“That’s not true.” I hug his arms against me tightly.
“Really?” He’s miserable. “Because the one time I did try to have sex, I killed a girl.”
“You say that but there’s no possible way. Did you see her die in front of you?”
He shakes his head. “Two days later. Her brothers came for me and said she didn’t wake up. That the doctors told them she’d hemorrhaged internally for two days and died as a result.”
“You couldn’t have done that damage, not how you described it. Unless you lied to me.” I know he didn’t but he needs to hear it.
“No, never,” he says hoarsely. “I barely touched her . . . but there was the blood and then . . .” He trails off.
“You didn’t kill her. I don’t believe it and you need to stop beating yourself up with it. Here’s the thing,” I say, tracing a finger over the thick veins in his hands. I’ve got such a thing for hands and I love his big, rough ones. “When you’re hurting, I want you to come to me. I want you to trust me. We’ve got each other in this, you know?”
“Garcia,” he says, voice quiet and full of pain.
“I know, baby,” I tell him softly. “I know. Whatever happens, we can’t shut each other out, okay? I feel like I’ve lost Rose.” I choke up a little, and swallow it down. Now’s not the time. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”
I feel him nod against my neck, and he holds me tighter. “You’re it, Ava.”
“Hmm?” I don’t understand.
“Nothing,” he says. “Just something Garcia was saying.”
I stroke his hand with my slippery one. I ignore the lube all over us, just like I ignore the sweat that’s making our skin stick together. He holds me close—no, he’s clutching me against him as if I’m a lifeline. He’s breaking my heart, my big, strong guy. From what I know of Rafe, he doesn’t love easily, and I don’t know how he’s going to handle the loss of his best friend.
I’d do anything to make it better for him. Anything.
But for now? All I can do is love him and remind him that life’s worth living.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
RAFAEL
I towel off as Ava finishes up in the shower. She is asking impossible things of me. And worse, I want to give them to her. My mother had said that I needed to spend the rest of my days atoning for the people I had killed. My unborn baby sister. The high school girl. When I came home on leave, my mother would cross herself as I passed over the doorway and sprinkle holy water outside the door to cast out the demons I had carried home with me.
The souls of those who’d died at my hand clung to me, she claimed. I believed her then and believe her now, because Garcia’s death hangs around my neck like an anvil.
Ava’s sweet face is so hopeful when she speaks of Rose and even if she won’t admit to it, not saving Rose will change things. I know this and deep down, I believe that Ava knows it, too.
But there is no point in dwelling on this. Tomorrow will happen, no matter what I do today. What shape it is, who I have with me? I can change that. In the next room, Bennito is bent over the table, drawn away from his computer.
“Dude, you sounded like you were killing her in there.” He holds up his hand to high-five me. Glad that Ava isn’t here, I grunt a nonresponse and take the chair opposite.
He leans over the table. “We always joke about who’s got the bigger gun, but it’s always been you, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.” And suddenly I get all the jokes. The pie jokes. The baseball jokes. The boning jokes. I heard them before, but now they have context and meaning. Heft.
“Cool.” He sits back and looks at me more admiringly than ever before. Because I have a big gun and know how to use it. There’s something wrong with that thinking. Something I’m going to have to talk to Bennito about so when he finds his Ava, he doesn’t screw it up with his machismo. But for now, we share a moment for a few seconds before I flick my fingers at the items he has laid out on the table.
“What have you found?”
His attention is easily diverted. “Shit, this is some cool stuff. You remember how each of the folders had small sticky flags?” I nod. On each page, there are two or three translucent flags with colored tabs that matched the folder. “Well they aren’t fucking notes. You stick them together, like so.” He holds up a small stack. “They form a fucking USB chip. Wild, huh?”
Spy shit. It’s the weirdest shit in the world.