Page 78 of Go Back to December

“When his temper dies down, he will regret his behavior, and he’ll acknowledge it. He needs to cool off. You’re just as bad as he is if you wind him up.”

“How are you okay with all of this? Especially Alicia!”

“I’m not good with any of it,” I snap. “But Baz is coming over here to do something immensely stupid to protect you. I can’t allow either of you to disrespect Sam’s place of business as part of that.”

A sheepish look creeps across her face as Baz inches closer.

“I won’t let him get hurt, Luiza. Now go with Dooley.”

She snakes around the crewcuts, and I tell the short one, “You. Scatter.”

They fall out in search of other prey before Baz finally reaches me, chest pumping, eyes wild.

I hold up my hands. “I’m handling it.”

“And I’ll finish it.” He lunges toward the bar, and I wrestle him back, grabbing a fistful of his fleece.

“No!” I shout, so he hears me above the din of the crowd and the shaky vocals of the emo anthem blasting from the bar speakers. “You won’t do this to Sam.”

“I’ll take it outside then.”

“You will not!” I grab his chin and force his crazed gaze down to me. “I already spent one terrified night in the hospital worrying if you would survive. Are you going to make me do it twice in one week?”

He strains his neck and registers Dooley guarding Luiza at the elevator. Then he turns his glower toward my fists, gripping his jacket.

Tension seeps from his body like a slack tide.

“Bruh.” A flannel-clad guy hands Baz his crutch. “You okay?”

Baz nods, but I don’t release my hold until he promises he won’t attack the bar.

When we meet Dooley and Luiza at the elevator, she says with a Baz level of iciness, “You made me miss the last train, asshat. I’m staying with you tonight.”

Chapter Seventeen

Sleet pelts like gravel against Baz’s bay windows.

The rhythm is erratic, the storm unrelenting. It will be next to impossible to get a car back to Manny’s apartment, where I should spend the night.

The peck-peck-peck of precipitation provides an underlying soundtrack to Baz and Luiza’s argument.

Baz has them holed up in the spare bedroom, an idiotic strategy given that it’s the smallest room in the apartment. They’re shouting in Spanish and English. They’ve been arguing for the better part of an hour, and the reality that most of my things are in the bedroom makes me as edgy as the memory of Baz’s hands on me in the pool hall.

My stomach demands something soothing, so I patter to the kitchen and take out the mammoth dish of flan left from Christmas. As I spoon several pounds of it into the largest bowl I can find in Baz’s kitchen, I catch a few choice words.

Cold-hearted dick.

Spoiled brat.

Worry Mamá.

Allie.

The last one lingers in the ensuing silence like the echo of a gunshot.

A door slams. Baz stomps on his crutches back into the living room.

His eyes land on me. The spoon that’s currently in my mouth.