Chapter 12
Meeting the family had Charlie sweating through his shirt. It didn’t help that it was ninety-plus degrees. Once Laura had told her parents about the wedding, they’d decided that they needed to throw a reception. Laura had talked them down from their country club to her cousins’ parents’ house.
He’d met most of the Hernandez family at the wedding. The Delgados—other than Laura—hadn’t paid anyone else attention. Where the Hernandezes were loud and outspoken, the Delgados seemed much more reserved.
“Are you sure they don’t already hate me?” He looked over at his wife, who seemed incredibly tense. Like, more than usual.
“They don’t even really like me.” She squared her shoulders, and he gave into the urge to put his hand on her back in a gesture meant to reassure her. She accepted his touch, and it felt like a victory. “They’re too busy being miserable to hate anyone.”
Laura had tried to explain her odd relationship with her family over dinner the other night. After the magazine had published the news about them two weeks ago, it had been a lot easier to convince her to spend time with him.
Almost every night that she didn’t rehearse through the dinner hour, she came over to Charlie’s house. He’d found out what she could eat and made sure he had it on hand, so he could feed her and fuck her most nights.
It hadn’t taken long, but he’d grown addicted to this woman. He couldn’t touch her enough. She was in the last stages of rehearsal before the ballet season began, so her body was exhausted. He woke up in the middle of the night wanting her, but had schooled himself into letting her sleep.
And she’d started opening up to him, too. She smiled more, gave him more of her story. Every tidbit she gave him—about rehearsal, her family, anything at all—made him want her more. The way she’d started to give him her touch and lay down some of the shit she threw up to keep other people away, made him feel like they had a chance of making this work.
Until morning, when he woke her up by kissing and biting the back of her neck, all along her spine. He liked to feel her come back from sleep in his arms. And it never took long for her to start writhing.
She’d made herself comfortable and started wearing his T-shirts to bed. She was so long and tall that they barely covered her ass. Most mornings, he couldn’t even wait to get her naked before getting inside her.
If he couldn’t convince her to stay married to him, he would have to burn his bed. Maybe demolish the entire house. Two weeks of her there, and he couldn’t imagine living there without her soap smells in his bathroom, her pre-portioned meals in his refrigerator. The sounds she made when she was coming around his cock.
Thinking about Laura coming apart was not the way to meet her parents. They would definitely hate him if he walked in to his rush-job wedding reception with a hard-on.
She wrapped an arm around his waist. Over the past two weeks, the sex had gotten even better, as he’d gotten to know every nook and cranny of his wife’s filthy mind. But she’d gotten more affectionate with him, easy. He didn’t know if she realized it, but she’d started to reach out to him. And it felt amazing. He felt needed, like he belonged.
When the door opened, Molly Hernandez nearly ripped Laura out of his arms.
“You are the last one of your siblings I would have expected to elope.” When she was done hugging Laura, she grabbed Charlie’s hand and dragged him into the house. “You’ve got a good one here, though, you know?”
Laura looked up at him, and he thought for a second it was love in her gaze. “I do know he’s good. That’s why I had to snap him up, right away.”
“Seems risky not even getting a taste of the goods first.” Molly’s South Boston accent was thick and laced with sarcasm. Charlie’s skin heated. “Your parents and brothers are out back. Joaquin is scowling at the paella his sous chef made, and Max is next to the bar, scowling into a whisky as usual. I don’t think your mother’s taken more than one Xanax, but the day’s still young.”
Laura’s eyes widened and she grabbed onto his arm. He leaned over and whispered so that Molly wouldn’t hear. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”
* * * *
Alejandro Delgado had the look of an El Greco painting about him. Long in the face, dour, very pale. Laura got her long, lean figure from him. And the color of his eyes was similar, but his gaze lacked the light and fire of his daughter’s. Laura’s mother, Sylvie Hernandez-Delgado, had once been beautiful. But she had the look of someone who wasn’t there.
Neither of them had gone to Carla and Jonah’s wedding. Apparently, the long-distance travel would have been terrible for Sylvie’s “nerves.”
Meeting them made him want to tackle his wife and run away. Running away from family had worked out to his advantage, and maybe they could make it a Delgado-Laughlin family tradition.
Instead, he shook hands with Alejandro and kissed the back of Sylvie’s. A ghost of a smile crossed her face, which felt something like victory.
When she kissed both of her mother’s cheeks and embraced her father, Laura had that same pained look she got when she thought no one was looking after rehearsal. Charlie wrapped his arm around her shoulders while they all stared at each other in awkward silence.
After a scan of the backyard, he spotted both of her brothers. Joaquin, an imposing bearded man, was next to the buffet table, and he spotted Max at the bar, just like Molly had told them. He had met Max and Joaquin Delgado at the wedding. They were both kind of quiet and surly. Growing up in this family, he could see why. Suddenly, he was filled with gratitude that Laura had found dance and gotten out of her house as a teenager. Even though dancing hurt now, back then it must have saved her.
“You’re late.” Laura’s mother’s voice was sing-songy and she trailed off at the end of her sentence. More silence until she looked down at Laura’s left hand. “And, where’s your ring?”
Charlie’s face heated again.
“Reality television is not that lucrative.” Alejandro’s misguided statement was like a punch to the gut, reminding him about how he always felt around his father.
He squeezed Laura’s shoulder when he felt her startle against him. Her father’s oblique insults were sort of like gunshots.
“Actually, we just haven’t had a chance to pick one out yet.” He’d already bought a ring for his wife, but he was waiting to give it to her for another week. He planned to surprise her with the ruby and diamond ring on opening night of Carmen. Even if she divorced him, as planned, he wanted to give her something. He wanted her to wear his ring for as long as he could keep it on her finger. “She’s been so busy with rehearsals. I get to watch sometimes because my company sponsored the show, and she’s simply stunning in it.”
“She’s very old to be a ballerina.” Charlie had never hit a woman, but he wanted to slap Laura’s mother. Still, he kept his hand firmly rooted on Laura’s shoulder. Even though she was clearly on something, she knew exactly where her daughter’s vulnerabilities were and knew how to stick the knife in but good. “It’s good that you have money to take care of her.”
“I have savings.” Laura turned to her father. “And, thanks to all your hard work, I have a trust fund.”
“And now she has me.” Charlie ignored how Laura’s body recoiled at that remark. She might not like the fact that she could depend on him, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her asshole of a father think that Laura was going to end up depending on him.
He had to get his wife away from her parents. The need to protect her overwhelmed his normally good manners, and he steered her toward the bar. Both of her brothers must have been looking out for Laura surreptitiously because they both appeared next to her.
Max had a glass of white wine poured for her. “Drink.”
Laura took it, and swallowed down a gulp. “Thanks.”
She smiled up at her brother. Max’s beard-covered mouth tipped up at the edges. “Only way to deal with the both of them.”
“Why did you even invite them?” Joaquin nudged Laura’s shoulder. “He doesn’t know how to be anything else but an asshole.”
Anger flipped around in Charlie’s stomach on Laura’s behalf. She didn’t deserve to get shit from her brothers just for wanting her parents to celebrate their marriage. As though she sensed him growing angry, she touched him lightly on the arm.
“He doesn’t.”
She looked down, and Charlie wanted to tip her chin up and see whether she was about to cry. If she were about to cry, he’d have her out of here so fast heads would blow off. “I just didn’t want her to be left out.”
“You’re more tenderhearted than me,” Max said.
Joaquin shook his head. “She didn’t do a damn thing to stand up for me when he got going.”
Laura reached out for her brother. “She couldn’t. She was too—”
“I know, but that’s not an excuse I accept.” Joaquin’s words were harsh, and Charlie knew that there was something behind them.
Listening in to them made him realize that as much as Laura had opened up to him, it wasn’t enough to really know her.
* * * *
Laura couldn’t breathe out in the backyard. The twinkly lights, the music, the free-flowing champagne were all so lovely. But it was all a big lie.
She couldn’t explain why she hated Charlie standing up to her parents so much. Not even to herself. And having him hear her brothers talking about them was almost worse. So, after Carla had made a bawdy toast, scandalizing Laura’s parents and delighting Lola and the Hernandez clan, Laura found the first-floor powder room and locked herself in.
She just needed a minute. A minute stretched to maybe fifteen after she sat on the closed toilet seat. She’d never forget how safe and secure she’d felt with Charlie’s arm tight around her. He’d told her parents that he was going to buy her a ring, and she wanted that more than anything.
She wanted their marriage to be real.
He wasn’t the man she’d thought he was—feckless, irresponsible, full of empty promises and witty flirtation. Looking at him next to her father made everything he’d come to mean to her feel so real that it threatened to pull her under.
She could not fall in love with her husband.
Falling in lust with him had been bad enough. Letting herself go to him every night was even worse. Each morning, after she got in her car to drive to class, she promised herself that this would be the last night. She’d push him off when he asked if she was going to be out for dinner. But, when his text came in at around six thirty, never after six forty-five, she told him she was coming to him.
The two nights she’d had rehearsals that ran until eleven and gone to the condo she now apparently shared with both of her grandparents, she’d barely slept. Not until she’d given in and dug out Charlie’s T-shirt from her bag. She needed his smell against her skin to go to sleep.
All of that, plus him standing up for her, brought a knot of tears from her chest, and she leaned over and sobbed.
She must have been way too loud because someone knocked on the door.
“Mija, it’s Lola.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
Laura stood up and yanked the door open. When Lola saw her tear-streaked face, she closed the door behind her. “What happened?”
She’d enjoyed having her grandmother around for the past few months—until Lola had interfered and ruined her life. And seeing the contrast between her mother and her mother’s mother tonight set of a spark of rage inside Laura’s chest. Maybe none of this would have happened if Lola hadn’t abandoned her family years ago. Coming back into their lives now was too little, too late.
“Go. Away.” That’s all her grandmother was good at, anyway. She’d certainly had an easy enough time leaving her mother. And her grandfather. Her poor abuelo, who she was now stringing along. And now she’d come here, and made her feel things. Laura had survived by never allowing herself to feel. Now, she’d been pushed into falling in love, when she’d never intended to. “Go back to Havana.”
Lola’s gaze darkened and she seemed to get a few inches taller. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’ve messed everything up by coming back.”
“Lo siento, mi amor.”
“It’s too late for you to be my grandmother. I don’t need you anymore.” She only needed herself—not her grandmother, definitely not Charlie. That was the only way.
Lola wiped at the skin under Laura’s eyes. Her mascara must have run. Even though she couldn’t let herself trust it now, she’d needed this her whole life. Maybe if Lola hadn’t stayed in Cuba, everything would have been different. Maybe her mother would have grown a backbone like Lola’s. Maybe she wouldn’t have married her father at all.
“I’m so sorry, sweet girl.”
Tears threatened again. “I wish—”
“What do you wish?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re crying in the bathroom at your wedding reception. It’s something.” Lola let her go, and pointed at the closed toilet seat. “Sit.”
Laura obeyed because her grandmother’s tone brooked no objections, and Lola hefted her handbag onto the counter and wetted a washcloth.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this. I wasn’t going to tell anyone this. Not even a priest.” She wiped down Laura’s face. It was soothing, and she couldn’t help but accept her grandmother’s kindness. “But I had my reasons for not moving here. They weren’t good reasons, but they existed. I told myself that I wasn’t going to explain why I’d hurt all of you. That I would just try to make it up to you.”
“Why?”
“Because, even after what he did, I did not want to hurt or embarrass your abuelo.”
Laura got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, as though her body knew she’d been wrong about Lola before her mind did.
“But now that I see how much damage I did—” Lola put down the cloth and rooted around in her purse until she pulled out a cosmetics bag. “Not just to your mother. But to you and your brothers. . .”
“We’re all okay.” It was a lie, but she wanted to make things okay for her grandmother. Not because she had any reason other than her intuition that Lola wasn’t completely at fault for her fucked up family.
“Your grandfather and I had a great deal of passion for one another.”
Her mind flashed to the image of her grandparents making out on the couch like teenagers and she cringed. “Believe me, I’m aware.”
That got a sharp bark of laughter out of her grandmother. “We should not have gotten married. I’m glad we did, because none of you would be here if we hadn’t. But, I wanted to be free, and he wanted a wife who would do his bidding.”
“Sounds like some other people we know.”
“Well, your mother and I never had very much in common. She was so sure that I was the worst wife ever.” Lola smoothed some cream blush across Laura’s cheeks—she’d become a cosmetics junkie since moving to the United States. “And, really, I just had interests other than housekeeping and talking to small children.”
“She used to tell us that we were lucky that she was around so much.” Laura closed her eyes so her grandmother could sweep on a light coating of eyeshadow. “I always wished that she had more to do.”
“Your grandfather wasn’t happy with me, and he found someone else.” Laura blinked open her eyes, and saw the sorrow etched across her grandmother’s face. “I loved him so much, and I became so furious that I refused to listen to him say another word to me.”
“So, you didn’t leave when he found the opportunity to?”
“He wanted to come here to be with her.”
“That bastard.” She felt nauseous. Her sweet, little old grandfather was a filthy philanderer. Her grandmother’s behavior all those years ago made sense, and Laura felt guilty for lashing out a few moments ago. “You certainly seem to be ready to talk to him now.”
“It’s been thirty-five years.” Lola shrugged, and her lips curled. “That woman is dead.”
“So?” If Charlie ever cheated on her, she would never be able to look at him without thoughts of murder again. Shit. That had happened fast. “Aren’t you still angry with him?”
“Of course I am, but love is more complicated than that.”
Laura shook her head, hoping to dislodge thoughts she didn’t want to have. She wouldn’t say she was in love—not out loud—but having a relationship was somehow a lot more complex than having a sham marriage or a quickie annulment had been.
“You’ve forgiven him then?”
Her grandmother stroked the side of her face gently. It was patronizing, but the woman was old. She’d earned the right to be patronizing. “It’s been a long time. Neither of us have forever to be used on holding grudges. I’ve just found that it’s much more pleasurable for me to let things go and enjoy what we have.”
It all sounded so simple. Let go. Enjoy what was right in front of her.
“I can’t do that with Charlie.” Laura sighed and stood. “We have the rest of our lives to plan for, and I don’t want to promise him things I can’t give him.”
“Who says you can’t give him what he wants?”
“I can’t just quit and let him protect me. I have to fight my own battles. Live my own life.”
“You’re afraid of becoming like your mother?”
Yes.
“It’s not that. We’re just too different. We don’t make sense.”
“Some of the best things in life don’t make sense.”
“Like affairs with one’s ex-husband?” Laura wanted to get out of the room. The tiny room was getting stuffy with two people and major life decisions all crammed in there together.
“That’s not what I meant.” Lola put her hand on Laura’s shoulder, making it known that she would stay right there until she’d dispensed all the grandmotherly wisdom that she could tolerate. “He’s not asking you to give anything up. The way he looks at you is rare, and precious. The only thing you’ll be giving up if you end things with him is that. And I want you to have that.”
“I can’t dance for much longer.” She didn’t know why she’d confessed now. Or to her semi-estranged grandmother. But those words had been floating around in her brain, her muscles, and on her heart for so long that they were going to leak out sooner or later. “I have to know what I’m going to do next before I commit to anything. And Charlie wants all of me. Right now. It’s scary.”
Lola pressed one her of fingers against Laura’s breast bone. “All that he wants is in here. You’ll figure the rest out.”
“But didn’t you hear me?” The organ in her chest ached and shifted when Charlie was near her, when he took care of her like she meant something more to him. It was an unfamiliar feeling and she wanted to bottle it up and push it away all at the same time. “I’m afraid.”
“That’s the reason to do it, mi amor.” She turned and open the bathroom door. “Love is the only reason to do anything in this life.”