Page 78 of Bound in Blood
Logan’s hands tightened around the edge of the bar. He felt like he was balancing on a knife’s edge—torn between reaching for Mateo and pushing him further away.
“I’m not asking you to never mess up,” Logan said. “But I am asking you totry.To think. To remember I’m standing right here. That I’m not invincible.”
“I know,” Mateo said, voice barely above a whisper. “Sometimes I feel like I know you so intimately that I forget we’ve barely met. I can feel every one of your emotions, but I don’t know the name of the town where you grew up. I know you like to sleep on your left side, and that you mumble in your sleep, but I don’t know your favorite color.”
Logan huffed. It wasn’t a laugh, but it wasn’t a sob either. It was somewhere in between. “Gold,” he said, looking up at Mateo.
Mateo blinked a few times, stunned. “What?”
“My favorite color is gold. And it doesn’t matter where I grew up, because we will never,everbe going back there.”
Mateo’s mouth parted, like he wanted to say more. Instead, though, he stepped around to the other side of the bar, sitting in the same stool he’d sat in the day Logan had met Mateo and Marco.
“Mine’s red,” he said softly, “Because it was my older cousin’s favorite, and by the time I realized I didn’t have to be just like him, I didn’t feel like picking a new one.”
Logan blinked, trying to think of something to say, but no words coming to mind.
“Marco’s is green,” Mateo added, like it was incredibly important for Logan to know. “He never has said why, but I think it reminds him of the necklace our mother used to wear to Mass.”
A quiet breath hitched at the end of the bar.
Marco stood slowly, the legs of his chair scraping gently across the wood floor. He didn’t speak right away, just crossed the room, unrushed, until he stood beside them. His gaze swept from Mateo to Logan, then down to the wet floor around Mateo’s stool.
“You’re wrong,” Marco said mildly. “I picked green because I liked the frogs in Nonna’s garden.”
Mateo blinked up at him, mouth quirking up around the corners. “I forgot. You andcugina?*Rositaand the frogs.”
Marco rolled his eyes but didn’t push. Instead, he reached behind the bar and grabbed a towel, tossing it to his brother without ceremony. “You’re dripping all over the place.”
Logan looked between them, unable to stop his own smile forming, “Is there a story behind this? Can I hear it?”
Marco made a soft noise as he leaned one elbow on the bar, like he was pretending to be annoyed but secretly pleased at the question. “One of our younger cousins wanted to study amphibians, but it wasn’t a ‘girl’s place’according to her parents. So… I would do it for her, and report back.”
Mateo rolled his eyes. “You mean you’d makemecatch them because you didn’t like the mud. Then you’d go find a picture of it in one of your stupid books.”
“Thosestupid bookssaved your ass when one bit you,” Marco pointed out.
Mateo scoffed, the sound barely covering the way his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. “It didn’tbiteme.”
“You screamed louder than Rosita. And she wasfour,” Marco shot back.
Logan’s grin widened. The edges of his heart, still tender and bruised, began to feel a little less fragile. “I’ve never heard you two argue so much before.”
“We’re notarguing!”They both exclaimed at the same time, like this was something they’d explained a thousand times before. Logan bit back a laugh.
“This is just how we talk,” Mateo scoffed, “Now who’s the one sounding like a mother, hm?”
Logan chuckled, softer now, the kind of laugh that didn’t hurt. He looked between the two of them—Marco with his dry wit and patient gaze, Mateo still dripping onto the bar, lookingwrecked and repentant and just a little bit more like himself again—and felt something settle inside him.
It wasn’t fixed. Not entirely. But maybe,just maybe, it was healing.
“Tell me more about the frogs,” he said, resting his chin in his hand.
Mateo sighed dramatically. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope.”
Marco smirked. “The frogs have nothing on the time I almost convinced him to eat a slug.”
