Page 83 of The Slayer
It wasn’t just anyone’s life hanging in the balance.
It was Marcos’s life.
Any cause worth fighting for was worth dying for.
Chuito needed more to drink, but he had just promised himself while lyingin jailthat he was going to lay off the Patrón for a while.
Plus, more importantly, he was out and didn’t have a car.
Alaine probably wouldn’t appreciate Chuito jacking hers.
That was inconvenient, especially considering his only other form of stress relief didn’t need a gangster fucking up her life any worse than he already had.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alaine said she would cook, but she sat at the kitchen table instead, staring at her stove. Her heartbeat was thundering in her ears, and she was angry, soveryangry, because not only was Chuito thinking of moving back to Miami.
He was discussing it with Tino instead of her.
She was Chuito’s friend first.
Why was he discussing it with Tino? Because Tino was a man? Because the two of them could do ridiculous things like beat the shit out of each other and bond in jail afterward?
Then there was Tino’s very chauvinist, very caveman suggestion that Alaine simply change Chuito’s mind with sex. Someone needed to punch Tino, preferably Alaine now that she was over her shock. She’d taken every self-defense class Jules taught at the Cellar; now she was glad for it.
The insult to her firmly held feminist beliefs aside, sex and Chuito never equaled a solution to anything. For some reason, it hit her right then that she had actually attempted to date men she not only wasn’t attracted to, but shared absolutely no common interests with.
She was a lawyer, for Christ’s sake.
Why was she shopping in her father’s church for men who wanted a housewife?
That was as unfair to them as it was to her.
Alaine was officially done sacrificing her happiness for Chuito and the delusion he had that she should be someone she wasn’t. It didn’t matter how soulful his eyes were, or how endearing those dimples made him.
If he couldn’t get his shit together, then he could leave, and Alaine could finally start figuring out how to live without the sexy scent of his aftershave fogging up her dreams with something that was clearly never going to happen.
She heard the downstairs door open, and she dashed out of her apartment, determined to intercept him before he could do something like lock himself in like he had last night. He could go back to Miami if he had to, but Alaine wanted answers first, and she wasn’t going to get them by stripping down and begging Chuito to stay.
Tino could shove his advice.
Alaine had her own ways.
Chuito stopped on the stairs, as if he sensed the fury in her. “What?”
“Anything you want to share?” Alaine shrugged. “Anything at all?”
Chuito just gave her a dull stare. “Not particularly. No.”
“Well, you and I need to have a conversation,” she said simply as Chuito walked the rest of the way up the stairs. “Because it seems like you’ve been talking to everyone but me.”
“Yeah, it does seem like that, doesn’t it?” Chuito’s voice had an edge to it, something more than the hard, unyielding way he usually dealt with problems. It was almost manic, like he was about to completely come unhinged. “I’m done for today. I don’t have any Patrón, so—”
Alaine punched him.
She caught him with a right hook that unfortunately connected with the bruise Tino left him with. He grunted, his eyes closed with pain, but he didn’t stumble.
He just stood there, shoulders tight, body tensed like a panther about to spring.
