Page 54 of Bang Buddies With Benefits
Zac was more of a lightning strike. Scorching and searing, all ravishing and rapture. It was what made it so easy to turn off that overly analytical side of my brain that’d developed. Reality had taught me a harsh lesson, one that left me aware of how unreliable the future could be.
My heart ached with the loss of two men now, and what did it want? I’d gotten scared, the idea of losing another man I loved was too painful to bear. So, I’d… lost him.
Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked, blinked, blinked and inhaled, inhaled, inhaled.
Before I reached the front door, Alba swung it open and flashed me a wide, welcoming smile. “¡Catalina, qué bueno verte!”
Mateo’s madre enveloped me in a hug, and my throat grew so tight that I couldn’t squeeze out a single word.
Then Miguel was there, giving me a small smile and happy nod that was the same as a hug in his book. I extended him the whiskey, and he thanked me and guided me to the faded brown chair that he usually sat in, as it was the most comfortable seat in the house.
My gaze couldn’t help drifting to the wall of pictures, several of which showcased Mateo. I was in a few of them, too, in various stages of growing up. As was Hernando, often squished between the two of us, and while I’d always inwardly cursed him for getting in the way, I noticed one that hinted Mateo felt the same way.
Since he was better tempered, he didn’t have his jaw clenched in irritation like I did. But his humor showed through as he peered around our mutual friend who often felt more like a chaperone and shot me his signature grin.
As if we had all the time in the world.
“I have some good news,” I said, and then I launched into a recap of the case I’d been working on, and how it’d been a tough battle, but I’d been able to win the family a nice settlement to help them cope with the loss of their child. “I only wish I’d known a decade ago what I do now, so that I could’ve done the same for you.”
The two of them exchanged confused expressions, as if they were perplexed as to what I meant.
“For Mateo,” I clarified. “I still can’t believe the judge let that guy who hit him off so easily.”
“Mija, is this why we don’t see you anymore? Why you’ve stayed away?”
I wanted to say no. It wouldn’t be right, though. “I didn’t mean to. It just…hurts so bad.” Everything went blurry as tears filled my eyes. It was like once they’d started last weekend, I couldn’t get them to stop.
Alba snagged hold of my hand and sandwiched it between both of hers. She told me about how happy they’d been to hear I was dating someone new, and that they’d been waiting for the day I finally managed to move on.
“But how can I? Mateo would be here if it wasn’t for me.”
“No,” Miguel said, shaking his head. “My son spent his whole life loving you. Even when you were kids, he took it upon himself to protect you. One day he comes home, and he’s upset, and it’s because you were stung by a bee. You remember?”
I did remember. It wasn’t anything I’d thought about in a long, long time. “He killed the bee. And I got upset because it didn’t know any better, and it was just trying to pollinate the flowers.” It was like we’d swapped places that day, him snapping and getting angry while I moderated my reaction. Then later we learned bees died after they stung someone, anyway.
Then later, later, I learned that when the drones mate with the queen, his endophallus is ripped out of his body and remains attached to the queen, likely to keep the sperm from leaking out, which was a whole different twist on the birds and the bees discussion.
I shook off the random factoid my brain provided to help me cope, because I was weird like that, and tried to put the pieces together of what they were saying. I understood—anyway I thought I did—but I couldn’t agree. “That guy who got behind the wheel, he knew better.”
“Maybe,” Alba said. “But as I told Mateo that day, there are times in life, that no matter how hard we try to keep someone safe, bad things happen.” She spoke of her faith and sharing that with Mateo. And how at the end of it all, he said he could accept it, as long as nothing bad ever happened to me.
To my surprise, Alba and Miguel both chuckled at that.
“I was surprised when he accepted that scholarship in Texas, so far away from you,” Alba continued. “And I worried he was going because he thought it was the only way we could afford for him to go to college, which was true, but I didn’t want him to do it for that reason alone.”
“We had a talk about it.” Miguel gestured for his wife to go on and tell me, as if she wasn’t already in the middle of doing just that, and it made me smile that she didn’t call him on it, when I knew I would’ve.
“Mateo, he tells us ‘Catalina doesn’t know she’s in love with me yet. She’s going to do big things someday, and so I want to go do some big things myself. That way she’ll see that she misses me, and that we belong together.’”
“But he already deserved me, and I was already in love with him—I told him that before he left, the big idiot.” I slapped my hand over my mouth, cringing that I’d come over to give them closure and accidentally insulted their son in the process.
But they simply laughed again.
“I said something similar,” Alba said, and Miguel agreed. “But we always knew you two would find your way back to each other, and you did.”
My heart knotted and tried to expand, and it ached so badly it robbed me of breath for a second or two. “I loved him so much. I really thought we’d grow old together.”
They nodded and a moment ticked by in silence as we all fought our emotions and glanced at the pictures and acknowledged the loss, we’d all had.
