His smile widened, the glint of sunlight on water in his tanned face. It was a relief to see genuine pleasure on a face that had been set with pain all morning. A small blossom of relief unfurled in her chest. Perhaps the terror of seeing him flung to the ground by the vampire would never dissipate, but he would heal.
As he cleaned off the razor in the bowl of water, Nena flipped the mirror around and looked at her own complexion in its rippled surface. She had been in the hot May sun without a hat for far longer than she usually was. No one, not even Mamá, could escape the sun for long on the rancho—Los Ojuelos women worked outdoors and would never be as pale as the wives of wealthy hacendados, the mothers of the men that Papá wished her to marry. But that did not change how Mamá insisted on hat wearing once the girls were past a certain age. The reflection was nowhere near clear enough for Nena to tell what damage had been done over the last two weeks.
She flipped the mirror back to face Néstor as he resumed shaving his other cheek. In response to an inquisitive look, she said: “Mamá will say I’ve gotten darker, I’m sure of it.”
“Hm.” He wiped suds off his freshly shaven cheek with a rag, then put a light hand on her forearm to lower the mirror. He leaned closer, examining her face.
He smelled like soap and sunshine and warm skin. Not for the first time, she was acutely aware of how he was not wearing a shirt, how yes, she had seen many shirtless men working on the rancho. She had even taken off Néstor’s shirt the night before to wrench his arm back into place. This should not bother her.
But it did.
A thought darted through her head, fast as a fish through clear water: if she were to lean forward, it would be easy to close the space between them and press her mouth to his.
So easy.
Madre Santa, why would she think that? She should banish the thought from her mind as quickly as she could—
Slowly, he raised a hand and pointed at the bridge of her nose with his smallest finger.
“At least three freckles,” he said. What was it about his voice that awoke an ache in her sternum, like a thumb pressed against an old bruise? It hurt, it was tender, but there was a sweetness in it that made her wish he would never stop. “My, my,” he continued. “However will your father marry you off now?”
The mention of Papá shattered the moment like a stone through a glass window. Why would Néstor bring that up now, when he was close enough to kiss her? Why was she even thinking about that?
She exhaled sharply through her nose, a dismissive sound, and lifted the mirror up again. It alone could not form a barrier between her and Néstor—she had to rely on her sharp tongue for that.
“I have no doubt he’ll find someone,” she said brusquely.
Néstor leaned back slowly, almost lazily, and resumed shaving. He had dropped his eyes to his reflection, but she could feel him measuring her. Watching her.
“What makes you say that?” he asked innocently.
“Nothing stands between Papá and doing what’s best for the rancho.” It was true. Papá loved Los Ojuelos more than he loved anything, more than her or Javiera or Félix, more than even Mamá. She knew it in the way he oversaw its workings tirelessly, in the way he spoke about it to other rancheros over dinner. The land was home. The land was purpose. It was one thing, Papá sometimes said, to work hard in life to be allowed through the gates of Heaven. It was another to be born on Heaven’s soil and sacrifice to earn the bounty that it gave so freely.
The worst part was that he was sacrificing her. He would rather send her away to a stranger’s home than let Los Ojuelos face cattle rustlers and land thieves alone.
The worst part was that she loved Los Ojuelos so much that she understood why he would do it. That she would let him do it.
“It’s security he wants,” she said. “Allying with a larger rancho will provide more protection from Yanquis. He wants a man with power and money. He’ll get one, and I’ll marry him.”
Néstor hissed softly. His hand had slipped; perhaps he nicked himself. “Shit,” he cursed in English.
The night before, he spoke English to the Rinche. Or, what they thought was a Rinche. She thrust the image from her mind. She focused on watching Néstor’s blade.
“Since when do you speak English?”
“Beto taught me,” he said, grimacing slightly as his hand moved quickly over his upper lip—he was almost done shaving. Good. She should move back from him. Such close proximity was making her want to jump out of her skin. “It’s useful for trading with Yanquis. And eavesdropping on them.”
“You traded with them?” Nena said, letting disgust curl over the words. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
“It was on behalf of Rancho Buenavista,” he said.
Buenavista. Do?a Celeste Romero, the widow of Rancho Buenavista, was one of the most sought-after women in society—she was young, well-liked, and universally admired for both her looks and the enormous herds she inherited from her deceased husband.
Did that mean that Casimiro’s gossip about wealthy widows was true?
“My apologies,” she said, tasting acid seep into her voice. “I misunderstood. I didn’t realize you broke trade regulations and sacrificed principles on behalf of someone you were sleeping with. That casts your decisions in a far more forgiving light.”
“I traded with them because it was a job I was being paid to do,” he said carefully, keeping his eyes on his reflection as he brought the razor in quick, final strokes across the soft flesh beneath his chin.
He was not denying her accusation.
He was all the vaqueros gossiped about: a womanizer, a drinker, a gambler. She did not know which she hated more: the idea that he had slept with Do?a Celeste Romero or that he had left her and proceeded to live a life so blissfully, infuriatingly free of responsibility.
“Not all of us were born with land and money,” he continued. “Some of us need to sacrifice our principles in order to eat. Some of us,” he added, with a measure of his own acid, “need to actually work.”
Defensiveness sprang up hot in her chest. How dare he insinuate that she did not work, after all she had done today? She was weary to her bones. “Everyone works on the rancho,” she said hotly.
“But some work harder, and others keep the profit,” Néstor said, a stoniness that she did not recognize creeping into his voice. “Haven’t you ever thought about that? Why my uncle works until he breaks but lives in a jacal instead of being able to build his own house of stone? I guess you would never have to. Not when the patrón goes on and on about the nobility of life on Los Ojuelos.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “How we should be grateful for him.”
“Life on Los Ojuelos is good,” Nena shot back. “Only an arrogant man would turn up his nose at it.”
“What if I don’t want a good life, if it comes with the way the patrón treats us?” He snapped the razor shut and set it down firmly in the dirt. “What if I want to chase silver and widows and sleep easy at the end of the night knowing that my money stays in my own pocket and not his?”
“You want that? Then go.” Nena gestured with a sarcastic flourish at the trail that led away from their camp. “See if I care.”
His shoulders tensed; his mouth resettled in a grim line, one corner twisted deep. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sick of hearing sorry,” she spat. “Sometimes I wish you never came back.”
His eyes flicked up at her, their expression wounded. Good. She didn’t care that the words weren’t true. She wanted him to feel what she had felt when he left: aching, hollowed out. Abandoned. Cast carelessly aside.
“And what could have become of me if I stayed?” he challenged. His voice was soft at first, but frustration hardened it as he continued: “What future was there for me here?”
“What future?” she repeated, incredulous. A future with her. A future where she wasn’t alone. “Our future.”
The words fell from her lips before she thought to stop them.