Max hadn’t had Alejandro’s charm. He was more straight-forward. Brusque. Misunderstood. Or he had been. It was still hard for me to remember he was dead and I had to speak about him in the past tense.

“I understand,” I told Alejandro. “Take all the time you need and ask me anything you want.” I would go ahead with my appointments as planned to ramp up my fertility. When he was ready, I would be primed for egg extraction. And if he was never ready? I would go anonymous. It wasn’t my preference, but I wanted a baby no matter what. My goal my whole life was to have a child and now I had a ton of money saved from years on the road. It was time.

The driver cleared his throat. “Miss, we’re here.”

He wanted us out of the car. “Great, thank you.”

I reached for the handle of the door, but Alejandro grabbed my wrist and stopped me. I glanced over at him in question.

“Hey. I love you, too.”

That made my heart swell. The last thing I wanted to do was destroy the remaining fragments of my relationship with Alejandro, and the Garcias. I reached out and cupped his cheek. “You’re such a good boy. You always were.”

He covered my hand with his and he held it tightly. “Not a boy. A man. A grown-ass man with a man’s needs.”

What did that mean? And why on earth had my nipples hardened? Of course I knew he was a man. But I was older than him. I just thought of him as Max’s younger brother. “What does this man need?” I whispered.

It was a dangerous question.

His answer was a sly, lustful smile. His eyes were dark. His shoulders tense. “You. That’s what I need.”

Whatever the hell I thought he was going to say it wasn’t that.

The door I was holding yanked open and I almost spilled out onto the driveway. Instantly, lightbulbs flashed. Instinct had me sliding the sunglasses back over my eyes.

Bill was there to catch me. There were people yelling for Lola. I was out of the car and being hustled into the hotel, the whole time wondering what exactly Alejandro needed me for.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had a crazy question to ask.

two

When Max and I were kids, I figured out by the age of five, when he was ten years old, that he was the real-life version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not everyone saw the different sides of Max because he was good at hiding the darker side of himself. But he was completely unguarded around me. So I was there when he knocked over a vase and blamed it on the dog, even as my dad smacked the poor unsuspecting mutt on the rump. I was there when Max was twelve and tripped a girl his own age at the playground and called her a whore as he flipped up her skirt. Or the time he used his slingshot in front of me to knock the neighbor’s cat off the fence, laughing hysterically.

All cruel, all symptoms of a bully, but not necessarily psychotic.

But I was accidentally there years later when I walked in on him with another girl while he was dating Miranda. He had taken my iPod without permission and I stormed into his room to retrieve it. I was pissed off that he was stealing from me when I knew full well he was selling weed and wasn’t paying rent to our parents. There they were, Max and a brunette fully naked, the girl riding him like she was on the pro rodeo circuit, fondling her own nipples. She did pause long enough in her groaning and squeezing to smile at me and give me a friendly wave. “Oh, hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

I ignored her. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked Max. “Does Miranda know you’re fucking other girls?”

Max gave me the stare. The one that only myself and a handful of other people had seen. The one that said I could die and he would not give a shit. In fact, he would enjoy watching. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “Or I will shoot you.”

His hand went into his nightstand drawer and I was already backing up. I knew he had a gun in there. And suddenly it was out and pointed at me. And I had seen enough in our lives to know the truth. He could shoot me without hesitation. I had no doubt about that. The girl let out a squeal.

“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to maneuver herself off his dick, her expression one of alarm.

The gun shifted from me to her. “Don’t you dare stop fucking me,” he said. “I don’t like a dick tease.”

She went completely still for a heartbeat. I regretted riling him. I should have said something later, when she was gone. But I was so pissed off for Miranda that I had broken the cardinal rule of life with Max—don’t poke the guy with the weapon. “Max, leave her alone,” I said quietly, trying to stay calm.

But now he ignored me. He was focused on the girl, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “Are you a dick tease?” he asked her, his voice like steel.

She shook her head rapidly and settled back on him, her thighs spread on either side of his chest. She started to move, her face leeched of color, all pleasure gone. He relaxed a little, his arm dropping down slightly.

At fifteen, I didn’t know what to do. He was twenty, bigger than me, muscular, and crazy. I couldn’t rush him, knock the gun out of his hand. That would be a huge risk and it wasn’t just me I would be jeopardizing. I knew he wouldn’t kill the brunette intentionally. But if I intervened further, he might by accident. So I did what I had always done in life with Max—I backed out. But I stood in the hallway, watching around the doorframe, just to make sure nothing went south. I felt sick to my stomach, horrible, in agony for the girl. She was moving faster now, spurred on by his hand smacking the back of her curvy backside. Her yelp was one of fear, not pain, and certainly not pleasure. He still kept the gun pointed at her, and I knew that I had inadvertently given him a new form of torture pleasure. Sexual domination. Fear mixed with sex.

It was my fault.

The wait felt endless. Interminable. But finally he gave a grunt of satisfaction as I sat with a noxious pit in my gut. A minute later she came out of his room, tears streaming down her face, her clothes in a bundle in front of her nudity. When I locked gazes with her, she sucked in a breath and recoiled from me. She was halfway across the living room before she paused briefly to pull her shorts and top on with trembling fingers, not bothering with undergarments.