“Cera!”
He said her name in a hoarse, broken whisper against her ear. Her name. He actually said her name. Her name, which he hadn’t ever written.
Hearing that broke something inside of her, and she went straight over the edge, the climax exploding through her body with a meteoric blast.
His body went rigid on top of hers, signaling that he’d fallen over the edge right along with her. Usually she loved it when they came together. Nothing made her feel closer to him than when that happened. But tonight…
Tonight she found herself fighting sad tears, even as they reached the most beautiful place she’d ever known together. Because why couldn’t it be real? Why couldn’t he talk to her? Let her see him?
Why couldn’t he be her boyfriend? Without money exchanged? Or manipulation?
Tonight shame dragged her down from the soaring heights of her climax almost before it was done. Tonight the heat of being with him felt like it was burning her alive. And the pain. It was unbearable.
This must be why they call it heartbreak, she realized. Because it literally felt painful. Like something inside of her had broken. Leaving her with internal wounds that could never be fixed. And would definitely leave a scar.
He pulled out of her, but instead of collapsing beside her for a few moments, he fast-forwarded to the part where he wrapped his arms around her in post-coital bliss.
That had been her idea, she remembered now, the snuggling afterwards. Over the course of July, she’d come to think of it as the best part after the best part.
But tonight she pushed him away.
“Okay, I paid you back for the trip,” she said, trying to keep her voice even as she turned away from him in the bed. “You can go now.”
He reached for her again, but she jerked her body away, curling her shoulders forward as she said, “Just go. Please just go.”
A few moments later she felt the bed depress as he got up. And soon after came another familiar sound. The whisper of clothes being put back on.
She was happy for the blindfold then. Happy he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. Stupid tears for a man who obviously hadn’t wanted her love, but had gotten it anyway.
She silently cried and waited for the next sound in the series. The click of the front door.
But then a rough voice said, “Cera.”
That brought her head up.
Was Gus talking? To her?
“Yeah, I’m talking to you, Cera. This is me, Gus, talkin’ to you.” The voice wasn’t so rough now. In fact it held a familiar accent.
He was Southern, she realized, and more specifically than that, he was from New Orleans, her hometown.
Now she sat up, her eyes wide behind her blindfold.
“Go’on ‘head and take off that blindfold,” he said.
Yes, this guy was definitely from New Orleans. And his accent was smooth, like honey on top of butter.
She used to know a guy with an accent like that. Another Latino, like Gus. But this couldn’t be him, she thought as she slowly removed the blindfold. It couldn’t be…
But it was.
When she removed the blindfold from her eyes, she found herself staring at her first crush. Tavo. Tavo Martinez. The boy she thought had died the same night as her brother.
19
Fifteen Summers Ago
Cera opened the door, only to stop short, her brow crinkling.
“Tavo?” she said.
It wasn’t that she didn’t remember the pretty boy who’d been by the house a few times to meet up with her brother. Who could forget him? That tall, lean body. Those dimples that somehow made him look boyish and sexy all at the same time.
All summer long, she’d been trying not to take the hooded looks he’d thrown her too seriously. She had a feeling there were a lot of Lower Ninth Ward girls falling easily for that smile and smolder combination he had going on. But it was hard for even a sensible girl like her not to feel a little pitter patter in her fifteen-year-old heart when a boy from the wrong side of the tracks smiled at her like he wanted to do things to her.
Very bad things. Things that made her newly feminine body feel tight with an unknown yearning when she let herself think about him at night.
But tonight, Tavo wasn’t smoldering. In fact he looked a bit…undone. His eyes were wild and frantic, and a sheen of sweat covered his whole body.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He threw her a weak approximation of his usual killer smile. “You changed your hair.”
She reached up and ran a hand over her now short curls. “Yeah, this is how I usually wear it. I only put in braids for the summer. And the summer’s almost over now.”
“Yeah,” he said with a smiling wince. He rubbed his chest, like something on the other side of it was hurting. “I guess it is.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she felt compelled to ask. Real worry starting to build inside her own chest.
Again, he just smiled at her. “About Bruce Jr.…” he said.
“He’s not here,” she told him. In fact, she’d assumed he was with Tavo when she’d arrived home from volunteering at church to find the house empty but his car still there.
Tavo was one of the few friends her brother would let drive his car. Why? She had no idea. Yet another thing that set the handsome Lower Ninth boy apart from the rest of her brother’s idiot friends.
“I know he’s not here.” Tavo was breathing hard now. Wheezing, like an old man, even though he couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen.
“He was with me tonight. But some bad shit when down and I got away but…he didn’t.”
“What?” she asked, not understanding what he meant by “bad shit.” Her brother was an idiot, sure, but she couldn’t imagine him doing anything against the law.
But Tavo continued, “We were doing this deal. It was supposed to go simple, but your brother started shooting his mouth off with these cartel dudes. Trying to get them to lower their price. I tried to put the brakes on that shit, but it all happened so fast. And then they was shooting and I…” He gave her sorrowful look as he wheezed, “I don’t think your brother made it. I’m sorry…”
What?!?! Guns? Deals? Shooting?! This was not Bruce Jr. She couldn’t imagine her dumb jock brother participating in any deal that could possibly end in bullets. At least, she couldn’t have imagined it a few weeks ago. Not before this new Lower Ninth friend of his starting coming around.
Her body went cold. “What did you do?” she asked Tavo. “What did you get him into?”
But Tavo shook his head. “It’s not like that. I didn’t get him into anything. He asked me,” he stopped. Wheezing some more. It seemed to be a struggle for him to even speak at this point. “He asked for my help. His grooming wasn’t going so good, so he asked me to take him around with him. Show him some stuff about the business. Help him learn. I agreed, cuz—I don’t know why. Cuz he’s the boss’s son. So I let him come along on a few things. But I guess tonight he got tired of hanging out in the background. It was supposed to be a simple deal, but he wanted to put on a show. Go all Scarface. I—I—”
He broke off, shaking his head and clutching some more at his chest. “No, I’m blaming him, but it’s my fault. My fault for taking him with me. I should never have done that. Cera, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am.”
But Cera just shook her head, still not understanding even half of what he was saying. “What are you talking about?” she asked him. “Grooming him for what? Who’s this boss?”
Now it was Gus who was looking at her like he was the confused one. “You don’t know. Your brother knew everything, so I assumed you did, too.”
“Knew everything about what?” she asked, her stomach filling up with dread.
She didn’t know what he was about to say. But she had a feeling—a very bad feeling it was going to be something she wouldn’t like.
And she was dead right about that.
“I work for your dad,” he told her. He was now breathing in what could only be described as intermediate bursts. A tortured blast of breath coming out of his nose every ten seconds are so.
“Your brother wanted to impress him. Your dad told him at the beginning of the summer that he had to go to college. Get a degree in accounting so he’d be able to run the books, since it didn’t look like he’d ever be capable of taking over the organization. But your brother didn’t want to do that. So he asked me to help him prove to your dad that he had what it took. And I agreed to help.”
He shook his head, regret shining in his eyes as he continued to wheeze. “Even though I knew he didn’t have what it took.”
“Why?” Cera asked, her voice soft with horror. “Why would you do that?”
“Because…”
He stopped and put what looked like a whole lot of effort into standing up straight and looking her in the eye. “Because of you. I wanted to be able to keep on coming around here. Your father doesn’t let any of us come by his house. But your brother let me come here. This is where you are. So I helped him, so I could see you. And that’s all on me, Cera. I’m sorry.”
Questions piled up in Cera’s head, her fifteen-year-old mind unable to comprehend even half of what he was telling her. Was Tavo Martinez trying to say he had helped her brother do something illegal in order to see her? That his mild flirtations had been about more than just getting her into the backseat of his car?
“Tavo,” she whispered. “You obviously need help. So we are going to get you to a hospital. And then you are going to explain to me and the police exactly what happened tonight.”
Tavo shook his head. And even that small motion looked like it was taking tremendous effort on his part. “No, no, police. I can’t—”
A siren sounded in the distance, finally breaking his gaze away from her. “Fuck,” he said, when he saw the flash of police lights further down the street. “I gotta go…”
“No, Tavo, wait. You’re in no condition to—”
“I’ve got to go. I’m sorry, Cera. You’ll never know how sorry I am about all this.”
Then he staggered away, disappearing around the side of the house. And soon after, the quiet night filled with the sound of several police officers surrounding the house. Guns raised. Voices shouting for her to get down on the ground.
Cera had done what they said. Still confused. Still not understanding.
But she would soon understand everything. Her brother was dead. And his dramatic death by cartel fire had blown the lid off the boiling cauldron of secrets her father had been keeping.
Apparently the Councilman and well-respected business leader was the head of one of the largest drug and gun running operations in New Orleans. The outfit had operated much like a terrorist organization. In cells, with bosses. With only four or five of these bosses knowing who the real boss was.
From what Cera could piece together, Tavo had been one of those bosses, even though he was only seventeen. In charge of the high school dealers, serving the rapidly expanding Latino population in New Orleans.
However, he was one of the few people who didn’t get taken down in the round-up that followed her brother’s untimely death. Nor had his name been mentioned in any of the many articles and court cases that followed.
From what Cera could tell, he’d most likely died in a ditch that night. An anonymous victim of whatever had been making him wheeze like an asthmatic the night he came to tell her Brian had died. Or maybe he’d just disappeared into the Ninth, like the street rat he turned out to be.
In any case, she’d figured that was the last she’d ever see of Tavo Martinez.
Except it wasn’t.
Fifteen years later, he stood in front of her. Bronzed skin now glowing with good health. Face a little older and much wiser than the pretty one she remembered. He was no longer thin or wheezing. In fact, he was now well-muscled as an ox and seemed to be holding his breath.
Only his eyes remained completely the same.
Full of regret and sorrow, as he stared back at her for the first time in fifteen years.
20
Gus didn’t know what he’d expected when he asked her to take off the blindfold.
Okay, that was a lie. He’d banked his every hope on her not recognizing him after fifteen years and over a thousand miles from where they’d first met. He’d hoped she wouldn’t be able to see the skinny kid he’d buried beneath muscles and a strong heart. That he’d be able to write the blindfold and not talking off as some kind of weird fetish—one he was completely over. In short, he’d hoped she’d never have to know about the old him, now that he was officially Gus Benton.
But the horror in her eyes after she took off the blindfold dashed every hope he had in an instant.
“Tavo? Tavo Martinez?” Looking him up and down, she got off the bed and came to stand in front of him. Her beautiful naked body shaking with outrage as she said, “What. The. Hell?”
“Cera,” he said, moving toward her.
She stepped back, shaking her head. “Why? Why would you do this?”
“Cera, let me…” He reached for her again, wanting her skin on his. Wanting to feel connected with her. Like they’d been in bed, before she pushed him away.
But she shrank away from his hand, batting it away from her body like it was poison. “No, don’t touch me. Explain,” she commanded through clenched teeth.
He didn’t want to. God, there were a million things he’d rather do than explain the fucked up circumstances that had led to this moment. But what other choice did he have?
“I’m obsessed with you,” he admitted quietly. Simple. True. “I have been ever since the day we met. But after what happened the night your brother died, I got my act together. Max’s grandfather stepped in behind the scenes and made sure I got what I needed. A new chance at life and a scholarship to a really good hotel program at Cornell University. He also...”
Gus hesitated to tell her this next part, knowing how badly her life had gone after her father’s crimes were revealed. But he pressed on anyway. “He also made sure I wasn’t tied to your father’s organization. In the news or in the courts. I’m not sure how he did it. Truth is I didn’t even know he was doing it when it happened.”
Gus shook his head, remembering how confused he’d been back then after waking up in the hospital with a new heart to find his whole life had changed. Like Cinderella’s. Except his fairy godmother had been completely invisible.