, only she’s fifteen. It’s kind of like her Welcome to Womanhood party or something.”
“And you don’t want me there?” I tried not to sound hurt, but it definitely stung. Bea had been by my side through everything with Grandma, so I’d hoped we were moving into meet-the-family territory on her side of our relationship equation, too.
“I just don’t want you to have to face my family yet.”
“Or maybe you don’t want them to have to deal with me,” I bit off. Was she embarrassed to be with me? Sure seemed that way.
“No!” she insisted. “That’s not it. It’s just—my family—they’re a tough pill to swallow, even for me. And for you, they might be overwhelming.”
“I’m going to have to meet them eventually.”
Her brows shot up. “Are you?”
“Aren’t I?” I bit off. “Or maybe I’m just reading too much into the last week or so.”
“What do you—"
“I just thought that after you flew all the way across the country to be with me, maybe that meant you were ready to be my girlfriend. I thought that since you finally let me touch you, you were ready to be with me.”
“I am ready—”
“To be with me,” I cut in. “Not just sex. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?” she demanded.
“It’s about you not wanting to bring me around your family. It’s about you being embarrassed about me for some reason.”
“No! I’m not embarrassed about you. That’s not— I just—”
“I get it,” I said. “I’m not the kind of guy you want to bring home to meet the folks.”
“More like I’m not sure how you’ll respond to them.”
“Well, try me. Seems like a good way of finding out. At least to me.”
“But what if…”
“What if what?” I prodded.
Bea sighed. “You don’t understand. They’re not like your grandmother.”
“No one’s like Grandma.”
“But she’s the only family you’re used to.”
“Are you trying to tell me they embarrass you? It’s not me, but it’s them?”
“Maybe a bit of both?” she squeaked, almost apologetically. “They’ll be glad I’m finally bringing a man around, I suppose.”
“But not a man like me?”
“You’re not what they’d expect for me.”
“Not what they’d ex—”
“You’re not Hispanic,” she interrupted before I could get the question out, raising a brow pointedly. “Which doesn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t matter to them, but it does. And you’re younger than me, which again shouldn’t be a problem, but it will be. And to be honest, I think they’re convinced that I’m never going to get married or have kids, so I can be the one to take care of my parents in their old age or something. I’m the perpetually single one.”
“So maybe it’s time you show them who you really are. Or who you want to be.”
“I’ve tried. I mean, they didn’t like it at all when I had weight-loss surgery.”
“Why the hell would they be upset about you making a choice about your own body, something for your health?” I ground out. All of a sudden, I was starting to hate her family, and I’d never even met them. This wouldn’t bode well for whenever I did get to know them.
And if I was going to this quinceañera thing, that would apparently be very soon.
She turned apologetic eyes on me. “It’s something they talk about before you can have the surgery. I had to see a counselor about it. People treat you differently afterward.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning my family lost control over me in some ways, because when I was fat they knew they could force me into certain things because I didn’t have any other options, so now they’re trying to regain that control in other ways.”
“Well, maybe you just need to convince them they can’t control you at all,” I said.
“It’s not that easy. Not in a family like mine.”
All the more reason I supposed I needed to meet them.
“So when’s this keen señora thing again?”
“The eighteenth,” Bea said, almost hopefully.
I dug out my phone and glanced at the calendar. The eighteenth was coming up soon. “Looks like I’m all yours the whole day.” And I tapped in a reminder, just to be sure I didn’t forget and plan on anything else that day. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be letting her go to that thing alone. Not if her family was half as bad as she made it sound.
She groaned.
I winked.
“Aren’t you going to open that package?” she asked in a clear bid to change the subject.
I shrugged. “They’re probably just some adult coloring books I ordered. They can wait.”
“You ordered more?”
“Different kinds of them. It would’ve been nice to have them while we were gone, actually. Would’ve given me something to do while Grandma slept and you were working. Something other than playing games on my phone.”
“You had some stuff with you.”
“But these are better.”
“Better?” She arched a brow but didn’t press me. “Too bad they took so long arriving.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, grinning. “Now…how about we take a look at these proofs Mia sent me?”
“Can’t I look by myself first?”
“Nope. We took them together, so we’re going to see them together.” Because I didn’t know how much longer I could go without her letting me see her.
“TAKE OUT YOUR laptop,” Blake said. “I’ve got it open on my phone but we’ll be able to see them better on your monitor. They’ll be bigger.”
“I don’t know if bigger necessarily means better,” I muttered, unzipping the laptop sleeve and slipping the machine out.
“Sure it does. Just ask any Texan. Rachel Campbell will tell you. She’s always telling me and anyone who’ll listen how everything’s bigger and better in Texas.”
“Rachel is the tiniest woman I’ve ever come across.”
“Cadence Babcock is probably smaller.”
I furrowed my brow, thinking of the tiny blonde figure skater married to the younger of the two Babcock brothers on the team and comparing her to the redheaded pixie. “Not by much.”
“Okay, so maybe the people aren’t all bigger and better, but everything else is.”
I snorted. “I think they’re talking about the size of their state.”
“Whatever.” He rattled off his Wi-Fi password so I could log on, and then he forwarded Mia’s email to me so I could open the image gallery for us to see.
It seemed to take forever for the first image to load. Or maybe I was just impatient because I was sure these photos would prove my point, and Blake would realize his mistake, and this would all come crashing to an end.
But as soon as the first photo popped up on my screen, my breath caught in my throat. That couldn’t be me. Or if it was, Mia had to have Photoshopped the heck out of every tiny detail in the picture.
Because that woman in the picture was kind of hot.
The whole thing looked sexy as all get-out, especially the heat in Blake’s eyes in every single shot.
In a handful of them, I appeared shy—not a surprise. The whole experience had been uncomfortable for me because it had dragged me kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone. But as we scrolled through the gallery, my confidence during the shoot had visibly grown. By a third of the way through, I was laughing and leaning in toward Blake. By the midpoint, a definite sense of lust was visible in my eyes.
The thing that came as a true shock to my system, though, was the pure desire staring back at me in Blake’s expression—in all of them. Unless it was a trick of the camera, he was completely into me and what we’d been doing.
My tongue lodged itself in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow.
“You like them?” he asked, his voice thick and deep.
I nodded. “I think I do.” To my complete and utter shock.
But now I really had to wonder just how much editing Mia had already done, even though she’d said she wouldn’t be doing much until after we’d picked out the ones we wanted. Did I actually look like that?
“Good. Because they’re hot as hell. You’re hot as hell.” Blake leaned in and captured my lips in a determined kiss that made me forget my insecurities, at least for a bit. “So which ones should we have her finalize for us?” he asked, giving me another quick peck.
We spent the next twenty minutes poring over every image Mia had sent us. With each photo, Blake inched closer to me. Not that I minded in the slightest. His heat was intoxicating; his scent was addictive.
Finally, we finished going through the shots and sent Mia a message to let her know they were ready for her to finalize.
With his arm draped around my shoulders, hugging me to his side, Blake buried his nose in my hair. He took a deep whiff, then sighed. “After this, you think maybe you’ll be ready to let me see you soon?”
“Maybe?”
“So we can try it?”
“Dim lighting, at first?”
“I can compromise like that. I’m good at compromise. Grandma made sure of it.”
But could I follow through? I wanted to, but I just wasn’t sure what would happen once my clothes came off but the lights stayed on. Even just thinking about it had my pulse galloping at lightning speed.
“You going to stay with me tonight?” he murmured.
I nodded, tentativeness warring with desire.
He pressed a quick kiss to my temple and got up. “Give me ten minutes to get ready for you.”
“Get ready?” I stifled a nervous chuckle. Shouldn’t I be the one who might need a bit of time to prepare? I tried to remember when I’d last shaved my legs. Was it two days ago or three? I was probably stubbly.
“I just want to change the sheets. I’m not sure when I did it last…”
“Oh.” That was a bit of thoughtfulness I hadn’t expected from him. I nodded him on his way. But then I realized I should do something so I wasn’t sitting here getting more and more anxious by the moment, but I wasn’t sure what. Settling in for a bit of work didn’t seem like the brightest idea, so I shut down my laptop and set it aside.
The padded mailer was still sitting on the coffee table in front of me, though—the coloring books Blake had ordered. Surely that had to be what it was. I could open his package for him, get rid of the trash, and maybe have a look through the images just to get a better sense of what had struck his fancy now that he’d been doing these crafty things for a while. It might come in handy for me later—in case I wanted to get him a gift at some point down the line.
Random bumping sounds filtered into the living room from the direction of his bedroom. It shouldn’t take him too much longer to finish changing his sheets.
I tore open the mailer and took out the coloring books. The first one made me laugh out loud. It was called Swearing Words for Dirty Mouths and Dirtier Hands. That fit him to a T. I flipped through a few pages to get a sense for what was in the book—the images were frilly, flowery letters with cute animals surrounding them like bunnies, kittens, and puppies, and they spelled out words like cumbucket, dipshit, twatwaffle, douchecanoe, and thundercunt.
After almost snorting in laughter and turning another page, I closed that first book and set it aside, making a mental note to remind him not to bring anything like that to my classroom. I could already imagine the angry emails and phone calls I’d be getting from parents if their children went home saying things like fucktrumpet.
I switched that book to the back of the stack and brought the next one forward, and my tongue suddenly felt really thick.
Dirty Girls Doing Dirty Work was the title, and it had an image of an almost nude pinup type girl, wearing nothing but a tiny apron that barely covered her overly enhanced assets. Her impossibly long and curvy legs were spread shoulder-width apart, and she had a feather duster in one hand.
I opened the cover and found more of the same. The next one had an almost-nude sanitation worker riding on the back of a trash truck, her ridiculously large and buoyant breasts practically spilling out of her tiny uniform.
Every page I flipped to was more of the same.
I wanted to vomit.
Because this was what Blake was really attracted to. Not me. Maybe he could pretend he was into me, but I could never be what he was truly attracted to. He wanted a Barbie doll in human form, and that was something I wouldn’t want to be even if I had any control over it.
I’d only been fooling myself to think he could want me—no matter how hard he had tried to convince me otherwise. The photo shoot we’d done? That was probably nothing more than his attempt to get me as close to what he’d find in the pages of this book as he possibly could.
If that was his goal, it’d been an utter and complete failure. Maybe I looked better in reality than I could have believed about myself, but I would never look like this. Not even if I could afford plastic surgery to tighten things up a bit, and that wasn’t ever going to happen.
I dropped the coloring books on his coffee table and started gathering up my things, debating how long it would take to get an Uber to come and pick me up at this hour. That would be easier than trying to take my suitcases with me on the Max. And now that I’d thought through my options, I took out my phone and opened the Uber app so I could start the process of arranging a ride.
“What are you doing?” Blake asked, his impossibly perfect body filling the doorway and making me want to be with him again even as I wanted to punch him in the nose. He must have stripped down to his briefs while he was changing his sheets. Perfect, glorious muscle filled my eyes, making me want to lick him to see if he tasted as good as he looked.
Bad line of thinking. This wouldn’t help.
Well, good. If he was in his underwear, he wouldn’t come chasing after me when I left.
“I’m going home,” I bit off, but my voice wobbled. I silently cursed myself for allowing him to see just how upset I was. He didn’t need to have that kind of power over me.
“But I thought we—”
“But nothing, Blake.” I slammed my laptop back into the outer pocket of my suitcase—probably harder than I should have—and zipped all the pockets.
The hurt in his eyes nearly killed my resolve.
Nearly. But not quite.
“What did I do wrong this time?” he demanded.
“Nothing. This is all me.”
“If you’re not ready—”
“I’m not,” I cut in. “That’s it. And the truth is, I’ll probably never be ready.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I shouldn’t say probably. I’ll never be ready. Okay? This can’t happen. I need to get home to Neville and Luna.”
“But—"
My Uber app dinged. I glanced down at the screen of my phone. A driver had accepted the fare and was pulling in, ready to pick me up. “I’ve got to go,” I said.
Then I grabbed the handle of my suitcase, tossed the strap of my purse over my shoulder, and headed out his front door.
Only once my hand was on the door to the Uber driver’s car did I allow the first tear to fall.