Page 2 of The Right Garza
“Wait,” I say. “Areyou True? Or are you Trent?”
One corner of his mouth slants up, not quite a smile, but the tight narrow to his gaze tells me I’ve slighted him. “Quit playing.”
“What? It’s been a while,” I say in defense.
If he wasn’t wearing a long-sleeve tee, I could take his left arm and twist it, and on the underside of his bicep I would find either an ace of spades or an ace of clubs tattoo. It’s the best way to tell them apart. Trent, spades. True, clubs.
Someone moves, leaving an open space at the bar for him to shift to, closer to me, his jean-clad thigh brushing my bare knee. “And who’s fault is that?” he asks. “You’ve been dodging us like we’ve got the plague.”
“One gin and tonic.” The bartender finally appears with my drink and I slip him a twenty.
“Not the plague,” I say with a small grin before taking a sip. “Just related to the enemy.”
“Enemy.” He knocks his knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention who’s already moved on to another customer. “Strong word, don’t you think?”
I narrow my eyes over the rim of my glass. “Hecheatedon me.”
“You overreacted. Didn’t give him a chance.”
I set my drink down and clap my hands. “Trent! Totally got it wrong the first time. You’re Trenton. For sure.”
He arches a brow at me, a tiny twitch to lips. “How do you figure?”
“Your loyalty has always been a dead giveaway,” I say. “Truewould’ve said his brother’s a piece of shit for what he did and that’s what I get for choosing the wrong brother. Then he’d probably hit on me right after.”
At that, he chuckles. “Yep. That’s True alright.”
The bartender comes over to Trent and I drag my eyes over him once more as he orders an IPA. It’s true that it’s been a while—years even—since I ran into any of the Garza brothers, buthot damn. To think that there’s not one buttwoof these sexy, beastly man-meats roaming the earth.
I’ve known the Garzas almost all my life. We were neighbors. Lived directly cross the street from them. We had a small house but a large veranda. Because the house was always full, I spent a lot of time out there watching the scrawny, shouty Garza boys spar with each other in their front yard. Trent, True, and Tripp. They fought and yelled, and teased each other a lot. But they also hugged each other a lot.
It wasn’t until I enrolled at their school that we became friends. Monica—their mom, biological only to Tripp—had offered to take me to and from school with them so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. Their father, Flavio Garza, had been a renowned blackjack and poker player. A D-list celebrity, a televised tournament player. He wasn’t wealthy but was moneyed enough that their family lived in one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood, drove the nicest cars.
I was never an ordinary girl. I wore high-tops and backward ballcaps with my dresses. I wore skirts over my jeans and suspenders and bowties with my tees. I was a bit confused about my identity back then. Pretty sure the boys were, too. So they treated me like—well, not a girl. We’d spend time at each other’s houses, more theirs than mine since Mama never allowed them farther than the veranda.
We would play card games out on my veranda for hours. They knew more than they should’ve for their age, and I wanted all that knowledge. Soon, we became a crew of four—three Garzas and one Flores. Three half-black, half-Italian boys, and one strange Venezuelan girl.
Sometime after, when I was around fourteen and the twins fifteen, Torin Garza, the fourth brother—also from a different mother—came into the picture. He relocated from Colorado when his stepdad died shortly after his mom did. He didn’t have a great father-son relationship with Flavio, but the loss of the man who raised him as his own so soon after his mom, pushed him to work on his relationship with his father. So, he moved in with them.
He was older, brooding,hot, and alwayssodarn serious. And I had an immediate crush on him.
It took him about a year to finally notice my efforts to get his attention, and another for him to give it to me. We dated for almost a year before his father died. There was a shift in our relationship after that. Until a classmate told me she saw him making out with another girl at a beach rave. When I confronted him, he admitted it but didn’t apologize or ask for my forgiveness.
I was eighteen, he was twenty-one.
Heart split in two, I broke up with him and have avoided the entire family since.
Over the years, they’ve built quite a reputation. Torin joined the army right after our breakup. He did two tours in Afghanistan, and when he returned, he startedRed Cage Commando Security & Investigations Serviceswith his brothers. The most prestigious private investigations company in the west. They’re well respected, well known, and in some cases, feared.
And apparently,reallyhot and jacked.
“Checking me out, Lexi?” Trent asks with a raised brow.
Only mildly abashed, I drag my leer from his pecs and take another sip of my drink. “With a body like that”—I wave a hand up and down his person—”you’ve got to be used to women checking you out.”
“Sure… but not you. The only thing you ever looked at me with is aggression.”
“Only when you were being a bossy bully.” I pause. “Which wasallthe time.”
