I wanted to smile at her joke, but the words pulled at something sharp inside me. “What did you do, Carmen?”
Her face lit up. “Oh, I, of course, put my brother in your path. I sent Lincoln to watch you, brought him to Lalo’s, kept sending Natasha his way, and I’ve been having him help me at work.” Her smile was calculating and proud.
“You’ve really been milking that cow, haven’t you?”
She laughed. “You have no idea.”
I shook my head, staring down at the countertop until the marble blurred in under my gaze. Carmen felt… like a friend. It was difficult to embrace. It made me think of that first year after my parents passed when I’d been handing out the benefit of the doubt pretending it didn’t cost me anything, trusting people wouldn’t walk away and leave me holding the weight of everything. Then they did. A little voice in my head whispered that I was just that poor orphan girl who couldn’t keep a connection. I hadn’t kept a single one. Even Kevin had left.
I blew out a breath, setting my mug down a little too hard. “We’ve spent a lot of time together lately, but you don’t owe me any loyalty to pick my side against Lincoln’s.”
Carmen’s gaze became tarnished with pity, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I flipped my laptop open to have something to do with my hands.
“Hey,” Carmen interrupted, her fingers twitching as if she was holding herself from touching me. “He was awful in high school; he can handle some harsh teasing for a while.” She smirked, and then her expression schooled again. “And Nina, maybe I don’t owe you loyalty, but I’ll give it anyway.” Her brown eyes bore into mine, and after the intensity reached its peak, she winked. “For the most part.”
I didn’t think her joke was funny. My life had shown me you couldn’t count on “for the most part.” She could keep that.
“How are things with your cousin?” Carmen’s change in topic threw me for a loop.
“My cousin Vinny?”
She nodded, lifting the mug to her lips.
He’d offered his place, then stopped returning my calls. I shrugged. “Vinny’s… flaky.”
Carmen snorted into her coffee, jerking her cup away as coffee sloshed over the rim. “Flaky is the under-fucking-statement of the year. He’s a coward, Nina.”
“And he isn’t my problem,” I shot back, hovering my fingers over the keyboard, ready to dive into work just to shut this conversation down. “Especially if I land this pitch and never have to ask for his help again.”
“Life goals!”
“Is Curt not sending anyone to pitch for BrightMark?” I asked Carmen point blank, wrapping my hands around my mug. The heat grounded me. “I don’t mind, but I’d prefer not being blindsided if Natasha is going to show up.”
Carmen traced the rim of her coffee cup but didn’t meet my eyes. “You want to talk shop, or you want to talk about lover boy?”
“Lincoln’s not my lover.” The denial came out too fast, too sharp, and we both knew it.
“Only because there’s a lot of bad history.” She wiggled her eyebrows, grinning. “If you’d just met him in all his amnesiac glory of burning the world down for you…”
She wasn’t wrong there. I pretended to type something, even if my thoughts were as scrambled as the random letters filling the screen. If I could just stay mad at him, everything would be simpler, but there were these flickers of excitement for him inside me.
“But I’ve known him in all his cruelty and calculation,” I said, jaw tight. “He even made me lose a scholarship. And I’m not even getting into how his girlfriend got me fired and he did nothing.”
Carmen opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off. “And yes, I’ve seen the post he’d made about my being fired, trying to clean my name and denounce the big bad, corrupt marketing company, but he still did those things. Also, Natasha’s horrible, if he doesn’t want her around, please don’t put them together.”
Carmen smirked. “Jealous much?”
“In Lincoln’s dreams,” I muttered.
Carmen leaned back on the counter, crossing her arms, her mug still nestled in one hand. Her expression was serious this time. “It actually comes down to something simple.” She tilted her head, studying me. “Do you believe people can change?”
The question made something flicker in my chest—hope, anger, I wasn’t sure which.
“I don’t,” she said after a beat, shaking her head. “I think people are who they are, and they show you really fucking early. But…” She swirled the last sip of her coffee, thoughtful. “I think people can learn to redirect certain impulses. Like me.”
I stopped hovering my hands over the keyboard and looked at Carmen.
“Like Lincoln,” she uttered, “and this whole hero’s journey thing he’s got going on.”
