Page 34 of Privilege

Lucia blinked, and hurt marred her features. He wished it didn’t affect him like it did to see the water that lined her lashes, but it bothered him all the same. He didn’t want to be mean to this girl, but Christ, they were two entirely different people from worlds that would never mix. She could keep being sweet and kind all she wanted because at the end of the day, Renzo was still going to be the same asshole wearing a leather jacket and combat boots.

He had to be.

He didn’t know how else to survive.

“Oh, don’t worry about Carmen, pretty thing,” Charlie said, moving past Renzo in the doorway. He didn’t miss the way his father leered at Lucia, either. That hot shot of anger that burned in his gut wasn’t new, but it was a hell of a lot stronger than what he’d been feeling earlier. Now, he really just wanted to get Lucia out of his father’s sights. “She’s always strung-out, or drunk … or a mixture of the two. Leave her be.”

Charlie came closer to Lucia, who kept looking between his father, and Renzo. “Now, who are you?”

“It’s time to go,” Renzo said to Lucia.

Firm.

Dark.

Cold.

He wasn’t accepting no for an answer. He needed her out. And it would be to all their benefits if she just stayed fucking gone.

Renzo didn’t know what did it. It could have been him speaking, or his father still leering at her, but Lucia got up. She grabbed her bag, and headed past Renzo in the hallway without a look back at his mother. She did slow down as she passed him by, though.

Just enough to whisper, “I only wanted to check on you and Diego. You hadn’t been around—I was worried. I wanted to make sure you both were okay.”

Yeah, sweet.

Kind.

Pretty.

All things Renzo really didn’t deserve or need.

“Does my life look okay to you?” he asked.

Lucia didn’t break his gaze as she replied, “I didn’t say your life. I said you.”

“They’re the same thing.”

“But are they, Renzo?”

She didn’t give him a chance to think that over, or reply. She was already gone.

Renzo kind of hoped she stayed that way.

And he also wondered if she might come back.

Fuck my whole life.

• • •

“Ren, where’s Ma?”

Renzo kneeled down to tug the blue blanket back over Diego’s tiny body. The only bedroom in the entire apartment, and he always made sure Diego was the only one who got to sleep in it. It was his space—safe from anything happening outside.

Diego didn’t have much in there. Just his bed, a beat-up dresser full of clothes that had been either bought at a thrift shop, or passed down from someone else, and a few toys. What he cherished the most were his books, and the model car that Renzo had bought him last Christmas and spent seventeen hours putting the damn thing together piece by piece.

“Uh, Ma’s … out,” Renzo lied.

Carmen had started choking on her vomit shortly after Lucia left, and an ambulance had to be called. Which made Renzo late to pick up Diego at the babysitter’s, and caused the chick to rant at him for a minute too long about making sure to pick Diego up on time or else.