“So what? She’s just gonna take our mascot?” Ricky mutters.
I don’t look back.
I keep walking until I reach the elevator, Don Cheetos pressed tight against my chest, the doors sliding shut between me and everything else. Efren squeezes in just before they close.
“Alma,” he says. “You have to say something.”
I don’t answer.
We walk the rest of the way to the penthouse in silence.
“Alma,” he says again.
“Stop calling me that,” I snap, my teeth clenched.
“That’s your fucking name,” he fires back.
“No. That’s what you call me when you don’t care about me. And I don’t like it!”
Right now, I want to be Almita, Kitten, darling—anything that reassures me I still belong to him, because right now, I don’t know where I belong.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I swallow the emotions climbing up my throat. He stares at me then nods.
“Okay, Kitten.” The name cracks something open in my chest.
He closes the distance and laces his fingers through mine, guiding me to his room. He pulls his bloodstained shirt over his head and tosses it aside, then opens a drawer and hands me one of his white T-shirts. I slip out of my dress and pull it on, the fabric warm and familiar. Efren reaches out, tapping the blue circle of my evil eye necklace once, gently. His eyes lift to meet mine.
“I got your message,” he says quietly. “I missed you too.”
He pulls me back into the living room, scanning the bookshelf before he settles on one.
“The Day I fucked El Cucuy.” He reads the title with his brows pinched together.
“Can never go wrong with a monster romcom.” I shrug.
He moves me back to the couch, pulls me into him, and I lay my head on his chest. I missed this, him reading to me, us together. I listen to him read and take in the sound of his heart beating beneath me before I surrender.
“I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore,” I confess.
His hand slips into my curls, slow and soothing. “What do you mean, Kitten?”
“Like it’s too much to keep up with all the lies,” I say softly. “Not telling my friends the truth. Not even knowing who I am half the time. Not really.”
“I know who you are,” he murmurs.
His hand drifts down my thigh, his thumb brushing the scar on my knee.
“You’re the little girl who couldn’t have her own pet, so you asked the neighbors if you could walk their dog. Only you didn’t expect it to drag you across the pavement.”
I lift my head, staring at him. “You read the letters Missy sent Curtis?”
“Every single one.”
My chest tightens. I hold his gaze, letting my eyes say what my mouth can’t.
“She rushed me inside like my leg had been amputated,” I say, my voice cracking. “Cleaned the scrape like it was a medical emergency.”
He chuckles. “My favorite was you telling your third-grade teacher that when you grew up, you were going to be Darth Vader.”
