Page 93 of It Happened on a Sunday
I don’t have a fucking clue how she can be so strong, not after everything she’s been through. And I sure as hell don’t know why she’s willing to trust me after I confessed my biggest failure. But she is, and I’m damn sure never going to give her a reason to change her mind or doubt me the way I doubt myself.
I failed to protect Lucia. There’s no way in hell I’m going to fail to protect Sloane.
“Hey,” Sloane whispers, and now she’s pressing soft butterfly kisses to my jaw and neck. “You still with me?”
“I’m still with you,” I tell her, right before I thread my hands in her hair and pull her down for a kiss.
This kiss isn’t like the others tonight. Not wild or fiery or out of control. It’s soft and sweet and profound. Like at the observatory. And like that kiss, it warns me that things are never going to be the same.
As Sloane’s lips move gently against mine, I swear I can feel her soul reaching for my own. Pure, beautiful,powerful.
Instead of fighting it, I reach right back. I can tell by the way she jolts, the way she gasps, that she feels me, too.
Her hands creep from my cheeks to the back of my head, her fingers tangling in my hair and tugging me close.
I go because I can’t not go, not when every cell, every atom of my being yearns for every atom of hers.
I don’t know how long the kiss goes on. It could be seconds. It could be a lifetime. I just know that when she lifts her head, both of us have damp eyes. Her lips are swollen, her cheeks flushed, and she’s never looked more beautiful to me than she does in this moment.
I love you.
The words tremble on my lips, but I bite them back at the last minute. Partly because we had our first date fifteen hours ago and partly because—no matter what we just shared—I know there’s no way Sloane is ready to hear them.
Instead, I ask, “Are you ready for the rest of the story?”
Chapter 41
Sly
“I’m ready for whatever you want to tell me,” she answers, pressing her hand over my heart like she can feel the way it’s breaking open. Like maybe she feels the same way.
But I don’t push it, don’t pushher.I’ve already done more than enough of that tonight. Besides, if I don’t tell Sloane the rest now, I don’t think I ever will. “I got Lucia to the emergency room, and the doctors started running tests. She was pretty messed up.”
Just the memory of that night pisses me off, and I can’t even think of the days that came after. I couldn’t touch my sister without hurting her. No one could. But I had to carry her. They had to examine her.
“She cried the whole time,” I tell Sloane, my voice going hoarse. “Not out loud, just these silent tears rolling down her face. It nearly broke me.”
Maybe it did break me, because I’ve never been the same since. No one in our family has, not even abuela Ximena. When my dad died, he tasked me with taking care of my sisters. Told me I was the man of the family, even though I was just ten.
A lot of people have told me that wasn’t right, that he shouldn’t have put all that responsibility on me. But who else did he have to put it on? My mom fucked off right after Mariana was born, so she wasn’t an option. Abuela Ximena took on the responsibility of feeding us, taking care of us, making sure we got to school. Loving us, absolutely. But someone had to keep us safe, and that was my job. It’s always been my job.
And I failed spectacularly with Lucia.
“Very long story short,” I say when I can find the words again, “the hospital thought I did it. They called the cops on me while Lucia was getting an MRI, who then showed up to arrest me. To be fair, my hands looked like they look now. A few bruises, some cuts from a hard-fought playoff game. It probably looked like I had hit her.”
“Anyone who knows you would have known you didn’t do it,” Sloane starts.
“They did. Even a lot of the local reporters who showed up because someone leaked it knew something was wrong. Lucia got back in time to stop them from actually arresting me, but the news already had the story. And some of them ran with it.”
I shake my head at the memory. “I honestly couldn’t give two fucks what people thought of me. But when the news broke that the police had been called to arrest me over my sister’s condition, they included the name of the hospital. That’s how Grant found out where she was—and the dumb fucker actually thought he was off the hook. If the national press had the story that it was me, he thought he could just waltz in with a giant bouquet of flowers and convince Lucia to go along with it.”
“While her brother was arrested for assault?”
“Yeah.”
“So he was delusional as well as abusive?” Sloane asks incredulously.
“He was something,” I tell her, and it takes every ounce of self-control I’ve got to just sit here and finish the story when everything inside me is screaming at me to move, to pace, to punch a fucking wall. Something, anything, to make the fury go away.
