The Viper (Untamed Hearts #1)(22)
“I’m keeping my place,” Marcos assured him. “He’s not going to own me.”
Chuito put a glass into the strainer by the sink and sighed. “You know I have money I can give you.”
“No, send it to Tía Sofia. She needs it more than me.”
“My mother does all right,” Chuito promised him. “I just bought her another car. I have it to spare, Marc, and I’d rather you take it than—”
“The car was pretty badass. Lexus LS430. Very nice. I forgot to tell you how much I liked it.” Marcos gave his cousin a genuine smile because he was happy for him. “You should see your mother in it. It’s nice seeing her happy. She’s proud of you.”
“I appreciate you spending so much time with her,” Chuito whispered, sounding torn and miserable. “I wish she’d moved here, but—”
Marcos laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Chuito turned off the sink. “I keep hoping that maybe—”
“We don’t even know how you live here. Tía Sofia. Forget about it. She’d hate it here.”
“This place is all right.” Chuito walked into the living room, pulling his shirt off as he went, and Marcos got up and followed him. “It grows on you after a few years.”
“You stick out, bro. Big-time.” Marcos flopped down on his cousin’s bed and looked at the ceiling. “I’m surprised there aren’t more car alarms and video surveillance. You’d think they’d all have them installed when your Boricua ass showed up.”
“Speak Spanish,” Chuito said in Spanish and then touched the wall next to his bed. “The walls are paper-thin. Jules had the apartments made after she bought the place, but it wasn’t designed that way. She can hear everything.”
Marcos looked at the wall, thinking of the pretty redhead, Alaine, who lived next door to Chuito. He knew his cousin had a thing for her. It was the only possible reason Chuito was still living over Jules Wellings’s office rather than getting a bigger place. He was a UFC champion, for f*ck’s sake, but he lived like the same struggling amateur he’d been when he moved to Garnet five years ago.
“She hears everything?” Marcos asked in Spanish, raising his eyebrows as he grinned at his cousin. “Makes it hard to bring women over.”
“I don’t bring women over.” Chuito tossed his shirt into the hamper and then rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m going to take a shower. Unless you want to go work out at the Cellar.”
“Fuck the Cellar,” Marcos said bitterly. “I can work out at home.”
“Maybe if you stayed, showed them what you could do, start training with me and Tino, they’d reconsider giving you the fighting spot. You know Tino is Jules’s brother-in-law. They do listen to him and—”
“No.” Marcos closed his eyes and rolled on his side on Chuito’s bed, trying to block the image of Katie’s wide-eyed look of horror when she realized Marcos had actually killed some of the *s responsible for Juan’s and his mother’s deaths. “I need to get the f*ck out of this town.”
“What happened at Hal’s today?” Chuito asked in concern.
“I gave her a reality check.”
“Probably for the best,” Chuito said rather than argue. He looked at the wall as if sensing Alaine on the other side. “Girls like them—”
“Yeah,” Marcos agreed before he could finish, and asked something that had been nagging at him for the past few years. “Are you f*cking her?”
“Her?” Chuito gestured to the wall in surprise. When Marcos gave him a look, Chuito snorted. “Her dad’s the preacher at that big Baptist church on the edge of the town. Fucking Alaine is not an option. Trust me. I shouldn’t even talk to her.”
“But you do? Talk to her, I mean.”
“Yeah.” Chuito shrugged and sat on the bed, still looking at the wall, the longing palpable. “It’s strange. She doesn’t see the bad side of anything, even when it’s looking her in the face. She’s like, too good, you know? Sometimes, being around her, I start to forget the bullshit.”
“She makes you forget where you came from, you mean?”
Marcos wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he was starting to understand. Sitting with Katie today, it made him want to believe in the possibility of a different life. An impossible one.
Chuito turned back to him, considering it for a second before he nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. Then I find out Angel’s bringing half of Los Corredores to the next fight. Talk about a f*cking reality check. I don’t need the Cellar anymore. I got gyms all over Miami offering to sponsor me. My mother won’t move here. You know we’re never on the same page. She has you, but to be away for so long after she already lost Aunt Camila and Juan—” Chuito’s voice cracked on his brother’s name, and he shook his head. “I know I need to move my camp back home, but I just—”
“Stay here,” Marcos told him with certainty. “Your mother wants you to stay here. I do too. One of us needs to get out and stay out. Our family f*cking deserves that much, and you know if you come back—”
“I know.” Chuito looked at the wall again. “It’s just… It was easier when Alaine was nineteen and so totally f*cking naive she didn’t even understand what the danger was when it came to this”—Chuito gestured back and forth between himself and the wall—“but it’s not so easy now. It’s been really f*cking difficult for a while. I’m starting to think moving back home is worth it. I can’t keep doing this.”