by Bethany-Kris
Funny how that worked.
“You look sad,” she whispered.
“Defeated, I think.”
“Well, I don’t like this look on you, so stop it.”
Andino smiled a bit, and chuckled. Haven patted his cheek with a wink, and then dropped her hand back into his lap. For a long while, the two were quiet as they watched a couple of joggers pass them by in full gear.
At least, it wasn’t snowing today.
Andino’s thick, wool coat kept him warm from the mid-January air. Haven, on the other hand, didn’t look bothered by the cold in her sweater and yoga pants. It was comfortable enough that she didn’t even have gloves on, but at least she threw on a hat.
“I think what they say about me is right,” Andino murmured after a while.
Haven glanced over at him with a little knot between her brows. “Who, and what do they say?”
“My family. I think they’re right—my attention is not where it needs to be because I’ve been too busy elsewhere, and it’s showing. I let things slip. I fucked up.”
“Oh.” Then, quieter, Haven asked, “Do you mean me when you say your attention is elsewhere?”
He really didn’t want to answer that.
Because yes, that’s what he meant.
Haven nodded when he said nothing.
Andino needed her to know, though … “That doesn’t mean I want to change what I’m doing—what we’re doing, Haven. It just means I need to get my shit straightened out. Especially now … for my cousin, and whatnot.”
“Your cousin?”
“Yeah, John. You’d like him. He’s quiet, and does his own thing. He’s got some issues, but they don’t make him who he is; they’re just one part of him. He’s uh, going through some shit, and usually I keep an eye on him to keep him out of trouble. He got mixed up with a woman—Siena Calabrese—who comes from a family similar to mine. The difference is they’re a bunch of snakes; bad people in general. So, he found trouble anyway. I haven’t been looking out for him well lately. I figured he’d be okay since he was doing well, anyway. I’m supposed to be the one who takes care of him, you know. That’s my job, and I fucked it up.”
His unofficial job.
No one actually said he had to do it.
He just did.
“Andino,” Haven said softly.
He glanced over to find her looking at him in that way of hers—all silent, contemplative, and yet caring. Even when they were still up in the air, and not-supposed-to-be … even when they were confusing, and trying to deal with all the things he’d never told her, but probably should have … she still gave a shit about him.
It stunned him.
All over.
“You have to take care of you, too,” Haven said. “You have to look out for you, too.”
“Sure.”
“But do you really know that, though?”
Andino shrugged. “I have to look out for me, I know.”
“Yeah.”
“And John, too.”
Haven laughed lightly. “I mean, if you have to.”
“Nobody else does. Not the way he needs.”
“But what about you?”
Andino met Haven’s stare.
Didn’t she know?
He was coming to learn …
“I think that’s supposed to be you, Haven,” he murmured.
It was the rest of the world that thought differently.
“Doesn’t that …”
“It terrifies me, yeah.”
Haven nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
Andino knocked on the door of the small house in Queens, and shoved his hands in his pockets before taking a step back. He had all of one goal in coming here—to John’s place—and that was to start righting some of this shit he’d let slide. He needed to get back in the right place with business and the family before too many messes piled up on him. There, he’d be entirely fucked. Right now, he had a chance to fix some of it.
Hopefully.
He was starting with John.
That seemed like the best route.
As for Haven and his family … well, Andino’s best bet for the moment was to keep Haven’s presence as quiet as possible, and then deal with it when he no longer had a choice. Somehow. He was still trying to figure that bit out.
John first, though.
He intended to seem as least threatening as possible to John because if Andino’s thoughts were correct on his cousin’s current mental state, and John was already slipping off the edge of mania … the slightest idea of provocation from Andino could send his cousin into a bad place. It wasn’t even John’s fault—it was just how his mania manifested.
It took far too long for John to even come and answer the door, and he didn’t do it with any kind of grace or politeness, either. No, he swung the door open with a glare, and a sharp, “What in the fuck do you want?”
Andino kept his loose posture, and his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Thought we could talk, cousin.”
John’s gaze narrowed. “I would rather chew on glass, actually.”
“Can I come in?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Andino sighed, and glanced away from his cousin. “Come on, man, let me in. Let’s talk. You’ve got some things wrong, and I want to correct them.”
John barked out a harsh, bitter laugh. “There’s nothing to talk about, Andino. And really, now you want to fucking talk? Because lately, you’ve been just about everywhere but anywhere I fucking am, man. And that’s fine—keep doing that.”
“John—”
His cousin took one step out of the house, and forced Andino to walk down the steps. “No, you don’t get to say fuck all to me right now, Andino. You sold me out to the family like a fucking piece of shit. You set me up with Siena the one time—acted like it was fucking cool, and then what did you do? Ran to Dante with the info like the good little underboss you are. Always following the rules. That’s you. No worries; it’s just business, right? That’s all you’re about. The fucking business.”
“That’s bullshit,” Andino snapped back.
He knew better than to move forward.
He knew not to provoke John like this.
Knew how bad it could be.
Still, Andino moved back up those stairs and never took his gaze off his cousin’s all the while. He got close to John—too close, likely—and crowded him on the steps. He made sure his cousin was looking him right in the face, and not going to move the next time he spoke.
“You have no idea of the shit I am trying to handle, John,” Andino said, pushing a clenched fist against his cousin’s chest, “and that’s fine. I don’t expect you to know, man, but there’s one thing you know better than to fucking forget—that’s us. You and me; ride or die. I take care of you, and you do the same for me. No matter what. You thought this was different? You thought I sold you out?”
“You think I don’t know?” John asked. “You still don’t want to talk about her, do you? Haven?”
Andino stiffened.
His cousin had heard about Haven’s involvement with Andino through the grapevine, not to mention everybody else’s opinions regarding her and him.
John nodded, and sneered. “Is that what it is, then—you’re trying to keep attention off you, and the shit you’re trying to pull when they’re not looking, so you decided to throw me under the bus by selling me out?”
What the fuck?
This was not John.
Not a sensible John, anyway.
This was John finding problems in every little detail. This was his cousin being paranoid and pissed and wrong. This was John stepping into mania, and unable to see reason or reality. And yet, usually, even in his worst moments, John allowed Andino in. He let him talk, or help.
Not this time, it seemed.
Coming here had been a mistake; Andino was sure of it.
Still, he thought he could try.
“When have I ever sold you out
to them be—”
“Last week,” John interjected. “You sold me out last week when they called me in for that meeting. And you can color it up or justify it with whatever bullshit you want to, but in the end, it’s still going to mean the same thing to me. Fuck you, Andino.”
Andino didn’t even have time to react before John’s hands stuck out, and hit him hard against his chest. All it took was one good shove that Andino wasn’t expecting, and he was knocked off the steps entirely, and pushed a good three feet away from his cousin, causing him to slip on the step and spin as he fell. Andino barely managed to catch his fall before he landed face first into the pavement.
It was only the growls and barks muted behind glass that reminded Andino where he was, and who had just put their fucking hands on him that kept him from getting up and beating the hell out of John for that.
It was his cousin.
His blood.
His best fucking friend.
John wasn’t John right now.
John was … not John.
Andino kept telling himself that even as he got up from the icy ground, and brushed his jacket off. He continued to repeat those words to himself even as his hands stung from the scrapes that now covered his palms. He glanced over his shoulder to find Snaps still trying to claw his way out of the Lexus’s passenger side window in an effort to protect his master. Snarling, baring his teeth, and ready to fucking kill.
Damn.
He was glad he rolled that window up.
“Don’t fucking bother me again,” Andino heard John say from the steps. “I’ll come to you when I am ready to talk, and not the other way around. After what you did, at least give me the respect of coming to you first, and not trying to push your shit on me when I’m not ready. Do you fucking understand me?”
Andino nodded, but still didn’t look back at his cousin. He couldn’t, or else the very small control he had over his anger was going to break, and he was going to do something he would seriously regret.
This wasn’t John.
This was not John.
This was John in a bad place within his own head—nothing more. It wasn’t John’s fault. He couldn’t control it.
“Yeah,” Andino said, though it killed him to do it. “I got you, man.”
He didn’t go to Snaps until he heard the front door slam, and even then, he couldn’t calm his dog down.
So was his life, lately.
One giant fuck up after another.
SIXTEEN
“It’s way too cold for this shit,” Haven muttered.
She struggled to turn the knob on her front door. Finally, her frozen fingers worked long enough to get inside the very warm house. A cold snap was moving through New York, and she wasn’t having any of it. Except … she did deal with it every single day when she left her house to run, or even to jump into her vehicle to head to the club. Today, it was jogging.
Once inside the house, warmth instantly spread through her chilled bones, and she started to fell less like a block of goddamn ice, and more like a real human woman. It kind of felt like Valeria had probably turned up the heat a little bit, too.
Her relief came out in a long, grateful groan. “Oh, my God.”
“Cold?” Valeria popped her head around the corner of the kitchen entryway with a sly smile. She kept the same expression up even while Haven shrugged off her thick sweater, pulled off her cap and mittens, and hung them up. “I told you to buy a damn treadmill, Haven. At least for the winter.”
“It’s never this cold, though.”
“Is it cold like this in Mexico, too, Ma?”
Valeria gave Haven a look, and disappeared back into the kitchen to indulge her ever curious daughter while Haven finished getting undressed. “No, we don’t even see snow.”
“Ever?”
“Not where I came from, anyway.”
“Cool.”
Valeria’s laughter filtered out from the kitchen as Haven headed down the hall. She entered the room just in enough time to see Maria stand from her chair where she was currently drawing something at her seat at the table.
“Will I ever get to visit there, Ma?”
Haven didn’t miss the way her friend stiffened at the island. Valeria was smart, though—she had her back turned to her daughter so that Maria couldn’t see how uncomfortable the simple question made her, and kept it that way even as she let a lie slip through her lips as though she had said it a thousand times before.
“One day,” Valeria said. “One day, we will visit.”
“Okay!”
Satisfied with the answer, Maria went back to her doodling. Haven, on the other hand, went to her friend. “You okay?”
Valeria kept her head down on the vegetables she was chopping. “Yeah, fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“She’s going to ask, Haven.”
True.
“But are you ever going to tell her the truth?”
Haven figured that was the better question. Although, frankly, it wasn’t any of her goddamn business, and she shouldn’t be asking. It wasn’t that she was trying to pry for herself, but more that she was trying to prepare her friend for the inevitable.
Valeria seemed to understand.
“One day,” Valeria echoed. “One day, I will tell her.”
“You speak that lie so well.”
Valeria laughed. “Yeah, chica, I know.”
Assuming they were done with the conversation, Haven checked the oven to see what her friend was cooking up considering Valeria was prepping a salad, too. She found a casserole cooking, likely made from one of Valeria’s special recipes.
“That looks—”
Riiiiiiiing.
A familiar tune lit up the house; it echoed from the spot in the living room where Haven had left her phone charging before going on her run. She didn’t even need to act fast to catch the phone as she knew who the caller was without checking the ID, and he didn’t mind her calling back. She kept a special ringtone for Andino.
“Give me a sec,” Haven said.
Valeria gave her a look from the side; one she didn’t entirely understand. Haven didn’t think on it for long as she was already out of the kitchen, and crossing the hall to grab her phone. She didn’t make it in time before the call cut off, but before she could even pick it back up, a text message lit up the screen.
Lunch at my restaurant in Manhattan?
That was all he asked.
Haven typed back, What time?
An hour sound good?
Haven checked the watch on her wrist—she had to be at the club before three to start all the prep for opening, but she had some time to spare. Andino was so goddamn busy all the time that she really only got to see him occasionally, and never for very long.
She wasn’t about to turn him down.
I’ll be there, she messaged back.
His reply came within seconds: I look forward to it.
Haven found herself smiling even when she headed back into the kitchen. “Sorry, you’ll have to eat without me for lunch.”
Valeria frowned over her shoulder. “Really?”
“Andino invited me to lunch. You know I don’t get to—”
“See him often, yeah.” Valeria shrugged, and went back to her work. “Well, I’ll make you a plate so you can have something when you get back from the club tonight.”
“Thanks, Val.”
Haven had already turned around, and was heading out of the kitchen to get ready to leave. She was still in yoga pants, and a sweaty shirt that needed changed. Plus, she had to do something with her damn hair. A messy bun was a nice look, but not when it was messy from running.
Still, her steps hesitated when she heard Maria say to her mom, “Haven’s busy a lot, right, Ma?”
“Yeah, baby, she’s busy.”
“Oh—I miss her.”
“Me, too.”
Haven paid the cab, and thanked him for dropping her off on the wrong side of the damn street. No
thing unusual for New York cabs, though. She had just closed the door on the cab, and moved to the edge of the sidewalk to cross the street where Andino’s restaurant looking to be busy with people going in and out was, when someone called her name.
“Hey, it’s Haven, right?”
A bull of a man came from her left. She looked him up and down, and while he seemed familiar, she just couldn’t place him. She only relaxed a bit because of the dog that was walking beside him—Snaps.
“That is my name,” Haven replied. “And you are?”
“Pink,” the guy replied. “Or, that’s what they call me.”
“Seriously?”
Pink shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
“Okay. Can I help you?”
“Just wanted to stop you and say hi—Snaps got excited to see you from down the way, too.”
Haven smiled, and bent down to give Snaps a rub behind his pointed ears. The dog’s tail wagged hard, and he huffed in her hands. She glanced up at the man quickly, asking, “Are you one of Andino’s men, then?”
Pink nodded. “I am, yeah.”
“Oh. Hello.”
Haven’s attention was back on a happy Snaps, then, but when she noticed the man hadn’t replied to her or said anything else, she glanced up again. Pink wasn’t looking at her, now, but rather, at something across the street.
She looked that way too—quieted suddenly at the sight of a familiar woman coming out of the restaurant with a wave over her shoulder.
Andino’s mother.
Haven stood up, but by the time she thought to speak again, Kim was already gone in a town car that had pulled up to the side of the road. Kim never saw Haven, and probably had no idea she was even there at all. Had Haven kept walking across the road, she would have walked right into Andino’s mother as she came out of the restaurant.
What were the chances that it hadn’t happened? What were the odds that this unknown, strange man who worked for Andino would stop Haven before she could cross the street at just the right time?
Had that been … purposeful?
