Rock Chick 07 Regret(177)

I was stuck on an earlier point.

“You went to see my father?” I asked.

Hector nodded. “Yeah.”

“He talked to you?”

“He gave me everything.”

I couldn’t believe this because, frankly, it was absolutely, positively, unbelievable.

“He helped you?”

Hector nodded again, watching me closely.

“You?” I repeated.

“Me,” Hector replied.

“For me,” I whispered.

“For you.”

I pulled in my lips and I felt the tears hit the back of my eyes, stinging there.

“I’m not going to cry!” I yelled then, damn and blast, blast, blast, I promptly burst into tears. “Fuck!” I shouted and found myself in Hector’s arms. “I’m crying,” I told Hector’s chest unnecessarily, my arms wrapping around his waist and my body pressing against his.

“Cry, mi cielo, who gives a fuck?” Hector said over my head.

“I do! I’m sick of crying! But he’s been… he’s been…” I choked then hiccupped. “He’s been trying to get hold of me and I haven’t even gone to see him!” Even though the last bout of tears hadn’t yet gone stale, I burst into fresh ones all the same.

Hector’s arms grew tighter.

“We’ll go next visiting day. I’ll take you.”

I was shocked at this offer, so much, my tears ceased immediately. I tilted my head back, looked at Hector through blurry eyes and asked, “You will?”

I was pretty certain he nodded.

“I can’t believe he helped you,” I whispered.

“He helped you,” Hector amended. “He didn’t help me and he didn’t like seein’ me either. It wasn’t like he invited me to Christmas dinner at the big house.”

I couldn’t help it, what he said was funny, so, through my waning tears, I burst out laughing.

“Christmas dinner at the big house?” I repeated, still giggling.

One of Hector’s hands came up and wiped at my tears. He grinned but he didn’t respond.

“Do you think he knows I informed on him with you?”

Hector’s gaze went from my cheeks to my eyes. “No.”

“Why wasn’t he angry that my Mom betrayed him?” I asked, as if Hector would know.





Apparently Hector did know because he answered.

“Because he loved her. You love someone, you forgive a lot of shit. She wasn’t exactly doin’ the wrong thing, mamita, he was.”

Hector was right.

I pulled in breath, looked at him a second then two then let the breath go and leaned into him, pressing my cheek against his chest and giving him a tight squeeze.

Then I moved, doing a circle so his arms were still around me but my back was to his front.

I looked at the room to see everyone was watching.

“I’m okay,” I announced to the room and surprisingly I was.

I looked at Vance and my voice went soft.

“Thank you,” I said and he gave me a chin lift which I took to mean “you’re welcome”.

My eyes skimmed across Malcolm, Kitty Sue and Tom and then rested on Blanca.

“Unless someone else wants to rock my world, I think we can have breakfast now,” I told her. “Can I help?”

Blanca gave me a close look. Then she must have approved of what she saw because she smiled and declared, “Today, I’ll teach you to scramble eggs.”

I knew how to scramble eggs but I decided not to tell Blanca that, it might spoil the fun.

And heaven knew, I needed some fun.

I felt Hector lean into me and he whispered in my ear so only I could hear, “Will of fuckin’ steel.”

The warm, snugly, comfy, lovely feeling was back with the happy glow and I knew part of it had to do with what I learned that morning.

And the fact that Hector had given me that too.

Now, in my bizarre world of bizarre events that happened every day, that was the bizarrest of all. My boyfriend, who happened bizarrely to be the ex-DEA agent that brought down my Drug Kingpin father, also, in a bizarre way, brought my father back to me.

Blooming heck.

How totally bizarre was that?

I could be my own soap opera!

Instead of sharing any of this with Hector, I turned to look at him, leaned in and touched my mouth to his. Even though his arms flexed around me and his eyes flashed at my mouth touch, I gave him a small smile, pulled away and headed toward Blanca.

Kitty Sue grabbed a bag of bread and the toaster.

Tom moved to make another pot of coffee.

Then Blanca taught me something I already knew.

And after breakfast, I walked hand-in-hand with Hector, following Vance to the door, and I asked Vance if he had time that day to take me to my mother’s stuff.

Vance said he did.