Page 52 of Forbidden Fate

“What kind of trouble?”

“The kind I can’t explain on your doorstep.”

She steps back. “Inside.”

I usher Robin in first.

The house smells like old wood and flowers. The entryway is tiled in faded blue and white.

I look away from the stairs.

Too late.

The memories are already invading.

My mother, barely out of her teens, laughing in this doorway, younger than I am now. My mother brushing my hair back. My mother telling me to wait in the kitchen and not speak to anyone unless Valentina said I could. My mother disappearing upstairs with men.

Valentina shuts the door and locks it. “Tell me what you need, mijo.”

“We need a place to lie low,” I say, “until I figure out our next move.”

She offers a wide smile. “Of course. We have plenty of empty rooms tonight. I’ll have clean sheets put in one of them.”

My stomach tightens.

A room. In this house. A place where my mother sold herself so I could eat, so I could have shoes, so I could be sent away from rooms like these and become nothing like the men who walked into them.

I became worse instead.

The irony is almost funny.

Almost.

“Thank you,” I say.

“If you are not together,” Valentina says, “I should prepare two rooms.”

“Yes,” I say. “That would⁠—”

“No,” Robin cuts in. “I want to stay with him.”

21

ROBIN

The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’m saying them.

“I want to stay with him.”

Cruz is staring at me.

So is Señora Valentina.

And of the two, Cruz is the one I can’t look away from.

For one insane second, he looks almost happy.

Heat climbs up my neck.