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As the son of a man who’d been an undocumented immigrant until his marriage, Cooper had a lot of things he wanted to say to Siena. But he did not want to unpack right now the question of whether and to what degree she might be racist.
Still, he couldn’t let it go entirely. “Therewasa racial dimension to the issue, Siena. Do you see that?”
“I swear, I didn’t blame Luis at all. Certainly not because he’s Mexican.”
That right there was probably a little light racism. Maybe Luis and his family were Mexican nationals; Cooper didn’t know. Jorge’s Spanish sounded Mexican, but accent and idiom got weird when you lived in a place where, first, Spanish wasn’t the dominant language, and, second, people whose roots spread all over the Americas were living in proximity. Cooper had learned Spanish from infancy from a Salvadoran native, but being in public school speaking English, and living in a primarily Muscogee area, had shaped his accent in a way that might be entirely unique to him.
It had driven his father insane to hear his son speaking a Spanish inflected with the rolling cadence with which his Muscogee neighbors and relations spoke English.
Now, Siena knew Jorge and Luis better than he did; maybe they preferred to be referred to as Mexican. He didn’t know. He didn’t know if Siena was racist or not, but he figured she at least had some impulses that carried its stink. He’d met few white people who didn’t.
At any rate, Cooper wouldn’t act or speak on the assumption, but his best bet would be that Jorge and Luis were MexicanAmerican. Considering that Jorge worked casino security, it was safe to assume they were American citizens. Not ‘Mexican.’ If so, Siena’s way of understanding them was, in fact, rooted in racism. She’d denied them their citizenship, and she hadn’t even thought about it.
Knowing exactly how she would take that lesson—badly—Cooper set it aside. Instead he said, “It doesn’t matter if you pointed out race, or even if you considered it. The fact is, three boys fucked with your sister. Two of those boys are white. One is brown. The white boys—who Geneva said were the instigators—got one day of detention. The brown boy, who did the least, got a three-day suspension. Why do you think that is, Siena?”
She didn’t answer right away. He hoped she was letting a truth sink in. “I didn’t do any of that. It’s not my fault.”
“I’m not blaming you. I’m just asking you to see it.”
She sighed. “I see it. It sucks.”
Finally, Cooper smiled. Good enough. “Yeah, it does.”
“I don’t know what I could have done differently.”
“Is that an invitation for an answer, or just a statement?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Is that an invitationfor an answer, or just a statement?” Cooper asked.
He stood across his kitchen, regarding her with a look crossing into the territory of smug.
A lot about this guy was smug, actually. He clearly knew how hot he was; his awareness showed in every move of his body, every expression. Though it was obvious he didn’t care about his surroundings—his house was an unholy mess bordering on actual filth—he took care of his personal self much better. Right now, he wore only a beater and jeans, but the beater was bright white and fit his body like skin, and the jeans were clean, and stylish in both color and cut. He was lean, muscular but not bulky—his arms were amazing—and covered in ink, all of it that she could see artistically done. His hair and beard were neatly groomed. He took care of himself.
He wore quite a bit of jewelry, too—thick silver chain around his neck, a silver hoop in each ear and one through the side of his left nostril, silver and leather bracelets around both wrists, big silver rings on three fingers, a thick black leather belt with silver studs. Siena hadn’t worn that much bling all at once in herlife. Considering that he was also very obviously macho (would he say it was racist for her to use that word?), he had to have a strongly developed sense of himself to deck himself out in so much tinsel.
To be totally honest, at least with herself, the jewelry was hot, too. Maybe because of the confidence and presence it telegraphed. There had been a time when Siena might have wanted to get something started with him; his looks were right up her alley, and now that he’d shown himself to be more hero than villain, she’d probably have been interested.
No point in trying to dress it up: she’d have been totally into Cooper in her ‘before’ days, heroorvillain. Muscles, ink, attitude, shit-eating grin, huge honkin’ Harley? Oh yeah. Talk about right up her alley. Back in those days, that alley had led straight to her vagina.
She’d had a real bad-boy problem in her wayward youth. If she’d ever been able to afford therapy for herself beyond the ‘prep for surgery’ sessions, an overpaid professional with alphabet soup after their name would probably have suggested that the death warrant in her family’s genes had incited some pretty darn reckless behavior, right up to the moment that she’d been responsible for someone else.
And hey, look—she didn’t need to overpay an alphabet-soup professional; she’d figured that out all on her own. She also knew that some of the situations she’d landed in while she was being reckless had made her even more suspicious of men than merely existing in the world as a woman should make every woman.
