Rock Chick Regret (Rock Chick #7)(55)

I didn’t want them worried. Or, more worried.

If he told them this, he would use them up. He couldn’t use them up!

“She got a –” Hector started to repeat but I came to and frantically acted to put a stop to his words.

“No!” I shouted, interrupting him and quickly I advanced across the kitchen.

Hector black eyes came to me and he stood as I approached.

“I need to talk to you a second,” I told him.

“Sadie, they need to know –” Hector started but I’d made it to him.

I reached up, put my healthy hand over his mouth and put my casted hand into his chest. Then I pushed him toward the door, Hector walking backward, me moving forward, my hand still over his mouth.

He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, pulled it from his mouth and halted at the door, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.

I changed tactics, immediately twisted my hand so it was holding his and I walked around him, tugging him behind me and praying he’d change his mind and come with me instead of resisting. I didn’t want to engage in a kitchen tussle with Hector in front of Buddy and Ralphie, firstly because it would be embarrassing, secondly because I’d lose.

He came with me (thank goodness!) and I pulled him into the living room, my step stuttered and I had to make a quick decision.

I knew Ralphie and Buddy could hear if we stopped there. So I dragged Hector through the living room, down the hall and into the powder room. I flipped on the light and closed the door.

Hector looked around us with obvious surprise that we were in a powder room and who could blame him, a powder room wasn’t exactly the primo choice for this particular tête-à-tête (or any tête-à-tête) but it was the only option open to me. I wasn’t going to take him to my room, the very thought of Hector in my bedroom made my toes curl.

When his eyes came to me, the surprise was gone and he was smiling his close-to-laughter, white, glamorous smile.

“Don’t you smile at me, Hector Chavez,” I snapped, not sounding like myself, not sounding like Any Sadie That Ever Existed. Sounding weirdly like Attitude Sadie and, if you asked me if I could even be Attitude Sadie, I would have told you, “heck no”.

“We’re in the bathroom,” Hector told me, still smiling.

“We are. I don’t want Ralphie and Buddy listening in,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want them to hear what I have to say.”

He started laughing softly (yes, laughing!) and said, “I got that, mamita, but why not?”

“I didn’t want them to know about the phone call. You’ve got to go out there, say something that’ll make them not so worried and then… I don’t know…” I stopped because I didn’t know, my mind was racing and I couldn’t catch a thought.

Hector was still laughing softly. “Say something to make them not so worried about one of the Balducci brothers threatening you over the phone in the middle of the night? Tell me how I’m gonna manage that?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, losing it in my panic. “Make something up. You’re a private investigator. Veronica Mars is a private investigator type person too and she lies all the time!”

“Veronica Mars is a character on a TV show,” Hector informed me.

“So?”

Hector’s stared at me a beat, read my panic, his smile faded and his face got serious. “Sadie, I’m not gonna lie.”

“But –”

He came in close (or closer, we couldn’t not be close as we were in a powder room).

“What I wanna know is; why do you want me to lie?”

Oh darn.

This was a sharing situation, as in, me sharing my private thoughts. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t tell Hector that I’d never had any friends and I’d grown to love Ralphie and Buddy and I was terrified of losing them.

People were, well… people. In my experience they had only so much to give before they expected something in return.

I didn’t have much to give in return. Heck, I didn’t have anything to give in return.

But I couldn’t tell Hector that. He’d think I was pathetic.

When I didn’t answer, I watched in alarm as Hector’s face got more serious and he closed the minute gap that was still between us. He put a hand to the side of my neck, sliding it up so his fingers went into my hair, his thumb resting along my hairline, his other arm curled around my waist and he pulled me into the heat of him.

“I don’t wanna say this, mamita, but I have no choice. It’s understandable, you not thinkin’ clearly with all that’s goin’ down. But I have to remind you what’s at stake here,” Hector said.

“I’m thinking clearly,” I informed him and I certainly knew what was at stake.

He shook his head. “You aren’t.”

“I am!” And I thought I was.

His face dipped closer and I watched his eyes go a weird mixture of warm and intense. I’d never seen anything like that before and I had a feeling it did not bode well for me.

I was right.

“Sadie, a month ago, I got back to the office after finishing a job with Luke and walked into a stairwell to see you, literally, fall on your face because you didn’t have the strength to hold yourself up.”