No f**king way.
My heart was for me and me alone and, obviously, my Mom (when I found her), and Ralphie and Buddy, who I’d keep contact with of course, and, maybe, Daisy and the Rock Chicks, if I could manage that without the involvement of Hector.
As for Hector, I knew the Ice Princess didn’t work, so I settled on another strategy. I knew it would cost me but I was willing to pay the price.
There was going to be a New New Sadie. I was calling her Pretend Sadie and she was going to protect me.
It would make it easier in the long run, even though it would be far more difficult for the short one.
But I could do it. I lived twenty-nine years with my father pretending to be someone I was not. I could live a few weeks guarding my heart from Hector “Oh my God” Chavez.
And guard it I would.
* * * * *
At ten to four, Hector picked me up from the gallery.
I was kind of hoping that he’d cool off by the time he came but one look at him told me this was absolutely not the case.
So be it.
I could work with that.
There was only one hitch on the way to the Nightingale Investigations offices. They were just around the corner from Art, maybe two blocks away. Still, Hector drove it and as we approached the entrance to the garage, I audibly sucked in breath.
I’d forgotten about the garage.
My last time in the garage had not been a happy memory.
I wasn’t ready to go back there again.
Hector heard me, he muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath, pulled out of his approach and rounded the block, parking on the street.
With effort, I forced my body to relax.
Before getting out, his hand wrapped around my neck and he turned me to face him. He was leaning toward me but not as close as he normally got. I noticed this and it made something ugly twist inside me, something which I firmly set aside.
“I didn’t think, the garage –” he said to me, his eyes were masked but his voice was soft.
“That’s okay,” I replied quickly.
He didn’t let me go and his eyes scanned my face.
“Who’s with me now?” he asked.
“Me,” I answered immediately.
His eyes narrowed. “Which ‘me’?”
“Me, me,” I replied, as if there had always been only one (hardly!).
This answer didn’t make him happy and that’s when he got as close as he normally did.
I held my breath and braced (it was a good thing too).
“If I didn’t know it was worth it. If I didn’t know from what happened last night and, whatever the f**k you thought it was, mamita, what happened this morning. And if I didn’t like your hands in my hair holding my mouth to you, the smell of your f**kin’ perfume when I’m buried inside you and the way you lose that tight-as-shit control over every f**kin’ move you make when you get excited and you use your nails and teeth on me, I’d give up, because, mamita, you are one serious pain in the ass.”
I hadn’t planned for a speech like that (I ask you, who would?). Nor had I planned for how it made my heart race (damn and blast!), my stomach pitch (more damning and blasting!) or the area between my legs to tingle (damn and blast it all to hell!) or, contradictory to all this, how it made me want to give him a good sock in the gut. So I thought my best bet was to pull in my lips and try to look ashamed of my pain in the ass behavior.