Less secret.
Less dramatic.
More honest.
A holding cell with nicer sheets.
I grab the small bag of bird food Magic must have scooped up from my apartment and pour some into Disco’s dish. He bobs his head excitedly and starts chattering nonsense syllables that sound suspiciously like Spanish words he learned from the neighbors.
“¡Dale, dale, dale!” he mumbles with his beak buried in seeds.
The normalcy of it hurts more than I expect.
He has no idea how close we came to losing everything.
Or maybe he does.
Birds notice more than people think.
As usual, Disco fills his belly and goes into an almost comatose state afterwards.
I glance toward the door.
There’s no lock on the inside.
I think of how I cracked it open earlier to look down the hallway and saw Dusty stationed at the far end. Young. Eager. Wearing his responsibility like armor. He stood there like guarding a hallway was the most important job in the world, because in a club, it is when the president says it is.
Off-limits.
Protected.
Contained.
That’s me.
The engaged biker president’s secret. Because if Carmen knew what happened in that office. Really knew. She’d claw my eyes out or worse.
I change into the jeans and black tank Magic grabbed from my apartment. The clothes smell faintly like my place. Like stale air, cheap detergent and the quiet stress of living somewhere you never fully relax. The fabric settles against my skin like memory.
When I lift the tank over my head, my body reminds me of Diablo.
My skin still feels touched in places I didn’t know could remember.
I swallow hard and shove the thought down.
Carmen’s voice drifts through my mind again.
“Little Havana’s charity case,” she called me.
My stomach twists.
What if she’s right?
I shake my head immediately.
No.
That’s exactly what she wants.
