Andrea finished her wine and conceded that Diego wasn't coming and he wasn’t planning on calling, so she asked for the check and the filet mignon to go. She would track him down and eat it in front of him.
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She banged down on Diego’s door, the doorman letting her into the apartment building. He’d seen her plenty of times going in and out with Diego, but she wasn’t discounting the effect her deep-neck shirt had on revealing her cleavage. She’d worn it for Diego, but willing to use it wherever she needed to if that was the case. Maybe she’d give the security guard something to think about when he was alone tonight, just to get back at him.
Now there was no answer on the door.
“Diego!” she shouted. “You asshole, open the damn door right now!”
She heard a shuffle inside the apartment. If the door didn’t open in five minutes, she was prepared to make a scene that his neighbors would never forget. But she saw something move across the shadow under the door, in the narrow strip of light between the bottom and the ground. She heard several clicks. Diego always had several locks on his door, claiming he thought the crackhead down the hall was stealing from people.
When he opened the door, Andrea hadn’t expected to see what she did. He was dressed in ratty black sports clothes, his hair a mess. It looked like he’d just come back from playing football and hadn’t taken off all his underclothes. He yanked her in the apartment and slammed the door shut behind her, going back to reattach all the locks he’d just removed.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, slamming the to-go box on the table. She tossed the credit card at him. “By the way, thanks for taking me to dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded stressed, but not like he meant it.
He paced around the apartment, shoving things away. His cleaning spree should have been a sign that something was very wrong. He never cleaned. Not for her at least. She never once saw him exert effort to make his apartment look presentable in the many years they’d known each other. But there he was, shoving things away and out of sight.
“What is it? Porn? Letters from your secret girlfriend?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“No, it has nothing to do with any of that,” he said, sounding frustrated.
“Not giving me much to go on here,” she said. “I’m three seconds from walking out that door again, but somehow I don’t think you’d care.”
That got him to pause. He turned around with a desperate look in his eyes and dragged his hand down his face, massaging at the muscles there quickly. It didn’t do much. Bags still sat under his eyes and the visible vein in his neck and one in his temple both still throbbed.
“I would care,” he sighed. “I promise. I’ll explain everything. I just need to make sure things are safe.”
She felt something dark wax in the pit of her stomach and swallowed a little too painfully. He was scaring her now, rushing around the apartment in his strange clothes, hiding things away. Every time he passed the window, he peeked out of it through the crack in the curtains. The lights were off and three new locks that she’d never seen before now bolted the door shut. Something was very wrong.
“Diego,” she said, softer.
But it wasn’t enough to get his attention; instead, he raced around the apartment until every last scrap of what he looked to clean up had been shoved away. That’s when he dropped onto the couch and let out a breath. He ran his hands through his hair, succeeding in only making it messier. It had a sheen of sweat visible, even in the dark tufts sitting on top of his head. Some of it stuck to the base of his neck and behind his ears.
“What’s going on?” she asked, walking over to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. It was fascinating how quickly she could turn from scorned lover to concerned girlfriend. She cared about him too much for her own good sometimes. She squeezed his shoulder and ran her fingers through his hair, ignoring the ick factor of feeling the sweat gathered all across his head. What had he been running from?
He didn’t answer but he didn’t have to. Her eyes caught sight of something she was probably never supposed to see, but there it was anyway, sitting out in the open, the one piece of evidence that Diego had missed in his cleanup. A beanie sat on the coffee table. It was small and black, but there was a logo on it she vaguely recognized, though she couldn’t quite place it from how far away she sat. She reached for it before he could stop her.
Shifter Alliance in red and black and that familiar logo was now suddenly so clear to her. She could feel the blood rushing around in her own head, trying to get control of her spinning brain. She turned to look at him and he stared back at her, pale and terrified.
“It’s not what you think,” was all he got out to say to her as she got up and moved away, attempting to make a run for the door.
Chapter 2
Andrea learned a lot that night that she didn’t know only several hours previous. It was the kind of thing that made her grateful she’d managed to down an entire bottle of wine at her disaster of a date night dinner, but also made her wish she had more.
“How is this not what I think?” she said, standing up with the hat in her hand. “I heard the news broadcast, Diego.”
“It wasn’t dangerous, nobody was hurt,” he said.
She didn’t know what she wanted to focus on first: the fact that her boyfriend missed their date because he was busy robbing a store, or the fact that he was somehow involved with the shifter movement. More than involved. He wore the logo of a known terrorist organization, one linked to some of the most violent shifter extremist activities in history. And according to the news, he’d been stealing road flares, flammables.
“You have three seconds to explain it to me or I call the cops,” she said, reaching for her phone. He dove across the room in a violent launch, grabbing the phone right out of her hands and yanking it in. She let out a yelp and he shushed her, slapping his hand over her mouth, and she recoiled. He’d never touched her before, never so much as laid a hand on her. But now she could feel the tension rippling underneath. If she didn’t watch herself, she thought he might actually deck her, knock her out, remove the threat.
“I’m sorry,” he said, instantly, pulling his hand away. “It’s been a trying day. I’m sorry. I would never hurt you.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m a shifter,” he said. “I think that’s obvious by now. That’s the first secret out in the open.”
“You mean the first lie,” she said darkly.
“I never lied. You never asked.”
“And what about when you said you’d be at the restaurant for dinner?”
“I thought I would. We got held up.”
“No, you were holding someone up.”
She was more than a little proud of that play on words but he looked positively ready to burst with nervous energy. He growled and got to his feet. Taking his frustration out on some old, empty beer bottle instead. It shattered hard against the wall, leaving both a skid mark and a stain from the minuscule amount of beer that had been sitting at the bottom. The pieces fell to the floor, one by one.
“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” he said, turning back to her with that pleading voice again.
“What was the end game, Diego? Were you planning on telling me on our wedding night? When our kids suddenly started sprouting claws or wings or God knows what else?”
“It’s not like we were engaged,” he said, darkly.
“I told you I just needed time to think about it; it wasn’t a no,” she said. “And you’re not turning this around on me. You’re wanted for robbery and battery and I’m sure five other things they didn’t say on the news. You didn’t make it to our date. You’ve been lying to me for years—”
“Okay. I get it. I fucked up.”
“Do you get it? Do you get how scary this is for me?” It was her turn to stand, her turn to feel powerful. She got to her feet and walked right up to him, making him seem smaller than
he’d ever been before. “I was considering marrying you, Diego. And now I’m finding out everything about you was a lie the entire time.”
“Was considering?” he parroted back with such hopelessness, she thought she might cry just a little bit but held it in.
“You think that’s the first thing on my mind right at this moment?”
“If I can explain it all to you, would you let me? If we sit down—it can be somewhere public. You pick the place, you’re not in any danger—and I can just explain to you what’s been going on. Would you listen?” he asked, taking her hands in his shaking ones.
She looked at him. It was hard not to see the boy she met all those years ago in school, sitting there in front of her. He’d looked just as vulnerable the first time he asked her out and she had to decline because she’d been dating a boy from her English requirement at the time. But he waited for her with that pining look on his face. He never asked twice. She asked him out the next time.
She remembered their first date, their second date, several dates in between. She knew Diego was a good person. She knew he had a good heart. How could he not? But people could also change, they could become something terrible or different or wrong. Just look at Voldemort for God’s sake. But she owed him the chance to explain. They’d stuck by each other’s sides for so long, she had to see this through.
“I’ll give you an hour,” she said. “After that, if I want to disappear, you don’t follow me, you don’t look for me.”
He looked devastated at the mere idea of it but nodded and said okay. He offered to walk her home, but she vehemently declined. Despite how late it was, how dangerous she knew it could be, she needed the time alone and away. She took the long way back to her apartment, going over several residential streets. It wasn’t the smartest thing she ever did but she needed to work out at least some of the energy or she’d never be able to sleep.
She didn’t like lies. Diego knew that. He’d been by her side the day she’d found out the truth from her father. He’d held her while she cried and promised that as long as she wanted him around, he would be there. Yet there he was, lying to her himself now, and she had no arms to run to. The one person she wanted to comfort her was the exact reason she needed it. How terribly that all worked out. Her boyfriend committed crimes and she was the one left to pick up the pieces of it on her own.
It might have been the copious amount of wine she drank or how late in the night it was, she’d never been a good decision maker when those two things combined together in her brain. She never cheated on a single partner in her life. It had been the one thing she said would completely break a relationship for her, even if they were ten years deep with a mortgage. But her fingers were already going through her phone; she was already moving through the contact list to find his name.
She called him. He answered on the second ring. He agreed to come over ten seconds later and her night was spent tossing around naked in her bed with a man who wasn’t her boyfriend, though he had been once, long ago. She pushed the thoughts of Diego’s betrayal out of her mind, humming another man’s name, feeling another man’s skin, and letting another man see all the vulnerability she let run wild in the moment she orgasmed.
It felt like a fitting punishment. But in the morning, all she wanted was Diego and the clock to reset.
Chapter 3
Charles had been her first boyfriend in college. He’d also been the first man she ever slept with. He’d been so kind then, asking her several times if she was okay, if she needed anything, if he was hurting her. Afterwards, he bought her two bouquets of flowers and a box of chocolates, and walked her to and from class the rest of the week, even on days when he had classes of his own. When Diego first asked her out, there had been no competition there. Charles was all her eyes could see in any direction, even when they were closed.
But they had been too young for a fairy tale ending. All it took was one summer away from school and back at home for things to come crashing down in the form of a tantalizing ex-girlfriend and Andrea’s apparent “over-focusing” on her career too early. They hadn’t drifted apart; it had been a bombastic breakup. There had been shouting and tears and one would have thought they’d been married for fifteen years with the way they carried on to each other. Her mother said it was a testament to how much she cared looking at how angry someone could make her. She was sure from this fight that she was in love with Charles.
But she sent him out the door and he gladly followed orders.
A few months later, Diego was right there and she asked him out on a whim. Charles had started to message her again and she feared what would happen if she gave in. She did give in, once or twice, while she still decided how serious she was about Diego. She hadn’t slept with him in years and it was fascinating how easily he answered, how much they remembered about each other’s bodies, and how easy it was to fall back into the rhythms they’d once known.
“You break up with Saenz?” he asked when they were both laying on their backs, looking up at the ceiling.
She didn’t answer. She just got up to use the bathroom, wash herself off, and then walk out into the kitchen where she wouldn’t have to look at Charles or smell what they’d done. He didn’t follow her out, choosing instead to fall asleep in her bed. By the time she got back into the bedroom, he was snoring loudly, face down into the pillow, leaving a familiar spot of drool where his mouth hung open. She almost missed it. But then she caught sight of Diego’s t-shirt hanging over the door knob from the last time he’d been here and the spell of pretending was over.
Despite the discomfort, she got back into bed with him instead of sleeping on the couch. She refused to be forced onto the couch in her own house by the awkward afterwards of a booty call. She put a fair bit of distance between them. She refused to cuddle. This wasn’t some sentimental night where they’d rediscover their love. She needed someone to leave scratches on, someone to command, some pleasure to receive. And she needed to know it was something that would hurt Diego if he knew. She wanted to make him hurt.
In the morning, she woke up earlier than Charles as well and went out into the kitchen, making coffee for herself—a sign to him to find his post-coital breakfast elsewhere. She poured out the steaming mug and didn’t add any of her usual almond milk or fake sweetener. She needed a real kick in the pants right now. So she cringed as she swallowed the bitter taste of hot coffee. How did Diego drink this stuff? One year when she’d been over his place for Christmas Eve, his grandmother made hot chocolate the way they had it back in Mexico City. It was bitter and spicy, and it was all Andrea could do not to throw it all up.
She needed to get Charles out of there. She promised to meet Diego at noon and if she didn’t shower by eleven, she would never make that time. Though she thought he would deserve her showing up a bit late, she just wanted to get this over with at this point. And she wouldn’t delay it because Charles slept like a rock most days.
She walked into her bedroom, slamming the door, and watched him jump up and out of bed in a confused whirl. He groaned, let out a yawn, and ran his hand violently through his bedhead. He blinked at the sunlight she let stream through the room when she ripped the curtains open.
“Morning,” he said.
“Time to go, Romeo,” she said. “I have plans.”
He didn’t say anything at first and she looked over at him, seeing traces of true hurt on his face. She wouldn’t feel bad for him. She wouldn’t let the puppy dog eyes of two men cloud her judgement.
“I should have known,” he said, getting up and she purposely turned to avoid seeing him naked all over again. “But I pick up the phone anyway.
He always would pick up the phone too, that was his problem. She could do this to him five times in a row and he would still answer when she called and come running if she asked. He slid on his clothes, slowly and pensively. She wondered if he was truly thinking or just wanted to see what sympathy he could play out of her by moping his way through leaving.
>
“Any coffee?”
“Try Starbucks.”
“Right.”
And then he was out the door and she didn’t have time to be overly guilty about it, jumping into the shower and turning it up as hot as it would go to fill the bathroom with steam. She let the mirror fog up so she couldn’t see herself and turned it back down to just short of scalding as she stepped in, watching her skin redden from heat and irritation as she worked the soap over her body, scrubbed the shampoo in her hair, carded her hand through her strands of hair with conditioner all over her fingers. She took her time, giving herself a few moments to think.
It wasn’t the wine headache that made this morning difficult. She wanted to be swallowed up into a blackhole and never come back out again. She wanted to eat her weight in ice cream and pizza, and watch Netflix for several days. She wanted a lot of things that weren’t a reality right now. She needed to get a grip on a new take on a once familiar world. Things were different this morning than they had been yesterday. That was the way life went sometimes and no matter how long or hot of a shower she took, that wouldn’t change.
She stepped out of the shower, the bathroom still awash with steam. She wrapped a towel around her and granted herself a few more moments of contemplation by dripping dry a bit on the bathmat before she set to work at really getting her body dry enough to slip on clothes. She walked out into her bedroom and received a rush of cold air in contrast to the cocoon the bathroom had been. It was certainly a wakeup call, but she needed several more of those if she would get through his day.
She put on the first clean things she could find. There was no use getting dressed up. There was no use trying to impress him or make him feel bad. She’d already slept with another man and kicked him out of her apartment only hours before meeting him. Knowledge that she’d done that would be punishment enough for him. If he got too difficult to deal with, she’d level him with that information and let him wallow in some more self-pity.
Hero's Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 31
