Dancing in a Hurricane (52 page)

Weird. The dining room table held a half-f pizza box, a six-pack of beer and three empty bottles. She walked toward the couch where he lay, his laptop on the coffee table loudly playing a football game.

"What's going on, baby brother?" She picked up a Taco Bell bag from the floor.

"Nothing, older sister. What's new with you? Oh, right. Just an abortion. Nothing much else."

"What?" She went to sit on the couch across from his and her foot kicked over two beer bottles hidden under the table. Picking them up along with four more from the coffee table, she tsked. "I've been calling you to come and talk, but you don't return calls."

"I lost my phone." He reached down beside the couch and produced a bottle of Patron Silver .

Tequila at noon? "Jesus, you lost your mind too?"

"I'm close." He took a swallow.

"Close to drinking yourself to death?"

"Close to forgetting."

She turned toward the kitchen and screeched. "What the hell happened here?" More pizza boxes, white cartons of Chinese take-out, a McDonalds bag and a sink full of empty beer bottles.

Setting the bottles down, she walked back to the living room and plopped down, watching him swig tequila from the bottle, swallow, and cough. His hair was a snarled mess, half in, and half out of the rubber band, his clothes were stained. This was not her brother. An alien pod invaded his body…

A terrible thought blasted into her brain. "Where's Bree?"

"Gone."

She looked around. "I guessed that. When is she coming back?"

He looked at her for the first time. "She's. Gone."

Marisa sat forward. "No way. She left you? I don't believe it." She jumped up and marched to Bree's room. The bed was made, everything looked in place. But no photos on the dresser. The bathroom countertop was cleared of hair and skin products. She spun around, ran to the closet, and opened the doors. Only empty hangers and boxes on the floor addressed to Port Angeles, Washington.

Goddamnit! "Asshole!" she shouted and stormed into the living room. Slamming his laptop shut, she asked, "What did you do to make her leave?"

He set down the bottle and burped, shivering. "I kicked her out." His words slurred. He was really drunk.

"No you didn't. Sixto, talk to me. What's going on?" She sat on the coffee table, facing him.

He struggled to a sitting position. "She overstepped her rights. By taking you to the clinic without talking to me."

"Oh, God, no." She dragged her hands through her hair. "Not Bree. She's your future. How could you let her go?"

"What she did is unforgivable." He gestured halfheartedly and reached for a bottle of beer.

She moved it out of his grasp. "No more liquor. We're going to talk."

"Nothing you can say will convince me to forgive her." He closed his eyes.

"I made her promise not to tell you."

He looked at her, and then closed his eyes again and shrugged.

"Sixto, I didn't want anyone to know. She was the only person I could turn to."

Abruptly he sat forward, pointing to his chest he shouted, "Me! I'm the person you should have turned to." He flinched and flopped back on the couch. "I would have helped you," he added quietly.

She linked her fingers together. "How? How would you have helped me?"

"I would have talked to Victor, threatened him if I had to…"

"And ended up in jail."

He waived an erasing hand. "No I wouldn't—"

"Yes, Sixto you would have. Victor would have paid someone to be a witness to your threatening him, he'd have you arrested, talk the judge into keeping you without bail because you are violent. Then he'd—"

"You're just scepu…speculating."

"No. I'm. Not." She dug her fingers through her hair. "Listen to me! I know how he works. When we were together, he bragged about how he got his clients off. He has no morals, Sixto. He'd have you in jail, and he'd call me and ask if I'd like to come back to him in return for your freedom."

Sixto looked like her words were getting through. "Why did you stay with him?"

She sighed. "At first I thought he was exaggerating. He talked about having people roughed up, hiring men who knew how to get witnesses to recant their testimonies."

Her guilt sickened her. "I overheard him talking to someone about a year ago and finally realized he was serious. By then I was already under his control. Brainwashed?" She ran her hands up and down her arms to warm the goosebumps away. "Too scared to do anything."

"Aw, Riss. See? You should have come to me for help then, too." He shook his head.

"No, Sixto,
you
don't see." She sat beside him on the couch, cringing at his alcohol breath and body odor. "He would have put you in jail, or had you injured, just to keep me where he wanted me."

He looked at her, his eyes unfocused. "Is that what you told Bree?"

She nodded. "I told her that I couldn't go to you because you'd try to be my savior. And it would end badly."

He blew out a breath through tight lips, puffing out his cheeks. "She thought she was saving me?"

Was he finally beginning to understand? "I made her promise not to tell you. And she made me promise to tell you afterward."

He scratched his cheek. "She was protecting me?"

"And me, Sixto. An abortion was the only way for me to keep Victor out of my life." Softly she said, "And my child's life." She missed the little one. "And if I hadn't miscarried before I got to the—"

"Whoa,
chica
." He furrowed his brow. "You miscarried? When?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well, duh, evidently
before
I went in for an abortion."

"This isn't funny." He blinked, trying to focus.

"No." She needed to find compassion for him. He ruined his life and was just realizing how badly he'd screwed up. "When I got to the clinic, they tested me and I wasn't pregnant."

"Huh."

"Didn't Bree tell you?"

He ran a hand down his face. "Didn't give her the chance."

Poor Bree. What was she feeling right now? If it was even half as bad as Marisa felt weeks ago when Rico asked her to leave, she shouldn't be alone. "Tell me what happened."

"I need some water." He started to get up.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "You talk, I'll get you water." Walking into the kitchen, she called, "Talk. I can hear you."

"Rico thought we both took you to the clinic."

Rico—of course. Her man hadn't listened when she told him it was just Bree.

Sixto continued. "I asked her what she'd done. She said you'd tell me."

Marisa walked back to him with a cold bottle of water. "Then?"

"I was pissed that she didn't tell me. Told her you needed counseling, not just a ride to the clinic."

"This was my choice, Sixto."

"Yeah, she said that, too." He drank half the bottle. "You and me don't have to get into that argument right now."

"No. Neither of us will change our stand."

He paused a moment, staring off into the distance. "She apologized, but… I told her I couldn't accept."

"Why? You're the most forgiving, kind, understanding man on the face of the earth. Why couldn't you forgive the woman you love?"

He swallowed and she saw pain in his eyes. "I told her I lost faith in her."

"Oh, fuck."

Chapter Forty

Marisa's eyes filled with tears. How did Bree survive that kind of wound to her soul?

"Then I threw her out," Sixto mumbled.

She blinked, tears overflowed and ran down her face. "You didn't really throw her out, did you?"

"I did." His breathing was labored. "I put her suitcase outside and told her to…" His face contorted.

Marisa clutched his arm. "What? What did you tell her?"

"I told her to go home…" he choked out. "And stop fucking with my family."

She sucked in a shocked breath. "You couldn't have. Bree? Oh, dear God, no." She put her hands over her face. Her cries burst free, shook her entire body. "Bree is the sweetest person either of us will ever know," she gasped between sobs. "She's perfect for you, perfect for our family. We need her, Sixto. What will we do without her?"

She cried for Bree and for her brother, but sobbed even louder when she realized it was all her fault. In her own panic, she'd grasped at the only friendship she had, and now her actions had torn apart the perfect love. Had she ruined two lives to save her own? Had she destroyed her brother's chance at happiness?

When she stopped feeling sorry for herself, she grabbed a wad of Kleenex, blew her nose, and mopped up her wet mess. "Sixto." She turned to him. His eyes were closed. She smacked his thigh. "Sixto!" He didn't move. He'd passed out.

***

Sixto woke on the couch and opened one eye. The light over the stove was on, otherwise the house was dark. He cleared his throat and the sound echoed in his throbbing head. Sitting up slowly, he caught a whiff of his armpit. Potent.

A bottle of water sat on the table in front of him next to his laptop, but the beer and tequila bottles were gone. He glanced at the dining room and kitchen. Marisa. She cleaned up for him. He smelled the citrus disinfectant she used to rectify his mess.

He opened his laptop and fired it up. In one pull, he drank all the water. It was 9 P.M. and he counted how long he was without Bree. Eighty-four hours. The first seventy-five without sleep. Marisa thought he was drunk this morning, but it was exhaustion that knocked him out in the middle of her crying jag.

He stood, stumbled a little and went to the kitchen, dropped his bottle into recycling. Hungry. He opened the fridge and found food. Marisa shopped for him, too. Making a sandwich, he remembered her face, the blank terror when she realized what her actions caused. Was it really her fault? What wasn't he recalling from his sister's lecture?

Walking back to the couch, he flipped on the light and sat, loading up his e-mails. In the middle of a bite of sandwich, he felt gut-punched as his sister's words roared back into his head.

I told her that I couldn't go to you because you'd try to be my savior. And it would end badly.

He set his sandwich on the plate. Damn. Bree thought she was saving him, protecting him from Victor. Is it excusable to do something morally wrong if you believe it's the only solution? Hell, he'd done the same to Bree. He withheld information on the club because of his responsibilities toward his family.

The bottom line was a choice—life without Bree, alone with his strict ethical code and pride intact. Or forgiveness, understanding, and the woman he loved by his side.

Elbows on knees, he dropped his head in his palms and heaved a breath. The stench of three days away from a toothbrush curled his lip. Worse, in his mind, the unpleasant smell of the temper he unleashed on Bree stunk worse than hell. God, he'd made a mistake.

That whole damn day was a rollercoaster and he went off the rails, reacted instead of thinking. When he saw her packing to leave, his fear of losing her frightened him nearly beyond reason.

Then her betrayal. Murky pictures replayed themselves. Her tearful eyes begging to explain. Had he really told her to go home? And set her bag outside the door? "Fuck. Me."

What was he supposed to do now?

***

Bree smiled, but it didn't stay on her face long. Her best friends since kindergarten, Gina and Annette, kept her cornered in the back of the round booth. The '80s music the cover band played seemed familiar and reminded her of her parents. Which reminded her how alone she was—again.

Closing her eyes, she swallowed back the sting of tears. She spent the last four days in seclusion, cleaning her house, buying groceries and weighing her choices. Until someone saw her and told Gina she was back.

She looked at her friends who rocked out to "What I Like About You." She took a sip of her beer. She'd tried to order a Red Stripe and the waitress had no idea what that was. Funny, she acquired a taste for it and when she ordered it instead of her usual Bud Light, the girls looked at her as if she'd morphed into an alien.

She tapped them on the arms. "Go…" She shouted over the music. "Dance."

"We're not leaving you alone," Annette said. "You'll take off on us."

Bree sat back. The tired, achy feeling in her joints presented like the flu, but wasn't caused by a virus. It was depression. Gina called today and insisted they all get together to talk. Bree suggested this bar because it was loud and mostly impossible to carry on a conversation. She wasn't ready to get into the whole Sixto thing with them yet.

They tiptoed around her, sensing something was wrong. Especially when she wasn't jumping at the chance to see their babies. The mulletted lead singer announced a quick break. This was her chance to leave. She wanted out.

"I'm heading home. I'm just tired."