“Ay Dios…” She sighs. “What the hell is an NDA, and please tell me I did the right thing by not signing it?”
I drag my hand down my face. “It’s a ‘shut up’ document. An agreement that says, ‘You can’t repeat anything that Lovie Sinclair said to you as it pertains to AJ Boyd.’ Especially not about all the different ways he beat her ass. They want me to sign one too.”
She huffs out a choke. “Ramiro was a piece of work, but he didn’t have millions of dollars and a whole team on payroll to perpetuate his abuse. When I left him, all I had was my story and my voice. If he would’ve had the power to take that away, I wouldn’t have shit. Not even my dignity. How the fuck did you deal with this for so long?”
“The same way you dealt with Ramiro—by being tough.”
Rich’s constant reminder lingers in my head: “You tough. You know that, right?”
I close my eyes and try to find him in the darkness while I nod in agreement.
Yeah, Rich. I am.
“Yessi?” I murmur.
“What?”
“I fucked up.”
Sirens wail in the background while her heavy breaths tickle my ears. “What you mean you fucked up?”
“Remember what you told me before I left New York?”
“About how stupid it was to go back to Houston?”
“No.” I scoff. “About putting myself back together.”
“Oh…yeah. I do.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I actually even got a chance to do that.”
The silence between us is deafening. I lean forward, grabbing my forehead, and Ginger tilts her head, letting out a concerned “meow.”
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did?” she mutters. “Please tell me you didn’t agree to go back to him. You’re not with him now, are you?”
“No.”
“So you signed the NDA?”
“No. I…I think I fell in love.”
“I’m sorry. Come again?”
“I think I fell in love.”
The second time it comes out of my mouth, that light and dark feeling bursts inside of me and jolts my body forward.
I grab hold of the toilet seat.
It’s that same feeling I kept getting while I cried in bed. It made me want to leap out of it and run to Rich again, but his silence held me back.
“Love, as in the four-letter word?” Yessenia asks. “The same love that had me running around the Bronx half-naked with a broken nose and a screaming baby? The same love that has youhiding out in Texas and dodging NDAs? You’re talking about that love?”
I pinch my eyes shut. “I know I sound ridiculous, but I think this is a different love.”
She blabbers out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t understand. I’m trying…but I just really don’t understand.”
“Me neither.”
