“When then?”
“Some other time, please. I promise. I’ll tell you everything one day, but only if you stop looking at me like I’m breaking your heart.”
That made her cry. Silent tears fell down her cheeks, clear and heart-twisting. “Look at your poor face. You should see your eyes right now. They’re haunted. You can’t like this. You can’t be happy.”
“I’m not!” I erupted. “I’m not happy, okay? I’m stuck. I can’t stand facing myself right now. I know that what I did today was repulsive. I know it. But I also know that if I didn’t do it, Gabby, Antony, and Mama would be in danger. And so would your sister. So would you, Rya.” I patted my chest. “I fight every day to keep the people I care about safe, and all I get is nothing. Mama doesn’t help. She checked out when she lost my father. I work, I go to school, I take care of the twins, I fight off the Kings, I fight off the drugs and the alcohol—I fight every single day of my life and I’m tired,” I gasped. “I’m tired of fighting, but if I stop, I’ll lose everything. I didn’t fight today to hurt you. I’d never hurt you on purpose. If I did anything to you on purpose, it would only make you feel good.” I sighed miserably, my breathing heavy now.
Rya could do that to me. She made it so easy to breathe. So hard to breathe sometimes. And other times, I could spend hours inhaling without even realizing I was breathing at all.
Her eyes held mine. “I didn’t know how hard it was for you. I mean, I suspected, but you’re so self-contained. You’re like Romeo in the book. You never stop fighting. You never complain. You never let anything get in your way. All day long he battles just to get closer to his ultimate goal. The angel. His purpose. You’re doing the same thing.”
“You’ve been reading those books?”
“They’re amazing,” she admitted. “You can talk to me, Romeo. Even if I get mad and scared, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about your day. About your fears and hopes. They matter, too. Just as much as everyone else’s. Stop keeping me in the dark and let me in.”
She was so close, I could see her pupils dilating. I rested my forehead against hers. “If I let you in, it will be one of the most selfish things I ever do. You’ve seen how fast things can turn. If you ever got hurt, I could never live with myself.”
Her soft lips kissed the tip of my nose. “If I let my fears get in my way, and you got hurt, I’d never be able to live with myself. You put yourself in danger every day for everyone else. Let someone put you first for once.”
I was too weak to tell her no. Too weak to deny that all I wanted to do was say yes. “You want in. Really?”
“Really.”
I stared deep, as deep as I could get, into her eyes. I saw a lot of things I didn’t like. She was intensely naive, but in an entirely coherent way. She knew she didn’t know. But I also saw some other things. Warm, fiery things, burning in her eyes. Things that said neither of us knew anything at all. But we wanted to know each other.
“You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
“I do want to kiss you just as badly. Kiss me,” I breathed, our lips so close if I whispered hers would be on mine.
She grinned. Bright and proud. “I knew it.”
Rolling my eyes, I leaned back. “Way to ruin a moment.” I struggled to my feet. My ribs ached and I was no closer to feeling better.
But I didn’t feel as awful as I had either.
She wrapped herself around my arm. “You shouldn’t walk home like this.”
“Don’t have a choice.”
She was quiet for a moment as we headed back toward her house. “You could sleep in my room.”
I looked at her like she was crazy, my mouth as wide open as my eyes. “In your bedroom? With you? With your dad down the hall? Who hates me, by the way? I can’t exactly defend myself right now. No thanks. I’ll walk you home and then I’ll go to mine.”
“It’s safer at my house,” she said, letting her true intentions shine through.
“You can’t do that, Rya.”
“Do what?”
“Protect me from every little thing.”
“Watch me,” she mumbled defiantly under her breath.
And since no one had ever tried to protect me before, I let her think she could, let her think I didn’t hear her.
But I did.
I always did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RYA
It was hard to sleep that night.
Kenzie snored levelly, in and out. For a while, I focused on that. In hopes that her sleep would entice mine.
It didn’t.
I groaned, rolling back onto my side. If I were being honest with myself, I didn’t try that hard to sleep in the first place. My mind was spinning. I kept seeing Romeo’s bruised, beaten face. His tortured eyes. He was a boy trying with all his might to do the right thing, but the wrong thing hung over him. He was so much better than his neighborhood.
I was starting to hate that rotten gang.
In the morning, I was exhausted. My phone chimed with a text right before I got out of bed.
Romeo: Can you give me five minutes extra? I want to walk to school with you, but I want to make sure the twins get to theirs too.
Me: Take your time with them. I can walk with Kenzie.
Romeo: Wait for me.
I texted back that I would. I didn’t understand why I was in such a crabby mood. Not sleeping wasn’t helping, but I suspected it was something else. Or maybe it was everything. I worried a lot more in Kings River than I ever had in New Hampshire. All that worry was frying my brain.
It was changing me.
And apparently, I wasn’t the only one. At breakfast, Kenzie shuffled out, having come down with an abrupt case of the “flu” again.
Dad barely even looked up from his coffee, eyes drooping tiredly.
“Go back to bed,” he told her. “You okay, Rya?”
I glanced at Mom, who was trying to breathe evenly near the kitchen, eyes pinched in pain. She was having bouts of nausea lately. She hadn’t even heard her.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled.
I wasn’t sure she heard that, either. I shoveled soggy cereal down my throat and then quickly rinsed my bowl.
Back in our room, I closed the door. “What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“I’m tired,” my sister lied.
I knew she was lying because all she did was sleep since the night we got attacked. I was the tired one. “Kenzie,” I warned. “Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t want to go to school. Is that so horrible? I don’t want to see Raf’s stupid face. I don’t want to see any of them. They’re all in on it. They’re all like him. I don’t want to look over my shoulder on the way to school. Worry about saying the wrong thing and pissing someone off. I’m over this entire city!”
I settled on her bed. “I don’t want to go either,” I admitted.
“Then don’t go. Dad’s so busy he won’t know. Mom’s too sick and tired to see anything. No one cares about us but each other.” She sat up, her sadness clashing with mine. “You want to ditch and go someplace else today? Get away? Just me and you? We could take the bus to the movies and hang out at the mall.”
My sister was running. Something I’d done since we got here, but I was tired of running. If we were going to live in Kings River, then we had every right to have fun and exist like everyone else. To be happy. Running from everyone wouldn’t help us do that.
“I’m going to school. We can’t let them win, Ken.”
She fell dejectedly onto her back. “This isn’t a war, Rya. And they already won the battle.”
Aggravated, I decided to leave for school early, realizing too late that Romeo had asked me to wait for him. But I was too restless to stand still for a second longer. My head was in the clouds, but it wasn’t heaven up there. It was a spacey kind of hell. Good and bad but real.
I was a block away from campus when I heard my name shouted down the street. I turned around t
o find Romeo jogging up behind me. He paused at the corner, saw no cars, and continued, eyes disgruntled, hair messy, and face a purple, bruised mess.
My heart sunk seeing his face.
The feeling made me realize what was causing my funk.
He grinned. “Do I look as bad as Mama said I do?”
“What did your mother say about this?”
“If you’re hoping she scolded me, then hope again. She wasn’t happy, but she understands.”
“You mean she’s okay with this? She’s okay with her son risking his life to defend an honor that isn’t his?”
He studied me for a stretch. “You’ve been thinking, haven’t you? You want to take it back?”
“Take what back?”
“The fact that you asked me to let you in last night, and I was actually dumb enough to consider doing that. If you don’t want this, just say so.”
My mouth popped open, hurt and shocked he’d accuse me of not meaning what I said. But then I had to wonder why I was hurt. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to keep me and his world separate. He’d done so to the point of causing himself pain. I’d asked to be let in because I wanted to be wherever he was. Those were the cold, hard facts. The warm secrets I whispered to myself. He had no one on his side who knew how special his side was.
“I want this.”
He didn’t react, but I could see the hardness in his eyes. That hardness hid his own hurt. He wanted to let me in. The realization warmed my cold chest.
I stepped close to him, peering up from under my lashes. “Stop brooding.” I reached up and touched his face tentatively, gently caressing his cuts and bruises. There were butterfly bandages closing the cut under his eye, but it didn’t do anything for the impending scar. “I wish you didn’t have to hurt.”
His thick, dark lashes fluttered closed. “I wish you didn’t have to choose between your innocence and me.”
I smelled faint hints of mint on his breath from his toothpaste and he hadn’t shaved at all. He had stubble on his hard jaw; I scraped my fingers over the rigid bone structure, unable to stop myself from studying his lips. I wanted to kiss right over his cut, love his hurt.
“Innocence is nice. It’s like a cocoon, protecting you when you don’t even know you need protecting. But you can’t grow in innocence. You can’t fail or succeed. You can’t love or break. You can’t live in innocence forever.”
“So, what are you saying?” His eyes opened, flashing those magnificently rich pools at me. “You want me to be the one to corrupt you?”
“You also can’t breathe in a cocoon. You’re slowly suffocating under the weight of all the things you don’t understand. What I’m saying is, you’re not the only one having a hard time breathing. But when I’m with you, I’m okay that you keep taking my breath away.”
I wondered if my eyes ever glazed over like his. If they shone and shimmered like his were doing. My heart sped up with the way he was looking at me, and for some reason I forced myself to memorize the look. That look couldn’t lie. It said things he hadn’t. It proved that I wasn’t the only one falling and tumbling and unable to stop myself from hitting the ground of this impossible crush.
That look told the truth.
His hands slid to cradle my face as mine held his. His thumbs stroked my cheeks and he gave my face a tender onceover before giving me his heavy gaze once again. “If I let you in, you have to promise me you won’t run when things get hard. Because they’re going to get hard, Rya. It’s unavoidable in my world. And you have to promise me that I tried. I tried to keep you out of it. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“No, say it. I need to hear you say it. I need to know I tried.” He brought my face so close, our eyelashes tangled.
That intense warmth began to blossom in my chest again. I was overcome and though I knew I needed to breathe, he made it too hard. “I promise not to run, and I promise you tried. But you have to promise me some things too.”
“Tell me.” He kissed the very corner of my mouth.
“If I let you in, because that’s what I’m doing too. We’re letting each other into our worlds. That’s a big step I think, for both of us.” He nodded in agreement, kissing that same spot, but for a little longer that time. My head fuzzed but I forced myself to think. I needed to get this out before he stole my consciousness and turned it into a dream. “You have to promise to talk to me. When you’re scared, when you’re mad, or even before you do something stupid like yesterday. You have to promise not to put yourself last.”
“I promise,” he murmured, softly skimming his lips over mine. “I hate this, putting you in danger, but a part of me is so happy I don’t have to pretend anymore.”
And then Romeo Moreno took my first kiss and made it his.
His lips were so warm and soft, I heard myself sigh a second before my eyes fell closed and I gave in to the deep flames burning in my chest. The world fell away, leaving behind nothing but us. It was such a beautiful sensation to stop worrying for a second and to just feel. He tasted of mint and I’d never felt so far from innocent in my life. My fingers moved to delve into his hair. He held my face, tilting it to the side so he could kiss me harder.
Every brush stroke of his lips told me that I didn’t have to pretend anymore either.
I could finally feel.
Belong.
Be.
There was no freedom in innocence.
But there was in this crush of mine.
This impossible, beautiful crush.
When Romeo pulled away, I got my first taste of his world. One where I could want and not be afraid. A girl could get addicted to that. I should be careful. Instead, I brought his lips back down on mine and kissed him until my back hit the hot metal fencing of the house we were standing in front of. He clutched my face and told me the truth with his lips. The hot, perfect truth.
“We should stop.”
“We should keep going.” I kissed his bottom lip softly.
He chuckled against mine, breathing hard. “You kiss me once and now you’re insatiable. I should have seen it coming.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because you’re not the only one who wants seconds.” His head dipped, and that kiss was slower, warmer, effectively turning my bones to liquid.
I’d never been at the mercy of a boy before. Never had one at mine. Kissing him was like a tennis match. He served, curling my toes. I countered, making him groan low in his chest. I wondered if kissing was always that good, or if only kissing Romeo was that good. My hands slid down his chest, my goal his abs. But when I touched his sides he hissed, tearing his lips from mine to clutch at his midsection.
“Sorry,” he huffed, sucking a sharp breath in. “My ribs are killing me.”
Worry catapulted me back into reality. “Do you think they’re broken?”
“Nah, just bruised. I wouldn’t be able to move if they were broken.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go to school.”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to distract me from his injuries or if I was trying to distract myself. I gave him my hand and he pulled away from the gate he’d just had me pressed against. Heat burned in my cheeks and my lips felt tender and plumped from the warm pressure of his. I touched them when he wasn’t looking, just for proof.
“Where’s Kenzie?”
“She has the flu this morning.”
“Oh,” he said, in understanding.
We didn’t sit together in our first class. We hadn’t done so yet, but I did find it hard to keep my eyes on my work. To not constantly touch my lips. To not replay my first kiss over and over again.
I felt perfectly invisible today, not minding the time on my own to process what had happened that morning. I was even looking forward to eating alone under the oak tree and reading my book. I was partway into book two when a shadow eclipsed the sun, cutting off my light.
I looked up to find Romeo standing there.
“Hi,” he said.
/> Simple. Cute. But he had totally rebellious eyes.
“Hi,” I said back, wondering why he looked so destructive. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, you can. Put your book away and grab your lunch. You’re going to hang with my crew today.”
“Uh…” My eyes flashed to his friends. I gulped. “No, thanks. I’m fine right here.”
His lips twitched. “You wanted in, Rya. This is part of it. They’re not going to bite you. I think. I mean, they might, but just bite them back and everything should be fine.”
I gawked at him. “How is that supposed to comfort me?”
He gave me his hand. “Come on, Angel.”
I didn’t move. “What if they won’t like me? Rosa’s over there. I shouldn’t have to subject myself to your ex on a daily basis.”
“You’re right, you shouldn’t. I wish she could be more mature about this, but she can’t. You can. Try it. For me.”
The for me part was purely manipulative. But he said it with a touch of tender and I fell for it. “Ugh, fine.” I slammed my library book shut and put it in my bag, and then grabbed the snack box I got in the cafeteria. With my other hand, I took his.
I had to give it to him. He didn’t let my hand go. Not even when everyone stared at us. His group of friends studied us the closest. Shrewd, curious eyes. Not everyone liked our hands pressed so close together. But Romeo and I did, and that was all that mattered.
There was an equal amount of girls and boys. I noticed small tattoos on a few of the girl’s inner wrists I hadn’t before, my heart stuttering when I realized it was a marking for the Kings.
“Girls are in gangs too?” I whispered.
“Yes,” was all he said, tugging me along when I tried to slow down.
He nodded at Raf, who had his fair share of cuts and bruises. The strange part was that Raf nodded back and then he gave me a nod too.
I gave him the finger.
Romeo laughed, sitting down between two guys. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit. I stood there awkwardly near him, as close as I could get as eyes tore into me.
“What’s with the gringa?” the boy on his right asked.
Romeo and the Angel: Impossible Crush Chronicles Page 13
