Javi braced against the dashboard as I hit the gas. He wrapped an arm around Vero’s waist. “Finlay? What are you doing? The door!” He tensed as I accelerated toward the only exit. I prayed I was right, that these men would rather let us escape than watch us total a three-hundred-thousand-dollar sports car.
They scrambled, one of them rushing to slap a button on the wall. The bay door started to rise. I cringed, closing one eye when the underside of it raked over the car’s roof, and with an earsplitting screech,we tore out of the garage. The automatic headlights came on, cutting through the dusky sky, glaring against the hoods and windshields of the cars waiting to be stripped and sold in the vacant lot behind the building. I cut the wheel, kicking up gravel as we careened through the alley, back toward the street.
“The gate!” Javi gripped Vero as we raced toward it. I pulled Hector’s pistol from the back of my yoga pants and handed it to Vero.
Her window hummed open. The chain-link fence shimmered in our headlights. Behind us, men flooded out of the garage, ducking into cars, their engines gunning one by one. Javi held Vero by the seat of her pants as she leaned out of her window and fired three shots into a hazardous waste barrel as we flew past it. I watched in my rearview mirror as a stream of dark liquid spewed from the barrel and spread across the alley.
“It didn’t work!” she cried, ducking back inside the car. “In your books, they always expl—”
An explosion rocked the car. I wasn’t sure if it was the gate crashing in around us as we mowed through it or the wall of flames behind us, consuming the chop shop.
I didn’t care.
We’d found Javi and we’d survived.
That was all that mattered as the Aston’s wheels caught the road and we peeled away from Hector’s garage.
CHAPTER 27
I navigated the Aston Martin down a series of narrow side streets, waiting until we were a safe distance from the fire before parking between two derelict warehouses. I killed the engine, my hands still shaking as we all got out. Javi paced the alley, breathing hard. His hair had come loose from the band at his nape, the dark strands falling haphazardly over the bruises on his cheek.
He caught Vero by the arm, his eyes frantic as they skimmed over her. He peeled off her wig and cupped her face in his hands, turning her chin this way and that to catch the narrow blade of light from the streetlight before pulling her to him. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said into her hair. “You could have been hurt.”
She backed out of his arms and threw a punch at his shoulder. “I just saved your life!”
He reeled. “Don’t you get it? There’s nothing left of me to save! You ruined me the first time you kissed me, Veronica! You completely destroyed me for anyone but you, and I’ve been living in a fucking purgatory since you left!”
“SinceIleft. You were the one who disappeared!” Her voice cracked on that last sharp word.
“I’ll wait in the car,” I said quietly.
“You’ll stay right here!” Vero snapped in an unquestionable mom-voice. “Anything Javi has to say to me, he can say to my family.” She caught him firmly by the cheek and forced him to look at her. “I waited for you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I waited all night to pack my bags for college because you said you were coming to help me. At six in the morning, I packed them myself.” Her eyes glistened with pent-up tears, and my heart broke for her. “Ramón and my mother had to drag me into the car when it was time for us to leave, because I was still so certain you were coming. Because youpromisedme you would. Yousworeit, Javi! So why didn’t you show up?”
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, as if the words were fighting to stay inside. “Because your cousin asked me not to.” Vero’s hand fell from his face. “Don’t be mad,” he said, desperate to placate her. “Ramón was only trying to protect you.”
“Protect me? Heknewhow I felt about you!”
“He and your mom only wanted what was best for you.”
“My mom was in on it, too?” she cried.
“It wasn’t their fault.”
“Of course it was their fault! Who else’s fault would it be—?”
“I got arrested, Vero!”
She took a stunned step back. I covered my mouth, trying to melt into the background as they stared at each other, wide-eyed and shaking.
“It was stupid,” he said through a thick throat. “I was on my way to your mom’s place to help you pack, but I couldn’t do it. I was so damn proud of you! And at the same time I was so angry at you for leaving us. For leavingme,” he said, clutching his chest. “The three of us had been together every day since we were kids, and then suddenly we weren’t kids anymore, and that summer everything changed, and I’d fallen so fucking hard for you. I was scared you would go off to college and meet someone else—some rich, smart trust fund kid who actually deserved you!” He winced and shook his head. “I took the long way to your house that night because I couldn’t stand the thought of watching you pack. I didn’t want to see you put those pictures of us in your suitcase. Orworse, leave them at your mom’s house, locked away in some drawer you’d never open again. I walked right past your street and ended up in a bar, thinking the whole thing would be easier to stomach if I just couldn’tfeelanything. By the time I got up the nerve to leave the place, I was shit-faced drunk. Some asshole in a BMW was double-parked out front. Not just over the line,” he said, sweeping his arms wide, “but straddling the last two spaces in the whole damn lot just so no one would park too close and scratch his precious fucking car!” Javi dragged a hand down his face as if the memory still haunted him. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Iwasn’tthinking, I just snapped. I took a rock to his driver’s side window. I wasn’t going to steal it, V, I swear. But someone saw me and called the cops and told them I was trying to boost it.” His shoulders sagged with the weight of his confession. “The morning you left for college, I was in jail, Vero. That’s why I didn’t come to say goodbye.”
The edge on her voice softened. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“They only gave me one phone call.”
Vero’s dark eyes seethed as she realized who Javi had chosen that night.
“Don’t be mad at Ramón,” Javi pleaded. “He was right not to bail me out. You were too young to know what you wanted, and I needed time to get my shit together. It was better this way.”
