Not So Far Away (Worlds Collide The Duets #1) - LL Meyer Page 0,36
as he re-takes my hand and heads for the parking lot. If I were shorter, I’d be hard-pressed to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.
He takes me to the passenger side and opens my door. I get in, but before he lets my hand go, he gives it a quick, reassuring squeeze. I watch him through the windshield as he goes around the front of the truck. Something definitely has him wound up.
It takes a full ten minutes before the silence gets to me. “You want to tell me what’s going on before we get where we’re going?”
“Not in the least.”
Okay, then. I go back to staring out the passenger window.
“Sorry,” he growls, the tightly controlled anger in his voice filling the cab of the truck. “I’m just so sick of this shit.”
I wait for more, but it takes the passing of another minute before he breaks down and enlightens me.
“It’s my mom,” he finally admits miserably. “She’s drunk off her ass and someone I know called me to come get her.” He shakes his head. “Probably so the cops don’t get involved.”
Oh. I bite my lip, unsure of how to respond, but he saves me from having to come up with something by continuing on. “I shouldn’t have to pick up my mother from some random bar on a Friday night, you know? You’d think someone else could do it for a change.”
The slightly shocked, Nosy Parker in me loosens my tongue, “You’ve done this before?”
“Yeah,” he bites out. “It’s not the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
I watch his grip tighten around the steering wheel as I try to imagine myself in a similar situation. “I’m the last person anyone in my family would call if they needed help.”
He shoots me an annoyed glance that clearly conveys And your point is?
“I don’t know, maybe you could look at it as a compliment. Your family and friends know you as someone who cares.”
Exasperated, he asks, “Are you saying you’d let your mom go to jail?”
“What? No! I don’t know what I’m saying.” I struggle to find the right words. “Just that it must be a nice feeling to know you’re valued by the people around you.”
Laughing bitterly, he retorts, “Or maybe the people around me get themselves into too many bullshit situations, and I’m the only one sucker enough to show up to bail them out.”
Scott is forced to slow down as we arrive in the downtown core of San Jose where the streets are busy with the Friday night crowds.
“I guess,” I say reluctantly, not at all convinced that it wouldn’t be gratifying to have people in my life who thought I was worth something. But hey, I earned Piper’s flaky reputation all on my own. The only way to shake it is to do better, to be better. Maybe Scott can teach me how it’s done.
Scott
To the absolute depths of my soul, I’m sick of this shit. Getting the call from Alejandro who suggests I come to remove my mother from a situation described to me as no bueno was like taking a baseball bat to the gut.
As soon as I saw his name flashing on the screen of my phone, I knew it could only be very bad news. Though it hasn’t always been that way. As my Tío Javier’s best friend, Alejandro was at our house a lot while I was growing up. Javier and Alejandro used to carry me on their shoulders, hell, they used to toss me between them for fun. Both of my uncles, one by blood and one by adoption, were larger than life for a kid with no dad and an inattentive mother.
Sadly, after the drive-by, my grandmother didn’t want Alejandro hanging around anymore. She didn’t want me influenced by the world her murdered son had made his life in, a world of easy money and casual violence. And rightly so. Association with Los Santos del Diablo ultimately ends in one of only two ways, death or imprisonment.
Nowadays, Alejandro is the furthest thing from a man you want to get involved with. He’s led Los Santos with an iron fist for the last five years; he’s watchful, cunning, and deadly.
I haven’t seen him in six months or so, not since the last time he called me to come get my mother from some dive bar up in Oakland. It was humiliating then, and even more so now because I have to do it in front