The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (9 page)

“Does it hurt?”

She shrugged and glanced back up at him, seeing that his gaze was on her bare shoulder, and the guilt on his handsome face was blatant. “It’s fine, Jesus.”

“Chu.”

She frowned. “What?”

“It’s Chu,” he clarified. “That’s what people call me. That’s my name. Chuito. Most of my friends call me Chu.”

She winced. “Jules told me your name was Jesus.”

“It is my name, but no one calls me that. Chuito is a nickname for Jesus in Spanish.”

“Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.”

“Why would you?” He let out a bitter laugh. “Are there any other Latinos in this town?”

“Maria Handover is from Colombia. That’s Latino, right?”

“How’d a Latina get a name like Handover?”

“Probably from her husband.” Alaine shrugged. “He’s…white.”

He grinned, and it made the dark, intense look in his eyes lighten a little. “Like you.”

“Yes.” She nodded as she smiled back at him. “Like me.”

“I’m sorry I hurt your arm.” He groaned as he looked back to the fridge. “I feel like mierda. I really didn’t need that.”

“Can I make you something to eat?” she asked him in concern. “Maybe that’s why you’re shaking.”

He shook his head. “It’s not why I’m shaking.”

“I still think you need to eat. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll make you a late dinner.”

He seemed to hesitate and looked behind him as if still lost. “O-okay.” He nodded after a moment. “We can put ice on your shoulder.”

“Okay,” she agreed, because he seemed fixated on it. She firmly believed he needed to eat, and if the guilt of her injured shoulder was what got the job done, she could work with that. “Do you want to get dressed?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at himself, as if remembering he was nearly naked. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s your apartment. I just thought it might help you warm up if you aren’t used to the cold.”

“I’ll get dressed.” He gestured to his bedroom, still seeming very unsure about the entire situation.

“I’ll start dinner. Just come in,” she said as she turned to leave. “I’ll keep my door unlocked. Does that work?”

He nodded. “Sí.”

Chapter Ten

Alaine wasn’t sure what Chuito would like, but she decided soup was good if he was cold. So she made him tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich, because it was fast.

She had just put the sandwich in the pan when he peeked into her apartment.

“Come in.” She waved him in and gestured to the table. “I didn’t move my books. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get it,” he said as he walked to the kitchen and picked up her calculus book, looking at it like it was a foreign object. “You’re really smart, huh, chica?”

“I hate calculus,” she said as she turned back to the stove. “I just need it to graduate. I made tomato soup and grilled cheese. Is that okay?”

“I don’t complain about food that’s served to me.” He worked on straightening her things spread out over the table, handling them as if they would break. She noticed his hands were still shaking. “That’s a gringo thing.”

“How so?” she asked him curiously.

“You have too much of everything. Gringos are picky.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Do you have coffee?” he asked with a wince. “I ran out and—”

She looked at him in surprise. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’ll keep me from going to sleep again.” As if that triggered a memory, he looked to the freezer. “I’ll get you ice. You can take something, maybe. Do you have medicine to take? What do gringos take for things like that? Aspirin?”

She turned around and frowned at him. “What do you take for things like that?”

He shrugged. “I usually just smoke bud when I hurt myself.”

“Bud?”

“Pot.”

“Oh.” She turned back to the stove and laughed. “Does that help?”

“Yeah. It works great. Especially for sore muscles.” He pulled open her freezer and found a bag of peas. He put it on her shoulder without asking permission. “Too bad we don’t have any.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme for a sore shoulder?”

“You think bud is extreme?” He laughed bitterly as he stood behind her, holding the frozen peas to her shoulder. “Dios mio. I need to go home, chica. I feel like I’m in another world here.”

Alaine’s voice was stolen temporarily, because this was very intimate, standing there cooking while he was behind her still holding the peas to her shoulder. She suddenly became aware of wearing nothing but a nightgown, and she got the impression he was very aware of it too.

On instinct, she tilted her head, seeing that he was looking over her shoulder, his gaze on the low dip between her breasts. She wasn’t particularly endowed in that department—everything was mostly hidden because of it—but she still saw him staring.

He glanced away, as though sensing he had been caught looking.

“You’re not cold?” he asked. “Peas will make it worse.”

“I like the cold,” she confessed. “Winter’s my favorite season.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “You want me to wrap them in a towel?”

She shook her head, because she didn’t want to give him a reason to leave, and honestly she was feeling very warm with the memory of what he looked like in his underwear still fresh in her mind.

“Why are your hands shaking, Chuito?” she asked him softly as she turned to him.

He stepped back, taking the peas with him.

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m just asking because you seem—” She paused, trying to choose her words wisely, because it sort of felt like anything could put him on the defensive. “Do you have a medical problem? Maybe your blood sugar is low or—”

“I’m crashing,” he admitted in defeat like he needed to tell someone. “Please don’t tell your boss. They’ll take away the sponsorship and—”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone anything,” she promised quickly before she had to ask. “But I don’t have a clue what crashing means.”

“It means I’m coming down off”—he studied her, as if trying to decide if he could trust her, and then admitted—“a drug.”

She looked to him in concern. “Like pot?”

“I don’t think people crash off pot.” He winced and then glanced away from her. “I’m crashing off blow. C-cocaine.”

“Oh my God.” She gaped at him in horror. “That’s—” She turned back to the stove for a moment as she tried to process that. “Isn’t that serious? Don’t you need medical care for that?”

“No.” He shook his head, like the idea of medical intervention was completely foreign to him. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” she repeated. “You decided to get off cocaine without being sure? Isn’t that highly addictive?”

A broken laugh burst out of him. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking addictive.”

“We should look this up,” she said as she glanced at her computer on the desk in the corner. “How long has it been?”

“Two days.”

“And you haven’t eaten in all that time?” Her heart rate picked up when she studied him again. He was just such a large, powerfully built man. It was easy to dismiss huge things, like his hands shaking and the dark circles under his eyes, but she realized anyone else would have seemed like they were on death’s door with the same symptoms. She took the peas from him and put them on the counter. “Sit down and you’re gonna eat, and I’m gonna look it up, and we’re gonna figure this out.”

“I don’t need help. I’ll just ride out the crash and—”

“Sit down.” She gestured to the table. “
Now
.”

Chuito sat down and looked at her hesitantly. “I do need coffee. I’m very certain whatever you look up will tell you I need coffee.”

She looked to her coffeemaker and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think coffee is the prescription for cocaine detox.”

“Do you have cookies?” he asked, seeming much more relaxed all of a sudden, as if he really did need someone to talk to about this. “Those cookies were baller. I could eat like five hundred of those right now.”

“I have orange juice.” She put the grilled cheese sandwich on a plate and set it in front of him. “Orange juice is good for you. Cookies and coffee are not.”

“I’m Boricua. Coffee is my lifeblood. It’s like milk to gringos. It does the body good.”

“Is that true?” she asked him with a stern look.

“Yes,” he said slowly with a stern look of his own. “I’m pretty sure my mother put coffee in my baby formula.”

She gave him orange juice instead, because if he’d been drinking coffee since he was an infant, then he needed to start cutting back. He drank the whole glass and then got up and poured himself another as he worked on eating his sandwich and soup.

“Coño, chica, I didn’t know how fucking hungry I was. Gracias for this,” he said as Alaine sat at her computer reading about cocaine withdrawals. “You find anything interesting on there?”

“That sugar cravings are common when coming off cocaine,” she said as she read. “And so are nightmares.”

“I had nightmares before the blow,” he mumbled and then took another bite of his sandwich. “That’s not it.”

“I think it is,” she mused. “I’m not sure if the sugar is good or not, though. It just says the cravings are common.”

“It’s good.
Muy bueno
.”

She laughed and turned back to him. “I think you’re doing pretty well under the circumstances. It says most people are throwing up and so depressed they’re suicidal.”

“I’m suicidal. They got that one right,” he said with a broken laugh. “If I wasn’t pretty fucking sure I was going to land someplace worse than Garnet, I’d end it all.”

“I think you’re being overly harsh with yourself.” She gave him a sad smile. “Mind you, I ain’t suggesting suicide, but God’s pretty forgiving.”

“He’s not
that
forgiving,” he promised her with such grim certainty it was heartbreaking. “And there’s no Catholic church here. So I definitely can’t take myself out. I haven’t gone to confession in a really long time.”

“What happens if you die without going to confession?”

“Taking yourself out without going to confession?” He gave her a wide-eyed look of horror. “Bad plan for normal Catholics. For motherfuckers like me.
No way
. I’m stuck here instead, but I’m starting to think I’d take hell over snow.”

“My daddy’s a Baptist preacher,” she admitted as she turned around and gave him her full attention while he ate. “Did you know that?”

“I did know that.” He reached for his orange juice. “I don’t know too many Protestants.” He looked ahead, the glass in his hand. “I don’t think I know
any
.”

“I don’t know any Catholics,” she countered.

“I guess not if there’s no Catholic church within a hundred miles and only one Latina who married a gringo and probably fucking converted to make him happy.”

“You say a lot of bad words,” she observed drily. “You’re worse than Jules.”

“That’s what you get for inviting
el diablo
into your house for sandwiches and soup,” he said without remorse. “Trust me, swearing is the least of my sins.”

“You think you’re a devil?” she asked curiously, because she recognized that one. She’d never heard someone say that about themself, especially someone religious enough to worry about confession. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Just like you’re sure I’m not a thug,” he said with a smile and took a drink of his juice. “How old are you, mami?”

“Nineteen.”

“Coño.” He rolled his eyes and looked away. “What the fuck are you doing hanging out with me at one in the morning?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“That’s not very different.”

“It
is
very different. Twenty from where I come from is old already,” he argued and then took a sip of his soup. “I’m sure I’ve done a lot more living than you have. Probably more than you ever will.”

“Probably,” she agreed softly. “I haven’t done very much living at all.”

“Well, living sucks,” he said with another smile. “Don’t feel bad about it.”

She stared at him quietly as he went back to eating, seeing that his hands weren’t shaking as badly, but he still looked extremely tired and worn down. She got the impression his exhaustion was the reason he was in her kitchen, confessing all this to begin with. She wasn’t sure he would have let his guard down if he weren’t so ill.

“I think you should sleep,” she whispered. “It says you’re supposed to sleep.”

“The last time I fell asleep, I ended up with a gringa screaming over me. I’ll pass.”

“Sleep is good. Sleep heals,” she argued. “You need it. Desperately.”

“I’m not going to sleep, chica. Sleep is never my friend. Why the hell do you think I was on the blow to begin with?”

“We could figure something out.”

He paused, looking at her curiously. “Like what?”

She shrugged. “I could stay with you.”

“
Stay
with me?” he repeated slowly, his eyes wide in shock. “You’re not worried about getting your hands dirty?”

“Getting my hands dirty?” She frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

He leaned forward, giving her a harsh look as he studied her. “You ever been with a man, mami?”

“Been with?” she repeated, and then her eyes widened in horror. “Is that what you think I mean?
You’re ill
. I was going to wake you up if your nightmares got bad.”

“Carajo,” he said with a laugh as he pushed away from the table and surprised her by taking his dishes to the sink. “A virgin gringa living in the same house as me with no one else around. A
smoking-hot
virgin gringa. This whole fucking town is loco.”

She stared at his back, admiring the muscles under the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing. “I guess you’re not a virgin.”

He turned his head, giving her a look over his shoulder that caused a ripple of something hot and unnamable to rush through her bloodstream.

“That was a dumb question,” she whispered.

“Yup,” he agreed as he started washing the dishes. “I don’t need you to wake me up from my nightmares. That would be a very bad idea.”

“But I’m pretty sure you do need supervision if you’re detoxing. Being alone is a
worse
idea.”

“I’m sure I’ll live.”