“I don’t want to spend any more time in my father’s house than I have to this summer,” he’d told her. “It’s toxic there.”
She had been so proud of him for using his free week to volunteer as opposed to lazing around like his other frat brothers.
But when she broke the news to him, he’d morphed from her kind and thoughtful boyfriend, into a guy she’d never met before.
“Whose is it?” he asked, his face curling into a snarl.
It took her a few moments to process what he was asking her. Before this, she thought boyfriends only asked their girlfriends stuff like that in bad movies. “It’s yours, of course,” she answered. “You know I haven’t been with any other guys!”
He’d been so proud to claim her virginity a few months ago, but now he was looking at her like she was a stranger. “I don’t know anything, except I’m the son of one of the richest men in New Jersey and you’re the daughter of some nobody. Dad warned me about girls like you, but I thought you were different.”
Lacey looked at him, truly alarmed now. “What do you mean ‘girls like me?’”
“Girls who want to entrap me. Become my baby mama, so they can get child support!”
She shook her head frantically. “No, Hector. I love you! I wouldn’t have slept with you if I didn’t love you. And I have too many hopes and dreams of my own to want to entrap you. I wanted to finish college and get a good job before I ever had children. This was an accident!”
“A convenient accident for you,” he sneered.
And Lacey started to get angry herself. “Listen, we were both at that party. We both got drunk and you’re the one who didn’t use a condom. I didn’t set you up!”
“Then prove it,” he said. “Get rid of it!”
Her heart stopped. “We can’t just get rid of it. I’m Catholic. I don’t do stuff like that.”
“Really?” he asked. “Cuz you didn’t seem all that devout when you were giving it up to me all those times.”
No, she hadn’t. But Lacey had been sure she was giving her virginity to the man she was going to marry, a man she wanted to please, and a man who loved her as much as she loved him.
But the way he was staring at her now, she knew she had made a horrible mistake. Her father had been right. Hector wasn’t the tragically misunderstood hero she had believed him to be. He was a predator, one who lured his prey in with sweet words and kisses, only to eventually turn on her.
“How many other girls have you done this to?” she asked him then.
“You mean how many girls have tried to use me before you?” he asked in an ugly voice. “Too many to count.”
To Lacey’s everlasting regret, she didn’t sense how dangerous Hector really was until that moment, when he was emanating menace, but standing between her and the door.
“Okay,” she said, backing down, and trying to keep her voice neutral. “I’m going to go back to my dorm room now. I think we both need to calm down and we can talk about this later, alright?”
He stood there, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
And Lacey panicked. She had wanted to play it cool and just walk out but instead, she darted for the door. And she’d almost thought she made it, but at the last minute, she was yanked backwards by the hair.
She screamed as Hector dragged her away from the door and threw her to the floor.
“Slut! Bitch!!” he yelled. Then before she could get up, he kicked her in her stomach, so hard she nearly threw up.
She had enough presence of mind to curl up in a ball, so he couldn’t get to her stomach again, but that only brought on more kicks. To her back, to her front, even one to her face when she begged him to stop.
No one came to help her, and after he kicked her in the face, Lacey knew she had to do something or this boy she thought had loved her would kill her.
Out the corner of her eye, she spotted a single shoebox under his bed, and in a moment of strange clarity, she knew Hector had too many shoes to keep them stored anywhere but his closet. No, he had to be using the shoebox to hide something, something he didn’t want the other frat brothers to know about.
In a burst of adrenaline, she ignored the burning pain, which she would later find out was due to a broken rib, and crawled toward the box.
“Get back here,” Hector spat, grabbing her by the ankle. But not before she managed to get her hands on the box. Even as he dragged her back on her stomach to do God knew what, her main focus was on getting the box open.
At that point, the only thing going through her mind was self-preservation for her and the baby growing inside of her. So when she found the gun inside the box, black and sinister, she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed it, flipped over on her back, shoved the gun in Hector’s face, and squeezed the trigger as hard as she could.
The recoil reverberated painfully through her body, causing her to drop the gun to the ground. But then she heard a great thunk, and when she managed to sit up, she found the boy she thought she had loved, the boy who had claimed to love her just a few days ago, dead with a bullet wound where his nose should have been.
“You’re a natural,” a voice said behind her.
Lacey jumped out of the memory to see Suro standing in the doorway of the nursery.
He wasn’t smiling. Lacey wasn’t even sure if he knew how to at this point, since she’d yet to see him do so. But the look on his face as he watched her with Spidey, who was now nuzzling his nose into her shoulder, made her feel like maybe he had been telling her the truth the day they’d made their agreement, that he really did care about her.
However, she been burned before and she was still paying the price for trusting the wrong boy. She couldn’t put her trust in this man, no matter how thoughtful his gifts were. She couldn’t trust anybody, she reminded herself.
Her eyes dropped to the key that still hung around Suro’s neck. Especially the man who had more or less bought and blackmailed his way into her life.
She handed Spidey back to Miss Beatriz and gave Suro a distant smile. “I should get back to work.”
She started to push past him, but he stood his ground, his eyes lasering in on her like he was trying to extract her thoughts via ESP. For a moment he loomed over her, too close, and putting her in mind of the way Hector had tried to use his size to intimidate her twelve years ago.
Then to her surprise, he took a few locks of her hair and pushed them behind her ear. His face softened and he looked at her now, just looked at her. Not demanding answers, but his eyes clearly asking what he wanted to know, “What were you just thinking about? Why are you pulling away from me?”