Page 96 of Cruel Lies

The Blackwood boys phased out of my life as quickly as they’d come into it, leaving a piece of my soul forever changed.

Hours later, I wiped the sweat from my brow and straightened, realizing with a start that I’d disassociated through my following two jobs, and was about to have an empty bay. I glanced at the clock; sure enough, it was mid-lunch break, and I was the only one left in the bays.

The isolation gave me an eerie feeling of being watched.

I shook off the strange heaviness on my shoulders and grabbed a shop rag, wiping as much of the grease from my palms as I could before I trekked my way across the street for one of the taco truck’s famous burritos.

Tito, as usual, was happy to see everyone, and I was no exception. Those weathered lines on his face crinkled up as I approached, and I smiled despite my sour mood.

"Ayye, if it isn’t the lovely lady of my dreams. Here to finally accept my marriage proposal,míja?"

I grinned wider and slapped his arm out from under him as he leaned out the window and winked at me. "Tito, I love you for your food, and that’s all I’ll ever love you for. But I hear Miss Chen down at the Asian Market is in love with youandyour taco Tuesday."

He blushed under that dark tan skin, and I laughed for the first time since I’d come back to my old life. My life without the Blackwood boys in it.

I hoped that escaping them would mean returning to my normal life. I was wrong.

Life without them no longer felt all that appealing.

Tito handed out my usual order through the square window, and like he often did when there was no rush or line of customers, the grizzled veteran from Mexico City took off his apron and came out to sit down with me at the nearby picnic bench to chat.

His eyes scanned me as I bit into his little handheld tortilla-wrapped heaven and moaned, eyes drifting closed. "So, where’d you go?"

I shrugged and took another bite, ripping off the tortilla wrap with a savagery akin to a venomous snake. "Oh, I was around." I gestured in the air with one hand and grinned over the burrito. "But I’m back now."

His brows furrowed. "Sí, you’re back in the shop and yourold apartment, but are youreallyhere with us, or are you going through the motions?"

"They don’t pay you enough to man that taco truck, Tito. You should go into therapy. They make top dollar for this free advice and opinions you be handing out on the street corner."

I didn’t like that he could see right through the mask I’d pasted on my face. Hated that he knew my mind was elsewhere. Hated that the closest thing I had to a friend now was the taco vendor on the corner.

I’d spent so much time isolating myself from others that I didn’t realize I needed someone to balance me out at my lows.

The panic attack hit me out of left field, and as I tried not to choke on my food, Tito leaned over and put a hand on my arm, squeezing it gently to tell me I wasn’t alone.

But I was. In the basest of senses, in the truest of truths, I was alone. And for the first time in seven fucking years, I didn’t want to be.

I’d broken the biggest rule, the one I made when I realized I’d been betrayed by the three people closest to me in life—don’t fall in love. It happened so slowly, so subtly, that I didn’t even see the signs until it was too late. Now, I’d have to live with the repercussions of this aching heart because I certainly wasn’t going back to being locked up and kept as a fucking house pet anymore.

Work welcomed me back with open arms, and Big John insisted he would never fill my spot even if I disappeared for years.

If he only knew I’d been hiding in his very shop from the ghosts of my past the whole time.

"I should get back to work," I mumbled, wrapping up the unfinished half of my lunch and shooting him a half-assed wink. "Thanks for the lunch, Tito. And the chat. I missed this place."

A frown marred his features as I walked away, but I didn’t comment on it, and he didn’t stop me. Like all the rest of the people in my life, he let me go without trying to hold on.

The days blurred together,one after another, the same old routine I’d been so eager to return to now lacking any reason to live, to keep going. I kept expecting to see the Torino pull up, Rowan and the others piling out to demand I come back.

But that day never came.

Angel had been saying it all along—I was only temporary. That when I didn’t need protection anymore, I’d return to my life, and they’d return to theirs. Hell, he so much as laid out the fact that they were better off without me every day we were together.

When would I learn to listen to men when they tell me their intentions?

Probably never.

I never stopped feeling like there was always someone watching me, though. Sure, I could have called up Rowan or one of the others, and asked them what was going on. But I didn’t have any fucking desire to intrude on their lives. The last thing I wanted was to be dragged back into that very unhealthy shitstorm of a life.

---