The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(38)

Yes.

He called her, and Alaine answered on the second ring. “I didn’t want to call you. I reckoned you were busy.”

“Yeah, it’s been crazy,” he agreed and then felt a flush of embarrassment on the back of his neck as he asked, “Did you watch?”

“Of course.” He could hear her excitement over the phone. “It was amazing, Chu. I cried.”

“Why’d you cry?”

“I’m just happy for you.” She sniffed, her voice choked with emotion. “Been crying all dang night.”

“Oh, mami, no crying,” he said with a laugh. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“I’m proud of you,” she went on. “You did it. You won. Was your mother proud?”

“Yeah.” He thought of Marcos again. “They were all proud. They want me to stay in Garnet. Win ten more titles.”

Alaine gasped on the other end of the line before she asked, “Are you gonna do it?”

He rolled on his side and propped his cheek in his hand, even if the action made his head hurt worse. “I told them I would.”

“Are you gonna move out of our place?”

“Why would I do that?” he asked with a frown. “I like our prison.”

She laughed despite the tears in her voice. “It’s not a prison.”

“I’d rather be in prison with you than partying with Wyatt, Jasper, and Jules,” Chuito admitted, feeling like he was having the first sane conversation of the night. Now Alaine was his normal, and the rest of the world felt intrusive and loco. He wasn’t real sure when that happened, but it had and he clung to it as he asked, “What’d you eat for dinner?”

“Frozen pizza.”

He laughed. “That’s not good. You need me to cook for you.”

“I still got black beans in the fridge from before. No rice, though.” She sighed. “I wonder what I could put it with instead of rice.”

“Go buy rice.” He frowned. “Go buy rice before it goes bad. Don’t waste food. You always waste food. Did you eat the pork?”

“I got a little left.”

“Ay Dios mio.” Chuito rolled his eyes. “Eating frozen pizza when you got a whole fridge full off leftovers. I love you, mami, but you are so white.”

“You love me?” she asked softly.

“Yeah,” he whispered into the semidarkness of the room, the throbbing in his head and worry over his cousin forcing him to let walls down. “I love you. You’re my family too. You make it easier. Wish you were here.”

“But Jules is there. Who would run the office?” she said as she took a deep breath, as if she needed to remind herself how to breathe.

Chuito didn’t argue with her, because they both knew even though they didn’t talk about it that letting Alaine come to his fights would make it obvious to the whole world that they were closer than just neighbors.

He didn’t want that for her, not when all of Garnet would gossip about it.

Chuito had crossed her father’s path many times, and every time it was tense. The preacher didn’t say anything to Chuito, just stared him down as if he knew what Chuito didn’t admit to anyone.

That whenever he closed his eyes and thought of a woman…it was Alaine.

“Chu,” she whispered into the silence, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I love you too. Just so you know.”

“Love me. Don’t be in love with me,” he warned her. “You wouldn’t want to be in love with me.”

“So you love me, but you’re not in love with me?”

Chuito opened his mouth, wanting to say yes, it was just a friendship-type love he felt for her, because lying about how he really felt would shut down what was growing between them.

He couldn’t do it, so he said, “I just love you. That’s it. Only love. Not sex. I can just love someone. Love is good. Sex is cruel.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said with a bitter laugh. “But I think sex can be kind.”

“It’s dirty.” Chuito confessed it like a sin, because he thought about dirty sex with Alaine all the time. “Angels don’t like dirty.”

“Except I’m not an angel,” Alaine corrected him.

He smiled. “You are an angel. You cry during fights. You’re sweet, mami. You don’t wanna be with someone like me. Not like that. Friends are good.”

“I do want it, Chu,” she said without hesitating. “I want it more than anything.”

Chuito closed his eyes at the white-hot rush of lust that surged into his bloodstream, so hard and blinding it made his head throb worse. It had been so long since he’d touched a woman. Just the thought of having Alaine under him, flushed and breathless, made him almost dizzy with the longing.

If it had been a different time, he might have caved, but he was feeling like the devil himself for agreeing to stay in Garnet when his cousin was in deep with gang life again.

He needed a little self-punishment.

Or a lot.

“No sex. Friends only.” He groaned because that honestly hurt to say. “Friends last longer. I’d die for my friends. I’d do anything for you. Anything.”

“Not anything. But that’s okay. I’m patient. Love is enough for now.”