Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
I wasn’t fighting back tears.
But I was on the verge.
I wouldn’t dare let them come. If they came, they’d never end, and I’d be heading right back to Spruce ready to screw up Wyatt’s beautiful life even worse. Wasn’t my heart in the right place? I kept asking myself that, wondering if I really was in the wrong, or if it really was just me not learning any lessons from anything again, my same routine of bulldozing my way into people’s lives, just as stubborn as my dad was on his worst days.
Now it’s morning.
I’m not any better than I was last night.
And I can’t take another bite of rubber pancakes or these fake powdered eggs.
When the shadow falls over my face and takes the seat right across from me at this tiny lobby table, I look up from my plate.
And my stomach drops.
Tío Marcos.
Mustache. Unsmiling face. Tilted head.
Just like he used to look when I was a kid about to get another talking to. Another scolding.
“Where’s Tía?” I ask instead of greeting him.
He works his mouth, peering down at my plate. “Not planning to eat your continental breakfast?”
I stare at him. “Tastes like paper.”
He pulls the plate to himself, takes my fork, and digs in.
I cross my arms and lean back. “She waiting in the car?”
“Nope,” he says between bites. “All you got’s me. Which is a shame, considering Lottie loves these stale hotel pancakes.” He grimaces as he chokes down the first bite, then looks at me. “But the drive was long. And all I’m running on is coffee.”
“Why’re you here?” I ask, getting to the point.
“Why are you?” he asks right back, chewing.
I’m still trying to figure out why Tío Marcos came and not my tía. “Nothing holding me to Spruce anymore,” I answer. “House is sold. Did my part looking after it. Time to move on.”
“To what?”
“What’s with the interrogation?” He continues eating calmly, not giving my question any attention. I sigh. “I don’t know. That’s for me to figure out.”
One pancake already finished, he starts on the next one, then continues talking without even looking at me. “Funny, how sure you sound saying nothing’s holding you to Spruce anymore. Yet your face is telling a whole other story.”
I ignore him. “Want my juice?” I nudge the cup to his side of the table. “Didn’t drink any of it.”
“Wouldn’t care if you did.” He gives it a look, then shakes his head. “I’ll pass. Not good for my reflux.”
“I’ll get you a coffee.”
I barely start to stand when he says, “How’s Wyatt?”
Just the name buckles my knees. Glues me back to the seat.
Cripples me.
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumble, barely audible.
“Didn’t ask if it matters. Asked how he is.”
I fold my arms on the table and stare down at the wet ring my cup of bad orange juice left.
Tío sighs. “You know Lottie still hears everything, right?”
I look up. “Huh?”
“Well, she knows something’s been going on between you and Wyatt. You guys were the talk of the town these past few days.” At my blank face, he gently scoops eggs onto his fork, runs it through syrup, then adds, “The ladies still keep Lottie in the group chat.”
He says “group chat” like it’s the name of some dark magic.
Maybe it is, where Spruce is concerned.
“Then why ask me if you and Tía already know everything?”
“Maybe I wanna hear it from the source. Never really trusted grapevines, not even when we lived in Spruce.”
He already talks about the town like it’s a memory from many years ago.
I wonder if that’s how I’ll be in a month from now. Or a week.
Tomorrow.
Thinking of Wyatt in the distance, disappearing behind me as I keep going, shrinking until he’s nothing more than a speck in my rearview mirror.
I feel sick suddenly. “I hurt him.”
“How?”
“By standing up for him.”
He’s still trying to cut off a bite from the second pancake with a little plastic knife and fork. He’s failing. “That doesn’t sound like hurting him yet.”
“This guy was treating him like shit. A big client of his. Former client now … maybe ‘cause of me.” I scratch a spot on the table. “I don’t know what the fuck else I was supposed to do.”
He gives up cutting the pancake and just picks it right up off the plate to take a bite. “Did you ask Wyatt?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
That makes him laugh. “Like father like son. I say this with all the love in my heart, Diego, but the older you get, the more and more I see my brother in you.” He lowers the pancake, looking at me across the table. “He would always try to solve everyone else’s problems. It drove everybody fucking crazy.”
This is where I start to feel the floor vanish beneath my feet.
Tío Marcos went and opened up his secret weapon on me.