“Ellie?” she called out from behind the closed door.
“I’m here,” I told her and climbed into my bed. A tank dress was no different than a nightgown and I wasn’t chummy enough with her to sleep naked.
The bathroom door opened and she staggered out. From the weak light that lit her up from behind, I could see she looked pretty wrecked. Or wrecked but still pretty, as it seemed to be the case with her.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. “How’s your arm?”
She gave me a sloppy smile and eased herself into bed. “I feel kind of sick and I can’t feel my arm. But I don’t feel any pain.”
“Good.”
“Ellie,” she said softly. “What’s going to happen to me?”
I turned my head on the pillow and looked across at her. “What do you mean?”
She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. I had an idea of what Javier’s nose must have looked like before it was broken a million times. “I have a bad feeling. I’ve had it for a week. That I’m going to die.”
“You’re not going to die, Violetta. Javier wouldn’t let that happen.”
“You know that’s not true. Javi always acted like he cared more than he did. Even when I was younger, he would be nice to me if it got him something, maybe a treat from mom. Or he did it because it was expected. I don’t know if he cares if I’m alive or dead.”
I licked my lips, thinking back to the conversation in the bar. “I know he wants to keep you safe. He may have a funny way of showing things but he does care about you. He wouldn’t have come this way if he didn’t have to. Tomorrow he’s going to send you away from all of this.”
She laughed. “Let me guess, to see my sisters?”
“You don’t need to get mixed up in this.”
“I already am.”
“It’s not too late to get out. And I, I will make sure you’re taken care of.”
She turned her head to look at me, her eyes glinting in the dark. “You’re nothing like him, you know.”
The back of my neck tingled. “I’m not?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I thought you would be. But you’re not.”
I could barely find my voice. “I wasn’t a good person. I was a con artist.”
“I know. You left that out earlier when you told your little story, but I know. What difference is it what you were? You’re not conning anyone now are you? You’re risking your life to save somebody. You risked your life to save me and you don’t even know me. You could have let me fall and ran on but you stopped and you helped me. I don’t think there’s anything more noble than that. You have more courage than any of those cartels do. They wouldn’t even do that for each other. It’s every man for himself. You’re not like that.” She paused. “And neither is Camden.”
She was at least right about him. But when you’re told over and over again about how immoral you are, how bad, how wicked, how unlikeable, how terrible you are, it’s hard to hear anyone say any different. I felt like a fraud being good just as I felt like a fraud being bad.
“Camden is a good man,” I whispered, a pit lodged in my throat. “Too good for me.”
“And you say he’s not your man?”
“No. He’s no one’s.”
“If you say that then you don’t see what I see.”
I smiled weakly. “What do you know? You’re high on morphine.”
She giggled. “This is true. But I know love when I see love. You never forget your first love.”
Javier was my first love. That was always a hard pill to swallow. “No. I suppose you don’t.”
“First love or not, it’s what you have now that matters. And you have Camden. You should be with him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Things are only complicated if you make them. Believe me, I know. I wanted everything at one point. Then I lost my parents, a sister, and in a way, I lost a brother. After Beatriz died, Javier changed. And then I realized I didn’t need everything, I just needed people to love. That was it. Only people to love and to love me.”
Tears welled up behind my eyes. I didn’t really know Violetta. I didn’t know exactly what she’d gone through. Yet still, her words could have been my words.
“I’m glad I met you,” I told her, my voice choking up. “Really.”
“Same here. Just …” she trailed off.
“What?”
Her features softened in the dark. “Be careful. Javi may have loved you … and maybe he still does. But don’t think he wouldn’t throw you under a bus in order to get what he wants.”
And what if what he wants is still me? I thought. And what happens when he figures out he can’t have it?
“I’ll remember that,” I told her. We lapsed into silence, her breath becoming steady.
I fell asleep thinking about jungles and guns and death and blood. I dreamed about Camden, Gus, Violetta and I buried under a landslide, and Javier on the mountaintop, one foot on my mother’s severed head.