For nineteen months I hadn’t been living a lie. I’d been a lie. A man with a false identity and no past.
As for my future, it seemed I might not have one. My brain would flip the switch from Carlos to James, and the man I was today would disappear tomorrow. And when I did, my sons would have a father who didn’t know them and might not want them.
?Dios! What will happen to my sons?
I slammed back a few more shots and swallowed the tequila’s burn. I swore I intended to go home after seeing Imelda, but hell. I needed a drink, or two. I emptied another shot glass. Make that five.
The tequila knotted in my esophagus. I hissed through my teeth, pounding my sternum with a fist, then coughed.
I glanced at my watch. Good, I had some time to hang around before returning home. Natalya, my deceased wife’s half sister, was watching the boys. As a representative for her father’s business, Hayes Boards, she was in town for Puerto Escondido’s annual torneo de surf. She planned to leave this morning but given the nuclear bomb that went off this past weekend, she’d stay another week. I needed to deal with the fallout without worrying about who was caring for Julian and Marcus.
I needed another drink.
Pouring more shots, I emptied them in quick succession—one, two, three—striking the glass on the counter after each round. After downing my ninth shot, I stared at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Bloodshot eyes embedded in a face with three days’ growth on my jaw stared back at me. The mirror tilted.
“Whoa,” said the guy on the stool beside me. He pushed me back in my seat.
“Lo siento.” I leaned on my elbows and lowered my head into my hands.
“No worries, dude.” He clapped my sweat-drenched back. Sun-bleached hair fell over his brows. He tossed it back with the flip of his head and grinned.
“You’re done here, Carlos. I’m cutting you off, friend,” Pedro the bartender told me in Spanish. He swiped my glass off the bar and underhanded it into the sink, where it clattered against the other dirty glasses.
I snagged the bottle of Patrón, the finger of liquor left inside sloshing around, and stumbled off my stool. Pedro yelled at me as I left. I waved a hand behind my head. “Put it on my tab.”
I took a long step off the bar’s deck and dropped into the sand. The early evening sun scorched my face, temporarily blinding me. Squinting against the glare, I trudged across the sand, and sought refuge under the shade of a lone palm. It offered no reprieve from the dry heat.
Neither did the tequila, I thought, wiping the sweat off my forehead. I was still the guy with the fake name and doomed future. And I didn’t have an ounce of control over it.
Leaning back against the palm trunk, I gazed at the sun taking a dunk into the ocean’s horizon. Bile thickened in my throat, and my stomach gurgled in that unsettled I-have-to-vomit sort of way. I rubbed the front of my shirt and eyed the trash can nearby. A camera clicked.
I scowled at the photographer.
Ian lowered his camera, letting it hang from the strap over his shoulder. He used his hand as a visor, shading his face. “The lighting’s phenomenal. It was a good shot.”
I flipped him off.
He held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I should have asked.”
“Forget about it.” I probably would. One day. I offered the near-empty bottle. “Drink?”
He grabbed the bottle’s neck, wiped the lip with his shirt, and drank. His lips spread thin over his teeth as the liquor’s sourness made its way to his stomach. He returned the bottle, now empty.
“Why are you still here?”
He clipped a cap on the lens. “Imelda’s looking up some information for me.”
I overhanded the Patrón into the nearest trash can and missed. It dropped into the sand. Shit. “I wouldn’t trust anything she tells you.”
“My situation is unrelated to yours.”
“You mean she hasn’t been paid to lie to you?” I pushed away from the tree and the horizon tilted.
“Steady, man.” Ian snagged my arm. He scooped up the Patrón and waved the bottle at me. “Did you drink the entire thing?” he asked, tossing it into the trash. It crashed onto a pile of empty Corona bottles left over from the torneo.
I shook my head. No, thank God. I was drunk, not comatose. The bottle had been less than half-full when Pedro started pouring me shots. Speaking of shots . . .
“I need another one.” I stumbled away from the tree.
Ian folded his arms. “You’re just like him, you know.”
“Of course I look like James.” You idiot.
He nodded his head in the direction of Casa del sol’s lobby. “I was talking about your brother Thomas.”
The asshole who choreographed my mess of a life. Definitely not the person I wanted to see. I couldn’t be responsible for what I’d do to him if I did. He’d find out firsthand what it was like to recover from reconstructive facial surgery and pulled shoulder ligaments.
That had been my second memory. Opening my eyes to a woman sitting beside my bed. She’d worn a white blouse and gray skirt, her shapely legs crossed and leaning to the side. Breathtakingly beautiful, that was my first thought of her. Like an exotic model from an upscale clothing catalog. Or the ones airbrushed to perfection on the glossy pages of a magazine, like the one she flipped through. I lifted my head to see what she was reading and groaned at the laser-sharp pain that exploded in my shoulder.
Her head snapped up. She tossed aside the magazine and leaned over me. Her hand found mine, soft and cool to the touch, and when she smiled, her cocoa eyes sheened. “Don’t move; you need to rest,” she said in a soothing voice. “Your nose and cheekbones had to be reset. The less you move, the less pain you’ll feel.” Her fingers fluttered over my face, drawing my attention to the bandages wrapped around my head.
She nodded toward my right shoulder. “You dislocated it.” She explained that the swelling had finally diminished enough for Dr. Mendez to pop the joint back into place. I had to keep it immobile, then I’d need therapy.
My gaze skimmed her face, the sharp angles of her cheekbones and straight line of her nose, hinting of European descent. I frowned. How could I know that when I didn’t even know who she was, let alone my own name?
“Who are you?” I whispered through chafed lips.
“Imelda.” She smoothed her palms over the front panel of her skirt. “Imelda Rodriguez. I’m your sister, and I’m going to take care of you, Carlos. Sí?”
“Sí.”
I had a sister.
I didn’t know why it was important. It was more like a feeling I had. This woman would watch over me while I healed. For the moment, I felt safe.
As I eyed Ian a few paces away, an uneasy feeling rippled through me, adding to the queasiness brought on by downing too much liquor in the span of twenty minutes. I wondered if I was any safer today than I had been before I entered my fugue state.