[english] The Viper

Author: Kele Moon

Garnet County
January 1, 2014
A Garth Brooks song played on the radio. The windshield wipers worked overtime pushing away the snow as Katie drove back home after the New Year’s Eve party held at her brother’s place. The roads were empty at two a.m. Not that they were ever too crowded in her small hometown of Garnet.
Katie had gone to her brother Chris’s just in case her ex tried to stop by the house after he sent her flowers for New Year’s Eve, asking for a second chance. Her divorce had been two years of hell, and Grayson still didn’t want to let go.
Now she was stuck driving back home through the early stirrings of what looked to be a nasty winter storm. Damn Grayson. She would’ve been happier spending the night on her couch with a bottle of wine and Ryan Seacrest to keep herpany.
Determined to enjoy the first vestiges of the New Year, she turned up the radio. She started thinking of her mother and deliberately sang along. Her mother used to love Garth Brooks.
Katie didn’t notice the blue car behind her until it was practically on top of her. That little car just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had to be doing ninety at least. On a snowy, two-lane road that was nothing but sharp turns. Were they crazy?
She expected them to pass her. Even if it was a two-lane road, people did it all the time. Katie certainly wasn’t going to speed up in a snowstorm to make a lunatic driver happy. A chill ran down her spine when the driver continued to ride her tail rather than pass. For one moment she thought it could be Grayson, but this driver was noticeably swerving. Grayson didn’t drink.
She slowed down, hoping the driver would pass, but they just remained plastered to Katie’s bumper in a way that made her feel bullied. Her instincts were...

 

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Chapter One

Garnet County

January 1, 2014

A Garth Brooks song played on the radio. The windshield wipers worked overtime pushing away the snow as Katie drove back home after the New Year’s Eve party held at her brother’s place. The roads were empty at two a.m. Not that they were ever too crowded in her small hometown of Garnet.

Katie had gone to her brother Chris’s just in case her ex tried to stop by the house after he sent her flowers for New Year’s Eve, asking for a second chance. Her divorce had been two years of hell, and Grayson still didn’t want to let go.

Now she was stuck driving back home through the early stirrings of what looked to be a nasty winter storm. Damn Grayson. She would’ve been happier spending the night on her couch with a bottle of wine and Ryan Seacrest to keep her company.

Determined to enjoy the first vestiges of the New Year, she turned up the radio. She started thinking of her mother and deliberately sang along. Her mother used to love Garth Brooks.

Katie didn’t notice the blue car behind her until it was practically on top of her. That little car just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had to be doing ninety at least. On a snowy, two-lane road that was nothing but sharp turns. Were they crazy?

She expected them to pass her. Even if it was a two-lane road, people did it all the time. Katie certainly wasn’t going to speed up in a snowstorm to make a lunatic driver happy. A chill ran down her spine when the driver continued to ride her tail rather than pass. For one moment she thought it could be Grayson, but this driver was noticeably swerving. Grayson didn’t drink.

She slowed down, hoping the driver would pass, but they just remained plastered to Katie’s bumper in a way that made her feel bullied. Her instincts were on high alert. It was clear this person was trying to scare her.

And they were obviously drunk.

She turned on her blinker, intent on pulling off the road, but before she could, the driver sped up and finally made the move to go around her. Katie looked at the driver, but in the darkness all she could make out was the long hair and slim frame of a woman. She also couldn’t help but notice being flipped off when the strange woman stuck her hand out of the open sunroof. Maybe if the driver had been paying attention to the road instead of giving Katie the middle finger, she would’ve seen the white pickup truck coming over the hill. As it was, the woman didn’t even try to slow down.

As if caught in a nightmare, Katie watched the truck swerve violently to avoid the blue car suddenly in their lane. The last thing Katie heard before her world exploded was the blaring of a horn and the skid of tires against icy asphalt.

Glass was everywhere. The sting of it was in her face and neck. She could feel the warm trickle of blood running into her eye, but all that was nothing but sensory annoyance next to what was going on with her left arm. The agony was so extreme she wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it before this moment. A scream burst out of her as the shock of getting hit cleared between one heartbeat and the next. She tried to tug her arm free from where it was pinned by the twisted metal that was once her driver’s side door.

She nearly blacked out from the pain. She started hyperventilating as the smell of smoke filled her senses. She was claustrophobic in the best of circumstances. After five years in a mentally abusive relationship, Katie didn’t like feeling trapped. She was in such a freak mode, she found herself trying to steel herself against the pain and willing the strength to attempt jerking her arm free again…even if it caused more damage.

She needed out of her car.

“I’m calling 911!”

Katie heard the voice from somewhere. Low and gruff, vibrating with panic. She blinked, focusing on it.

“Stop moving. I’m getting help.”

Katie hadn’t realized she’d been fighting to get out until the passenger side door was abruptly opened, and the blast of cold air hit her. She blinked at a tan face. Light blue eyes swirled with concern, hidden partially by locks of dark hair. As insane as it was, this man was so handsome that for the pulse of one second she forgot the pain, but in the next breath, it slammed into her with such force it wouldn’t have made a difference if it was Bradley Cooper sitting himself in the passenger seat of her car.

The handsome stranger was talking rapidly on his phone.

She started crying. Embarrassing. Ugly crying. Punctuated by really dignified statements about her predicament like, “Ow, ow ow.”

He asked her questions. She thought she answered them correctly.

She couldn’t believe this was how she was starting the New Year.

As she sat there, trapped, in pain and shivering in shock and cold, he took off his jacket and put it around her. “They’re coming,” he told her, sounding concerned as he held the phone to his ear. “Mrs. Wellings says they’ll be here in three minutes or less.”

Katie nodded, feeling a little better and a lot warmer. “That’s Jules?” She struggled to stop the tears and speak clearly. “Can you tell her it’s Katie Foster so she can call my brother?”

Katie actually heard Jules’s screech through the phone. Jules Wellings had been Katie’s attorney for the divorce and one of her only true advocates. A very busy woman and a mom of twins, Jules rarely worked 911 dispatch these days, even if her twin brother was sheriff. It was a small stroke of luck.

The world hazed out in relief then. Knowing it was Jules sending help eased some of her panic, and this handsome stranger sitting in Katie’s mangled car had kind eyes. He had even given her his jacket, and it left his arms bare to the cold—really big arms. He had tribal tattoos on his biceps, and a large snake inked into the corded muscles on the inside of his right forearm. She’d never seen tattoos like that up close. They made him look undeniably dangerous, but for some reason she wasn’t nervous in his presence. She focused on him because there was nothing else but the pain to set her attention on.

 

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He cursed when his phone died. “Hijo de la gran puta!”

“A-aren’t you cold?” she stuttered as she stared at those bunched, tattooed muscles rather than think of the agony in her arm.

“I just slammed into your car two hours after New Years. You should want my ass to be cold.” He let out a bitter laugh full of self-hatred as he turned to her in concern. “I’m sorry about this.” He shook his head. “Coño. That sounded lame, huh? You can’t just say sorry for something like this.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “This is my worst nightmare. It was the last thing I fucking needed on my conscience.”

“I know it wasn’t your fault.” More tears rolled down her cheeks. “T-there was nothing you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve swerved the other way.”

Well, there was that.

“I had a couple beers when the ball dropped. I don’t even know why I hung around Chuito’s when I should’ve left for Miami yesterday morning. I just hadn’t seen him in so long. Hell, I thought I was sober. I waited a couple of hours before I headed back home, but obviously—” He paused and then picked up Katie’s good hand, squeezing it tightly. “I really am sorry, Katie Foster. You seem like a sweet girl, and you didn’t need my shit luck rubbing off on you.”

“My luck isn’t all that great either,” she confessed as she squeezed his hand back rather than pull away. “Obviously.”

“Feel better. I promise you a messed up arm’s gonna end a lot better than what this accident is gonna do to me. You’ll get your revenge, chica.”

She heard the nervousness over the drinks he had. He was likely facing a DUI. He could’ve taken off like the other driver. Instead he was sitting there, jacketless, holding her hand.

“You should leave,” she whispered. “Go, and I’ll forget what your truck looked like. See if it’s still drivable.”

“I’m not leaving you.” He snorted as if the thought were ridiculous.

“But the drinking?”

“Your friend, Jules Wellings, she knew it was me who called 911. I met with her a couple of days ago hoping to get sponsored by the Cellar. Hell, I was staying with Chuito Garcia. He lives above her offices. She knows where to find me. I promise.” He gave her a sad smile, showing off white teeth. The bottom ones were a little crooked, making it obvious he hadn’t suffered through four years of braces like Katie had, but somehow that just added to his charm. “So we’ll just sit here together and face the bad luck head-on. That’s what I usually do. This time I got company. It’s all good.”

She looked back to this stranger with no little amount of admiration for his courage. He was a fighter. Even if he hadn’t just admitted to it, he had the look of a man who spent his days working out in the Cellar.

The Cuthouse Cellar, Garnet’s one claim to fame, was a state-of-the-art MMA training center in town. Every day it seemed more up-and-coming fighters chose the Cellar as their training camp. It was clear he was one of those men who came here looking for fame and glory, but unfortunately for this one, his life collided with hers instead.

What a shame.

She was still staring at him in amazement. Her intrigue with him was enough to keep her from crying. The pain still throbbed in her arm, radiating out to the rapid thump, thump, thump of her heartbeat, but with him near, it was almost as if that crazy strength it took to be an MMA fighter was rubbing off.

“Does it work?” she whispered.

He frowned. “Does what work?”

“Just f-facing it head-on?” she clarified. “The bad luck?”

He seemed to consider that for a moment before he grinned. “At least you know when the next punch is coming. Nothing worse than getting blindsided, right?”

“Right,” she agreed softly, looking down to her arm, trying to see how bad the damage was. All she saw was the blood. It made her stomach lurch, and she looked over to the fighter once more. “I’m gonna try that. F-facing things. Not hiding from my problems anymore.”

“Where I come from, teenagers would fuck with me when I was young. Hard kids. Thugs. Nothing fazed them. They’d use anyone to get the job done. They’d make eight-year-olds run their drugs if it kept the heat off them, and I wasn’t ready for all that. Then I figured out it was harder for them to threaten me if I was looking them dead in the eye.” He squeezed her hand once more. “That’s the one thing they can’t take from you. Your courage.”

“I’m not courageous,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks heat despite everything. “I’m the exact opposite o-of courageous.”

“You seem pretty brave to me.” He tilted his head to look at her with noticeable admiration. “All the girls I know would be freaking out and screaming their heads off right about now.”

The wail of sirens had him jumping out of the car before she could respond. He faced a possible DUI head-on, without even flinching. She watched him wave down Sheriff Conner, who beat the ambulance to the accident site. The sheriff came flying out of the car. He didn’t pay more than a passing glance to the young fighter other than to say, “Don’t you be going anywhere, boy.”

Then he was crawling into the passenger side of her car, filling up the small space with his powerful presence. She always forgot just how big the sheriff was until she was next to him. He was one seriously large fella, but Katie’s mind was on her fighter standing out in the snow without a jacket.

 

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The sheriff touched the pulse point at her neck and shined a light in her eyes as he asked, “How ya doing, Katie?”

“O-okay. Listen, Sheriff—”

“Jules is calling your brother. She wanted me to tell you that she’ll make sure he meets you at Mercy General.” The sheriff leaned over her, shining his flashlight toward the door that held her arm trapped. “We need to make sure you don’t move until Tommy and the fire department get out here.”

“Yeah, but Sheriff—”

The sheriff picked up the radio on his hip and started speaking into it. Most of what he was saying was police jargon, but she got the gist of it. They needed bigger equipment out here to cut her out of this car. The fear washed over her in icy-hot waves. She used her good hand to pull the fighter’s jacket tighter around her, seeking comfort from it. Her instinct was to start crying again, but she realized now why her thoughts were scattered in other directions besides the pain. Extreme shock had settled in at some point. Her arm was still hurting, but her acknowledgment of it had faded to the background.

More sirens wailed in the distance. Help was coming. She should be relieved, but instead she looked back to the fighter, standing there illuminated by her headlights. The snow was falling in his dark hair and resting on his broad shoulders.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said quickly to Sheriff Conner, wanting to get it out before the fire department showed up. “There was another car. This crazy woman swerved into his lane right as he was coming over the hill. None of this was his fault, Sheriff. It was just b-bad luck.”

“Okay, darling.” The sheriff squeezed her good hand. “Just focus on breathing easy and not moving until we can get you out. Can you do that?”

Katie took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, but about—” She paused, realizing she’d never asked his name. “The m-man out there.”

“Don’t you worry ’bout Marcos. He’s a big boy, and there’s not a scratch on him.” The sheriff squeezed her hand once more. “You’re the one we’re gonna focus on right now.”

“It was just bad luck,” she repeated, thinking of not just the accident, but a long string of rotten luck and getting the impression she wasn’t alone as she stared at the fighter again. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Rather than respond, the sheriff got out of the car to meet the fire truck that pulled up. Katie got the distinct impression the fighter, Marcos, was low on his priority list, but Katie still worried about him.

The entire time they worked at cutting her out of the mangled mess of her car, she thought of Marcos. She would look for him, her gaze searching the accident site when the fear or pain got too much. She’d usually find him standing out of the way with a brown blanket over his shoulders. She wished she could hold his hand again, but there were firefighters everywhere. Tommy, the paramedic, sat next to her taking her vitals, talking in that calming voice of his that made it obvious why he was good at what he did. He had put a brace around her neck. He was getting her ready for the stretcher as the horrible grinding of metal being cut away made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

She was shaking. The shock was still clouding her brain. It blocked out some of the pain, but still she fought for clarity as the relief of finally being free made her vision haze. The world started to spin as they put her on a stretcher. Tommy had to take extra time with her arm, splinting it on a board. Katie didn’t have the nerve to look.

“I-I need the jacket,” she told them, knowing it had been tossed aside somewhere. She didn’t want it to end up at the tow yard. “P-please. I need to take it with me to the hospital.”

“Sure, darling.” Tommy gave her a warm smile that made more than a few Garnet women weak-kneed.

The paramedic was one of their most eligible bachelors, but Katie was still worried about her fighter. She breathed a sigh of relief when Tommy put the jacket over her as they wheeled her toward the ambulance. She was just starting to think everything might be all right when Sheriff Conner’s voice drifted over from the other side of the street.

“Have you been drinking tonight, Mr. Rivera?”

She wanted to scream at him to lie.

Instead she heard her fighter face it head-on. “Yeah, Sheriff, I had a few beers at midnight.”

She found herself staring at the roof of the ambulance before she could hear how it all played out. The sirens came to life. Tommy, the handsome paramedic, alternated between checking her vitals and writing things on his chart. All the while he laid on that charm he was famous for, obviously very accustomed to making horrible situations a little easier with the good looks God gave him.

Yet all she could think about was Marcos, the mystery fighter with kind eyes, dangerous tattoos, and a horrible case of bad luck almost as epic as hers.

Chapter Two

Miami

April 2014

The only good thing to come out of Marcos’s fated trip to Garnet County was getting out of that town without a DUI. Once the sheriff gave him the all clear, Marcos promptly headed back to Miami and attempted to forget everything about that week. To be safe, he went ahead and moved just in case the sheriff decided to change his mind and pin something on him.

Marcos’s past made him more than a little paranoid where the police were concerned. The old apartment had been a shithole anyway. Not that the next place was much of an improvement, but sometimes any change was good. A new place, a new job, a new cell number, a new life.

 

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That had been his grand plan after his dreams of being a professional fighter had officially ended the moment he ran into Katie Foster. More than losing the fighter spot at the Cuthouse Cellar, it was the accident itself that disturbed him.

He remembered the young, pretty brunette with no small amount of regret. There was something about those wide, honey-colored eyes framed by long, tear soaked eyelashes that haunted him. Her hair was the same shade of light brown as her eyes, long and wavy, the kind a man longed to touch just to see if it was as silky as it looked. Everything about her was soft and innocent in a way the women he knew weren’t. She’d been so pale in the night, making the blood stand out starkly on her cheeks and forehead. He’d seen a lot of terrible shit in his life, but that image disturbed him more than most. Perhaps because someone like Katie Foster was never meant to bleed like that, and knowing it had been his fault had him waking up at night in cold sweats.

That accident was churning up a fuckload of posttraumatic stress.

Even if Chuito had assured him she was recovered, he couldn’t shake the guilt or the strange pang he got in his chest when he remembered how she’d actually been concerned about him that night. Even with painful injuries, she had been willing to cover for him, and it just furthered his determination to stay out of trouble once he got home. He didn’t want to run into another Katie Foster again, and he was officially tired of the fast lane. He could work hard, keep his nose to the grindstone, and stay out of trouble long enough for life to somehow forget guys like him weren’t designed to grow old and live off a pension.

His intentions had been good, but it didn’t take long for it all to go to hell.

“You can’t fire me.” Marcos glared at his boss of the past several months, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “I’m the best guy you got.”

Sebastian sighed and lowered his head as he mumbled, “You know the heat’s been sniffing around my place ever since you started. We’ve had four salvage inspections in the last three months. The cops came back last night. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”

Marcos felt that familiar white-hot rush of shame and anger wash over him. He couldn’t argue with that reasoning. If he were in Sebastian’s place, getting shaken down every few weeks by the cops, he’d probably fire the ex-con putting a target on his back too.

Even if he was the best body man in Miami.

“Yeah, whatever.” Marcos turned his back on him, determined to gather up his things and then go and get drunk.

Fuck it, what the hell was staying on the straight and narrow doing for him anyway? Clearly life didn’t want him to stay out of trouble.

“Tell your tía I’m sorry.”

Marcos winced, hating the reminder that his aunt—one of the only relatives he still had left—had to turn to an old boyfriend to get him the job in the first place. Something nasty and cutting was on the tip of his tongue. Once upon a time, he’d been guilty of being a mean motherfucker when it came to shit like this. He’d likely have punched this pendejo for even mentioning his aunt, but now he just walked out of the office without a backward glance.

With his tools in the back of his pickup, he peeled out of the parking lot of Sebastian’s Auto Body, being sure to leave his mark on the asphalt. He picked up his phone, paging through his old contacts as he kept one eye on the road.

Of course, there was traffic, and he silently fumed as he listened to the phone ring.

“Oh wow.” He threw up his hand after someone cut in front of him. When Marcos missed the light, he cursed, “¡Coño!”

He laid on his horn, hoping the dickhead who cut him off could hear it. He didn’t even notice that the phone had been picked up until his friend Luis laughed in his ear. “Road rage, bro. I thought you were changing your ways.”

Marcos just shook his head. “I just got fired—again. Fuck changing my ways. It never works out.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Heat’s been shaking down Sebastian since I started. He finally got sick of it. I was lucky I kept the job that long.”

“Come down to the warehouse and hang.” The hope was heavy in Luis’s voice. “It’ll be a party. Old school. Just like back in the day.”

Marcos hesitated, because it was tempting to touch those wild, free days of his youth again. It was that long-ago dream that always got him into trouble, because the memories weren’t all bad. There was a time when being part of Los Corredores meant everything to him. It made him invincible. Untouchable. Dangerous. The days before the darkness. When the gang stood for respect and unity instead of revenge and money.

The days before Marcos’s mother and Juan died.

Before Chuito left.

And Angel took over.

“You know he’d take you back,” Luis cut into Marcos’s private thoughts. “He owes you. We all do. Big-time. He’ll literally pay you twenty times what you were making at Sebastian’s. They’re tagging you anyway. Might as well benefit off it.”

“Yeah, might as well,” he agreed in Spanish, feeling a little apprehensive talking about this over the phone.

He wasn’t real sure what the Spanish was going to hide; most of Miami spoke Spanish—cops included.

“And no one can do what you do,” Luis went on. “You’re a fucking artist.”

That was true, and it was nice to hear someone recognizing it again. He gave up the respect of being a lead member in Los Corredores to spare himself looking over his shoulder every five seconds, but what the hell, he was being hounded anyway.

 

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“I got to go back home first. Take a shower.”

“I’ll tell Angel you’re coming. You staying the night?”

“Probably.” Marcos honked his horn again when someone cut him off. “Carajo, I need to get the fuck out of the 305. These pendejos can’t drive.”

“That didn’t work out so good the last time you tried it. I can’t believe that cop let you off a DUI. I think Chuito paid him off.”

“Some puta got in my lane that night and then took off without stopping. I blew under the limit. Way under,” Marcos said defensively. He did not like talking about that night. “I got off because that accident was not my fault. Chu is still giving me shit about it. I don’t need to hear it from you.”

Luis chuckled in disbelief. “That’s why you strip the cars instead of boost them.”

“We’re on the phone.” Marcos held up his hand. “Are you blitzed right now or what?”

“A little.”

Marcos grunted in annoyance, still wound tight and desperate to change the subject. It must have been more than obvious.

“Sounds like you need a party. A few bottles, a few blunts, you’ll feel better. Come hang with your bros and remember where you came from.” Luis sounded sincere. “Make some real cash for once. Get out of the shitholes you’re always staying in.”

Marcos winced. That was hitting way below the belt. He didn’t like being broke, and it hadn’t been easy, especially since more cash was always there if he wanted it. The past few months hadn’t been the first time he’d tried honest work since he’d gotten out of prison; it’d just been the longest he’d managed to hang in there before he was forced to start stripping cars to pay the bills.

“Stick to what you know,” Luis went on. “We can’t all be UFC champions, right?”

“No, I guess not,” Marcos agreed, because he’d certainly tried for that ticket out of the hood.

He’d been fighting at his cousin Chuito’s side all the way back to grade school. They’d competed in the same underground matches since they were young teens. He’d just had the misfortune of being in prison the night World Heavyweight Champion Clay Powers showed up at an underground fight and pulled Chuito out of the dark recesses of gang life and into the spotlight, effectively saving him from the destiny they all shared. Thug life usually ended in a coffin or jail. Marcos wasn’t as deluded as the rest. He knew it would end badly for all of them eventually. Serving eighteen months did nothing if not provide a little perspective on things.

He’d been trying to save himself from the agony, peacefully distancing himself from assholes like Angel, and more so, from friends like Luis. He couldn’t bear to bury another one after doing it so many times already. He wanted an escape like Chuito—a way to forget the connection long enough that maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad when the next bullet found a friend.

He’d tried to get out, but the fighting spot at the Cellar was a long shot for an ex-con, and that had been before he’d smashed into Katie Foster on New Years.

He felt so much older than he should.

Before Marcos could come to his senses and start figuring out a way to find legit work, someone else cut him off in traffic. He was wound so tight, stressed about money, about telling his aunt he’d lost another job, about the cops that hounded him no matter where he went because of his connection to Los Corredores. Not selling out his friends had earned him a lifetime target on his back from law enforcement. If he wasn’t with the cops, he was against them, and the heat reminded him of it every chance they got.

Marcos rolled down his window and shouted in Spanish, but it did nothing to dispel the anxiety.

Luis laughed again at Marcos’s road-rage issues. “Six o’clock. We’ll party.”

The right thing to do was to hang up and spend the night searching online for a job, but instead Marcos agreed, “Six o’clock.”

Right then it looked like he was screwed. He couldn’t keep a legit job even if he managed to talk some fool into hiring him. He’d tried off and on for over four fucking years now. He might as well just accept that life didn’t want him to be law-abiding.

So he’d live hard instead.

The next funeral could just as easily be his, and maybe it was better that way.

There were no miracles for Marcos Rivera.

Chapter Three

Garnet County

Shock was a handy thing.

It created an oddly hazed, almost romantic memory of a horrible car accident. A handsome fighter silhouetted by moonlight and snow. Courage. Kindness. Kinship. Marcos Rivera was burned in her brain—a tanned angel with strange light eyes and dangerous tattoos. The man himself was as much a mishmash of darkness and beauty as the memory.

If only the rest of the journey had been so pretty. Two surgeries. Hours of agonizing physical therapy. The panic attacks. Being forced to take the medicine just to function past the pain those first many weeks. Being forced to get off the medicine in order to crawl out from the covers, get back to work, and start living again. Reality waited for no woman.

Now spring had arrived.

Her arm was scarred but healing. There were still a few dull aches, but if she got a rare stab of pain it was cured by a few ibuprofen.

The break would be here before she knew it, and Katie ended the last class of the day in a very good mood.

“Don’t forget your final projects on ancient Egypt are due Friday. I’m excited to see how they all turn out.”

 

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Most classes would groan, but this was an eleventh grade AP History class. These were the type of students who shuddered over the destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria whenever they studied it in class. All that history lost. Katie understood their pain. She still spent nights looking at her ceiling, wondering what knowledge that long-ago fire destroyed.

She was a geek.

Which was why she shouldn’t be in mourning over the memory of a fighter, long gone—a smoky mist in Garnet’s history like the lost Library of Alexandria. So much about him Katie would never know. He was gone by the time she got out of the hospital. She knew because she’d looked for him. Dazed with pain, eyes glassy from the pills, she had her sister-in-law Lily drive her to Chuito’s place above Jules’s office, remembering Marcos’s mention of the famous fighter that night. Chuito had informed Katie that Marcos had gone back to Miami. That was all she had ever been able to get out of him. Chuito had been annoyingly tight-lipped about contact information.

That was strange.

Katie knew for a fact Marcos didn’t get a DUI. She had a copy of the police report. He’d been below the legal limit. The phone number was disconnected by the time she called. The address on the police report was no good. All her letters got returned. Why run off and disappear like that? And why all the secrets?

Katie had even taken to posting on craigslist, short messages sent out to Miami with the vain hope of Marcos seeing them and contacting her. All the effort got her was an inbox full of messages from weirdos, but she still posted at least once a week. At the moment, it was the only way she had to reach out to him.

She didn’t like that Chuito.

Not at all.

The two of them had been glaring at each other every time they crossed paths over the past several months. His contempt for her was every bit as potent as hers for him, with all his secrets and dark looks. She was strangely fearless of the light-heavyweight UFC champion. She knew he recognized Marcos’s jacket that she wore whenever it was cold. Which had been always since January. She didn’t care. Let him think what he wanted.

Chuito wouldn’t even give her a damn cell phone number. Jules certainly didn’t have Marcos’s contact information, and had largely discouraged Katie from seeking him out.

“Turn that one loose,” Jules said when Katie sat in the chair behind Jules’s desk and complained about Chuito’s silence on the subject. “He’s probably doing you a favor. We wouldn’t have sponsored him at the Cellar even if he hadn’t taken you out two hours after New Years. Checkered past is an understatement.” Jules glanced at a file on her desk and mumbled to herself. “Dunno why Chuito recommended him in the first place.”

Katie snorted in disbelief. Jules’s own husband had been in prison. Everyone knew it, and she would have called the pretty lawyer on it if the phone hadn’t rung. Jules held up her hand and answered it, which led to a long conversation about taxes and accounting that made Katie’s eyes glaze over. Numbers reminded her of her ex-husband. She quietly excused herself and left.

But she was due back at Jules’s desk, to glare a little at Chuito, who was always underfoot there considering he lived in an apartment above Jules’s law office, and argue some more with Jules. The last time she was there, she’d noticed Chuito had the same snake tattoo on the inside of his forearm that Marcos had. That was very curious. They had to be close friends. She was going to ask him about it the next time she saw him.

This accident had made history geek Katie Foster downright bold, and she liked the change in herself. Life had taught her nothing if not that time was fleeting and a wasted chance was nothing but a potential regret. Screw that. She had enough regrets for a lifetime.

The AP students crowded around her desk to discuss their end-of-the-year projects.

She answered their questions as she pulled on Marcos’s jacket and retrieved her purse from her bottom drawer. She’d already told Principal Jenkins she was leaving early once school let out. Jules Wellings owed her a conversation that she had been avoiding with impressive skill for almost four months. Now it was time to hit her when she least expected it.

The last of the students cleared out. Katie gathered her papers to grade, taking the time to neatly organize them in the soft-sided leather briefcase her mother had bought her the day she had gotten the job at the high school. Her mother died three months later of a rapidly spreading cancer.

Katie took very good care of her briefcase.

Which was why she didn’t appreciate it when she slammed into Grayson before she even had the chance to close the classroom door. Katie’s ex-husband frowned down at her. “Heard you’re blowing off the staff meeting.”

“Physical therapy appointment,” she lied as she dropped down to pick up the briefcase he had knocked out of her hand, and then spent the time to reorganize the papers. Fuming.

He had the good grace to bend down and help her pick up the papers from her earlier classes, but she noticed he didn’t apologize about the briefcase as she sat there brushing it off. She rubbed at a scuffmark on the corner, trying to decide if it had been there or if Grayson had caused it.

“This boy is hopeless,” Grayson mumbled, reading one of the papers in his hand. “Look at that grammar. You’d think after failing algebra three times he’d at least know how to spell.”

She jerked the paper out of his hand. “That’s mine.”

“Dumb jocks. Why the hell did we decide to stay in Garnet to teach?” He shook his head, obviously expecting understanding. “They still plague us, Katie girl.”

 

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“Don’t call me that.” She put the paper back into her briefcase along with the rest. “I like Jason Clover. He tries hard, and Ned said he does amazing things in auto body. We can’t all rule the world through calculus.”

“Oh, a math jab.” He grinned rather than rise to the bait. “You’ve been spunky since the accident. I like it.”

“Gross.” Katie shuddered as she stood, unable to fathom that once upon a time she’d thought the sun and the moon rose over this man’s shoulders. He’d been so different from the other boys in their town. Grayson understood her love of academics, even if their interests were vastly different, and she’d gotten married without a second thought as a sophomore in college. How utterly stupid. “I have to go now.”

She’d take a jock any day over a math geek. Grayson had burned her for her own breed—likely forever.

She walked out of the room without looking back.

Ashley, the cheerleading coach, who was in the hallway instead of on the field, bumped into her before the door had even clicked closed, but this time Katie had a firm grip on the handle of her briefcase out of anger.

“Excuse you,” Ashley huffed indignantly.

Katie didn’t like Ashley when she was the head cheerleader of their graduating class. She liked her even less now. The only difference was, Katie wasn’t intimidated anymore. She just looked the striking blonde in the eyes like Marcos had told her to do and arched an eyebrow.

She might have made a snarky comment, but making fun of jocks was something she had struck off her list. It was called being an adult. Not all cheerleaders turned into washed-up, broke twentysomethings who spent their weekends at the bar hoping the bottom of her beer bottle would somehow help her reclaim the glory of eighteen.

Just this one.

She actually smiled as she brushed by Ashley. Katie wasn’t perfect. Her arm was scarred to hell and back, but she had paid off the few college loans she had since getting the new teaching job. She wasn’t hiring their local lawyer to fend off all the creditors.

Yes, Katie had looked at Jules’s desk when she she’d gotten up. Terrible of her. Oh well. Ashley had made her life miserable since grade school. If Katie got a small amount of pleasure knowing the washed-up cheerleader was living with her mother again and had lost everything due to outrageous credit card debt, she just chalked it up to karma.

* * * *

“I’m sorry, but I’m not helping you with this delusion. Let it go.”

Katie glared at Jules across her desk, but it did little good. This woman once held a spot on the US Olympic team for judo. She was a sheriff’s deputy in her younger years and was now the only lawyer in all of Garnet County. Plus there was that incident a while back where she and her husband faced down a whole crew of real-life mafia guys and lived to tell about it—those mafia guys hadn’t been so lucky.

Jules Wellings was not an easy person to intimidate.

“Please,” Katie whined out of desperation. “I just need a phone number. I know your friend Chuito has it. If you could just—”

“No,” Jules repeated as she glanced up from her work with a frown. “And what the heck makes you think he’s gonna give it to me even if I did ask him for it?”

Katie gave Jules a look, because they both knew Jules usually got whatever she wanted if she put her mind to it.

“Please,” Katie repeated.

“Okay, let’s actually discuss this.” Jules pushed aside her file and gave Katie her full attention. “What is the obsession with Marcos Rivera?”

“He was nice to me.” Katie shrugged self-consciously. “I never got a chance to thank him.”

“He crashed into you and ruined your New Year. You have the scars to prove it,” Jules said slowly, looking at Katie like she’d lost her mind. “He may have been below the legal limit, but he did have alcohol in his system. What the heck have you got to thank him for?”

“That wasn’t his fault,” Katie argued. “If you’d seen how that woman was driving—”

“He has a record,” Jules cut in before Katie could finish. “He served time for stealing cars. Did you know that?”

Katie stared at her, knowing she should feel more apprehension than she did. It wasn’t a huge shock. Jules had claimed before that Marcos had a colorful past. “That doesn’t mean—”

“Bullshit.” Jules cut her off before she could finish. “You know exactly what it means, Katie.”

Before she could stop herself, Katie blurted out, “Didn’t your husband do time?”

“We’re not talking about me.” Jules’s glare became icy, making it obvious Katie had stepped into dangerous territory. “But for the record, the situation with Romeo was unfair and unavoidable. Your fella Marcos served time for stealing not one but several cars. He was caught hacking them up for parts in an abandoned warehouse. Does that sound like someone you wanna get mixed up with? What if it was your car that was stolen? You think you’d still be wanting to get in touch?”

Katie folded her arms over her chest, knowing it seemed childish, but she just couldn’t forget Marcos at the crash site, willing to face a DUI head-on rather than abandon her. That sort of integrity was intriguing, and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she’d been attracted to him, but this quest was about more than her long-dormant sex life. She wanted a chance to talk to him once more. That’s it.

 

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“You’re not a college student anymore. You’re a teacher now,” Jules reminded her before Katie could put words to her convictions. “You cannot afford to get mixed up with someone like Marcos. He’s states away. Be thankful for it and move on with your life.”

Jules’s reasoning made sense. Katie knew she should do just that, but for some reason, everything felt unfinished. She needed closure.

Grasping at straws, she huffed, “But I still have his jacket.”

“Consider it his gift to you for totaling your car.”

“I have resorted to posting notes to him on craigslist,” Katie admitted with a blush of embarrassment. “You should see my inbox. It’s full of messages from every weirdo in Miami.”

Jules shook her head and laughed. “You honestly think a fella like that spends his Saturday nights reading the personals on craigslist?”

Katie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“If that boy had to read the personals for a date, you wouldn’t be coming in here every other day asking for his number. He’s good-looking, I’ll give ya that.” Suddenly Jules frowned and leaned past her desk. She narrowed her eyes at the staircase as if her cop senses were on high alert and called out, “In or out. Stop eavesdropping.”

“Oh God.” Katie resisted the urge to drop her head to Jules’s desk.

She knew who’d been listening to their conversation without having to look to see who came down the stairs. Her skin prickled with apprehension. Even without two UFC championship belts, Chuito “The Slayer” Garcia would have made her jumpy. He screamed danger, and Katie thought it was mighty rich of Jules to be giving her hell about trying to get in contact with Marcos when a fella like Chuito lived in the apartment above Jules’s office.

Maybe, by some small stroke of luck, he hadn’t heard the last bit of their conversation.

“Craigslist, huh?”

Katie stiffened at the rough sound of amusement in Chuito’s voice as he came up behind her. Her cheeks flamed, and she cursed her light coloring because she knew it had to show.

She turned around in her seat and glared at Chuito, who was almost as good-looking as Marcos. He didn’t have the light eyes that made Marcos’s features so startling, and Chuito was a little taller. His shoulders were broader, but the two of them still looked a lot alike, which always gave her a strange mental whiplash.

“What?” Chuito’s smile faded, and his shoulders grew tense under her scrutiny.

“Nothing,” Katie said quickly. “I was just thinking you and Marcos look alike. Strangely so.”

“Well, duh, we’re cousins.”

“Oh, really?” Katie was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

He snorted in disbelief. “What? Did you just think we all look alike?”

“All?” Katie frowned for a moment, and then gasped in understanding. “I would never think that. I’m not ignorant. I know not all Cubans look alike.”

Chuito narrowed dark eyes at her. “I’m Puerto Rican.”

Katie winced, hearing the insult in his voice. “I’m sorry, I assumed since you were from Miami and—”

“Just stop,” Jules mumbled under her breath.

“I apologize, but it was an honest mistake,” Katie snapped as she turned back to Jules. “He is trying to make me uncomfortable on purpose so I’ll drop this. He’s baiting me. I know, because I was married to a man who used to do it all the time.” She turned back to glare at Chuito. “I don’t care if you bully me. I’m not letting you win.”

“Chica, I’m not bullying you. I’m telling you flat out. Drop this thing with Marcos ’cause I’m sure as shit not giving you his number when he went out of his way to change it after the accident. I dunno what he said to you that night, but let it go.” Chuito’s laugh was bitter. “You’re not the first woman to fall for his bullshit.”

“Did you tell him I was asking about him?” Katie asked, not sure what she wanted the answer to be. “Does he know I still have his jacket?”

“Why don’t you give me the jacket, and I’ll get it back to him?” Chuito suggested, his tone still biting and sarcastic. “Since it’s so important to you.”

Katie snorted. “Not likely.”

Chuito mumbled something in Spanish under his breath and looked toward the ceiling fan in Jules’s office. “This shit could only happen to Marcos. This is the reason he’s been getting it since he was thirteen. Unbelievable.”

“Thirteen?” Katie repeated in disbelief.

She glanced at Jules for confirmation, seeing that she had a look of surprise on her face too.

“You’re a liar,” Katie decided as she turned back to Chuito. “And I don’t like you.”

Jules laughed, but then coughed when Chuito drew himself up to his full height obviously offended.

Jules cleared her throat and said earnestly, “Look, Chuito, can’t you just—”

“No, I can’t. Marc’s trying to forget that accident.” His eyes were still narrowed at Katie. “The last thing he needs is a call from her.”

“Well, what if Katie gave you her number—”

Katie gasped and turned back to Jules. “What?”

“And he could give it to Marcos,” Jules finished diplomatically. “That’s a fair compromise.”

 

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“Well,” Katie considered that. “Maybe.”

“No.” Chuito shook his head. “I want nothing to do with this gringa.”

Katie straightened in her chair and looked at him directly just the way Marcos had told her to. “Why do you think it’s okay to insult me?”

“It’s not—” Chuito started and then stopped. “You know what, never mind. Believe it’s an insult.” He rolled his eyes as if she were completely clueless and turned to leave. “Later, Jules.”

“Chuito—” Jules called as he walked to the entryway.

“No,” he repeated as he grabbed his jacket off the stand by the front door. “Do your friend a favor and hook her up with a nice, church-going guy here in Garnet. Ask Alaine to help. She knows plenty.”

As if on cue, Jules’s assistant, Alaine, opened the front door. She had a stack of papers in her arms as if she had just gotten back from the courthouse.

Alaine gave Chuito a bemused smile. “Help with what?”

He paused, looking down at the pretty redhead and considering her for a long moment. When he spoke, his tone was softer, endearing in a way Katie wouldn’t have thought possible. “Help her stay away from mean hijos de putas like me.”

Chapter Four

Miami

This warehouse was, by far, Marcos’s favorite. He was going to be very sad when it was lost to the inevitable police raid, because it was a cool place to hang out. Los Corredores had had it for over three years, and Marcos, always the cynical one, had been mourning its eventual demise for a while now.

The top floors had been converted into bedrooms. Two of the rooms had black lights. One had a foosball table. There was no heat or central air, but they had window units and space heaters. Flat-screen televisions, leather couches, and lots of dark corners.

By eight o’clock Marcos had two rum and Cokes and four different phone numbers in his pocket. Why the hell was he avoiding this anyway? He conveniently forgot the wide-eyed innocence of Katie Foster and her blood on his hands. Instead he danced with Mia Fuentes, who was a new face and his age, when lately the girls had been getting younger and younger at the warehouse. Of course, most of the guys there were younger than him too.

At twenty-six, he should’ve been dead or in prison.

There weren’t many of their old crew left. It was a better reason to leave than the image of Katie Foster the night of the accident, but the rum was doing away with his common sense. Mia had nice curves. Marcos had never liked them too thin, and she had a great ass.

“I’ve heard things about you. They say you’re different.” Mia leaned into him when the music turned soft and sensual. She pressed her lips against the curve of his neck. “Tell me why.”

Marcos laughed, because he knew what she’d heard.

“My mother raised me with manners.” He looked up at the stars as the two of them danced on the flat slab of cement behind the warehouse. “Unlike the rest of these pendejos, I respect women. That’s it.”

Her smile was wide and amused. “You got game.”

“Yeah, sometimes,” he agreed as he returned her smile.

“If you need somewhere to sleep tonight, I could hook you up. I’m staying here now.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you?”

“I’ve been helping Angel wash titles for the cars they steal. I got the best room.”

“I heard he’s been getting a lot of luxury cars. I thought he was boosting them for the parts, not selling them as is.” Marcos couldn’t hide his surprise. “How do you wash the titles?”

“Say you buy a Benz that’s totaled in an accident from Gus’s Junkyard. All you have to do is steal one that’s the same make and year. You switch the vin numbers on the cars, get the title on the totaled car changed over to your name, and you got a new, clean car to sell.”

“And you do all that? Get all the paperwork done and make the car legal?” Marcos was seriously impressed, because that sounded like a very complicated job.

“I spend half my time at the DMV,” she told him confidently.

“No wonder you have the nicest room.” Marcos pulled back, silently thinking about that. He’d heard of organizations as elaborate as that, but he hadn’t known Los Corredores had moved past simply stripping the cars for parts. “Does he get good money for them?”

“Yeah, we’re dealing in mainly luxury cars now. We have buyers who ship them overseas.”

“Do the buyers know they’re hot?”

“Yeah, but they don’t give a fuck. Once they’re out of the country, it doesn’t really matter.”

The paperwork aside, it was delicate business working on a car you wanted to sell rather than strip. Luxury cars were designed to be thief proof. Stealing was one thing, reworking them was another. Not many could pull that off effectively.

“Who does he have switching the vins?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Hopefully you.” Angel gripped Marcos’s shoulder as he walked up. “I’m tired of Luis fucking them up.”

Marcos turned to him in horror. “You’re letting Luis cut into luxury vehicles?”

Angel shrugged. “He’s the only one who knows where to find the vins.”

As a lover of fine cars, Marcos couldn’t help but wince at the idea of Luis hacking into something shiny and new. He let go of Mia to shake his head at Angel. “Estás del carajo. He’s the worst one to do it. He’s too impatient.”

 

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“So come back.” Angel held up a hand as if it were obvious. His eyes were sharp and calculating, his broad shoulders tense, making it obvious he had been waiting not so patiently for Marcos to get over his fit of morality and come back around. “You can stay here if you want. I bet Mia wouldn’t mind sharing her room. She’s my cousin, you know? She just moved here from the island a few months ago, but she’s smart. Got a college degree and everything. Top shelf. Better than these putas you’re used to.”

Marcos looked to Mia, whose gaze was as calculating as Angel’s.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked Mia curiously, because he didn’t put it past Angel to sell his cousin to the first dick who could help him make more money. “You really wanna share a room with a prick like me for some bodywork?”

“It’s not about the vin numbers. That’s his problem.” Mia’s gaze ran over Marcos slowly. “Like I said, I heard things. They say you’re good at all kinds of bodywork.”

“Man, you should’ve seen this pendejo when we were younger.” Angel laughed and turned to Mia. “He had every girl in Miami calling him. His mother changed their phone number five times when he was in middle school. Probably more than that when we got to high school.”

Marcos was already feeling a little raw, and he didn’t trust Angel. They’d been friends when they were younger, but something changed after high school. Greed had consumed Angel a little more than the rest of them. Marcos just had an innate knowing that he would do anything and sell out anyone for enough cash, and he hadn’t trusted him for a long time because of it.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Marcos warned him before he could stop himself as the dark, dangerous side from his youth surfaced without warning. “You know you don’t get to talk about her, cabrón.”

Angel’s shoulders tightened, and Marcos half expected him to lash out. He welcomed it, realizing just then that sex or booze wasn’t the outlet he needed. He wanted to fight. To hurt someone until they bled, because he was so fucking tired of his life without options.

He suddenly didn’t want to do Mia’s bodywork any more than he wanted to do Angel’s. She was beautiful, but he realized now she was just as cold and calculating as her cousin. He had the unexpected urge to shower and wash off her touch rather than stand there.

“I heard what happened,” Mia cut in before Angel could say something stupid. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“It was a bad night,” Angel confirmed and then took a deep breath as if remembering just then how bad of a night it was. “I’m sorry. Sore subject. I get it.”

Marcos took a breath too, knowing that the rum and cokes were probably getting to him. “I’ve had a shitty day. Maybe I’m just looking for a fight.”

“Hey, I got people you can fight.” Angel laughed, the tension slipping away as easily as it started. He turned his arm, showing Marcos the snake tattoo that matched his as a reminder. “But we’re brothers. Los Corredores need to stick together, right? Look at Chuito, he’s still my bro even with all the money and shit, and I’ll be at his next fight. Front row. Us against the world, right?”

Marcos hesitated, not so sure about the loyalty anymore. They were obviously in a lot deeper than a group of teenagers stealing cars. It had been more than that for a while now. The game became deadly the night Juan died.

The same night his mother died.

Unconsciously, Marcos rubbed his arm, feeling the snake tattoo like a brand as he agreed on autopilot, “Right.”

“You want another rum and coke?” Angel asked as he gave him a wide smile.

“I guess.” Marcos nodded, because he knew he wasn’t driving anywhere. Might as well be drunk for it. He could certainly use it. “Yeah, why not.”

“Mia.” Angel gestured to the backdoor of the warehouse.

For one long moment, Mia gave her cousin a dirty look. Then she glanced back to Marcos, her gaze hot once more and then turned and left. Marcos watched her go, her hips swaying, the skirt she was wearing clinging to her in all the right places.

Strangely, an image of Katie Foster came into his mind.

Innocent eyes, pale skin, all those soft, wavy chestnut curls. He wondered what her ass would look like in a skirt like that. Then he shook his head and blamed the rum. He didn’t deserve a girl like Katie Foster. Not even close.

“She wants you.” Angel grabbed Marcos’s shoulder, shaking him playfully.

“Huh?” Marcos frowned at him, his mind still on Katie.

“That one.” Angel gestured to his cousin. “She fetches for no man. Not even her papi, but she’s getting a drink for you.”

This was all sort of strange. It was almost as if Angel was trying to push his cousin on Marcos. Since money hadn’t worked on luring Marcos back into the deep end of gang life, Angel must have figured pussy would do the trick. Top-shelf pussy with a brain and an ass.

No one could say Angel wasn’t good at what he did. He was observant. He obviously knew what Marcos liked, and it wasn’t the brainless nineteen-year-olds hanging out at the warehouse every night.

Marcos was still contemplating it when his cell rang. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, seeing Chuito’s face on the screen.

“Sorry, it’s my cousin,” he mumbled to Angel and answered his phone. “¿Hola?”

“I want you to tell me, play by play, what the fuck you said to that gringa Katie Foster the night you got into that accident.”

 

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That was the last thing Marcos was expecting to hear, to say nothing of the hostility in Chuito’s voice when the two of them had been as close as brothers since birth.

“Excuse me?” He scowled, thinking he had heard him wrong. When Mia handed him another rum and coke, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Gracias.”

“Where are you?”

“At a party.”

“Where?” The suspicion was deep in Chuito’s voice.

Marcos took a sip of his drink, very aware of Angel and Mia standing next to him. “What’s this about Katie Foster?”

Chuito was quiet for a long moment, making it obvious he heard what Marcos couldn’t say.

“You’re an idiot.”

Marcus answered Chuito’s accusation by saying, “I lost my job today.”

Chuito was quiet again, before he whispered, “I told you I’d give you money.”

Marcos coughed and cursed in Spanish before he added, “Kiss my ass.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m trying to get there,” Marcos confirmed. “And I’m working on something.” He winked at Mia, even if his stomach lurched when he did it. He wasn’t near drunk enough for this, but he knew now this was as good as life was going to get. No pretty, sweet girls like Katie and no honest jobs. He might as well just accept his destiny. “Can you get to the point?”

“Hijo de la gran puta!” Chuito sounded more than little irritated when Mia’s giggle reached his ears. “This is what got you into all this trouble to begin with. I dunno what you said to that poor chica, Katie Foster, but she’s been bugging the fuck out of me for your number.”

He raised his eyebrows, wondering for just a moment if destiny was trying to send him a different message, and held up his glass to Mia. “Un momento.”

Marcos walked over to the junkyard behind the warehouse. He looked at the hollowed-out bodies of long-dead cars and whispered into the phone, “Tell me.”

“You tell me what party first.” Chuito switched to Spanish, making it obvious he was somewhere public. Probably the Cellar. He always worked out at night. Life before moving to Garnet had made him a night owl. Car thieves didn’t do mornings.

“I’m at the warehouse,” Marcos admitted, also speaking Spanish.

“Is Angel there?”

“Yeah, I was talking up his cousin before you decided to ruin my night.”

“You’re going to fuck Angel’s cousin? What the hell?”

“Consider it a fringe benefit. I’m going to end up working here anyway.”

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” Marcos cut him off before he could start in with a lecture. “I lost my job because the heat’s been shaking down Sebastian’s since I started. Fighting and auto body are the only two things I know in life, and I can’t get an honest job doing either of them. What the fuck do you want from me? I tried.”

“I want you to try harder.”

“Yeah, you fucking try.” Marcos took another drink of the rum and coke, allowing the burn of it to fuel his anger. “Angel told me you got him front-row tickets for the fight. You didn’t even get me front-row tickets, motherfucker.”

“I didn’t give him those tickets.” Chuito sounded disgusted. “He must’ve bought them.”

Marcos winced, knowing that was a sensitive subject. No one wanted to untangle themselves from Los Corredores more than Chuito. He’d even moved to the bumfuck, backward town of Garnet trying to get away.

It hadn’t worked out so well.

“Do you want front-row tickets?” Chuito sounded slightly abashed, as if realizing just then he was in no position to give Marcos shit when he was in deep too. “I didn’t think to ask, but—”

“Just tell me about the gringa.” Marcos took another drink. “Why does she want my number? Did you tell her I’m broke? If she thinks suing me will get her anything—”

“I thought that’s what she wanted at first,” Chuito started, making it obvious he was as suspicious as Marcos. “But I don’t think that’s it. She’s been wearing your jacket around town, and today I heard her tell Jules she’s been putting out messages to you on craigslist.”

“What kind of messages?” Marcos pulled his earphones out of his pocket. “Hold on, let me check it out.”

He plugged in his earphones, letting him look at his phone and talk to Chuito at the same time. He typed in craigslist on the search engine and waited for it to pull up.

“What did you two talk about that night?” Chuito asked, clearly trying to fill in the silence.

“I don’t remember,” Marcos lied, because he had relieved every moment of that night a million times in his head. He was still looking at his phone, now paging through the dozens of categories on craigslist. “Where do you think she would put the message?”

“Do I know?”

“She didn’t say?”

“No, she just told Jules she’s been posting messages on craigslist, and every weirdo in Miami has been messaging her. That’s got to mean personals or something, right?”

Marcos went to the personals. He was silent for a long while, and Chuito just let him search. His eyes got wide as he looked through them. “Have you seen the shit on here?”

“What did you say to her that night? Really. Try and remember.”

 

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Marcos sighed, his gaze still on his phone, but he tried to sum up the conversation for his cousin. “I said sorry for running into her. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I told her I was probably getting a DUI. I thought it’d make her feel better knowing I was going to get screwed too, but she told me to leave. As if that would get me off. I’d already called 911. I was just keeping her company. It’s not like I was talking her up or anything.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“What kind of messages do you think she’s posting to me? This can’t be the right place. Is there another section?” Marcos was having a very hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of a woman like Katie Foster being interested in him for anything more than maybe paying him to do work on her car. “It’s got to be money. She knows you’re rich. She probably thinks you’ll pay her off if she tries to sue.”

“I don’t think its money. I think she’s into you.”

He laughed in disbelief. “I wish.”

“Marc—”

“I’d definitely hit that,” Marcos confirmed without remorse, realizing just then that he was drunker than he thought for admitting out loud to Chuito something he didn’t even want to admit to himself.

He’d been trying to live an honest life for the past four months simply for the memory of a woman he’d spent five minutes with.

“You know she’s a high school teacher.”

Marcos’s smile grew devious. “Where were teachers like that when we were in school?”

Chuito grunted in disgust. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“I like the gringas.” Marcos’s smile grew wider, though it hadn’t been true before Katie had ran into him. He went back to looking at his phone rather than analyze how one pretty gringa could change his preference so completely. “I need help with this. Mia!”

“Who’s Mia?”

“Angel’s cousin.”

“You’re going to ask one woman to help you look up an ad another woman is posting to you on craigslist? What the hell?”

“It’s not like it’s that kind of message.”

There was no way he believed pretty Katie Foster, with those innocent eyes, was even remotely interested in him—but he was intrigued enough to ask Mia for help with craigslist.

Mia walked up with her eyebrows raised curiously.

“Okay.” Marcos turned to Mia and explained, “This gringa Katie Foster that I got into an accident with back in January is supposedly posting messages to me on craigslist. Do you know where to find them?”

Mia took his phone from him and stared at the craigslist postings on the screen. “What kind of messages?”

Marcos shrugged. “Chuito says she’s been trying to get my number, but he wouldn’t give it to her. She probably wants money, right?”

“She wouldn’t post something on craigslist if she was looking for money. Maybe she likes you.”

“Yeah, right.” Marcos laughed as Mia started looking through craigslist on his phone. “She’s from that place, Garnet, where my cousin Chuito trains, and it is one seriously country town. She probably thinks touching a guy like me will get her hands dirty.”

Mia looked up and grinned. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands dirty with you.”

“Thanks, chica.” Marcos’s tone was encouraging, but he looked away rather than meet her gaze.

Chuito coughed. “You know I’m still on the phone, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” Marcos pointed to his earphones when Mia looked up. “My cousin.”

“The fighter?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice.” Mia raised her eyebrows as she continued to page through his phone. “I might go with Angel to see the fight. He bought twelve tickets.”

Chuito cursed, making it obvious he had picked up what Mia said.

“Anything?” Marcos asked, hoping she hadn’t heard Chuito through the earphones.

“I’m looking in Missed Connections. Women love Missed Connections.”

“What is it?”

“My sister reads them. Sometimes they’re romantic.”

Marcos snorted. “You’re probably in the wrong spot.”

“Here it is.” Mia held up the phone.

Marcos was going to ask how she knew the post was for him when she handed the phone back, allowing him to see for himself why Mia was so certain.

Man with unusual snake tattoo who “ran” into me on New Year’s Eve in Garnet—w4m

The snake on your right forearm is purple and black, with several red ink drops decorating its coiled body. The tattoo is likely a work in progress as the rest of the ink drop scales were not filled in.

If this is you, please message me. You were so kind to me that night, and the conversation we had changed me for the better. Your courageous actions taught me to be a braver woman, and I would love to have one more chance to talk to you and thank you.

Also, you gave me something of yours. Please describe it, and I will gladly arrange returning it to you.

He was silent after he finished reading, wishing now he hadn’t let Mia be the one to help him find it. He could feel her gaze on him, and it left him more than a little uncomfortable. His breath was hitched somewhere in his chest. He cleared his throat and pushed aside the rush of lust that surged through him from seeing right there in black-and-white that something about that night had stuck with Katie as much as it had stayed with him. It felt like a small stroke of luck when he had been dealing with nothing but negativity for a while now.

 

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He knew instinctively that this connection was dangerous for both of them. Chuito should have never told him about it, because Marcos was feeling more than a little rash and reckless since losing his job.

“Why would she mention your Los Corredores tattoo in a public ad? Isn’t that like putting a target on your back?” Mia asked.

“She mentioned your ink?” Chuito choked. “Read it to me.”

Marcos read it to him, still feeling self-conscious with Mia standing there listening. When he was done, Chuito cursed and then said, “What the fuck did you say that night?”

“Nothing.” Marcos couldn’t figure it out either, though he was still secretly riding high over it. He wasn’t going to let Chuito know that. Or Mia, so he just shrugged. “I called 911. I waited for the cops to get there. I didn’t do anything.”

Mia smiled, though her gaze was still sharp and cunning in a way that made Marcos’s skin crawl as she asked, “Are you going to write her back?”

“Hell, no.” Marcos snorted, trying to mentally convince himself of it for Katie’s sake if nothing else. “I shouldn’t even be looking at it, let alone responding to it.”

“It’s not illegal to have a tattoo.”

Mia didn’t seem as concerned, but she also hadn’t spent most of her life being dogged by law enforcement either. He should be mad at Katie for it, but he wasn’t. She couldn’t know what posting about the ink meant. She was completely naive to Marcos’s reality, and that was all the more reason to forget the post and go back to drinking away the pain his life was always inflicting on him.

He wanted to read more, to see if Katie had posted anything else, but he was very aware of where he was and who was watching him.

“Whatever,” he said, his gaze on Mia as he forced a grin. “You wanna finish that dance?”

Mia’s smile was wide and pleased. “Sure.” She flipped her hair, looking triumphant.

“You’re just gonna ignore it?” Chuito huffed. “And let me keep dealing with your issue? What the fuck, Marc?”

“I’ll call you later.” Marcos clicked the button on his earphones to end the call and then tilted his head back toward where others were dancing under the stars. “Come on, chica.”

He let Mia lead the way, waiting until her back was turned to pull his phone out of his pocket and text Chuito before his cousin got pissed and started calling back.

No worries, bro. I’ll take care of it.

* * * *

Marcos managed to slip out of Mia’s clutches with the excuse that he was far too drunk to give her the night she deserved. Fortunately for him, Mia was the type of woman who wanted her men at 100 percent when providing “bodywork.”

So Marcos ended up on a couch in the warehouse once the party had wound down. He lay there in the early morning hours, reading through the other messages Katie had posted in Missed Connections. There were dozens and dozens of them, and no amount of rum and coke could pull his eyes shut now that he knew where to find them.

They all had the same tagline, but the messages themselves varied drastically. Some were to the point and professional, but others were intimate and vulnerable. Marcos reread one in particular over and over again, feeling himself fall under Katie’s spell even if everything in him knew it was a mistake.

I’ve thought of you every day since the accident, but tonight I dreamed of you for the first time. I was so disappointed when I woke up that I decided to write you another note, even if it is the middle of the night, and you’ll probably never see it anyway. In my dream, we were on the beach in Miami. We were both happy, and there wasn’t a stroke of bad luck in sight for either of us. I told you I had never seen the ocean. You laughed, and it was such a nice sound. Now I am lying here wondering if you laugh a lot in a real life or if your days stretch on like mine do, with so little to smile about.

Maybe that’s why I can’t give up hoping that one day we’ll talk again. I can’t stop thinking that maybe two negatives might equal a positive. That together, even something as terrible as a car accident can be beautiful.

What do you think?

It was a nice theory, if not completely naive. Marcos tried to imagine never seeing the ocean and couldn’t even fathom not spending at least one day in the sand, listening to the surf and feeling the sun on his back. Then he found himself fantasizing about taking Katie to Puerto Rico. The beaches on the island were more intimate than Miami—unscathed by the hordes of tourists.

With the rum still lingering in his system, he wanted to believe her theory. That in the small town of Garnet there was a pretty gringa with the ability to turn his negative life into a positive one. The oddest thing about the fantasy was that as he lay there on the couch in an illegal chop shop, what he wanted most was the chance to show Katie the world. To see her laugh. To watch those wide, innocent brown eyes light up with amusement and know he was the one to give that to her.

Then he started wondering what that soft gaze would look like hazed in passion. Didn’t two negative forces have to join together to create the positive? He imagined those pale thighs around his waist, those soft tits pressing against his chest, and he had to adjust himself in his jeans when his cock got too hard for comfort. He was willing to bet her nipples were a rosy pink, just like the color of her cheeks in the cold, and it created a very sexy image in his mind. It seemed a real shame that she was lonely enough to be posting notes to a thug like him on Missed Connections.

 

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This craigslist shit was leaving him very frustrated.

He could go up and find Mia’s room; instead, he decided to text Chuito.

Coming to Garnet. I’ll take care of the gringa situation when I get there.

What he didn’t say to Chuito was that he wanted one more chance too, but he didn’t dare respond to Katie’s post, not with the mention of a gang tattoo plastered all over the Internet. Miami PD knew what a Los Corredores tattoo looked like, but there was nothing stopping him from responding to her in person.

He needed a distraction from the gang life that always sucked him back in no matter how hard he fought against it, and, unfortunately for Katie Foster, she’d just provided one.

Chuito texted back almost instantly even though it was past four in the morning.

Bad idea. Call me when you’re sober.

Marcos knew his cousin was probably right, but rather than respond, he went back to rereading Katie’s posts in Missed Connections until the sun came up.

He was wired and felt alive in a way that was more than a little addictive to an adrenaline junkie like Marcos. The anger over losing his job had evaporated under the waves of lust reading all those Missed Connections posts had churned up. He kept waiting for the moment when reality would sink in, and he’d know it was a bad idea to test out Katie’s theory.

Instead he found himself packed and heading north on I-75 by noon.

He never did text Chuito back.

Chapter Five

Garnet County

Katie was worn out.

The Friday before spring break left the kids distracted and high-strung. They were counting down the minutes until break and really had no use for history.

As she headed to her car, Katie realized she was every bit as ready for spring break as her students. One of the small perks of being a teacher, and she planned to celebrate with a long bath, a glass of wine, and a good book. She had a stack of historical romances waiting to be read, and if she was lucky, the one she chose would be as good with the sex as it was with the historical accuracy and make her history-geek heart go pitter-pat.

A girl had to dream a little.

“Katie girl.”

Katie groaned and refused to turn around as she walked to her car. Instead she just held up a hand, giving a backward wave to her ex-husband.

“Wait up.” Grayson came up behind her, his loafers clicking on the asphalt. “You never told me what you were up to for the break.”

“That was by design.” Katie arched an eyebrow when he stood in front of her, blocking her path to her car. “Getting divorced means I don’t have to answer to you anymore.”

Grayson bristled at that. His eyes narrowed, making it obvious the long school day had worn on him as much as her. “Why do you have to be like that when I’m trying to be nice? I was going to buy you dinner.”

“Grayson!”

Katie looked toward the edge of the parking lot, seeing Ashley, the cheerleading coach leaning against the fence to the football field and waving Grayson over. Katie didn’t know why, but it seemed like lately the perky blonde was always underfoot whenever Grayson was doing his daily groveling.

“Why don’t you go buy her dinner,” Katie suggested, unable to taper the hopeful hitch in her voice. “She’s always after your attention. She giggles at everything you say in the staff meetings, even when it’s not funny.”

Rather than respond to the suggestion, Grayson glared over at the football field. “Later, Ashley!”

“My car won’t start!”

“Her car won’t start,” Katie repeated, giving Grayson a wide smile. “Go be a hero.”

Grayson grabbed her arm, obviously not amused with her sarcasm. “I am tired of begging, Katie girl, and I’m tired of this game you’re playing with our lives.”

Katie tugged at her arm, trying to break it out of his grasp. “Let go of me!”

“You know how it looks to this town when someone gets a divorce. They’re still talking about it. You need to come home now, and we need to get back to living our lives. Together. People look at me like a loser since we broke up, and I’m over it.”

“Oh, sweep me off my feet, why don’t you?” Katie laughed bitterly. “I don’t care what people in this town think.”

“I do.”

“I know.” Katie pulled at her arm again. “It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to be married to you anymore. All you ever cared about was what others thought. The perfect house. The perfectly obedient wife. Someday the perfect children to torment with this delusion.”

“It’s not a delusion,” Grayson snapped at her as he tilted his head toward the football field. “We’re better than them. We’re smarter. We make better life choices. Hell, I got more in my money market account than most of the people in this town could ever dream of. I pay more in taxes than they probably make in a year. I’m going to retire in another two years just off my investments.”

“Everyone talks about everyone. Not just here, but everywhere. It’s human nature.” Katie gave up trying to pull her arm free and just gave him a look of pity. “Stop worrying about what they think and just live your life. This obsession with being better is making you miserable. It was making me miserable too, until I realized I didn’t have to play along if I didn’t want to.”

“You’re not exactly a ten, Katie.” Grayson laughed cruelly, reminding Katie why she left to begin with. “No one is going to love you for your mind like I do, not in this town. I’m your best option, and I don’t understand why you did this to us.”

 

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“I think she’s a ten,” a man called from behind them.

Goose bumps danced over Katie’s skin, and she wasn’t sure why until she craned her neck to look toward the direction of the low, male voice. Her body must have recognized what her mind hadn’t caught up with, because walking over to them was Marcos Rivera. He was wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat, but it was undeniably him. She could see the snake on his arm from there.

He looked larger than life in the late-afternoon sun with those impossibly broad shoulders and large, bunched biceps covered in tribal tattoos. She couldn’t help but notice that every inch of him seemed wound tight and ready to jump—like a tiger stalking prey. She blinked, understanding for the first time all those warnings Jules had been leveling at her in regards to Marcos.

This wasn’t the kind, handsome angel from the crash site.

This Marcos looked deadly.

He took off his sunglasses when he stopped in front of them. His light gaze rested on the steely grasp Grayson still had on her arm. “This is the part where you let her go.”

“Excuse me?” Grayson huffed in that annoying superior voice of his that had always embarrassed Katie when he used it in public, usually toward someone parking their car or waiting on them at a restaurant. “This is my wife and—”

“Ex-wife,” Katie corrected before Grayson could finish. She was still staring at Marcos in shock, unable to believe he was really standing there in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

Marcos broke the dangerous staring contest he was having with Grayson. He let his gaze run over her hotly for one long moment, making more goose bumps dance over her arms. A small bit of the tension eased out of his powerful frame, and the look in his beautiful eyes became warm just like she remembered. “I got your messages.”

“My messa—” Katie cheeks heated when she realized what he was talking about, and her voice was a squeak of acknowledgment. “Oh.”

There was a quiet moment between them, one charged enough that Katie was actually breathless to be in his presence again after so long. Strangely enough, she could feel it off Marcos too. That electric frisson of need so overwhelming it actually showed on his face and translated into something tangible enough that even someone as romantically challenged as Katie could sense it. As if remembering they weren’t alone, Marcos cleared his throat and turned back to Grayson, his eyes narrowed in warning once more.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to insist you get your hands off her.” He eyed Grayson’s hold on her arm pointedly. “Now.”

“I don’t know who you think you are—” Grayson started, but he let go of Katie as requested and took a protective step back from Marcos.

“He’s a friend,” Katie answered, her cheeks still burning in embarrassment and something much more carnal. “We met through Jules Wellings.”

It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Oh, fantastic,” Grayson spat, because Jules wasn’t exactly his favorite person after getting Katie a more than fair settlement in the divorce and severely depleting those money market accounts he was so proud of. “This is just the sort of person she would introduce you to. She’s married into a family of criminals and—”

“We have to go now.” Katie was so thrilled to see Marcos, even with the craigslist fiasco, that she grabbed Marcos’s hand before she could think better of it. His palm was just as rough and calloused as it had been the night of the accident. She looked up at him with a smile. “Late lunch. Early dinner?”

“Sure.” Marcos grinned back, before his gaze darted to Grayson once more in warning “Later, cabrón.”

The dismissal was obvious, and it made it clear that Marcos wasn’t used to men arguing with him. He almost gave the impression that he was doing Grayson a favor by dismissing him.

“You can’t just—” Grayson sputtered in disbelief, his eyes wide as he gave Katie a look.

“Your girlfriend is waiting,” Katie said sarcastically as she pointed over to Ashley, who was standing by her car now and not so subtly watching the exchange.

“But you barely know this guy and—”

“We’re taking separate cars,” Katie offered before Grayson made a scene with some ridiculous excuse to protect her, even if his apprehension around Marcos was palpable and more than a little thrilling. “Bye, Grayson.”

“I’m texting you later,” Grayson warned as he looked at Marcos with distrust.

Katie shrugged with indifference. “If that makes you feel better.”

“I’m over there.” Marcos pointed to his white truck as he pulled her away before any more could be said. “Follow you?”

“Sounds great.” Katie didn’t want to let him go, so she decided to walk him to his pickup even if they had an audience.

Katie couldn’t help but pull up short once they were out of earshot. She looked up at Marcos, knowing the stunned amazement had to be showing on her face as she asked the one question that had been on the tip of her tongue since he appeared like a mirage in the teachers’ parking lot. “You didn’t come all the way here just because of those messages—did you?”

“Yeah, I did. Been driving since yesterday afternoon.” Marcos’s voice was distant for such a stunning revelation. He wasn’t even looking at Katie. His gaze was on Ashley instead. “That woman’s his girlfriend?”

 

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Katie couldn’t help but stiffen a little. She knew she wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as Ashley, but—

“That car’s had a new paint job. That’s not a factory color.” Marcos turned back to her. “What color was it before? Do you remember?”

“Ashley’s car?” Katie was so confused, but she glanced over to see Grayson open the hood to the red compact vehicle. “I don’t know. I try to pay as little attention as possible when it comes to her.”

“Maybe that’s a mistake,” Marcos said in warning as he looked back to Grayson and Ashley. She would have been insulted if his distrust for both of them wasn’t noticeable. “I have a weird memory when it comes to cars. That one looks very familiar.”

He turned to her and arched an eyebrow, as if expecting Katie to understand.

“Did you really drive all the way up here because of a few notes on craigslist?” Katie asked, because she could care less about Ashley or the car she drove. “Chuito told you what I said in Jules’s office, and you read them and just decided to come up. That can’t be true.”

Something on her face must have had Marcos forgetting Ashley’s car too as he gave her a thoughtful look and asked, “You’ve never seen the ocean? Really?”

Katie’s cheeks were hot again as she remembered what note that little tidbit was revealed in. “Never,” she confirmed rather than give in to the shyness.

“Early lunch. Late dinner,” he repeated her words from earlier as his gaze ran over her in another hot sweep that left her feeling warm and tingly in a way she’d never experienced before. “We’ll eat and talk.”

Chapter Six

Marcos rubbed at his arm, feeling his Los Corredores tattoo like a brand as he looked at Katie across the booth in Hal’s Diner.

He knew this was a mistake.

He’d known it since he pulled into the Garnet High School parking lot and spent forty-five minutes searching for Katie’s long honey-brown curls in the dying afternoon sun. He watched the sea of high schoolers spill out of the large brick building and studied their young, hopeful faces pensively because they were so very different from the teenagers he knew. These were kids with a whole lifetime of opportunity in front of them, and Katie was part of the reason for that.

She made the world a little brighter just by being in it. She helped shape young minds and got them ready to face the world. What the fuck was Marcos doing with his life? He’d dropped out of high school after his mother died, and that was the nicest part of that particular story. What he did after he left school would give most people nightmares for the rest of their lives, and he didn’t even have the decency to feel bad about it.

For a lot of years, he’d wondered if he had a conscience at all, or just an ingrained code of conduct that taught him to obey a different set of laws than most people followed.

Now he could thank Katie for finally proving that he did have a conscience. He wasn’t supposed to be here making her eyes glow like they had since that moment at the school when her asshole of an ex-husband forced Marcos to step in after he’d already decided Katie didn’t deserve his kind of trouble. He had just made the decision to leave, head over to Chuito’s for the night, and then go back to Miami to start stripping the cars in the warehouse and work on forgetting the idea of two negatives making something positive. There were no pretty, sweet gringas in his future. Women like Katie weren’t meant for guys like him, yet here they were, because the second he’d seen her ex-husband grab her, he couldn’t help but go to her. He was still congratulating himself for not killing the uptight prick.

He wanted to tell her to turn and run the other way. Instead he was glancing at the menu, berating himself, and willing some sort of strength to keep this friendly rather than give in to the throb in his cock that hadn’t subsided since they sat down.

“You’re really quiet.” Katie’s cheeks were pink, and she bit her lip nervously before she asked in a hushed voice, “Are you okay?”

No, he was anything but okay, but he was saved from having to explain when the waitress walked over, pad in hand.

“Can I get y’all something to drink?”

“Hey, Melody. I can’t believe you came back to work,” Katie said to the waitress. “How old is that baby now?”

“A little over three months.” The waitress smiled at Katie. “I’m just filling in. I’m so busy with the shelter. I really don’t have time to work for Hal anymore, but I help out if he needs me.”

“That’s nice of you. I’ll just have water.” Katie glanced to her menu. “Meatloaf still the special for Friday?”

Melody nodded. “Sure is.”

“I’ll have that.” Katie handed Melody the menu before she looked to Marcos. “What about you?”

“Um.” He frowned at the menu again with his thoughts so scattered it made something as simple as ordering difficult. “I guess I’ll have the same. Water. Meatloaf. That works.”

“Okay.” The waitress took his menu from him. “Mashed potatoes good for ya?”

“They’re excellent,” Katie assured him, and Marcos nodded in agreement.

He saw the waitress, Melody, give Katie a look and a smile before she left. That had Marcos looking around the diner, and he noticed the waitress wasn’t the only one who took an interest in the two of them sitting in the corner booth. He felt self-conscious and could just imagine what they were saying about him.

 

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He didn’t exactly blend in this town.

How the hell did Chuito deal with it?

“I guess we should’ve gone somewhere else,” Marcos mumbled when they were alone again. He unrolled his napkin and worked on setting out his silverware as he avoided Katie’s eyes. “They’ll probably be talking about you now.”

“Probably,” Katie agreed, though her voice was warm and excited in a way he didn’t expect. He looked up at her to see her smile was wide and pleased. “Girls like me usually don’t go on dates with fighters. Not that this is officially a date, but—”

“Chica.” He groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes as the lust and guilt collided violently enough to have a headache forming. Knowing she was so fucking pleased to be here with him wasn’t making any of this easier. “I’m the last guy you should want to be on a date with.”

“What does chica mean?”

He lifted his head, giving her a bemused look he couldn’t hide. It occurred to him that, with a few small exceptions like the past few trips to Garnet, he hadn’t ventured out of his turf. When he was ten, he’d moved from Puerto Rico to Miami, where Spanish was still the preferred language, at least in the areas he hung out in. Hell, even the gringos knew what chica meant in Florida.

“It means, uh—” He thought for a moment. “Girl, I guess.”

“You guess?”

He gave her a smile he couldn’t hide, because there was something about her that was so incredibly endearing as she tucked strands of curls behind her ears and looked at him with open curiosity.

“It can be an endearment.” He shrugged. “Like baby or something. It’s not rude.”

“Oh.”

Katie’s grin was pleased. She blushed once more, and it had his mind sinking back into that dangerous territory as he wondered if that pale skin of hers flushed pink like that all over. He imagined her rosy and sweaty, breathless as he touched and licked her until she came over and over again.

That had always been his thing.

Watching a hot girl come was his drug of choice. That was the reason his mother had to change their phone number so many times when he’d been in school. He’d discovered too young the high he got from getting a girl off. When other guys his age were sinking into drugs or alcohol, he was sneaking into girls’ bedrooms and going down on them.

He hadn’t had many girlfriends. He wasn’t boyfriend material. He never had been, but he was a good time, and all the women in his neighborhood knew it. He was “different,” as Mia not so casually put it.

Jesus, he wanted to taste Katie. To feel her fingers in his hair and her thighs shaking as he sucked on her clit and then fucked her pussy with his tongue. Just once, so he knew her flavor. So he could remember what she sounded like. He’d probably be in a prison cell again one of these days again soon. His father was still in prison in Miami and wouldn’t be seeing daylight for another ten years. That was a lot of fucking years, and Marcos would need something to sustain him. None of the other girls had given him that. They’d always just left him looking for something new.

But with Katie, he suspected she’d be different. She was so sweet. So fucking innocent. Everything about her was soft in a way that drove him crazy. He’d never met a girl like her before, and sitting across from her knowing he wasn’t supposed to touch her was driving him crazy. He had to look back to the table to keep himself from eyeing her, because the white blouse she was wearing was a V-neck that dipped down just slightly, showing off the curve of nice, full tits.

He also couldn’t help but remember the way her very studious khaki pants clung to her ass in the best way possible. How that prick in the parking lot had gotten to tap an ass like that was completely beyond Marcos. This woman could get any guy she wanted, but for some reason, she was oblivious to it.

“You know he’s full of shit, right?” Marcos asked as he went back to straightening his silverware rather than look at her.

“Who’s full of shit?” Katie sounded mystified, and Marcos didn’t blame her. He knew he’d been cryptic since he’d gotten there.

“Your ex. That crap about you not being a ten.” He practically growled the words, and he glanced up at her again, seeing the way those large honey eyes widened in surprise as if she couldn’t believe he’d have a different opinion. “That’s bullshit. Where I come from, you’d have guys crawling all over you.”

Katie laughed. “I doubt that.”

“Don’t doubt it.” His gaze slid downward once more, unable to stop himself from indulging in a quick glance at the curve of her tits. “Never come to Miami. I’ll definitely go to jail.”

“For what?” she asked with amusement.

“Murder, probably. They’d be all over you, and I’d have to kill them. Without finesse.”

He cleared his throat and looked away again, feeling exposed and wondering what it was about this woman that had left him vulnerable since the moment he ran into her. The whole reason he’d gotten the job at Sebastian’s to begin with was because of her. He thought it was the guilt of the accident, but now he realized it might be something entirely different. A part of him had wanted to be good enough for a woman like this. She’d worried about him that night, even while injured, and it stayed with him.

He reached across the booth before he could stop himself and grabbed her left hand to pull it toward him. He could see the scars, still pink against the otherwise pale flesh of her forearm. He reached over with his other hand and touched the scars thoughtfully.

 

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“This is why you shouldn’t be here with me, chica,” he told her as he ran a thumb over the largest scar, watching as the fine hairs on her arm stood on end. “You can see right here I’m bad for you.”

“You gave me something that night, but it wasn’t these scars.” Katie didn’t pull free; instead, she let him touch her, to feel for himself the damage he’d done to something so beautiful. “I’m stronger than I was before the accident. You gave me that. You taught me to be like you.”

He grunted in disbelief as he continued to run his fingers over the injuries, wondering about the pain she went through in recovery and knowing he’d caused it. If only he’d turned the wheel the other way. They would’ve driven right by each other, and neither of them would bear the scars of that night. He wouldn’t have spent the past four months fighting to be something the world didn’t want him to be, and those wounds were likely just as painful as hers.

“I, um—” He brushed the scar on her wrist reverently with his thumb, caressing it instead of just touching it. “The first memories I have are of working on cars with my dad. I’ve always had a passion for cars, all cars, but I’ve spent most of my life hacking them up. Cutting into perfectly good vehicles for the parts until they’re nothing but empty frames.”

“Okay,” Katie said slowly, not sounding nearly as judgmental as she should. “I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

“It’s like a curse.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles because he couldn’t resist. “Hurting the things that are most beautiful to me. It keeps happening to me over and over again. I don’t know why, but it does. I loved my mother so much, and she died.”

Katie shook her head. “My mother died too. That’s not—”

“She was killed in a drive-by.” Marcos cut her off before she could finish. “The whole front of the house was full of bullets.”

“That couldn’t be your fault,” Katie whispered, her voice strained with pain, and when he looked at her, he could see the agony in her gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

“They killed my cousin too. He was only thirteen.” Marcos flinched over the memory, remembering the screams that night, the way Juan had died in Chuito’s arms. The wide, set gaze of his mother staring at the ceiling in shock. He shook his head. “Those bullets were supposed to be for me. They killed Juan and my mother instead.”

Tears rolled down Katie’s cheeks, as if she felt the pain as deeply as he did. “Marcos—”

“I couldn’t respond to your messages because the tattoo”—he lifted up his arm, showing it to her and musing to himself that he was branded even more horrifically than she was—“it’s a gang tattoo. The heat’s probably watching. We’re a known gang in Miami, and they’ve been coming down hard on us for the past few years. I’m sure they sent a subpoena to craigslist.”

“You’re not still in the gang?” She gasped. “Are you?”

“You don’t get out of a gang,” he corrected her. “Until they bury you.”

She was silent, her eyes wide. He thought she might get up and leave, and really, that would be best. It’d be so much easier that way, and it’d save him from doing what he knew he had to do if he was going to obey his newfound conscience.

Except Katie didn’t say anything. She just sat there, like a deer in the headlights, making him feel like a Mack truck, and he hated it.

“I want to be the guy who shows you the ocean. I do,” he admitted, because why the hell not. He was spilling his guts at this diner anyway, and he really hoped no one could hear him, because he hadn’t said this shit out loud to anyone. Ever. “But I’m not, chica. I’m sorry. For both of us.”

It felt sort of like cutting off his own arm, and he didn’t even know why. He barely knew this chick. She was hot, sure, smoking actually, but he didn’t really have a hard time picking up beautiful women. So why this one, with her wide, deer-in-the-headlight gaze and absolutely zero understanding of his life and his reality?

That seemed about as unfair as everything else.

When she finally broke her silence, her voice was a squeak of misery that he understood all too well. “Then why come all the way up here?”

He jerked, not expecting that. “I told you, the heat’s probably—”

“You could’ve given the message to your cousin.” Her voice grew stronger, more reasonable, making him envision her standing at the front of the class teaching. “How long of a drive is it?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, fourteen hours without stopping, but—”

“Did you stop?”

“No, but—”

“You drove fourteen hours without stopping to sit here and tell me it’s impossible?” Katie arched a dubious eyebrow at him.

“Yes.” Even to Marcos’s ears, it sounded like bullshit.

“Liar.” She called him on it. “What if two negatives—”

“One negative.” He gestured to himself and then looked at her. “Just one, and what happens when you mix a positive and a negative, Katie?” He hoped she knew the answer, because his ass dropped out of high school, and he wasn’t real sure. He was tempted to Google it on his phone. A part of him was hoping for a different answer than the one he suspected was correct. “What does it equal? Tell me.”

 

The Viper
Page 19



“A n-negative,” she whispered miserably. “A negative and positive equal a negative.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out the last of his cash and tossed it on the table. “I have to go now.”

“It’s just a stupid math analogy,” Katie said, her voice shaking as her eyes welled up like they had the night of the accident. “I hate math. I don’t even know why we’re using it. Let’s use history instead and—”

He stood up and gave her a long look. “I drove fourteen hours to tell you that you’re beautiful, chica. That’s it.”

She surged forward, grabbing his hand before he could walk off. “I don’t want you to go. I still have your jacket and—”

“Keep the jacket.” He let her hold on, because a part of him wanted her to win. “You know all those things going around in your mind. The stuff you know gangs do, but you’re telling yourself I’m different. That I never did those things. You’re wrong. I’ve done them.”

Katie shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t care if you’ve stolen a few cars.”

“We’re not talking about cars.”

“Drugs?”

“No,” he said and then shrugged. “Well, yeah, but no. Ask me what you really want to know.”

She swallowed hard, as if considering, and then looked him in the eye and actually did it. She asked, “What happened to the men who killed your mother?”

“They’re dead now.” He couldn’t even taper the pride he felt when he said it. “And I don’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.”

Katie released him, her hand dropping back to her side.

She let him go.

“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” she whispered and then looked away rather than meet his eyes. “And your cousin.”

“I’m sorry too.” He sighed, meaning it, because that horrible night had stolen something else from him. Something he wouldn’t have been able to fathom back then— wanting a pretty gringa from Garnet County to look at him as a positive instead of negative. “You have no idea how much.”

He turned to leave before she had to say anything else.

Chapter Seven

Katie ended up in the bath, as she had originally planned. Glass of wine in hand, she was reading, but it wasn’t a romance novel. She lay there with her phone, using the information she had to form a clear picture of the life Marcos had described.

One that didn’t match her vision of the man from the accident at all.

He thought she was sheltered and naive.

As she read, she realized he was probably right.

It wasn’t that hard to find the information. By typing in the description of the tattoo, Miami, and, on a whim, the fact that they were Puerto Rican, the name Los Corredores popped up almost instantly. They even had their own Wikipedia page, filled with all sorts of nasty facts like:

A particularly territorial and dangerous Miami gang. They are one of the largest and deadliest gangs in south Dade County. Known members of Los Corredores have been arrested for a wide range of criminal activities, including narcotics trafficking, shootings, homicides, assaults, and auto theft.

There was even a picture of a tattoo like the one on Marcos’s arm.

And Chuito’s.

How stupid was she to think that it was some sort of cousin-bonding thing. She had imagined that they had gotten them together.

Perhaps they had.

This picture on the Internet had only two ink drops filled in red on the back of the snake’s back, which she realized now weren’t supposed to be ink drops. They are blood. The Internet was filled with grim facts that made Los Corredores look like a very scary gang indeed.

She had a hard time equating the information with the Marcos she knew, with those beautiful, soulful light eyes that had set her on fire as he looked at her across that booth today. She just couldn’t believe the picture these articles were painting of him. She couldn’t even put Chuito in that role, and she and Chuito weren’t exactly the best of friends.

It made her realize, as a history teacher, how very different the reality was from the facts on paper, but she couldn’t stop reading, searching through the different resources, though most were police related.

One article was a study on Los Corredores’s success as an exclusively Puerto Rican gang, when Miami had a much larger Cuban population. Most of Los Corredores’s rivalry was with Cuban gangs. According to the article, they’d managed to establish a strong foothold over the past decade in Dade County through swift, deadly action whenever their territory was threatened.

Katie wondered if by threatened, the article meant shooting up a house with women and children in it. None of these articles and posts had the whole stories in them. Not even close.

She was certain of it.

And she was regretting letting Marcos go so easily, which she knew made her absolutely insane. He’d all but admitted to murder, but going after his mother’s murderers was sort of like self-defense, wasn’t it?

Katie wanted it to be. Desperately. She needed another excuse to see him and touch the magic that she felt in his presence before he left.

She closed her eyes and dropped her phone to the mat by the tub and sucked in a shaky breath, because there was no amount of denial that was going to let her believe the lie for long.

The murders he’d confessed to weren’t self-defense at all.

They were revenge.