Page 100 of The Crush
“The water,” Isabel murmurs beside me. “That’s why you didn’t want to go down by the water.”
I keep waiting for her to stop me. To tell me she can’t hear any more, but she doesn’t, and now that I’ve started there’s part of me that simply wants to see it through. Tofinallysee it through. “I was down there one day and a woman came up to me. Maybe a little younger than our parents. I recognized her from the corner store by my building. Always nice to me when I came in, and she must have figured out I was a DEA at some point. She was looking for her son and kept asking me to help her, and I…I told her I’d try. Truthfully, I figured he was probably already gone, but I asked a few contacts. Found out pretty quickly we were trying to use him as an informant.”
Isabel stiffens. “He was working for the cartel?”
“Not yet,” I clarify. “But he was heading that way. The cartels love to recruit young, to grab kids who are angry at the world and their place in it. Impulsive. Reckless. Want to feel like they have a bit of power. Her son had gotten caught on a raid with some others, but instead of locking him up, we had turned him back loose. Told him we’d get him and his mamá out if he brought us intel.”
I feel sick thinking about it, remembering the pictures I’d been shown of the kid. Barely thirteen, but the other agent had just shrugged when I’d asked if we thought he’d even make it throughthe week.
“I don’t know why I did it. I think I’d already seen so much I couldn’t do anything about that I thought if I could fix thisonething… I set up a meeting and told her where we’d be. Gave her some money to get out of the city, told her what route to take and where he’d be, but when he showed up, he wasn’t by himself.”
Go. Go. Go. Go now.
“I kept yelling for them to run, and, in the confusion, she got a hold of him and took off. I tried to buy them time.” My fingers move to graze a long, thin raised scar along my side, remembering how I hadn’t even noticed it until I was back at my apartment. “I really thought my number was finally up that night. Guess it was in a way. Someone must have found out what happened, because the next day, I was written up. Told mypriorities were clearly not what they should be. I don’t even really remember what I said back, but I was gone that night.” I drag my hands down my face, letting my head fall as I stare at the floor and picture somewhere else entirely. “I don’t even know if they made it out. Might have all been for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Isabel counters, trying to get me to look at her again as her fingers lift my chin. “You were trying to help.”
“I was. But maybe I could’ve done more if I hadn’t. I spent so long trying to get there. So I could do something. And then as soon as I had my chance—”
“You did something,” she says. “When you had your chance, you did something.”
I look down at her diary again, still in my lap, still full of headlines that say otherwise. “Not enough though. I should’ve done more.”
“You can still do more, but it doesn’t have to be like this. We can figure it out.”
I study her face, that same look in her eyes that’s been there since I came back. Since before then, I realize now. “Isabel, I don’t—all that time?”
“Yeah, all that time,” she says softly, smiling as she shrugs. “I followed you then and I’d follow you now. Because for whatever reason, I have wanted you since before I knew what it was to want a person. You’ve always been it for me, Danny. You’ve never had to ask. You’vealwaysbeen my choice.”
Seventy-Nine
Isabel
I think I used to spend so much time being afraid. Maybe that’s why it was always so easy for me to see that he was, too.
I was afraid to step out of line. Afraid to let everyone down. Afraid I would never find my place. Afraid for him. My diary, the physical embodiment of the things that kept me up at night, fear wrapped up in a pretty pink cover and a frayed red ribbon to make the outside look brighter than the things it held.
I used to spend so much time being afraid, but I’m not anymore.
When the diary tumbles from Daniel’s hands, I don’t even reach for it. I don’t even watch it go. I only watch him as he finally hears what I’ve always been trying to tell him.
Finally, no more lies.
Eighty
Isabel
It feels like floating and falling all at once. A suspended moment moving at light speed.
I land in the middle of our bed, and before I can even reach for him, he’s already there, his familiar weight covering me and blocking out everything else.
I let him come back to me in our own way, let him kiss me like we both need, his mouth moving over mine like he has all the time in the world. And maybe now we actually do.
The two of us are a tangled dance of touches, lips meeting, hands seeking, sheets and clothing shoved hastily away. Uncoordinated and uncaring, relieved sighs carry from my mouth to his and back again as we fumble through the process of stripping each other bare.
“What do you want, Isabel?” The words mean something different when I’m naked beneath him, my fingers in his hair, my mouth pressing a kiss over his pulse. But the answer is still the same.
“You. Always you.”
