Chapter 8
Ten minutes later, Cruz followed Rosie through a stretch of trees. It was just them, and he didn’t even try not to stare at her sweet little ass. Weeds and bushes grew into the narrow shaded trail that she navigated as birds chattered overhead.
“This leads to the famous Potato Creek?” he asked.
“That’s right.” She pushed a low-hanging branch out of her way and held it for him. “The one and only.”
Gurgling reached his ears as the woods thickened, then abruptly ended. They stood on a raised bank at the edge of the creek, which looked more like a river to him, but what did he know about creeks versus rivers. Its current dashed and swirled around smooth gray rocks. On the opposite side, chipmunks darted back and forth.
“Here we are.” She set her hands on her hips. “Shane and I used to come here all the time when we were little.”
“Did you catch anything?”
“Sure, lots of fish. Bass, bluegill.” She walked to the edge and peered down. “If we caught a big enough one, our grandpa would clean it and we’d have it for dinner.”
“That’s cool.” Another slice of Sundown life that was night and day to his own upbringing.
“I don’t clean fish, so if we catch any bass today, we’ll just admire them and toss ‘em back. Ready?”
“Yep.”
Taking the tackle box he’d carried, she set it down to open it, revealing a slew of unfamiliar items. She removed a giant metal spike with a hole at the top.
“That looks lethal.”
“Oh this?” She handed the spike to him. “It’s just a holder. It’ll make things easier if the fish are taking forever to bite. Could you stick this in the dirt? Just in case we need it.”
“Sure.” He shoved the spike into the soft earth.
Next she opened the can of live worms they’d purchased at Marvin’s. She deftly plucked a worm from the container and stuck it on the hook. “This is how you do it. Easy as pie. You can do the next one.”
He just grinned, thinking how the girls he’d grown up with would probably never ever touch a worm. This town may as well be in a different country.
“Now, you need to cast it farther than you think. It doesn’t weigh much. Like this.” She drew her arm back. “Way back. See how far I’m going?”
Her body was so damn tempting. “Yeah, I see.” He couldn’t keep the huskiness out of his voice as he took in her small waist and pert breasts, back to her slender arm that stretched into a perfect pose.
She blinked, frozen under the stare he didn’t avert. A flush crept up her throat and into her cheeks. “Okay, so…” She cleared her throat. “You, um, go forward. Like this.” With a swift toss, the line sailed out into the middle of the current.
“You make it look easy,” he said.
“Not too bad…” She started reeling the line in. “For havin’ a distraction.”
“Sorry.”
“Really?” An arched brow as she turned to him.
Hell. They were past hiding certain things. “No.”
“Didn’t think so,” she murmured, getting the line out of the water. With a challenge in her smile, she handed the pole to him. “Your turn.”
“Okay. Pressure’s on.” He took the pole from her and set his legs the same way she had.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Your feet are right.”
“Now for the tricky part.” He brought his arm back. Not the same way she had.
“No.” She stepped close to his right side. “Like this.” She grasped his wrist with one hand and pushed on his bicep with the other.
Her touch was soft yet firm and sent arrows of heat to his groin. And shit, she was only touching his arm. What would her hands feel like if she explored the rest of his body?
“Relax.” Her southern drawl was too near his ear for him to think. “I can’t even move you. Your arm’s like a tree.”
He grunted and let her move his arm. Not that he would remember how it was supposed to be positioned.
“There.” Her words were sparks dropping on his skin. “Got it?”
He turned to her. She stood so close, the breeze picked up a lock of her hair and blew it across his mouth. “Ooops, sorry.” She let out a nervous laugh and went to grab it.
Swiftly, he reached across with his left hand and gripped hers, stopping her movement. He didn’t know how much more of her gentle touch he could take without grabbing her and devouring her sexy mouth. Being alone out here with her was both a bad idea and an excellent one that were mixing into a storm he didn’t want to walk out of.
But how did she feel? Sure, her sweet, open nature could be taken as flirty. But he wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming she returned his heated thoughts. And he would never take someone’s choices away from them, never take advantage of another. Especially not someone who’d discovered the truth about him and decided not to judge.
Rosie sucked in a breath as his hand fully encircled her tiny wrist. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Shh.” He moved her hand ever so slightly to the side. “It’s okay.” He released her, dragging his finger across hers for one last greedy brush of contact, and forced himself to take a step back. The feather-soft tendril of her hair disengaged from his skin. “I think I need to see you do it again.”
Her blues eyes remained locked on his and she lowered her hand slowly, as if she didn’t really want to move it at all. “Um, okay.” Her breaths forced out in short bursts. “You want to see me cast the line again?”
He nodded.
“’Kay.” Her voice rasped over the syllable. “Um…you have the pole.”
He clenched his teeth, holding in a laugh and a groan at her words. A hundred dirty responses barreled through his mind. But he waited, on a crazy edge of arousal and amusement, for her to realize what she said. Three, two, one—
She turned scarlet and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god. I did not just say that.”
It would’ve been completely funny—if he wasn’t getting more turned on by the minute. Every word from her mouth, every expression that crossed her face snared him deeper. He soaked up all the cute mortification that rolled off her in waves. “I think you did.”
“Oh my god. That’s where my mind went. Just great.” She covered her eyes, then peeked through her fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Hell, his mind was already way past that.
She shoved her hair away from her face. “Okay. I’m gonna try and forget I said that, like a total pervert.” She cleared her throat. “Now. Give me.” She looked pointedly at the fishing pole he still held. “That.”
He handed it over.
With quick, practiced ease, she cast the line into the creek. “All right, let’s just let that set for a spell.” She rested the pole handle in the holder that he’d stuck into the ground.
Damn. He couldn’t resist. “You talk all country-like when you’re flustered.”
She pressed her lips into a line, staying silent.
“I like it.” He went on.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a total farm girl hick,” she muttered, with zero drawl.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a big-city fast-talking asshole.”
“I don’t! Of course not.” She frowned “Stereotypes suck. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No worries. I was teasing you on purpose.” He peered up at a blue dragonfly that zoomed over her head.
“Cruz Zaffino, you got me all riled up and I don’t feel like fishing. “
“No?” Those hundred thoughts returned in a wave. He was up for anything she had in mind, especially after her double entendre. “What do you want to do?”
“Just talk?” The slightest hesitation in her voice, as if he’d say no.
And a no to her would never happen. “We can do that.” He gestured to the soft grass. “Sit with me?”
“Sure.” She sat and he lowered himself down next to her.
He glanced at her toned arms, hugging her knees to her chest as she looked out at the water. “So, what do you want to know that the internet didn’t already tell you?”
“Well…I hope you don’t mind me askin’…” She fiddled with a shoelace, twisting it back and forth between her thumb and first finger. “It’s just…I don’t understand how one person’s words can put you behind bars. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be innocent until proven guilty?” She rested her head on her knee and gazed at him. “How does that happen?”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and watched the wind lift a tendril of her hair. It stayed there, buoyed for a second, while the reality of his past slammed him hard. How to even explain the mess that happened ten years ago? But his case was closed. Over. Done. He had nothing to hide. She may as well hear it from him. “I was at the scene. It was a gang initiation gone wrong.”
Her lips parted. “Who…who was getting initiated?”
“Me.” It was a simple fact, but why did it feel like an admission of guilt around her? Because you know what your intent was.
A hundred questions flickered in her eyes. Of course they would. That life was as far from her own as life on another planet. But he sure as hell wasn’t innocent, and she deserved to know that.
“A man was targeted,” he began. “He was from a gang called Los Reyes. They’re rivals of the one I wanted to join, which was the South Side Cobras.” He paused, because those words rolling off his tongue here at Little Potato Creek sounded way beyond odd. But it was his life story, and Rosie had already learned the online version. He only hoped she wasn’t horrified by the flip side of things.
“The Reyes man had interfered in a Cobra drug deal. Two Cobra men came with me to make sure I carried out the job.” He studied her expression, searching for any signs of revulsion at what he was implying. But all he found were those big eyes, locked on him with a mix of compassion and openness. Damn…
He took a breath. “We chased the guy into an alley. There were no fire escapes. Maybe he thought there was a way out the other side, I don’t know. He was trapped. Cornered. One of my guys told me to shoot.” He paused as images of that night flashed back, rapid-fire, through his mind. Rusty bars over sooty windows. Cracked sidewalks beneath his cheek as he was forced to the ground and handcuffed, a cop’s knee in his back. “I froze.”
Rosie let out a shuddering breath.
“The guy who told me to shoot—Arturo—he got pissed when I didn’t do it fast enough.” Cruz ran a hand over his hair. “I had never killed anyone. I couldn’t do it. Arturo said if I wasn’t going to then he was. He grabbed my gun and started shooting. Juanito, the other guy with us, started shooting too. And then the Reyes guy started. In all the gunfire, the Reyes man got killed.”
“But…” She straightened and shifted to face him. “You didn’t do it.”
“No. Then the cops showed up. No surprise because they patrol those neighborhoods a lot, trying to stop the violence.” He shook his head at the irony. Adding police hadn’t lessened the gun violence. “So we all ran. But they caught me and Juanito. Arturo got away.”
A tiny frown formed between her brows.
“Johnny Crazy Legs—that’s Juanito—was mad. It was him and me, and he said I did it.”
“But that wasn’t true. How could they believe him?”
“There was a dead man, and me and Johnny standing there. Arturo’s fingerprints and mine were both on my gun. Johnny’s weapon was different. They arrested both of us, took our guns. Forensic experts could tell both weapons had been fired. But my bullets matched what killed the guy. It was Johnny’s word against mine.”
“That’s horrible,” she whispered.
Not as horrible as what I was supposed to do. But he let her declaration hang in the air. “Our justice system isn’t perfect. And I was never initiated.”
“But you took the fall.”
“I knew Arturo really did it. But my jail sentence was better than the alternative. Ratting out any of the Cobras would’ve meant death. Slow and painful, for me. And maybe for my sister and mom as well. It was a lose-lose situation.”
“That’s so awful, I don’t even have words for it.” Anger tinged the sad edge in her voice.
He looked over at the bubbling creek, the towering trees on both banks, and breathed the country air. The contrast of then and now had never been more apparent and yet both existed closely together, like they couldn’t truly separate. When he’d first been incarcerated, he’d echoed her angry words. “Though after a few years, something changed.”
“What?”
“I saw so many men come in. Hopeless, angry, dropouts. Thought they’d rise to the top of a gang and have a steady stream of drug money and women. But all they got was jail time. More felonies added to their records. Some got released and came back, while I was still in.”
Her eyes widened.
“It’s a vicious cycle. And I realized that would have been my life too. Once you’re in one of those gangs, you’re in forever. And after seeing so many men in that situation, having no future…I realized I didn’t want that.” He met her open, sincere expression. “This probably sounds like fucked up logic, but prison kept me from committing more crimes. It made me see the real side of gang life. I ah…” He shook his head. “This is gonna sound lame, but I dodged a bullet.”
“Cruz, what you’ve gone through…” The sweetest compassion shone in her face. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know what to say that I haven’t already said.”
“No need to say anything. I know that’s probably more than you expected to hear.”
“I asked.” She swallowed. “I’m glad you told me. And I’m glad you’re here in Sundown.”
“Me too.” He gave a half smile at her admission, because her mind had to be reeling. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Actually, yeah.” Her gaze traveled his arms, stopping at his right forearm. “What does that mean?”
Sobrevivir. The word covered his skin from elbow to wrist. The font was thick black script, with the ends of the letters swirling and curling above and below, fading into thin wisps of ink. “It means survive.”
“Oh,” she murmured, appreciation in her voice. “I love that. So much packed into one word.” She tilted her head and her lips moved as she mouthed the four syllables. “Why is it in Spanish? It’s Spanish, right?”
He nodded. “My mom is Mexican.”
“And Zaffino is…”
“Italian, from my dad. But he took off after my sister was born. He’s not part of our lives.”
“I’m sorry.” She winced. “I’ve asked all the wrong questions today. I’ll stop.”
“It’s okay.” As long as she could handle his truths, he’d share them.
“Thanks for telling me all that. I get that you might not want to talk about it and I get that it’s not easy.” The breeze picked up the ends of her hair and played with them, sending a wave of a fruity shampoo scent his way.
He breathed her in, sweetness and a hint of shyness wrapped in sexy honey blond waves. “I’ll be straight with you. There might be things that I’m not proud of, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to hear them.”
“Ditto on the not proud stuff.” Her voice was a barely-there whisper that fired his curiosity.
Hell, what did she have haunting her? What was she not proud of? From her outward, sunny self, he couldn’t imagine what would make those shadows flicker across her face. But lord help him, he planned to find out.