“I’m protecting it,” I say, and I hate how true it is that protection and control live in the same damn house for bikers like me.
Her throat moves as she swallows. The anger in her face flickers for a second, replaced by something softer that almost looks like exhaustion.
“You can’t protect me from everything,” she murmurs.
I step closer before I realize I’m moving.
“I can try.”
The air in the room shifts.
The bass from the party feels distant now, like it’s underwater somewhere far away. All I can hear is the rhythm of her breathing and the faint hum of neon outside. She smells like coconut shampoo and Miami heat, like she walked through a ventanita line on Calle Ocho and the night clung to her.
The scent drags memories out of me I thought I buried.
Five years ago. It’s just me, my Harley, and her pretending she isn’t smiling.
I pick her up off Calle Ocho like it’s nothing, like the whole city isn’t watching, and she climbs on behind me in cutoffs and a thin little tank, hair up, hoop earrings catching the streetlight. She taps the back of my helmet. “Don’t drive like a psycho.”
I laugh into the wind. “That’s my whole brand.”
We stop at a ventanita and she orders for both of us like she owns the block. Two cafecitos, one pastelito, extra napkins. She feeds me a bite on the curb and rolls her eyes when sugar flakes onto my beard. “You’re a mess.”
“Yeah?” I wipe my mouth with my thumb, then smear the smallest dot of guava on the corner of her lip just to be a dick. “Now you match me.”
She shoves my shoulder hard enough to rock the bike and I catch her wrist, pull her in, forehead to forehead, our laughs mixing with salsa drifting out of somebody’s open door.For a second it feels stupidly normal. We’re just a man and a woman with sticky fingers like we’ve got nowhere to be.
“Miami’s gonna chew you up,” she says, trying to sound tough.
I kiss the guava off her mouth, slow.
“Behave.”
“I am,” I say, and she rolls her eyes like she doesn’t believe in miracles.
I tuck her in closer with my arm anyway, simple and stupidly good. She kisses the scar on my knuckle like always. The one I got as a dumb kid fighting in the streets. When she leans her head on my shoulder, I hear myself promise it like it’s easy.
“Always, cariño.”
I lift my hand slowly, giving her time to stop me.
She doesn’t.
My fingers brush along her jaw. This time I’m careful, gentle in a way I rarely am with anyone. The fading bruise near her collarbone catches my eye again and my vision flashes red.
“Never again,” I say quietly.
Her gaze flickers. “Don’t.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Diablo.”
“I will.”
She exhales sharply, frustration flooding her expression.
“You think that fixes what he did?”
