I knew Ralphie and Buddy could hear if we stopped there. So I dragged Hector through the living room, down the hall and into the powder room. I flipped on the light and closed the door.
Hector looked around us with obvious surprise that we were in a powder room and who could blame him, a powder room wasn’t exactly the primo choice for this particular tête-à-tête (or any tête-à-tête) but it was the only option open to me. I wasn’t going to take him to my room, the very thought of Hector in my bedroom made my toes curl.
When his eyes came to me, the surprise was gone and he was smiling his close-to-laughter, white, glamorous smile.
“Don’t you smile at me, Hector Chavez,” I snapped, not sounding like myself, not sounding like Any Sadie That Ever Existed. Sounding weirdly like Attitude Sadie and, if you asked me if I could even be Attitude Sadie, I would have told you, “heck no”.
“We’re in the bathroom,” Hector told me, still smiling.
“We are. I don’t want Ralphie and Buddy listening in,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want them to hear what I have to say.”
He started laughing softly (yes, laughing!) and said, “I got that, mamita, but why not?”
“I didn’t want them to know about the phone call. You’ve got to go out there, say something that’ll make them not so worried and then… I don’t know…” I stopped because I didn’t know, my mind was racing and I couldn’t catch a thought.
Hector was still laughing softly. “Say something to make them not so worried about one of the Balducci brothers threatening you over the phone in the middle of the night? Tell me how I’m gonna manage that?”
“I don’t know!” I cried, losing it in my panic. “Make something up. You’re a private investigator. Veronica Mars is a private investigator type person too and she lies all the time!”
“Veronica Mars is a character on a TV show,” Hector informed me.
“So?”
Hector’s stared at me a beat, read my panic, his smile faded and his face got serious. “Sadie, I’m not gonna lie.”
“But –”
He came in close (or closer, we couldn’t not be close as we were in a powder room).
“What I wanna know is; why do you want me to lie?”
Oh darn.
This was a sharing situation, as in, me sharing my private thoughts. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t tell Hector that I’d never had any friends and I’d grown to love Ralphie and Buddy and I was terrified of losing them.
People were, well… people. In my experience they had only so much to give before they expected something in return.
I didn’t have much to give in return. Heck, I didn’t have anything to give in return.
But I couldn’t tell Hector that. He’d think I was pathetic.
When I didn’t answer, I watched in alarm as Hector’s face got more serious and he closed the minute gap that was still between us. He put a hand to the side of my neck, sliding it up so his fingers went into my hair, his thumb resting along my hairline, his other arm curled around my waist and he pulled me into the heat of him.
“I don’t wanna say this, mamita, but I have no choice. It’s understandable, you not thinkin’ clearly with all that’s goin’ down. But I have to remind you what’s at stake here,” Hector said.
“I’m thinking clearly,” I informed him and I certainly knew what was at stake.
He shook his head. “You aren’t.”
“I am!” And I thought I was.
His face dipped closer and I watched his eyes go a weird mixture of warm and intense. I’d never seen anything like that before and I had a feeling it did not bode well for me.
I was right.
“Sadie, a month ago, I got back to the office after finishing a job with Luke and walked into a stairwell to see you, literally, fall on your face because you didn’t have the strength to hold yourself up.”
I pulled in my breath so sharply, my lungs started to burn.
He kept talking. “You were wearin’ nothin’ but a torn nightgown and you were covered in blood. I carried you to the Explorer and you couldn’t even hold your head up. You passed out in my lap after you told me there was no one to care if you woke up. I live to be a hundred, mamita, I’ll never forget it. Not one f**kin’ second of it.”
I closed my eyes and tried to turn my face away, hateful, humiliating memories charging through my brain and making my blood run cold. I didn’t want these memories but more, it was unthinkable that Hector shared them with me.
His hand at the side of my head put gentle pressure there to keep me facing him, foiling my mini-escape Hector plan. I opened my eyes again and he was still looking at me with that warm intensity.
“The next day, the two men in your kitchen walked into your hospital room, they took one look at the state of you and it rocked their world.”
The burning in my lungs intensified.
“Stop talking,” I whispered.
He didn’t stop talking. “Then they did everything in their power to take care of you and help you heal. And, from what I can see, they did a damn fine job of it.”
“Please stop talking.” I was still whispering.
Hector still didn’t stop talking. “A few nights ago, I watched you walk away from a bartender who hadn’t finished your order, you went down the hall, past the bathroom and then you disappeared out the backdoor. I followed you only to find you’d walked right into the hands of Harvey Balducci. He had you clean off the ground, you were fightin’ him and you were losin’. Daisy didn’t stop me, I would have squeezed the life out of him and you didn’t stop Daisy, she would have kept on beatin’ him.”
“Hector –”
He shook his head to stop my interruption and kept talking. “You don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, so I’ll explain it to you. Sadie, these are the actions of people who care about you. What happens to you happens to you but, in a way, it also happens to the people around you that care about you.”
I felt tears start to sting my eyes and I clenched my teeth to stop them.
Hector saw it and his face dipped even closer. “If you’re in danger, they got a right to know. You keep it from them, somethin’ happens to you and you end up –”
“Enough!” I snapped.
My finely honed defense mechanism clicked into place and Sorceress of the Antarctic made an appearance precisely when I needed her.