Yours to Keep (22 page)

“No! The plan for proposing.”

Looking at the glee splashed all over his son’s face, he knew that Theo wasn’t picturing a business proposition.

“Ring?” Theo asked.

Ethan shook his head. “I’m just going to suggest this to her. It’s not like a proposal, really. It’s just a conversation. I’m going to say, ‘I could marry you. Then we could file for a change in your status without your having to go back to D.R.’ ”

“No way,” Theo said emphatically, shaking his head. “You gotta do this right.”

But what was right for a situation like this? He might scare the heck out of Ana if he presented her with a ring. On the other hand, he might scare the heck out of her if he presented her with a business proposition.

A ring scared the heck out of him, he admitted to himself. A ring was acknowledgment that it wouldn’t be just a business proposition. Oh, Jesus. He was about to propose marriage to someone he’d been dating for two weeks. Someone he’d had sex with three times. He was not this guy! He needed to take about twenty giant steps back, catch his breath.

“What about this? She shows up Monday to tutor me and there are candles lit all over and you get down on one knee and give her a ring.”

“You’ve been watching too much TV.”

“Everyone knows you’re supposed to have candles and a ring and get down on one knee. You had candles and a ring and got down on one knee when you proposed to Mom.”

“I wasn’t proposing that she marry me so she could get a green card,” Ethan said dryly. “No, I have to be honest with her. We don’t know each other that well, and this is something that could help her out and help you and me out by making sure Ana sticks around.”

Theo grumbled under his breath.

“What?”

“Not very romantic,” Theo muttered.

“You have to trust me. I have more life experience than you do.”

Theo glared at him. “Doesn’t seem to have done you much good so far.”

Chapter 20

By Sunday night, Ana was able to haul herself to work. It took a supreme effort of will, but she taught her two classes.

Afterward, she barely slept. Cara had a bad cold and snored. Whenever Ana woke up, she thought of Ethan. Sometimes she thought about the good things. She remembered shooting pool, feeling his eyes on her, his gaze bringing heat to the surface of her skin wherever it touched her. She remembered his smile—rare, intense, his eyes lit up and his teeth flashing, the crinkles and lines diving into motion. But mostly she remembered the way he looked and sounded as he demanded to know why she hadn’t told him that she was illegal. Betrayed.

She tried to put herself back in time, tried to imagine telling him on their first date, maybe when she told him about coming to the United States. She’d been so afraid he’d turn tail, like Walt. Maybe she hadn’t given him enough credit. Maybe she’d been too scared, had liked him too much.

But the truth was he
had
turned tail. She hadn’t heard a peep from him since Friday night. She’d checked her phone a million times, even called herself once from Cara’s cell to make sure the voice mail was actually working. Everything was functioning properly—it was just that Ethan hadn’t called her.

Because any guy, put in the same situation, would do what Walt had done. Anyone with any sense in his head would run from the complications, the dangers, the sheer
drama
of being involved with someone who could be arrested and deported at any moment.

Her eyes burned when she woke up on Monday, from lack of sleep and unshed tears. Still, she taught her morning class. She had no choice. She couldn’t afford to give up on earning money because the inevitable heartbreak had finally arrived. Particularly if she had to turn her savings over to Ricky. At her current rate, it would take her two or three years to rebuild that stash.

When she got home after class, Ricky was sitting on the front stoop, waiting. Arms crossed. A look on his face that on anyone else might have been a hint of a smile but on him
was the beginning of temper. His face was drawn; she knew that he’d just finished his graveyard shift and hadn’t gone to bed yet.

“Who is he?” Ricky demanded.

Fear leaped in her chest, but she kept her face carefully neutral. “Who’s who?”

“The guy you spent the weekend crying over.”

For a moment, she considered trying to deny it, but she was too exhausted.

Ricky patted the stair next to him. “Who is he? I already figured out it’s no one from around here.”

She sat. “It’s over. It doesn’t matter who it was.”

“He break up with you?”

“Nah. I got bored with him.”

“That’s a lot of crying over someone you were bored with.”

“I get discouraged sometimes.” That was true. “I think I’ll never meet anyone I can be serious about.”

He was quiet then.

She realized that she didn’t often think about him and his romantic life. There had been girls along the way, and for all she knew he might have fathered children. Although if she knew Ricky, he was probably careful about that. After Cara got pregnant the first time, Ricky and a friend beat the crap out of the baby’s daddy. Ana was pretty sure the guy had fled the state. She didn’t think Ricky went around creating single moms. But did he ever think about kids? Did he want kids of his own? A wife? Did
he
get discouraged sometimes?

“It’s that guy, right? The tutoring guy?” He didn’t look angry. He looked sad, as if she’d disappointed him, or maybe the world had. “You know that’s never going to work for you, right?”

She did—she finally did. She nodded. Her head felt heavy—fatigue and a dull dread. She wanted to let her head slump forward on her chest. She wanted to go upstairs and get into bed and stay there for a week. She’d never really noticed before, but there was no slack in her life. If she was too sick or too tired to teach or tutor, there was no one to do it for her.

“You want me to kick the shit out of him?”

She looked up at him, alarmed. “You stay away from him!”

He put his hands up. “Just asking.”

They sat for a moment in silence. Then she said, “He’s a good guy.”

He shook his head, got to his feet, so that he towered over her. “No more
yanquis,
Ana. For me. No more.”

“What do you have against them, Ricky? What’s the big deal? He’s just a guy! For God’s sake …”

But she knew that he wasn’t going to answer, even as the words rushed out of her.

And she thought she knew the answer, though she’d never hear it from his lips. Ricky was scared of losing her. She was his partner. He loved Cara, too, of course, but the truth was it was Ricky and Ana who held things together. They earned the money, they made the decisions. If she left, he’d be alone.

She understood his fear. She couldn’t imagine doing it without him.

At the same time, it was not her job to take care of him forever. At some point, she had to do what was right for her. She had to stop living like Ricky’s little girl.

He took a step toward her. If it hadn’t been her Ricky, she’d have called his posture menacing. “Just promise, Ana. Promise me. No more.”

The last thing she ever wanted to do again was date another white boy—or anyone, for that matter. But it galled her, Ricky’s wanting to make the rules for her. She was a big girl, and she was her own boss now.

She couldn’t promise him. That knowledge took up residence in her jaw, hardening it.

He was watching her closely, and his breathing sped up at that tiny sign of her stubbornness. His chest swelled. She felt the heat of his growing rage, born of helplessness. If he couldn’t boss his little sister around, who did that leave?

“I won’t let you.” His low voice broke with anger.

It would be so easy to promise him. Make him feel that he could still be the boss. And yet she couldn’t. Craziness twisted in her chest, rose, full-fledged rebellion. “If I really wanted to, you couldn’t stop me.”

His gaze bored into her. “Oh, yes, I could.” And the cool steel in his voice scared her more than the heat had.

Ethan’s car was in his driveway. What did that mean? She climbed down the shuttle steps and stood motionless in front of the Hansens’ house for a moment, trying to make sense of his
presence here. She’d assumed—hoped, even—that he wouldn’t show his face when she came for tutoring sessions. Did this mean he was going to fire her? Or— She dared hope, for a split second …

She didn’t want to let herself think it.

She looked up the path. He stood, framed by the doorway, looking out at her. She tried to read his expression but couldn’t. Would he stand there in person to fire her? Yes, he would, because he was that kind of man, the kind who wouldn’t shrink from doing what was right.

Her walk up the front path took forever. Her steps were like the flower petals in He loves me/He loves me not. Right foot:
He’s going to fire me.
Left foot:
He cares.

She stood on her side of the screen door and looked through the mesh at him.

He put both of his hands up on the screen, brought his face to the mesh, so that his nose and lips flattened.

She couldn’t help it; she laughed.

He laughed, too, and she was flooded with relief. She came close to the screen and touched her lips to his. She could taste only the metal of the wire, but the heat of his mouth still affected her. Swept through her.

He opened the door and let her in. He wore a navy crew-neck sweater and jeans. His feet were bare. His hair was mussed.

“I have a proposal for you,” he said. “Literally.”

Her heart began pounding.

“I think you should marry me.”

She put a hand out to the wooden banister. She felt light-headed.

“I did a lot of research. I talked to Mrs. Abrams’s brother-in-law.”

“You did what?” she shrieked. She was startled by the speed and vehemence of her reaction. She wasn’t a shrieker, normally. But this was not a normal week.

“I didn’t use your name,” he said uncertainly. “Or—or any identifying information.”

Once unleashed, her temper seemed to have a life of its own. “She’ll know! Mrs. Abrams will know it was me! And she’ll tell Leah! Who apparently has the world’s biggest—”

He cut her off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think! You don’t know! You have no idea!” She sounded hysterical.
Unhinged. From some distant point inside herself, she thought,
This has all been too much for me.

“Don’t be mad.” The voice came from the top of the stairs.

She looked up. Theo stood there. He was holding his guitar, the green woven strap draped across his chest. “I’m not supposed to be here. My dad told me not to come out.”

“Theo, I have this under control.”

“You don’t!” Theo cried.

“Theo,” Ethan warned. There was as much threat in his voice as Ana had ever heard there. “Back to your room.”

Theo ignored him and came down a few steps. “You should marry him! Because that way you can get a green card, and you’ll be safer.” And with that, finally giving in to the ferocity of his father’s glare, he leaped back up the stairs and disappeared.

With a start, she grasped that she was being hysterical about all the wrong things. She’d missed the big point here. Ethan was proposing to her. Proposing marriage. Ethan was suggesting that she marry him.

He wanted to marry her.

She took a breath, which turned out to be shallower than she’d intended, and she took another gasping breath to try to catch up. It struck her, suddenly, as hilariously funny. She started to laugh, and once she’d started, she discovered that she couldn’t stop.

Ethan watched her, looking faintly worried, until she got hold of herself and calmed down. She panted a little, winded from the shrieking and laughing and general hysteria.

“I’m serious,” Ethan said.

She felt so many things at once. She was still angry at him for talking to Mrs. Abrams’s brother-in-law. He’d tell Mrs. Abrams everything, and Mrs. Abrams would tell Leah and God knew who else. She felt exposed, horrified at the thought of all that conversation going on behind her back.

And she felt a kind of scorn for them, Ethan and Theo, her two idealists, thinking that this could all be sorted out so quickly and easily, with a grand gesture.

But most of what she felt was a bone-deep relief and, slowly rising, brimming to her surface, something that might have been happiness. He wanted to marry her! Maybe he didn’t love her, but he liked her and wanted her enough to attempt this crazy, possibly dangerous,
life-changing arrangement.

She looked at him. He needed a haircut, his hair like dark-red hay gone to seed. He had worry lines between his brows that she’d never seen before. He was so beautiful, her very own copper-haired, green-eyed, long-lashed man. So beautiful.

“We’ve only known each other a month.” It didn’t capture one tiny fraction of everything in her heart and mind, but it was what popped out when she opened her mouth, so it would have to do.

“It’s been a busy month.”

She laughed. And realized that she still had her backpack on. She slung it off her shoulder and leaned it against the stairs.

A sound from above caught her attention. Theo was back, watching them.

“Theo, enough.”

Theo looked worried. She could tell that he wasn’t sure what had just happened or whether it meant yes or no. “Thanks for your help,” she told Theo. “Your timing was impeccable.”

“What about my tutoring session?” Theo asked.

She held back a giggle. That epitomized a teenager, right there. Theo was a selfless warrior on his father’s behalf until his own rights were threatened, and then he forgot all about the bigger fight.

“I’m giving her the afternoon off.”

Theo glared his disapproval.

Ana smiled up at him. “I’ll owe you. Promise.”

He retreated slowly back up the stairs, his eyes narrowed.

When he was gone, Ethan put his hand on her arm. She could feel its heat through her fleece jacket and sweater and top. Was his body temperature higher than most people’s? “Come into the family room.”

She followed him through the kitchen and into the high-ceilinged back room, where the big TV hung, silent. He gestured for her to sit beside him on the couch. His demeanor was brisk and businesslike now. “So what do you think?”