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Her forehead furrows. “He came here? I didn’t see him. Didn’t he want to see me?”
“Not here,” I lie, leaving out the part about him stopping by here first. “The office.” I busy myself taking off the vest, undoing the buttons of my shirt, then remove the links from my cuffs and set them on the tabletop before taking off my shirt.
“Oh.” I don’t have to see her to know she’s still hurt by the fact.
“He asked me about our kiss at the compound the night of the party.”
She clenches her jaw, raises her chin, ever stubborn. “What did you tell him?”
“That you did it to skew the conversation from something embarrassing for you to something that would make all your little girlfriends jealous.”
“They’re not my friends.”
“Not the point.”
“Was he angry?”
“He was concerned.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be. I’m an adult. He gets to have his own life on his terms, and I want my own.” She gets up out of the bed and comes to stand a few inches from me. “And I don’t deserve how you’re treating me. You’ve been punishing me for weeks because you’re angry with yourself, and it’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“You think I don’t know that. Me?”
I grit my jaw.
“You’re supposed to be different, Judge.”
“I’m a man, Mercedes. And you’re fucking hard to resist, but I need to do just that. For both our sakes.”
“No, you don’t. Not for my sake.”
She puts her hands on my chest, and I physically move her out of the way to walk into the bathroom, where I switch on the shower. Ice cold. I expect her to follow me in. She does but instead of coming into the stall, she just leans against the doorframe, watching me as I stand under the spray. When it’s clear she won’t go away, I switch off the water, step out, and dry off. She follows me into the bedroom, where I pull on a pair of pajama pants.
“What do you want out of this, Mercedes? You know I won’t marry.”
“Which is stupid.”
“You don’t know my reasons.”
“Then tell them to me. Trust me with your secret. I won’t hurt you with it.”
I grit my teeth. I know that. I believe she has honest feelings for me. And she’s right. I’m punishing her for my own shortcoming because I have feelings for her. And therein lies the crux of the problem.
I tilt my head to the side and narrow my gaze. I need to end this. Now. And I’m going to have to hurt her to do it for her own sake. But before I get a chance to speak, she does.
“I’ll even go first.” She takes a deep breath in, clenches her hands, and steels herself. When she looks up at me, I see the child she was in her eyes. One who once trusted the world. “My father,” she says, her chin trembling, voice a quiet breath.
“Your father what?” I ask tightly, seeing how the emotion of what she’s trying to tell me is taking a physical toll on her.
She swallows hard. It’s a long minute before she continues. “The scars. You wanted to know who did it. And I’ve never told anyone in the world. Only Antonia knows because she found me that night in the chapel. She’s kept my secret even from Santi.”
A lump forms in my throat. Something familiar. But for Mercedes to have endured something as brutal as the beating that left her scarred, it’s just wrong. I have the urge to draw her to me and hold her. It takes all I have to keep my arms at my sides.
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
