I snuggled my face into the crook of his shoulder and whispered, “Yes, I’ll move in with you.” That was the only decision I could make for now.
***
Since I had been spending so much time at Javier’s place anyway, I felt at home right away. The only drawback was the thirty minute commute to work each day, but I found that being alone in my truck was the best time to try and distance myself from my new situation and get my life back on track.
Which wasn’t easy. Javier had been right about the bar—no one suspected anything. Granted, after the incident happened, I didn’t work for another couple of days, but no one had called me saying they found evidence of a few murders, so I figured I was on the safe side.
It was hard being back at work though, being at the scene of the crime. I’d tried to deal with what happened, what was going to happen to me, but every time I saw those images—Javier with a gun, the half-naked body on the floor, Tom with the gunshot in his head—I nearly blacked out from panic. I found ways to push the thoughts aside, to shove the images deep down. I tricked myself into thinking it had all been a dream, that none of it had really happened. I pretended that I was falling in love with Javier and that was all to the story. I didn’t let myself dwell on who he really was.
And the fact is I still didn’t know who he really was. I knew he worked for Travis. I now knew people worked for him. He had power. He could kill people in cold blood. He was extremely skilled with a gun. He would do anything to protect me. The years leading up to this, I knew who I was going after and what I was getting involved with. I knew drug cartels were ruthless and violent, breeding people with no mercy. People like Javier. And yet now that I’d uncovered it, now that the blood was on my hands, I wanted to turn a blind eye. I wanted to sleepwalk through the bad and focus on the good.
Love was very good.
There was no point in denying it. I was in love with Javier. I just didn’t realize how bad I had it until Gus called me one day before my shift. I pulled over in the parking lot, eyeing the clock on the dash. I had five minutes and I hoped Gus wouldn’t talk my ear off. Not that it was his style to do so, but because I hadn’t talked to him in weeks.
“Hey, Gus,” I greeted hastily, hoping he’d catch the urgency in my voice. It was May now and the interior of my car was making me stick to the seats. I missed the dryness of California badly.
“Ellie,” he said, and for the first time ever, my own name sounded strange to me.
“Eden, please,” I said while attempting to put on mascara in the rearview mirror.
“Sorry, Eden.” He grew quiet. “Long time no talk. How ya been?”
“I’m good.”
“You sound good. You sound…busy.”
“I’m just about to start my shift.”
“You’re still working?” He sounded surprised.
“Of course.”
“I thought you’d be all wrapped up with, well, your mark by now. What’s his name again?”
I swallowed hard. “Javier.” My mark.
“Yeah, him. So how is that going? Did you get your revenge?”
I nearly jabbed the mascara wand in my eye. I needed to put the pointy objects away. I sat back in my seat, not wanting to talk about this, not wanting to face it. “Not yet.”
“It’s a long con,” he mused.
“This one might take longer than we thought…”
“Have you seen Travis yet?”
I hadn’t, actually. Aside from the night at the bar, I hadn’t seen anyone that Javier worked with. He was at home with me when I was there. We spent our days eating good food, jogging on the beach in the mornings, making crazy bunny love at night. I rarely saw him take any phone calls. In fact, it was so easy to pretend that he didn’t do anything at all; he just existed and purely for me.
“No. No Travis. Not much of his work, either.” I kept my voice low, paranoid of my surroundings. It was evening and a few patrons were heading into the bar. I only had a few minutes left before I’d have to serve them.
“Well, if this is still what you want, then you keep at it until you see him.”
My stomach turned in abrupt knots. “Why did you say that?”
“What?”
“If this is still what I want…”
“Well…people change their mind. They learn to let go of things.”
“They fall in love,” I blurted out.
Silence hugged the airwaves. Did I really say that out loud? I was about to say something else, anything else, when Gus beat me to it.
“Ellie,” he said, using my old name again. “Mistaking obsession for love is one of the greatest mistakes you’ll ever make.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that you’re obsessed with your revenge. You’re confusing that feeling for love. You don’t love this man. You couldn’t possibly. You know deep down you couldn’t love the man who’s responsible for what happened to you.”
I gasped, my heart thudding up my throat. “Javier is not responsible for what happened to me!” I hissed, indignation flaring up over my skin, my face turning hot.
“He is by association. And when you’ve been screwed so bad that can be enough. He works for the man you want to ruin. The man you say ruined you.”
“He did ruin me!” I yelled into the phone, shocked at the anger that was pouring out of me. So much for sliding everything under a rug. “He ruined me,” I said again, my voice lowered.
“Then you can’t possibly look at Javier and think he didn’t have a part in it.”
“He’s only three years older than me. He was in f**king Mexico at the time of the accident!”
“Look, I’m only telling you what you don’t want to hear. Javier might have never even known who Travis was at the time, but you can’t tell me that if Travis ordered him to do the same to someone else, some other little girl, that he wouldn’t. That’s the kind of person you think you’re in love with, Ellie. I want you to wake up and see the lie. Obsession is not love. He is a bad man.”
“Well maybe I’m a bad woman!” I yelled and promptly hung up the phone. I threw it down onto the seat, watching it bounce in the air. I tried to catch my breath, the truck feeling even hotter, and laid my head on the steering wheel, watching for the phone to ring, for Gus to call back. But he didn’t.