More?
Some small part of my brain wanted to deflect. To change the subject because I didn’t want to talk about it, not with him, not over something so petty that I thought I had already moved on from. Something that shouldn’t have upset me. I should have been throwing a fucking party or something.
But last night, while I’d laid in bed, I had wanted to talk to him. I’d wanted him to grunt at me and tell me not to cry.
Hot, sticky tears filled my eyes. I wanted to ask him to repeat himself.
But he didn’t need to.
I’d heard what I heard.
“Well, that means a lot to me.” My damn voice was wobbly. I eyed him sitting there, The Defender and Superbutt and Alex all in one. “It means everything to me. I just… you have enough going on. I don’t want to drop shit on you. You don’t need to hear me being upset over things I should let go.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but I managed to lift my finger and point at him.
“No, I’m not done. I don’t want to, but you know what? I’m going to.”
Both of those dark eyebrows rose in what wasn’t exactly surprise, but maybe… relief?
“I don’t think I can teach online anymore,” I told him first.
He dipped his head knowingly.
“You already knew that?”
“I couldn’t think of a way for you to do it without them eventually finding you. You had notes and books in your office, it’s too much of a trail,” he replied, watching me closely. “I didn’t want to make you sad and crush your dreams.”
My shoulders slumped even though it wasn’t like I hadn’t come to the same conclusion on my own.
“If you still want to translate, we’ll figure it out. My brother is going to pay you for teaching Asami. That’s nothing for you to worry about, we can work that out, find something that makes you happy,” he tried to assure me. “What else is wrong? What’s really bothering you?”
How did he know me so well? I wondered even as his words eased a tiny bit of my concern. He was right though, as worried as I was about money and how I needed a job to make some, it was nothing compared to the bigger picture. The hole in my heart that had only gotten bigger and more brittle.
“That drug lord, the head of the cartel, was sentenced to a few life terms in prison,” I told him. “That son of a bitch ruined so many people’s lives…my life,my grandparents’ lives… and he just gets to live some cushy life in a cell where he’ll probably bribe prison guards and still be able to live a pretty decent… what? Another twenty years? And the rest of us just get to live with the shit he left us with.” I made my hand into a fist. “I have nothing because of him, and he won’t even know a quarter of the way I’ve had to feel my whole life. He’ll never know how scared I always was, how lonely I was—”
My voice broke. I stopped talking as I clenched both my fists and tried to reel in the anger flaring within my veins.
“It’s not fair, Alex. It’s not fucking fair that I havenothing,and it’s his damn fault and my parents’ damn fault,” I spat out, angrily, cutting myself off as Alex’s energy suddenly flared, forcing me to focus on him as even my scalp started to tingle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I’d swear I saw the can of Dr Pepper levitate.
“You don’t havenothing,” he said slowly, carefully in that rich, demanding voice of his.
Fingers wrapped around my fist, and those long fingers pried mine open.
Then he slipped his through mine.
I pressed my lips together, trying to take a breath through my nose so that I wouldn’t tear up even more.
“You don’t have nothing,” he repeated, staring me right in the eye as he held my hand.
Oh, fuck. I reached up and wiped under my eyes. My nose stinging. My eyes stinging. My heart just… just fucking hurting in anger and grief.
And I shouldn’t have asked, I shouldn’t have been so pathetic, and my self-esteem shouldn’t have been so low, but I couldn’t stop the question. “What do I have?” I croaked, because it didn’t feel like a whole lot.
His expression went dark, and he scooted closer, his cape lapping at his calves on either side of the seat. Alex leaned forward, dropping his head so low, the tip of his nose brushed mine. Those eyes of his glowed. “You’ve got me.”
Oh hell.
