She read one of his papers, “The Shifter as the Everyman.” It was smart, it was impressive. There wasn’t a hint of Orlando’s rage in the words. In fact, he even spoke against the terrorist movements on the shifter’s part, claiming they weren’t truly human if they were willing to kill their fellow man to get what they wanted. She had to imagine that was met with a fair bit of anger when it was first published.
By the time the sun had gone down, she felt like she’d filled her skull right up to the brim with shifter knowledge and it was ready to burst. What to do with it then? Tell Diego that she now had a working knowledge of his life? Tell him that she read enough articles to talk with him analytically about his goals?
She would never know his life. For all those college papers and speeches told her, it didn’t tell her what it was like to hide oneself, to feel incredibly. Diego had been adopted when he was young and it was a spot of softness for him for as long as she knew him. He didn’t like to talk about it. Though he claimed he didn’t remember his real parents, she was certain he must have some memory of them for all the ways his eyes grew hollow and a little bit scary looking when they were mentioned. And on top of that, he was seen as some kind of monster by the world, even by Andrea, for a time.
So what should she do? Coddle him and tell him everything would be okay and she forgave him for the heartache of the past day, for all the lying he did the entire time they were together? She couldn’t make excuses for him. If he wanted to be treated like any other person, then she needed to respond to what he did as if he were any other person, tragic backstory be damned.
#
Her choice on what to do came a lot sooner than she expected. She’d gone several days without a word from Diego. He’d respected her boundaries and her need for privacy which she honestly found surprising considering he was never so attentive about her telling him to back off before. But the six o’clock news was faster.
“Believed to be the same group responsible for the break in last week, another store has been vandalized and robbed…”
Andrea felt her stomach curdle just a bit. So that was that. Diego had taken their several days apart to plan more heists to steal more things. This time, it was from a sporting goods store and Andrea was more than a little terrified at the possibility that they would report they’d stolen firearms or bullets. In fact, she expected that to be the case. But when the news came back, it was nothing more than hiking equipment and some leftover snow gear. It wasn’t good, and it didn’t bode well. But it was better than nothing. And better than the worst possible scenario.
She watched the newsreel several times and wondered what she should do. She could call the police, tell them she knew the identity of at least one of the men responsible, and that there were others. She could call Diego and tell him to knock it off or she would call the police on him. She could ignore the whole thing, invite Charles back over, and never speak to him again. While she sat there and waited to figure out what to do, the newsreel just kept playing and playing, and she felt more and more helpless.
In the end, she went out for a jog; something about the movement helped her think. She managed to get almost three miles in with all the churning and cog turning her mind was doing. It certainly distracted her from the burn in her legs by the end of the second mile, and the way her lungs were ready to give out by the end. She found herself jogging by his apartment, looking in from the outside and wondering who he was there with. What he was planning.
And then suddenly, she was angry. Didn’t he know that he could get hurt? Didn’t he know that it was so ungodly dangerous? Didn’t he care that he could die doing this, that it would hurt his mother, his family, her? All that running had worked her up a great deal and now she glared at the window she knew led to the kitchen. She recognized the small Mexican flag hanging in the window. Before she could stop herself, she walked over to the door and hit the buzzer on his apartment for several long seconds, far longer than a polite stranger might.
Naturally, it didn’t warrant a response. He was a fugitive, an anonymous fugitive, but one nonetheless. He wouldn’t answer his door for even the pizza man. So she kept going, buzzing and buzzing until he’d have to do something—unlock the door, send down security, whatever.
“What?” he spat from his end of the communicator on the wall.
“Let me up.”
She didn’t need to say more. There was only about five seconds of a pause between the end of her sentence and the door clicking unlocked in a familiar way. She pushed it open quickly before he could change his mind and let it shut and lock again on her. She went up to his apartment. She thought about all the things she would say to him, all the ways she would yell at him. A few of these sentences were ways in which she would convince him to knock it all off, to stop everything he was doing and let it go.
She would rip him a new one over all the things that had been building up over the past couple of days. She would make him her punching bag.
“Are you alone?” she asked when he opened the door.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
She stepped into the apartment. He closed the door behind him. Then he was up against it. She was flush to his body, pushing him into the solid wood of his own front door and not letting his lips get an inch of their own traction as she controlled every part of their kiss. At first, he was stiff, not responding, but then he loosened up, and allowed her to move all over him. Her hands pressed against him hard but felt across every muscle and every valley of his body that she could. She wanted to push him through the wall, but she’d settle for this.
Eventually, she started the biting. She started first with forcing her tongue in his mouth, pushing his own back and forth like it was her own pliable toy. She was in charge here. Once he gave her access and didn’t fight back, she moved her teeth forward to work on his body lip, worrying with her teeth so hard she thought it might bleed. Part of her wanted it to. She wanted to draw blood, to taste it, to make him see the error of his ways.
She’d never been one for the punishing kind of angry sex people had in books and movies. They’d never fucked their way through an argument. But this was a new level of disagreement. He’d lied the entire time they were together, and now he was planning God knew what with an illegal terrorist organization. If anything warranted hate sex, it was this. And it had been building up in her for so long that it wasn’t too difficult to just let it out.
He was entirely willing, allowing her to demolish him from every angle she could get at. He let her sink her teeth into every part of him, leave marks across his usually flawless caramel skin. It was mixed with the red and raw color of irritation now. She’d left marks across him that he couldn’t hide, at least not easily. She’d both marked him and warned him. This was what happened when he lied. This was what became of her without him.
She wanted to tell him then about Charles. She wanted to talk about how she’d fucked another man all night, but this was so much better. But even in her euphoria, she knew that would ruin the mood, ruin their current trajectory. Nothing would be a buzz kill more than admitting to her partner—well, still officially her partner—that she cheated on him out of anger a few nights ago. Who knew all it would take was one missed day and an apparent few years of complete lies to result in Andrea breaking her one rule with relationships.
They went at it like that all night until they fell asleep on different ends of Diego’s bed. Andrea would fuck him, but she couldn’t bring herself to cuddle with him after. He was still a liar, still made her angry. He was still doing the awful, dangerous things she’d yelled at him for days ago. He was still… something else entirely underneath his skin and in the very instincts of his core. So she kept away and swatted at his hands at the one attempt he made to touch her after he’d reached out for her. Never mind that those hands had just been all over her breasts, inside her. That was impersonal, anyone could do that. But she wouldn’t fall asleep in bed with just anyone, and right no
w he wasn’t one of those people.
Chapter 5
Andrea’s mother had always told her that life had a way of making sure that when it rained, it completely poured. All bad things came in twos and threes. She never just had a bad morning or one bad day; it was a stretch of events designed to test her patience to the most she possibly could take before she just broke down completely. And, for Andrea, that was the police knocking down at Diego’s door at six a.m. the next morning.
“What the hell?” she murmured out, groggily, her throat still constricted from sleep.
“We need to leave,” he said, whispering inches from her face. “They don’t know we’re in here, but I’m willing to bet they have a warrant.”
“Oh, what the hell.”
Right. Everything came crashing back down. Diego was a felon, a criminal and Andrea had made the poor decision of going to his apartment for a booty call the night before. Now his antics had finally caught up with him. The men on the other side of that door had guns and Tasers and badges that said they could do whatever the hell it was that they wanted if they so desired. Diego was a shifter, and a non-white male to boot. There was no way anyone would listen to stories of brutality when he had so much stacked against him.
At that moment, she could kind of understand why he didn’t tell her about his nature. Not that she was just anyone, but there was a certain amount of fear to everything he was. He was the son of Mexican immigrants, he grew up poor, and he was a shifter. Very little about his existence had promise and his was the exact type of demographic that ended up in the news as a youth suicide. For him to get this far in life was a miracle, in many ways.
“So, how are we getting away from the cops in your apartment with one entrance?” she asked, getting out of bed with several huffs, looking around for her clothes. He gave her a desperate, annoyed look as she slipped her legs in her pants, one at a time. “I’m not going anywhere naked, don’t even think about it.”
He rolled his eyes and walked away. She would have taken it even slower, made it that much more stressful on him, if she wasn’t totally implicated in all this too. The emotions of last night were gone. She was back to being incredibly angry with him. Go figure.
“Fire escape,” he said.
“And you don’t think the police thought of that too?”
“Not if they don’t think we’re here. So far, we’ve been quiet. Keep it that way.”
She bristled at him giving her orders, but kept it to herself. He had a point. The longer they stayed quiet and anonymous in the apartment, the easier their escape would be. That didn’t mean, of course, that the escape would be easy at all.
Diego moved to the window with care, avoiding the famously creaky board in his kitchen that he claimed every week he would fix and then promptly ignored each time. She stepped over it as well, moving with as much grace as she could muster for herself with how tired and frazzled she still was. She followed behind him where he gently worked at unlocking the window. It would squeak when they opened it, there was no doubt about that. So once he got it unlocked and lifted, they would have a very short window to jump out and get down the fire escape before the police realized what they were doing.
One lock clicked open. Then the other. Now Diego turned to look at her as if asking for permission. This was the last moment she could be passive. If he opened that window and if she crawled out after him, she would be an accessory, a guilty party. She’d be abetting a criminal and obstructing justice. They’d probably find several other sentences to throw at her before they were done. It would be nothing compared to Diego’s life sentence for his terrorist activities. But she’d get a very short end of an already crappy deal. She also had a choice here, to turn back and give herself up. If she stepped forward and said she had nothing to do with it, that she was willing to open the door, give them any information they needed, cooperate fully, she’d probably go free. He’d lied to her, she hadn’t known what was going on. She could easily claim she didn’t come forward with information before because she was scared. She could easily get free of this, go back to work, continue her life and budding career.
But God help her she actually felt something for that man looking at her with pleading eyes, trying to make a getaway as a wanted terrorist. She finally understood those women who stuck by serial killers or married death-row prisoners. Sometimes she just couldn’t help who she loved, who her heart decided she would risk her life and livelihood for. She wouldn’t give herself up and she couldn’t bring herself to abandon him. Not now.
God, she hated herself. She nodded. He turned back to the window and lifted his hands, pulling the window up with him. The dreaded whine from the ungreased window frame came after about five seconds of movement. It never seemed to be a bother in all the years that Andrea had dealt with it. Sure, it could be annoying and rouse someone from a nap. Now it was her worst nightmare, her biggest enemy. As soon as it went off, it sounded like that fabled shot heard around the world must have.
It went off. And then they were out the window. Diego went first, scrambling through it with such grace, she was sure this wasn’t the first time that he’d made an escape like this, which didn’t exactly comfort her but she ignored it, for now. She followed after. She wasn’t exactly quick or good at it, but she was small and limber enough that she could move through the gap without too much trouble. On the other end, he waited with open arms to pull her through. Once her feet were firmly planted on the metal grate of the fire escape, his hand stayed on hers.
The banging from the front door was loud and angry now. They’d heard. They yelled. Time to go.
Diego pulled Andrea’s hand hard, yanking her arm and the rest of her body with it. They moved across the metal platform until they got to the first gap in the floor. He kicked at the ladder until it dropped. They moved down quickly to the second landing. One more to go. They performed the same ritual, kicking the ladder down and practically sliding down it to freedom below.
Their luck, naturally, ran out at the last ladder. It was stuck.
“Dammit,” Diego hissed, kicking at the ladder, but it refused to drop.
“We’ll just jump,” Andrea said, shoving him out of the way and moving to the gap.
“And break our legs?”
“Maybe but we know if we stay here, we get arrested and go to jail for life.”
He didn’t argue. She slid through the gap and hung down off the bottom rung, as far as she could go to the bottom. The fire escapes were designed to prevent anyone at ground level from reaching the bottom and crawling up. That left her with quite a bit of room between her and the ground, even as she hung at her most stretched and straight. She took a breath. She dropped.
She didn’t break her legs. In fact, the only thing that really hurt was the brush burn from the sidewalk she could feel already working its way across the skin of her palm. She hadn’t exactly landed gracefully, but her feet were firmly planted on the solid concrete underneath. She took off, hearing a thud of Diego jumping down behind her. He yelled after her but she just kept running. She was running from a lot of things, more than just the police. Maybe she was even running from Diego. She wasn’t sure. She just knew it was like last night, running was the only thing that made her feel safe.
So, she took off into the early morning air, making wind around herself as she moved, legs already burning from the forced effort so early in the morning and without an ounce of calories in her system to help sustain her. Diego was still behind her, not far.
“Andrea, stop!” he called.
She didn’t. She was petrified. Her life had been turned completely upside down and she didn’t know what to do except run away from it. That’s what everyone did when things got rough. She ran away from her problems and didn’t look back at all. That was adulthood, right?
Her great escape was cut short when Diego used the last of his energy to sprint up to her and launch. He tackled her. Now that hurt. She had a few more r
ashes from the ground thanks to that and turned around wildly ready to smack him for it, but he was on his back, huffing and puffing as his chest fought to get air in his lungs. He coughed quite a bit.
“We’re safe,” he said. “You ran like a fucking bat outta hell.”
“Yeah well, when it was clear I might go to jail for associations with a terrorist, I kind of gave myself a kick,” she said.
He didn’t say anything, he just kept gasping for air, laying there on his back. He was never the athletic one and now she felt a little smug for all those times he made fun of her when she asked if he wanted to go with her for a run. Joke was on him now.
“Well, that was an exciting wakeup call,” he said, rolling over to his side and pushing himself up.
Andrea sprang to her feet. She dusted herself off and checked to make sure nothing looked permanently damaged. She’d have a far bit of scraping to explain to her friends and work, but for the most part, she was put together well. So, she started walking away.
“Where are you going?” Diego asked from his spot on the ground, now struggling to get up.
“Away,” she said. “We did our miraculous escape but now it’s time to go.”
“But—wait—”
“This wasn’t a make-up night, Diego,” she said. “I was angry and it manifested a little differently than how I imagined it in my head, but now we’re back to normal. It was a one-time thing. No breakfast the next morning or cuddles.”
“You can’t just walk away.”
She spited him by doing just that, moving down the street and away from him. Behind her, she heard him groan and force himself up to his feet. She heard him scrambling behind her, still out of breath, but now up to a standing position and trotting behind her. She rolled her eyes. This was exactly how things always went with him, persistent and hard to shake. He said it was a trait he inherited from his Mexican immigrant parents who had to toil every day to get the things they wanted. Andrea just thought it was his way of being frustrating.
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