The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(29)

Okay, this chica was too much. He rolled over and laughed. A hard, sincere laugh, and it was nice because he couldn’t remember the last time he was so genuinely amused by something.

“I was loaded too,” he added, because shocking her was way too easy and so very much fun.

“Oh my God. I’m horrified, Chu,” she said as he laughed harder. “Really. That’s appalling. She got you stoned and took advantage of you.”

“She did,” he agreed as his entire frame shook with mirth. “And it was tan bueno.”

“That is not funny,” she cut off his amusement. “I’m about to go to Miami and give that woman a piece of my mind.”

Chuito honestly wouldn’t mind seeing that, but the thought of it sobered him as he sighed. “You’d have a hard time doing that.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Her voice was sharp in warning. “I don’t have a hard time speaking my mind, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed.” It was one of the things he liked about her. “That’s not what would make it hard. Antonia’s dead.”

He tilted his head and looked at Alaine. Her mouth opened and closed in shock before she whispered, “How’d she die?”

“Dealing on the wrong corner.” He closed his eyes at that, knowing that to Alaine it made Antonia sound like a terrible woman, even in death. “Antonia was a good person, Alaine. She wasn’t taking advantage of my first time. She gave me the bud to help me recover from getting jumped into our gang. They beat my ass. Badly. I had a big rep. They were testing me. They knew I could take it, but it pissed Antonia off and she wanted to help. Same thing with the sex. She was just trying to distract me from the pain. Like you, she was sweet and took care of sick gangsters.”

“But you said she was a drug dealer,” Alaine argued. “I don’t mean to insult the dead, but—”

“She dealt to feed her three brothers. Her father was in prison. Her mother was an alcoholic. She had a lot of mouths to feed and—”

“There are other ways besides—”

“I dealt,” he cut her off. “And I wasn’t doing it to feed children.”

She was quiet for a long time, her eyes wide and bright in the darkened room. “You did?”

“Sí, I did.” He nodded. “I was dealing until I came here.”

“Why?”

One word, so innocent and choked with horror.

He considered the answer for a while before he shrugged. “’Cause it was easy.”

“That’s it?” She sounded so broken all of a sudden. “No excuses?”

He gave her a grim smile. “No excuses.”

He expected her to leave, but she didn’t. Instead she asked, “Is your cousin in jail for dealing drugs?”

“No.” He propped his head on his hand as he looked down at her. “He’s in jail for chopping cars. We used to have this warehouse where we stripped stolen cars and sold the parts. He was our main body guy. One night he was working late, and the heat raided us. He hung back so the other guys in our crew could get out. He let himself get caught. Gracias a Dios, I kept the drugs at another warehouse, or he would’ve gotten a lot more than two years.”

“Were you there?”

“No.” He whispered it miserably, because if he had been, he was certain Marcos wouldn’t have gotten caught. “I was doing other shit.”

“Dealing drugs?”

“Stealing cars.” He closed his eyes again. “I stole most of the cars Marcos went down for chopping.”

Alaine was quiet once more, before she asked, “Why are you here, Chuito?”

“Guilt,” he confessed without hesitation, and it felt good for some strange reason to admit it. “I found my own prison. I can ride it out until Marcos gets out.”

“And then what?”

“I get out of this loco town and go home.”

Chuito rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. A part of him realized he was telling her all this with the hope she would rat him out to the Conners and give them a reason to cuff him and send him back to Miami. He found himself missing the danger and constant adrenaline rush that came with always being on the edge of prison or death. Maybe they’d catch him; maybe they wouldn’t.

Either way, Chuito could handle jail if his luck did run out.

This pretty gringa testing all the boundaries he’d put up for himself a long time ago was freaking him the hell out.

“What if you have something to stay here for?” Alaine asked the question in a raw, pained voice laced with unexpected determination, which was the exact opposite of what he was hoping for. “What if you find something better here than drugs and stealing cars?”

“I won’t,” he promised her, thinking Alaine was nothing if not surprising. “Everyone likes their own poison, chica.”

“That’s not true. I didn’t like my own poison. My daddy wanted me to get married to a man like him and have a buncha babies and be a good church wife who made casseroles for Sunday potluck. I wanted something different.”

“Now you’re sleeping with me.” He gave her a pointed look. “You should’ve stuck with Sunday potluck.”

“People can change, Chu.”