Page 98 of Hard to Love
Doubtful, since he hadn’t done this in years, but fuck if he’d say that aloud, so he just snapped on a pair of disposable gloves. “You already said I was the best.”
Ruben boosted himself onto the table and cradled his head on his hands.
“Put your arms down,” Alex ordered, “unless you want this to look like a piece of shit.”
Ruben lowered his arms to his sides but turned his headin Greer’s direction, making Alex want to reach down and break his neck. Break the neck of a man he used to consider a brother.
What a fucked-up life this was.
“Your girlfriend here—”
“Greer,” she said, and Alex glared at her. Ruben didn’t need any more information about her than he already had.
Ruben’s teeth flashed white in his dark face. “Greer was telling me a little about the setup she’s got up there in Prophecy.”
Alex splashed vodka on the prone man’s back, not giving a shit how much of it spilled on the table and dripped to the floor. “I already told you she has nothing to do with this.”
“Take a look in that bag,” Ruben said, “because I guarantee you she does.”
Alex gave a sharp nod to his brother. Nicolás untied the sack and pulled out several stacks of cash. Holy fuck. What had Greer done? He swung his gaze to her face but saw only pride and defiance there.
“Before you start yelling,” she said, twining her hair around one hand, “you should know it’s not from me. I took the leatherwork you left in your booth and raffled it off to the people in Prophecy. I think you’ll be happy to know I took in over thirteen grand in three hours.”
“Not a bad racket,” Ruben mumbled into the table.
Alex couldn’t even comprehend what she was telling him. Maybe they hadn’t realized who they were supporting with their money.
“And some people just tossed money in when they heard it was for you,” Greer said.
Jesus. “I made that for you.”
“Then you can’t go apeshit that I sold it,” she saidsimply. “It was mine and I did what I wanted with it.”
“Then that money is yours.”
“To do with what I want.” She pulled her hair away from her face with both hands, twisted it three times, then let it fall against her back. “And what I want is for you to come back home.”
Home. Rather than think too closely about that concept, Alex concentrated on adjusting the needles in his coil machine. “When we leave here, Nicolás is coming with me. And we’re getting as far away from this town as possible.” And Prophecy certainly didn’t qualify as far enough away.
“What if I don’t want to go?” Nicolás asked, his voice chock-full of sullen teenager.
“You stick around here, you’re gonna end up just like Javi.”
“Like how you’re living is so much better?”
Alex applied the tip to Ruben’s back, and he immediately yelped, “Goddammit. You tattooing or doing surgery?”
He let up quickly and checked the voltage on his machine. Too damn high. He knew better than that, and he couldn’t afford to mess this up. But Nicolás’s words still echoed through Alex. No, how he’d been living since he left Texas wasn’t much better than being dead. Because although his body still worked, everything else inside him had withered and turned black.
Ruben cut his gaze up at Alex. “He’ll go if you’ll agree to my last condition.”
“You’ll let him out? What about your homeboys—can you trust them not to gun him down?”
“It may not look like it today, but I still have all the fucking control here.”
“You’re already getting your goddamned tat and anassload more cash more than I promised you. What else do you want?”
Ruben levered himself up on one elbow and hollered, “José.”
