Page 104 of Shadow Dance

“It was hard for me, too,” she says after a moment. “I felt really conflicted.”

“Because of him?”

“Because I didn’t know if I could trust you.” She stares at the beer bottle between her hands. “You seemed different than Cal and his guys, but I’d been wrong before and I wasn’t sure I could trust my judgement.”

We’re quiet for a moment.

“But you proved yourself to me,” she whispers, peeking up at me. “And after a while, I could tell you were into me the way I was into you.”

“I probably should’ve done a better job of hiding it,” I say, half-joking.

“Oh, sometimes you did.” She shrugs, taking a long sip of beer. “Like the night I kissed you. The things you said really hurt me.”

Regret spears my chest. “I know.”

“You were so angry, even when you kissed me back.” She frowns, looking down. “Especially then.”

I take a long pull of my beer. “You need to understand the kind ofworld I was living in, Maeve. You were living in it too, but you were spared from the worst of it until the very end.”

She nods slowly, still looking at the table.

“I knew there was something happening between us. And I wanted it,” I say, “I wanted you. But then I’d think about Cal and watching him beat some guy to death with a pair of brass knuckles and what he’d do to us if he found out we were messing around.”

Maeve squeezes her eyes shut, pain rippling across her face.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I’m sorry for hurting her then, for hurting her now.

“I guess I thought I didn’t have anything to lose, but I did,” she says, finally giving me her gaze. “We both did.”

Yomaris brings our mofongo—chicken for Maeve and shrimp for me—along with a tray of tostones and more beer.

“Gracias,” I say, giving her a smile. “Esto se ve delicioso.”

“¡Sí, sí, porque lo es!” She smiles indulgently at Maeve before peeking at me. “¿Esta es tu novia? Ella es tan bonita.”

Maeve smiles tentatively, her eyes darting between Yomaris and me. She says she doesn’t speak Spanish, but I’m pretty sure she senses what we’re talking about.

“We’re figuring it out,” I say.

“Aha! Leti estará desconsolada.” Yomaris cackles, her eyes sparkling in amusement. Leti’s one of her younger servers. She’s had a crush on me since the day I first walked in, and she’s not shy about letting me—and everyone else— know.

I give Yomaris a look, and she settles down, squeezing my shoulder as she focuses on Maeve. “Cruz is a good man,” she says in English. “And so handsome, right? Wow.”

Maeve laughs a little, nodding. “He’s very handsome.”

“Too handsome to be alone,” Yomaris says.

Chapter 33

Maeve

Watching Cruz get out of that pickup truck was surreal. Up until that moment, I’d been irrationally afraid that my plan to find him and see him again simply wouldn’t work. Life had been against us from the very beginning, so what made this any different?

But then he showed up. I watched him park and open his door, messing with something in the truck, and something inside me broke open. I was relieved and gut-wrenchingly nervous all at once. What if I’d made a mistake coming to his home, his safe place, unannounced?

His golden-brown skin had deepened into a dark, flawless bronze and his dark hair was short, shorn close to his head. Unlike the trendy, expensive hoodies and joggers and sweats he wore back in California, he was in plain jeans and a black t-shirt, flip-flops on his feet. He was as gorgeous as ever, but it was like looking at someone else. A doppelganger.

But the way he stiffened when I called his name told me I had found him. And the way he looked at me told me he’d missed me as much as I’d missed him. I’d hoped he would let me stay once I found him, and he did. Maybe he really had been waiting for me.

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