Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,17
hid behind it longer while I decided what exactly he wanted to talk to me about that was so important it couldn’t wait until we were over the mountain range.
I set the menu down and looked up into his disquieting indigo stare.
“So, what’s the deal?” he asked. “Why was Abuela so hard up to keep you right where you were?”
Ah, so it was about her and not necessarily about me. Or, it could be. Maybe he just wanted to know what I was supposedly a liar about. Apparently, he hadn’t been listening when my grandmother had said everything.
“Probably didn’t want me giving away family secrets, which I won’t,” I said, raising my chin defiantly.
“Loyalty or something else?” he asked, and I gave him nothing. Nothing with my eyes, nothing with my face whatsoever, my voice mute in my throat.
He nodded slowly, gaze calculating, and asked me, “I make a mistake taking you on?”
I shook my head slowly. “I say no,” I said, “but how could you believe me? According to my grandmother, your friend, I am a liar.”
Maverick laughed and it made him beautiful, the way the Japanese drew men in their romantic Manga’s.
“Your grandmother and I aren’t friends. Don’t get it twisted, beautiful.” He shook his head and raked a hand through the top of his hair, resting his elbow on the table, rolling his eyes to pin me with his gaze as he considered me and he looked predatory, dangerous…
“I’m not stupid,” I said with irritation. “I don’t want to die. Not like Anita. Not like her boys. I won’t do anything to put my brother in danger, which means I won’t tell you anything about them, and I damn sure won’t tell them anything about you.”
I stared back, mostly in an effort to convince him on this, there was no lie.
His mouth thinned down into a grim line and he nodded.
“You can keep your family secrets,” he said, and I scoffed. He sat up and cocked his head. “You won’t get to learn any of ours,” he said. “Club business is club business. I tell you to get lost, you do it. You’re there to cook, clean, and occasionally, if you’re down for it, to fuck but that last one? That’s always your choice,” he said, and I felt my brow wrinkle in a frown.
Yeah, right… I thought to myself.
His eyebrows went up and he nodded slowly, as if something had just been confirmed and I rolled my eyes. He shouldn’t automatically assume that he knew anything about me that didn’t come straight from my mouth.
Something in his expression softened and he dropped things for now. I shifted in my seat, uncertain, but kept my mouth shut. I’d learned quickly, and a long time ago, it didn’t do to ask questions. Asking questions got you in trouble and you didn’t always want to know the answer.
The same thing could be said for speaking the truth. People didn’t care. Didn’t want to hear it. You never had to take back anything you didn’t say. Never had to go into further explanations. Silence was, for the most part, the safer option.
We ate in silence, but it was a tense one, at least for me. I felt as though Maverick was trying to take my temperature. That he was trying to feel out my motives, and I thought a little less of him for it. I mean, wasn’t it obvious? Everything I did, I did with the intention to leave that place. To leave that place and to get my brother out so that he could leave with me.
I just wanted a new life. I honestly didn’t care how I got it as long as I got far away from here, with my brother. After that, I would figure it out. This was as good a start as any in finally accomplishing that goal.
Maverick paid for everyone’s tab and we left. The ride toward the mountains had me low-key excited. I’d lived on this side my whole life and had only had the occasion to cross over them once when I had been small, with my papa.
It was one of my favorite memories of him. I missed him every day. It was like once he was gone, all the happiness had gone, too. Like he had taken it to heaven with him.
I let the wind wash over me, sitting up on my seat, letting go, face tipped into the sun, arms flung wide as we skimmed over the highway. I