I gulped softly, clutching my bag tighter as I approached the couch.
“Fifteen minutes late. What happened?“ she asked, her eyes sharp but not unkind.
“The girls wanted to stop somewhere for a while. I asked them to take me home, but they were too busy,“ I answered.
She sighed, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ll let you off the hook. Be lucky your parents aren’t home.”
A soft, relieved laugh escaped me. My parents were strict—a suffocating kind of strict that left no room for error. Abuelita excused it as love, as protection, as them wanting the best for my future but even she knew they had gone too far. I was an adult and still had to ask permission to step outside.
Sometimes, I wanted to scream that I was twenty years old, but in this house, that would be a death wish. Abuelita was the only buffer I had. She didn’t like how they treated me, and she didn’t keep it a secret. She would start entire wars with them, and when they wouldn’t let up, she would simply grant me permission herself. She argued with them constantly on my behalf. Sometimes she won, sometimes she didn’t, but she was the only one who ever tried.
I wasn’t brought up to disobey my elders, so in my mind, listening to Abuelita over my parents wasn’t rebellion; it was just following the next command in the chain.
But though softer than my parents, Abuelita’s questioning wasn’t done.
“Who dropped you off? That car wasn’t May’s or Amber’s.”
I felt the heat rise to my cheeks and quickly looked away. “Just one of their friends.”
I sensed she didn’t believe that as her gaze narrowed so I gave my best smile, and said, “I’m going to go practice music before bed. Goodnight, Abuelita.”
I gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. She patted my wrist with an old, weathered hand. Then I hurried away, upstairs, doing my best to ignore that penetrating gaze on my back.
It wasn’t that my abuelita would judge… at least, I didn’t think so. She fought in my corner enough that I knew I always had her support. I just… I didn’t really know what had happened tonight, with the strong and brooding man from the tattoo parlor. The atmosphere in his car, with his hoodie wrapped around me and his scent filling my nostrils and his presence so, so close—it had been heady, almost drunken. And his number on that scrap of paper in my pocket…
I needed to think. Or not think. My thoughts were racing a loop on a single track. I needed to break them.
The music room was up the stairs, and I slipped inside.
All elegant, polished wood, the music room was impressive. It was also one of my least favorite places in the world. It was a room made to impress guests, not comfort the child forced to grow up in it.
My father had said I must learn an instrument when I was six, gave me no real choice in the matter. So, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday these past fourteen years, this was where I found myself, stationed before my tutor, Mr. Arthur, plucking harp strings until my fingers were calloused and sore.
Normally I would never come here willingly. But Tristian was striding through my head, every little step tickling neurons that sent confused thrills through me. I needed to banish him. I needed something to focus on, a constant drone ofsomething elseto drown out the moody tattoo artist.
I set myself in front of my harp, pulled my hair into a loose ponytail, opened my music book, and tried my best to play.
At first, it was slow-going. My fingers fumbled. Some residual adrenaline remained flowing within me, made the motions shaky. But in time, I began to move my thoughts away. The looming form of Tristian movedinto the shadows. The harp, the feel of its strings harsh yet familiar, its music so melodic and soft, filled the room.
For once, it was actually calming.
I let my finger graze over the harp’s strings softly, the melancholy sound hanging in the air, when I heard the door open. Turning my head, I looked up at my older sister. She wore a permanent scowl.
“It’s late,” she grunted, eyes narrowing at me.
I stopped, biting my lip. “Did I wake you? I thought the sound-proofing…”
“I wasn’t asleep,” she replied, ignoring the core of the question. Camila shouldn’t have heard. Our home was enormous, lavish, built to the highest standard. The music room was no exception. Thick, heavy sound-proof insulation was built into all four walls, under the floor and in the ceiling. I could set up an electric guitar on a stack of Marshall amps cranked to ten in here, and no one else in the house should be able to hear it.
She sneered at the harp. “Why are you even bothering with that thing?”
“Mama and Papa said that learning the harp will help me focus better on my studies…” I said softly.
Camila rolled her eyes, the gesture heavy with disdain. “You’re so damn annoying with this Mama and Papa shit—“
“Papa says it’s not good for young ladies to swear,” I cut in, the words automatic, conditioned.
She arched a brow. “And do I look like I care what he says?”
