I don't reach out.
"My mom left when I was fourteen," she says. "Just left. No warning. I came home from school and her closet was empty. She ran off with her Pilates instructor. He was twenty-six." A bitter laugh. "My dad sat me down and explained that sometimes adults make choices, and those choices have consequences, and none of it was my fault." She traces a pattern on the counter with her fingertip. "But for a long time, I thought if I'd been different—prettier, smarter, more interesting—maybe she would have stayed."
"That's not how it works."
"I know that now. Mostly." She looks up at me, and there's something raw in her expression. Unguarded. "She sends birthday cards sometimes. Always late. Always with gift cards inside, like she can buy her way out of feeling guilty."
I turn off the stove. Move around the island until I'm standing in front of her. She tilts her head back to look at me, and I see the little girl she was, the one who came home to an empty closet and a father who didn't know how to explain heartbreak.
"She's the one who missed out," I say. "Not you."
Diamond's eyes glitter. For a second, I think she's going to cry. Then she blinks, and the moment passes.
"Your tattoos," she says, changing the subject. "What do they mean?"
I look down at my forearms. The ink crawling across my skin, telling stories I don't usually share.
"Some of them are old. From before." I don't saybefore prison. I don't have to. "Gang stuff, mostly. I've covered most of those."
"And the rest?"
"The rest are reminders." I point to one on my inner forearm—a date, nothing else. "That's when I got out. The day I started over."
She reaches out. Her fingers brush my skin, tracing the numbers, and heat shoots through me like lightning.
I should step back. I should put distance between us, reestablish the professional boundary I shattered last night.
I don't move.
"What's this one?" Her finger traces higher, to the rose on my bicep.
"For my sister. Rosa. She's the reason I..." I stop. "She's the reason for a lot of things."
"The reason you went to prison?"
"The reason I got out. The reason I'm trying to be better."
Her hand is still on my arm. Warm. Small. I could close my fingers around her wrist and pin her in place. I could pull her off that stool and show her exactly what I've been thinking about for the past four days.
Instead, I step back.
Diamond blinks. The spell breaks. She pulls her hand back like she's been burned.
I turn back to the stove, putting distance between us that feels like miles. "Do whatever you want while you’re waiting for dinner. But stay off social media. And stay in the house."
I feel her watching me for a long moment. Then she slides off the stool and heads for the doorway.
"Cesar."
I don't turn around. "Yeah?"
"I'm not sorry I broke the rules."
Now I turn. She's silhouetted in the doorway, and I can't read her expression.
"You will be if you do it again." I can’t help myself. My voice is low, promising.
Diamond hears it too. I see the shiver that runs through her, the way her lips part. She opens her mouth to speak, but changes her mind and disappears down the hall.
