Page 101 of Hard to Love
The sound of his name seemed to pull Alex out of theexhaustion fog he’d been in since they left San Antonio. “Raylene, we can’t—”
“Don’t you dare start sassing me, Alejandro Villanueva. You just get your tired tail upstairs. Let me do what I do best.”
While Raylene urged the kids down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house, Greer steered Alex toward the stairs. Halfway up, he stopped mid-step. “You don’t have to stay.”
God, a heart full of those glass shards he’d had in his knuckles earlier would’ve felt like balm in comparison to those words. “Are you telling me you don’t want me to stay?”
Alex rubbed at his eyes, leaving the whites rimmed with red. God only knew the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. “I don’t know what I want.”
Well, that wasn’t the confession of undying love that she would’ve enjoyed hearing, but he wasn’t grabbing those two kids and barreling out the door either. One of the reasons she’d been more than happy to leave his crappy-ass car in San Antonio. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Why don’t you get some rest and—”
“What about Nicolás and…and Maria José?”
“Raylene’s got a handle on them.” She tugged on his elbow, urging him to move again. When he took the next step, she said, “And I’ll go back down to check on them.”
Once they were in front of his room’s door, Alex turned to face her and lifted his hands as though to touch her. But they just drifted there in the air. Greer felt their absence on her skin. In her heart. In her soul.
He finally stuffed his hands in his front pockets. “I don’t even know what to say about what you did.”
“How about nothing?”
“But you could’ve—”
She placed her fingers over his lips. His breath warmed her skin, and she couldn’t hold back a shiver. “Later.”
When Alex woke,the room was half shadowed and half illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through the window. Something warm and soft shifted against him, and the gut-wrenching fear that had forced him awake backed off a little.
He wrapped his arm around Greer, pulled her back to his chest. The warmth from her T-shirt and bare legs eased the chill inside him. What the hell had she been thinking? Strolling into Ruben’s house as though she were there for a Friday night card game. She wasn’t stupid, but she was so fucking reckless he’d thought his heart would stop beating when he walked into that kitchen and saw her sitting there.
Didn’t she know if something happened to her that there would be nothing left of him?
He stroked a hand down her hair, wild from rubbing against the pillowcase. What would he do if he could never touch her hair again? Could never touch her again?
He’d be living exactly the way Nicolás had accused him of. Which meant not at all.
But now, he had two teenagers. When his mamá found out what had gone down, she’d be scrambling to get in the middle of this. But it was time for Nicolás to have a man’s influence. And Ruben had made it clear he wanted Maria José out of San Antonio.
And what Alex wanted was Greer. But what the hell would she want with some fractured family that wasn’t even a family? They were just a bunch of broken pieces of skin and bone.
Greer sighed in her sleep and did a little back-up movethat brought her ass up close and personal with his dick. When he’d fallen into bed, he hadn’t been worried about modesty or company.
And he didn’t even know if Greer would agree to take on a fifteen-year-old daredevil. What the hell would that girl paint in this town—the two highway overpasses and the water tower? Yeah, that would take her a day.
The momentary relief he’d felt when he discovered his brother was in love with a girl and not another guy had bottomed out about the time they pulled away from Ruben’s curb. Not that he gave a shit about his brother’s preferences. All he cared about was keeping him alive and safe. But with only one roof and two kids who had the hots for each other, it would be a challenge. Oh, who the hell was he kidding, he didn’t even have a roof right now.
But that wouldn’t keep him from protecting Nic and Maria.
Soft fingertips trailed along his forearm, and Greer murmured, “Alex?”
He instinctively tightened his hold on her and pressed his face to her hair.
“It’ll all work out,” she said softly.
How could she know that? He’d gone to San Antonio to try to drag his brother away from that lifestyle and had somehow wound up agreeing to things he’d had no intention of agreeing to.
“You never should’ve gone there.”
“What would’ve happened if I hadn’t?”
