Page 122 of Enforcer

It’s beenhours since Pauly dropped me off at home, and I’ve been drowning my sorrows in any liquor I could get my hands on in the apartment, blasting music loud enough that the neighbors likely hate me more than they already do.

It’s one a.m. when I hear someone pounding on the door. I turn the music down and shuffle to the door. I’m fully ready for it to be the neighbor coming to tell me to shut the music off when I swing it wide open.

“Listen, I’m sorry…” I slur but stop talking when I stare into Alyssa’s tear-stained blue eyes.

Neither of us move.

Neither of us speaks.

My heart pounds so loud that it’s all I can hear, and tears spring to my eyes as my breathing fires out of control.

“Tesoro,” I finally say, and she sobs louder, stepping into me and wrapping around me.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” she cries as I robotically wrap my arms around her and tug her inside.

Moving her to the couch, I sit down and tug her onto my lap.

I say nothing. What is there to say?

So many raw emotions float, and a lump gets stuck in my throat.

I can’t swallow past them.

Anger mixes with joy, which swirls into sadness as I hold her tight.

She cries, her body shaking violently as she buries her head into my neck.

Closing my eyes, I bask in the feel of her in my arms again, her scent winnowing into every sinew of my sinuses.

She turns in my lap, straddling me as she cups either side of my face.

She looks me over as if she’s relearning what I look like. There’s a deep scar on the left side of my head, digging its way through my hair and down my ear and jawline from where the car had buckled and sunken into my skull.

“Fuck,” she whispers, fresh tears falling from her puffy red eyes.

“It’s healed now,” I tell her, trying to make her feel better, but likely only digging the knife of shame deeper through her stomach.

“I should’ve been there.”

I let her words settle between us. There’s nothing else I can say back. Even if I feel like she should have, she wasn’t under any obligation to be there, logically.

She told me from the beginning she could only handle no strings, and I promised her it was just sex.

Things have been complicated with us from the beginning, but she has always been honest with me about who she is.

It was me who got the wrong idea.

Even if she went about leaving the wrong fucking way.

She leans forward, her forehead resting against mine, which blanks my mind for the first time in six months.

The world silences in her presence, and I close my eyes and breathe the peace in.

“Why are you here, tesoro?” I whisper.

“I have things to say to you,” she says, pulling back.

Something in my stomach burns, and I try to ignore it.

---