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“You should have told me!” he yells, spreading his arms wide. “Now I'm bleeding from more wounds than my father left on me.”
I know he’s not talking about his busted knuckles; he means his mind and heart. “I spent years with those wounds too.” He scoffs, shaking his head, but I keep going, “But I realize that I could have spared us both the pain.Lo siento, Alvaro.”
He turns around angrily, shoving me like a fucking child.
“Don’t fucking apologize, Romero!”
My brows twitch with my rising anger. “What do you want me to do, throw a bitch fit right alongside you?”
He swings at me as I expected he would. I dodge the punch, grabbing his wrist with my left hand and shoving him to the cave wall with my right forearm to his neck.
I promised my girl I wouldn’t fight him, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let him land another fucking hit to me like he did five years ago.Diablasays he doesn’t need time and I believe she’s right, but what Alvaro really needs is an ass kicking. He wants one. He’s practically begging me to make him feel something other than the emotional pain he’s in. It’s the reason his knuckles are bleeding.
I will keep my promise toDiabla, but I’m not going to be Alvaro’s punching bag. I’m past the person I once was. I’m no longer the guy that was so lost in this man that he didn’t raise a hand to even defend himself.
I hold him against the wall, our angry eyes only inches apart as I yell into his face.
“Calm the fuck down, Alvaro.Diablawants me to be good with you but I have only so much patience.”
I shove off him, putting some distance between us.
“And fuck you very much, but Iamsorry. Sorry that you went for so long believing your father’s lies because I failed to tell you the truth. For failing your mom in the last request she ever gave to me.”
He steps closer to me, his hand gripping his shirt as unshed tears sit on his long lashes. “Do you know what that does to me? To hear you apologize after hating you for so long? It makes me hate myself even more, it reminds me of how you—” He bites his lip, squeezing his eyes shut. “It reminds me of what I did to you here.”
Without thinking about it, without giving two fucks what will happen, my legs eat the distance between us. I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull him to me, just like he did to me the first time we kissed here. I press my lips to his, my heart beating wildly in my chest when he shoves at me but before there’s any distance between us, he fists my shirt and deepens the kiss.
Time rewinds the moment our tongues touch. Heartbreak and memories clash together, flashes of him in my arms, me in his, our bodies connected…I pull back and press my forehead to his.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since seeing you kissDiabla.”
He doesn’t acknowledge my words, he just closes his eyes and blows a breath across my wet lips, his voice broken.
“He killed her, ‘Mero.”
I want to press my lips to his once more, to smother that fucking sadness, but I don’t. I pull back and sit down on the sand, running a hand through my hair.
“Yeah, but that motherfucker will pay for it. I promise you.”
Alvaro drops down beside me, his arms draped over his bent knees as he stares at the rolling waves where we see a pod of dolphins jump out of the water, and I wonder to myself if they’re the same ones that witnessed our times together in the past.
Did they see the passion, bare witness to the hate, share in our reunion? I shake my head at my foolish thoughts.
The sun is high in the sky but thankfully, the cave offers a bit of shade over us as we sit in contemplative silence for a while, listening to the familiar sounds around us.
He looks over his shoulder at me, his green eyes burning. “I don’t know where to go from here, but I know I need time, ‘Mero.”
THIRTY
ROMERO
“Greedy” by Tate McRae
I’m on my fifth lap of the pool when Vicenta emerges from the house, her bed head hair wild and untamed around her head as she drops to the edge, letting her feet sink into the water. Her eyes are puffy from both sleep and crying.
Alvaro must’ve called her drunk again.
I swim to her, running my hands up her calves, resting my chin on her knee as I look up at her.
