Page 10 of Connected

Chapter 4

Joaquin

After flushing the condom, I make my way back to the bedroom and stop in my tracks when I spot Pilar fully dressed in one of the few spare outfits she keeps in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but watching her remove the few articles of clothing from the drawer, I realize that’s all I’ve given her.

Here I am, living alone in this huge fucking penthouse and all I’ve given her is a fucking drawer. I don’t even let her keep a toothbrush here.

Nothing.

“Pilar,” I call, my fingers tightening on the door jamb over my head as I stare at her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Baby, let’s talk.”

Pausing, she lifts her eyes to mine.

“Why, so you can say you’re sorry, again? You’ve said it in English and Spanish, what language are you going to use this time?”

I part my lips to reply, but quickly smack them together when I realize she’s right. Another useless apology dies on my tongue as my hands fall from the door jamb and I start for her. She takes a step back and I sigh, dropping my ass onto the foot of the bed. Hanging my head, I try to figure out how to begin.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say softly.

“I’m tired of adhering to what you want, Joaquin. What about me and what I want?”

I turn my head to look at her. After three years, I should know the answer to the question I’m about to ask her.

“What do you want?” I ask.

She looks taken aback by the question and I immediately rack my brain trying to recall a time when she shared her wants . . . her dreams. This can’t be the first time I’m asking her that question.

“I want the impossible,” she whispers.

I close my eyes.

The baby.

I should’ve prepared myself for that answer. She hasn’t been right since, and while I felt her slipping, I did nothing to reel her in because I thought it was a knee-jerk reaction to the loss.

“You could’ve said no,” I tell her and as soon as the words leave my lips, I realize they’re a mistake. Her mouth drops open and tears well in her eyes. “You could’ve thrown the money in my face and told me to fuck off, but you didn’t, Pilar, and that’s because deep down you know a child deserves more than we’re capable of giving. I can’t take care of you like you deserve, and you . . . goddamn it, Pilar, you could’ve fucking died last night. We’d ruin a child far worse than we could ever ruin each other.”

“How dare you?” she spats.

“It’s true,” I continue.

Anger and despair rage inside of me and every emotion I’ve tried to bury since I found out she was pregnant surfaces. I’m a monster, this I know. I deliver death with my hands and smirk at the sight of blood. But I wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, I aspired to be more than a mediocre mob associate. I wanted to play ball. I was a decent pitcher and dreamed of donning pinstripes and riding on a float at a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes with my wife and kids just like Yankee greats Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neil.

Then the mob happened and those dreams died, but after Pilar told me she was pregnant, for a split-second, I was that kid from Brooklyn with high hopes.

“You think I don’t regret it? That part of me doesn’t wish things were different?”

“You don’t,” she argues. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“Don’t fucking tell me how I feel,” I bark.

“Oh, that’s not what I’m doing,” she argues. “I can’t speak on what I don’t know. I have no idea how you feel about anything. You don’t show a single emotion, Joaquin, and you sure as hell never utter one either.”

Scrubbing a hand over my face, I shake my head.

---