Rush (22 page)

“My late husband, Joaquin Vega,” Lucas’s grandmother said. “God rest his soul.” She crossed herself and kissed her locket. She beamed at Lucas with a grandmother’s pride. “My grandson is his image, don’t you think? He’ll carry on the Vega legacy.” She pinned Mi with her sharp gaze. “Family is all there is.”

Mi found herself agreeing with the older woman. Family was important. What Mi had done, what she continued to do for her own family, was not all that dissimilar to what this grandmother wanted for her only grandson. Mi nodded along. “Family is very important to me, too.”

“Then we’re in agreement.” Lucas’s grandmother turned away from Mi as if dismissing her and fixed her stare on her grandson. “Carmen will set aside time this week to bring you up to date with the business. She’s done an adequate job, but now that you’re home and healed, it’s time you took over.” She sliced a bite off her steak and looked down the table at Lucas’s sister. “Carmen, you will have Mr. Cervantes prepare the necessary paperwork for the transfer to Lucas.”

Carmen bowed her head, clearly unhappy about being swept aside by her younger brother. “Yes,
Abuelita
.”

“Don’t bother, Carmen. I won’t be able to make that appointment.” Lucas put a bite of steak in his mouth and chewed, seemingly unaffected by his grandmother’s machinations, but Mi knew better. The strain weighed down his shoulders as if he carried an elephant piggyback. Her heart went out to him. She reached out for him under the table and found his hand clenched in a fist on his knee.

Lucas’s mother pushed her food around her plate, looking like she hoped the floor would rise up and swallow her. Elisa went about eating her dinner completely unfazed by what was happening around her. Carmen gave Lucas an unhappy look laced heavily with unmistakable envy.

“You were raised to lead this family and our business,” his grandmother pressed on, her tone turning ugly. “Does honor and duty mean nothing to you?”

“You have no idea what honor and duty mean to me. As a sailor, men, good men, lived and
died
everyday around me bound by nothing more than honor and duty.” He lowered his voice so that only those sitting next to him—Mi and his grandmother—could hear. “Be very careful about how far you pursue this,
Abuelita
.”

The older woman sucked in a breath, then spoke low in rapid-fire Spanish, her tiny hand clamped to Lucas’s forearm.

Mi’s gaze went again to the portrait. Was this the legacy the old man had intended for his family? The astonishing likeness hit her anew. This was what Lucas would look like in middle age. Already threads of gray wove through his dark hair. The lines of a life well lived were only just beginning to show on Lucas and would only etch deeper as the years passed. As Mi studied the portrait more intently she could easily pick out the differences between Lucas and his grandfather.

Lucas’s face reflected a humanity and resilience the portrait’s lacked. The lines in the portrait’s face had taken completely different tracks than Lucas’s had, having been carved—Mi suspected—by cruelty. The look in the eyes told her as much. And then Lucas’s words came back to her
The day they put
Abuelo
in the ground was one of the happiest days of my life.
What had Elisa said about this man?
He was a… hard man. So cold.

Mi bit her lip and stared at her untouched plate. Lucas had responsibilities Mi could never be a part of. He’d been groomed to take over as head of the family and business, and to carry on the Vega name with a woman who was a part of his culture, his heritage. Whatever tiny fantasies Mi might have harbored for a future with Lucas died a swift, brutal death. Maybe it was just as well. Her family life was no less complicated, no less of an obligation than his. Their lives were as mismatched as her thrift store dishes and the Vega fine china set on the same table.

Mi pulled her hand from Lucas’s, ignoring his quick glance at her, and went through the motions of eating her dinner. For all she could taste, the food might have been made of sawdust and glue. She kept her head down and her mouth shut.

Lucas spat out a few curt sentences to his grandmother in Spanish, ending her rant. Mi could feel the older woman’s gaze boring into the top of her head. Whatever Lucas had said to his grandmother sent a rippling of surprise through the other diners. Four heads swiveled at once in her direction. Mi caught Elisa’s smile and nod of approval for Lucas. Then, bless her, Elisa launched into detail about her upcoming trip to Europe, stealing everyone’s attention.

The conversation flowed in a new direction, but Lucas found himself unable to focus. He’d made a terrible mistake in bringing Mi here. It seemed as though
Abuelita
was determined to pick up where her husband had left off. She’d made it clear now that Lucas had been released from the Navy and Vanessa, her mission would be to mold him into the image of his grandfather. But
Abuelita
was not the tyrant her husband had been and Lucas was no longer the boy who couldn’t fight back against a man who’d used his strength and size as weapon.

Mi’s silence worried him. He could handle whatever his family threw at him. After all he’d learned to cope at the hands of a man who made his drill sergeant look like a Kindergarten teacher. Mi didn’t deserve the treatment she’d received from his family. So he’d put his foot down. Hard. He hadn’t meant to say those things to
Abuelita
, hadn’t even known they were in his head. But now that they were out, he couldn’t put the ideas away. And maybe he didn’t want to.

He put his hand on Mi’s knee, needing that small contact. She glanced at him in surprise, then shifted in her chair so that his hand fell away. As soon as dinner was over they’d leave. He’d apologize for his family and try to explain.

He looked down the table, catching Elisa’s eye. She flashed him a thumbs-up, giving her approval of Mi, and then she puckered her lips and fluttered her eyelashes, making fun of him. He surreptitiously flipped her the bird. She flashed him a grin in return. God, he’d missed Elisa when he was on deployment. Despite the changes in
Abuelita
, it really was good to be home.

*****

Lucas gave Mi the silence she seemed to need on the drive home. He worried that the things
Abuelita
had said, her rudeness, had changed something between him and Mi. She’d barely spoken all evening. And now she sat next to him in the truck, stiff and withdrawn, arms crossed over her chest, legs pressed together much like the way she’d been with him when they’d first met. He hated seeing her like that. Hated that because of him she’d closed up, having gone back into exile within herself.

A sharp pain sliced through his chest, seizing the breath in his lungs. He gripped the wheel harder, trying get a handle on it. The pain morphed to a fist-like ache and then he recognized it for what it was—fear. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and stole a glance at Mi. She sat unchanged, unaware of his turmoil, staring out into the night. The fear clawed at him, carving hollows in his resolve. He wouldn’t be able to make this up to her. He wouldn’t get her back.

She’d looked at the portrait of
Abuelo
, listened to his family’s talk of legacy and inheritance and had come to the same conclusion everyone else did. He was the man his grandfather had made him to be. All of his efforts to fight against it were wasted. He should just take over the company, run it with the same ruthless calculation that flowed from
Abuelo’s
blood through to his. He’d take a wife with the proper lineage and breeding. Have sons who he’d mold and shape into his image and continue the legacy
Abuelo
had imagined.

His flight from
Abuelo’s
house to the Navy had been a wasted endeavor. Trying to remake himself under the military’s thumb, had been a futile effort. He’d only exchanged one tyrant for a host of others, one mindset for one that was not all that dissimilar. Why was he fighting it? It would be so much simpler to give in, to allow
Abuelo’s
lessons to take hold, be the man he was bred to be.

Dread rode him hard, and he couldn’t round up his thoughts on the way home or during the tense, silent elevator ride up to his apartment. And then the doors opened and they stepped into the living room, surrounded by the things of Mi’s he’d brought here. It seemed like another time, another place that he’d done this. A time when he could reach out and touch the man he wanted to be, could try that costume on and almost feel like maybe he
was
that man if only for a little while.

And then he looked at Mi and saw he’d been that man with her. And it wasn’t the caricature he’d assumed it was. It was real. He took a hold of her arms, bringing her around to face him fully. He wanted her to really look at him. Wanted her to tell him what she saw when she looked at him. Wanted know if there was any chance he was the kind of man she’d want, the kind of man she could need.

But she stared up at him with huge, blank eyes as though the part of her that had laughed and teased, loved and fought with him had died. A new kind of terror struck him, bringing with it anger and an eerie out of body calm.

“He beat me.” The words were out before he could call them back. Not that he would. He had nothing to lose. No reason to care. “I was made to kneel for hours at the side of his desk while he worked. If I moved he hit me. If
Abuelita
or my mother tried to intervene he hit me.”

His breath came in harsh bursts and he knew his fingers dug too deep, but he couldn’t let her go, couldn’t stop now that he’d started. “He used his power and size as a weapon to hurt and intimidate. He wielded it often and mercilessly. He was a monster. And he made me one, too.

“I laughed.” His voice cracked, his big body shaking so hard, Mi trembled with him. For the first time she was afraid of him and afraid for him.

“Are you listening?” he shouted, leaning closer to her face, shaking her. “I stood over my grandfather’s casket, laughing, and wished him to hell.” He released her, pushing her away from him.

She resisted the urge to rub her arms where his fingers had been. Not because he’d hurt her, but because his touch was like fire, burning down all of her defenses. He’d split himself wide for her, opened wounds long since crusted over. She feared she’d never be able to walk away from him.

“That doesn’t make you a monster like him. It makes you honest.”

“He’d use his belt. The sound of it sliding through his belt loops…” He paused, swallowed. “I can still hear it. The whoosh of it slicing the air above me. And the crack… the crack of it… striking flesh.”

He stood in front of her, his body taut as a bowstring. She hurt for him, every part of her ached. His pain was so raw, so real she could almost reach out and touch it, like a live wire, dancing and sparking in the air between them.

“I have his name,” he spat like a curse. “His size. For fuck’s sake, Mi, I look
exactly
like him.”

“But you’re not him.” She took a risk, laying a hand on his chest, hoping to impress upon him this point if no other. “You aren’t anything like him. Not at all.”

“I should never have brought you to that house. In that house he’s considered a saint. A god. They want him back. They want me to be him. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know they’d expect that. I’m so
sorry
.”

He stared at her with haunted eyes and she could see the boy he had been deep within their depths. She wanted to weep for him, to hold him to her, and rock him and tell him it would all be okay. But she sensed what he needed was to talk, to get it all out. So she stood there and let him, her heart breaking with every word. He turned away from her to look out at the skyline. Her hand fell away, back down to her side. She stayed where she was, her eyes burning with unshed tears.

“I finally got big enough to fight back, but I couldn’t.” He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “It just wasn’t in me. That only pissed him off more. He hit harder, trying to goad me into taking a swing at him. Said I wasn’t a man if I didn’t fight back.”

He turned then and everything about him cried defeat. Mi fisted her hands at her sides to keep from going to him and touching him again. Misery flowed off him, vibrating into her in waves that threatened to rise up and swallow them both.

“The last time he beat me, he did it with his fists.” He looked away as though the memories played out in front of him, like a flickering old movie. “I was eighteen.” He flinched as if they’d delivered a blow. “The next day, bloody and bruised, I enlisted in the Navy. That pissed him off more than my not fighting back.”

“Because that’s not who you are. He couldn’t make you him. He tried and he failed. And then he died.” She went to him and wrapped her arms around him, finally able to give him the comfort they both needed. “You’re not him. You’re not anything like him. He failed.” The tears came then, hot and angry at a man she’d never known. She soaked his shirt with them.

“You don’t get it,” he said miserably.

Standing up on tiptoes, she reached up to put her hands on his face so he’d hear her, really hear her. “He failed, Lucas. He died knowing he failed. No punch you could have delivered wouldn’t have hurt him as much. Know that. Know that I admire you.” She brought him down to her for a kiss. “Know that he never had a hold over you.” She kissed him again. “Know that you are a better man than he could ever have hoped to be.”

Lucas met her this time, kissing her and holding her with a desperation born of hope. It burst through him like the sun through dark clouds, flooding places inside him so dark he’d forgotten they were there. He ran his hands over her, needing her more than he’d ever needed anything. And the wanting. Aw, fuck the wanting. He couldn’t trust himself not to be rough, couldn’t trust himself to go slow.

“
Querida
, no.” He set her away from him, shaking with the need and the want. “I can’t. I won’t be gentle. I have to be in you so bad.” His hands came up, fisting in his hair, his eyes wide and panicked. “I can’t control—”