Forever Loved (The Forever Series) (7 page)

“Oh, I doubt we could attract one of those with this job and pay scale. I’ve been searching for someone for a couple weeks.”

I reached for my backpack. I was pretty sure I had stuck Tina’s card in there after I drove her to the airport last week. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago now. But she had helped me. Maybe I could do something for her. “I know a girl who might be perfect. She does speaking tours and just got her art degree.” I dug around and found the pale pink card.

Sabrina took it from me. “Interesting. I’ll give her a call.”

“She does suicide prevention.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it.

“So you went to a suicide talk?” Sabrina asked.

Damn. “Actually, no. I was asked to drive her to the airport after one. She was nice, and had some helpful things to say. She also lost a baby as a teenager.”

Sabrina nodded, her thick bangs falling onto the rims of her dramatic glasses. “What did she say that was so helpful?”

God, what to mention that wasn’t incriminating? “That I should give Gavin another chance. He was the father of the baby. He left me after the baby died and just recently came back into my life.”

“Has it worked out? Giving Gavin another chance?”

“Oh, definitely. We have a ways to go. I have to trust he won’t leave again. But we’re working through it.”

Sabrina smiled and stood up. “That all sounds very promising.” She fingered the card. “Do you think you’ll be ready to go when they discharge you?”

I flooded with relief. I had passed. “Definitely. I just need to catch up on school.”

“I’m sure you’ll do well. Good luck, Corabelle.” She shook my hand again, then left the room.

I flung back the covers, too antsy to stay in bed. I had done it. I would be free soon. I frowned at the strange heavy feeling in my chest when I stood up, but it didn’t matter. I could tell I was better. This was just some lingering issue. Soon I would be home.

Sunlight poured through the windows as I lifted the blinds and looked out over the city. I could text Gavin to come over and bring me some clothes. By Monday I’d be back at school like none of this ever happened.

I pressed my head against the glass, reveling in the coolness on my face. Everything was going to be perfect from now on.

9: Gavin

My phone buzzed for the third time in a half hour as I dropped the hood of a Tahoe into place and wiped my hands on a shop towel. I glanced at the screen to make sure it wasn’t Corabelle. She had written earlier asking me to bring her some clothes.

Nope, still Rosa, a prostitute I used to visit in Mexico.

I didn’t know what she wanted, but I quit seeing her completely once Corabelle came back. My little vice of only sleeping with paid women was over and done.

But three calls in a short period made me wonder what might be going on with her. The last time I left her apartment in Tijuana, I’d gotten into a fight with a man outside her building and taken his gun. She lived in a tough neighborhood, and “Sideburns” might be hanging around looking for me. I hoped that this hadn’t somehow come back to involve her.

I tossed the keys to Mario and said, “I think I need to answer this,” and headed out the back door. I punched the call button and braced myself for something tough.

“Hey, Rosa.”

I got silence at first, then finally she said, “Gavinito.”

“I’m not used to you calling me.”

“I — I must speak with you now.” Her voice was shaky, and I pictured that asshole from her street standing behind her with a knife at her throat.

“Are you okay? Is someone trying to hurt you?”

“No. No hurt. I have problem. Big problem. I must see you.”

I leaned against the bricks of the back wall of the garage. “Rosa, I can’t come anymore. I have a girlfriend now. She wouldn’t like it.”

The line went silent again.

“I’m sorry, Rosa. Are you all right? Do you need money?” I didn’t have much of anything to give her, but I guess I could try. She’d been there for me on the worst night of my life, right after my illegal vasectomy, lost and in pain.

“That is not it. I — I don’t know what to say. How to say it.”

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“I have a little boy. He is three.”

That was a surprise. “Okay…I guess you keep him hidden. I never saw him.”

Her voice wavered. “He lives with my cousin Letty.”

Why was she telling me this? “What did you need me to do, Rosa?”

“They have trouble. My cousin’s husband leave her.”

I waited her out, still not sure how this involved me.

“I need to get my boy.”

“Did you want me to take you there?”

I heard her intake a breath, as if she had not thought of it. “Yes, yes! That is good idea.”

“I don’t have a car, but I could borrow one.”

“My brother has a car.”

Why wasn’t her brother taking her then? “Rosa, what’s going on? Why are you asking me all this? Don’t you have family? Some friends there?”

The line went silent for a moment. I looked out over the street, tapping my boot. I should try to listen to her, to understand, but she was part of my past. I wanted to leave her behind.

“Gavin, the little boy is yours.”

The world went gray, and I couldn’t respond. This was impossible. I was snipped. She was confused. I squeezed the back of my neck in irritation as I realized something was really off.

“Rosa, I can’t have babies anymore. I got—” I wasn’t sure if she would know the word. “I got a vasectomy. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, you got it the day we met. I remember.”

“So, the boy can’t be mine.”

“But he is. He cannot be any other.”

“Rosa, you know I like you. But in your…your line of work, couldn’t he belong to anyone? Besides, he’s three years old. Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

Bud stuck his head out the back door. “Think you can take one more belt job today?”

I froze, wondering if he’d heard anything. He stared at me with a question on his face, so I glanced at my watch and nodded. “Rosa, I have to get back to work. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you. Just be safe, okay?”

I hung up the call, anger rising up. What sort of idiot did she take me for? I’d seen her dozens of times in the last three years. She never mentioned any son. No kid was ever around, or any toys, or anything to indicate she’d been pregnant. Ha, I’d never even seen her pregnant. The whole thing was a lie!

I followed Bud into the garage, supremely pissed off now. All those years she’d seemed so sweet and good. Just to pull a stunt like this!

I strode through the bays. Bud stopped by a banged-up Corvette. “This one’s yours,” he said. “See how she looks.”

I yanked on the latch and jerked up the hood. When I tried to force the metal stand into the hole, it missed, and the heavy hood came crashing back down, startling everyone in the garage.

Bud cocked his head at me. “You okay?”

I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, wishing the pressure would ease the ache in my temple. “Maybe not.”

Mario came up behind Bud, wiping his hands on a towel. “I finished up that radiator blowout. I’ll hang with Gavin.”

Bud backed away, nodding. “Keep him straight.”

When he disappeared back into the front office, Mario whirled around. “What the hell is up with you lately?”

“Nothing.” I yanked on the latch again and lifted the hood, this time making certain the stand was secure before letting go.

Mario tugged on the main belt. “This one’s shot. I’ll go hunt down a replacement.”

While I waited, I stared into the engine and wondered why Rosa had tried to pull a number on me.

My phone buzzed, and I wanted to just ignore it, but it wasn’t a call, just a text with a photo attached. From Rosa.

The picture loaded automatically, a boy, probably about three. I was going to delete it when something caught my attention. A cowlick split his hairline just to the right of the center of his forehead.

I touched my hair. I kept it short up top to avoid the whorl I couldn’t control, in almost precisely the same place.

I clicked on the picture and zoomed in. His eyes were Rosa’s, no doubt. But his ears — they laid just like mine, mostly flat but with a flare at the top.

Impossible.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket but pulled it out again five seconds later.

It couldn’t be.

The message said only “Manuelito. Feb. 15, 2010.”

I counted back. That time frame was right.

Shit.

Mario returned with the belt. “You look like you’ve eaten some bad chili.”

“How long after a vasectomy before you start shooting blanks?” I asked, my stomach turning.

He balanced the belt box on the frame of the ’Vette. “Hell if I know. You thinking of getting one?”
 

I tried to swallow, but my throat was blocked. “Already did.”

“Damn. That’s one hell of a thing to do.” He leaned against the car. “That girl you’re seeing — she just find out or something?”

“No. I mean, yeah. But, shit.”

He stared at me a second, then turned back to the motor. “Maybe you should take a walk or something. I can handle this.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The air outside was cold and helped me think. What the hell was going on? I strode briskly down the sidewalk, punching on my phone for a Google search on vasectomy.

I hadn’t understood a single word anybody said to me at the clinic. I’d awakened on a lumpy cot, groggy, with jagged shards of pain shooting up from my groin. They seemed to want me off the premises right after. I’d only made it a few blocks before I knew I had to figure out something to help ease the misery. Walking was near impossible and I couldn’t spot a taxi anywhere midafternoon.

The
farmacia
where Rosa worked was blessedly close. Between her broken English and the help of the man behind the counter, they got me some cold packs to stuff in a jock strap, plus God knows what sort of drugs.

 
But I still didn’t have information on the procedure or when it worked. I hadn’t worried about it, as sticking some girl was about the last thing on my mind.

The doctor I’d seen stateside a couple months later had confirmed I was sterile. He’d asked too many questions about where I’d had it done, so we didn’t exactly chat.

The first link came up on my phone, and I scanned through the information, looking for how fast it worked.

I bumped into a bench and sat down, feeling dumbfounded. Weeks? It could take up to two months?

I backed up and chose a different link, hoping for another answer.

Ten ejaculations, this one said.

How long had it been? Rosa had spent that first night with me after surgery, but we hadn’t done anything. I’d been strung out from pain and full of regret. When had I gone back to her?

I closed my eyes to piece together those days.

~*´♥`*~

After leaving the
farmacia
, I’d barely made it to the hotel across the street before collapsing. I took the first two pills Rosa had given me and crashed a little while.

But the pain woke me, and heeding her stern warning about not taking any more until bedtime, I wandered the room in a haze until I spotted her from my window. She stood on the street corner below, dressed very differently than she had been inside the shop.

I turned away from her curling black hair that reminded me of Corabelle and what I had done, this irrevocable act that meant I could never return to her. I stared at the ceiling, refusing to succumb to the heaving sobs that threatened to take me over, unable to erase the image of her standing in the aisle of the church, mute and shocked, Finn’s blue casket just behind her.

I had to get past it all. I had to force myself to think of something else. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Rosa stand by a pole, awkward and too innocent for the job, finally getting approached by a man but pushing him away.

When she had had no luck for an hour, and I was in too much misery to sit there alone any longer, I went down to see if I could pay for her myself. Company, any company, was preferable to the blaring Spanish channels and peeling wallpaper that only exacerbated the despair that tried to drag me back into a pit.

Her presence kept my demons at bay that night. I held her close as if she were Corabelle, and took the pills when she said it was okay to do so. In the morning, she left after asking only a pittance, and the next night I waited for her to close up the shop before I approached her to come again.

Her frightened face made me hang back as the man behind the counter came out and took off down the street. I figured the score pretty fast — he had no idea she was hooking and might fire her if he knew.

When he was well away, she turned back to me. “Better today?”

“I will be if you come with me.”

She glanced down the street, her black curls blowing across her face like her hair was the wind itself. I suddenly understood the concept of transference. I couldn’t love Corabelle anymore; I had cut myself away from my old world. So I would love this girl instead, in some new and different way, one that got nowhere near any tender or vulnerable space.

“I need to go home first,” she said and glanced up at the hotel. “Room is same?”

I nodded.

She slung her heavy black bag on her shoulder, trapping a swath of the wild hair. “I will come.”

We turned from each other, and I trudged with my old-man walk across the street and up the stairs, then back down to a liquor store next door, buying a bottle of wine, and up again.

We hadn’t done anything that night either, as the wine on top of the pills knocked me out cold not long after she arrived. I had pulled her against my chest on the lumpy bed, both of us fully clothed. I didn’t want her in any other way, not then, not so soon, my groin still searing from the stitches and Corabelle still so close in my memory.

When had we gotten busy? Within the two months? The ten jacks?

I stood up from the bench, restless, angry. Surely I hadn’t made so stupid a mistake. I headed back to the garage, racking my brain for the memory. How long had it been?