Page 145 of Law Maker
“Can you take me somewhere, then?”
He eyed me like I was about to ask for a drug run. Couldn’t blame him.
“Before you think weird shit—a mall. And somewhere else after.”
Javi pulled a key from his shorts pocket and twirled it in his palm. “Sure. But FYI, this conversation isn’t over.”
It wasn’t. But at least he was off my back for now. “Okay. Please, hand me my phone.”
He smirked, grabbing it off the coffee table. “You said please. Not everything’s lost.”
I snatched it from his hand. “Gracias.”
The person I was about to text might tell me to fuck off—and I’d deserve it. But I had to try, and I’d insist until I got what I needed.
***
“Russell must really hate his daughter,” Javi muttered, gripping the wheel as we neared Willowbrook. “This place is in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Corn and sunflower fields whipped past the windows, broken only by barns and farmhouses.
“You’re just a spoiled city kid. It’s beautiful,” I said. “And the school’s good. She needs math help if she wants to get into her dream college.”
Javi snorted. “City kid? Like we didn’t spend summers in El Puerto together. Good times. And I’m sorry things ended between you and Kaia.” He veered off the highway onto the country road leading to school—the same one I’d taken to see her, to take her to the beach, to the hotel for our first time.
“They didn’t end,” I said. “I ended them—like the piece of shit I am.”
“You wouldn’t have bought her books if you were.”
I ran my fingers over the pink package in my lap. I’d wrapped it in pink so she’d think a friend had left it, not the guy who’d broken her heart. My plan had a major drawback: if Alba refused to help, I was fucked.
Nerves shot through my battered body as Javi parked near the gates. I texted Alba I was here, praying she hadn’t changed her mind.
Javi climbed out, rounded the car, and opened the door for me.
“Thanks,” I grumbled. I hated being helpless, but it’d been a week since the crash. My body needed time.
We leaned against the car and waited.
Ten minutes later she came through the trees. Her eyes widened when she saw I wasn’t alone, and she stepped back, ready to bolt. Fuck—was she afraid?
“I’m Javier,” Javi said. “Asher’s best friend. I can wait in the car if you want.”
She shook her head and folded her arms, hugging herself. “Alba.” Then she turned to me. “You’ve got some serious nerve coming here after what you did to her.”
The frightened girl was gone. Her eyes burned with disdain.
Relief washed through me—she cared about Kaia for real, unlike that shitty friend from Kaia’s old school.
“I need you to give Kaia something. Don’t tell her it’s from me.”
Her lips curled in disgust. “Los tíos dais asco.”
We men were disgusting?Hard to argue, after what I’d done. Javi handed me the pink package and I offered it to Alba. “It’s just some books. Kaia loves reading—she’ll need somethingto—”
She snatched the package. “To stop sobbing into her pillow every night and checking her phone a million times a day, hoping for a message from the guy who thinks a few books delivered anonymously will fix everything?”
The image stabbed me. I felt that pang every time I thought of her—almost always.
