Seventeen seconds. That's all it took to completely override fourteen years of careful walls, family loyalty, and the voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Miguel saying "I'll kill anyone who hurts you."
I look around my mobile clinic—this space I've built to help people, to be something good in all the darkness. And I'm about to defile it for a man whose club killed Miguel's mentor.
My hand slips into my scrub pants anyway.
Somewhere, the seventeen-year-old whose brother joined Coyote Fangs to keep her fed is screaming. But the thirty-one-year-old disaster with her hand between her legs? She's alreadytoo far gone, lost in the gravitational pull of spectacularly bad choices.
I'm already embarrassingly wet, my body a traitor at the cellular level. My fingers find my clit, and I think about his hands—SINS and RAGE tattooed across knuckles that have probably broken Coyote bones. Maybe even Miguel's friends. Maybe even—
I come harder than I should, biting my cheek until I taste copper, my body shaking on this squeaky stool while committing what amounts to familial treason.
Before my rational brain can intervene, I hit record.
"Diablo," I breathe, and my voice is already wrecked. "I'm in my van in a fucking Home Depot parking lot, touching myself to your voice like the complete disaster I am." A moan escapes as I circle faster, chasing a second orgasm because apparently one betrayal isn't enough. "Thinking about those hands. About what they'd feel like on me while you—fuck—"
Eleven seconds of evidence that I'm the worst sister in the world.
I send it, then immediately save it in my password-protected folder labeled "Tax Documents 2019" like I'm not hiding evidence of treason, like Miguel won't eventually find out, like this won't end with someone in a closed casket.
Bad Decision:Jesus fucking Christ
Bad Decision:Where are you
Bad Decision:Angel
Bad Decision:ANGEL
A knock on my van door. I nearly have a cardiac event.
"Lena? You still taking patients?"
Dr. Nathan Winters. Of course. The new attending from Boston who's been circling me like a shark ever since he found out Miguel's my brother. Nothing attracts savior complexes quite like 'traumatized nurse with gang-affiliated family.' He probably thinks he can save me from my complicated life with his boat shoes and 401k.
"One second!" I call out, washing my hands like I'm scrubbing for surgery, like I can wash away what I just did, who I just betrayed.
I open the van door to find Nathan in designer jeans that cost more than my monthly van insurance, looking at me with those concerned blue eyes that have never seen someone bleed out in a strip mall parking lot over territory disputes.
"You're flushed," he observes, stepping closer. "You feeling okay?"
"Phoenix heat," I lie. "Even in November."
"Want to grab coffee? Cool down somewhere with actual air conditioning?"
My phone buzzes insistently.
Bad Decision:Need to see you, Angel. Soon.
"Boyfriend?" Nathan asks, noting my expression.
"No," I answer honestly. The man I'm sexting isn't my boyfriend. He's my brother's enemy, my spectacular disaster, my seventeen-second path to destroying everything Miguel built to keep me safe.
"Someone who makes you smile like that?"
Was I smiling? Christ, I'm smiling about betraying my family. There's probably a psychological diagnosis for this level of self-destruction.
"It's complicated."
"The best things usually are." He hands me his card, even though we work at the same hospital. "Coffee offer stands. You know, when you're done with complications."
