He Ruined Me—Now He Crawls Back Begging novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Walk Out

Wynn leaves anyway, on her bad knee, for her foster mother's kitchen in Gary, and finds Bella in Gino's shirt in a photo from June.

In the hall, Santiago's men stepped forward at the same time.

Santiago lifted two fingers off his cane, and they stopped.

Gino didn't look at them. He looked at me.

"Think," he said. "You walk out with an Arango, you're done in this city. My father won't touch you. Your father won't touch you. You'll be the girl who went home with the cartel."

"I already went home with the cartel," I said. "You texted me to understand."

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"I'll take you upstairs," he said, lower. "You'll sleep. Tomorrow we'll talk about the wedding like adults."

"Move, Gino."

"No."

I was six inches from him.

I could smell his cologne, cedar and money.

Seven months ago I'd have put my face in his collar.

"In February you were in Detroit," I said. "You didn't come stand in a doorway for me then. You don't get to stand in one now."

I stepped forward.

My bad knee went out from under me on the threshold.

He grabbed my elbow to catch me.

I pulled it free, hard, and caught myself on the doorframe instead, and went through the gap between his shoulder and the wall.

His coat brushed my cheek. My scar.

He flinched before I did.

Then I was in the hall, with the marble cold through my borrowed flats and two strange men in dark coats holding very still.

"Wynn," my mother called from the dining room. "You'll come back. You've got nothing."

I didn't answer her.

I had a cheap phone and a business card. It was more than I'd had yesterday.

Santiago came up beside me, slow, the cane tapping.

"The car is warm," he said. "I'll take you anywhere you like. I won't come in."

"I'm not getting in your car."

He considered that. "Because of my basement."

"Because of everything."

He nodded like that was a reasonable answer.

"Then call a cab," he said. "We'll wait at the gate until it comes. Nobody from this house follows you down that driveway."

He didn't say it loud.

He didn't have to.

Behind me, through the dining room doorway, Gino heard every word.

I sat on the front step in my borrowed dress and called a cab with my thumb shaking.

The dispatcher asked where to.

"Gary, Indiana," I said.

There was a pause. "Ma'am, that's an hour."

"I know."

Santiago's black car idled at the bottom of the driveway the whole time. It didn't move until the cab's headlights turned in.

When the cab pulled out past it, the back window slid down an inch.

I couldn't see his face. I saw the hand on the head of the cane, lifted, just slightly.

Then we were on Sheridan Road and it was gone.

Peg's house was the same.

It still had green siding, a one-legged plastic flamingo and a porch light that buzzed.

The cab stopped and the meter said a hundred and forty dollars, and I had nothing, and I started to say so.

The front door banged open.

Peg Mahoney came down her porch steps in a Bears sweatshirt and slippers.

Her red curls stood up, her glasses sat on her head, and she had a fistful of twenties in her hand.

"Keep the change," she told the driver, and threw the money through his window.

Then she saw my face.

She stopped on the bottom step.

"Oh, baby," she said. "Oh, my baby girl."

She didn't step back.

She came down off the step and put both arms around me, scar side and all.

She held my head against her shoulder.

I hadn't cried once in two hundred and ten days.

I cried in Peg's driveway until the cab was gone.

Her kitchen smelled like onions and Marlboros.

She put me in the chair with the good cushion and propped my bad leg on a milk crate.

Then she stood over the stove frying eggs.

From the cage by the window, her parrot screamed, "Who's that? Who's that?"

"That's Wynn," Peg told it. "You remember Wynn."

The parrot looked at me with one eye. Then the other.

"Hot stuff," it said.

I laughed. It came out cracked, like something rusted.

"Don't encourage him," Peg said. "He's been watching the dating shows."

She set down three eggs, toast with too much butter, and tea with four sugars.

That was how I drank it at sixteen.

"Eat," she said. "Then tell me who I'm killing."

"Nobody."

"I'll start with your mother."

"Peg."

"I've got a Buick and a full tank. Don't tempt me."

I ate.

I ate everything and wiped the plate with the last of the toast.

She watched me do it and didn't say a word about how fast I went.

Then I told her.

I told her about the driveway, the phone call, the text and the basement.

I didn't tell her about the nights.

She looked at the scar, and I watched her work it out anyway.

She put her hand flat on the table between us and kept it there.

"And the fiancé?" she said at the end. "Where was he?"

"Detroit. With Bella crying in his car."

Peg's eyebrows went up into her hair. "Bella was in Detroit?"

I stopped with the mug halfway to my mouth.

I'd never thought about it.

Seven months, and I'd never once asked myself what my sister was doing in Gino's passenger seat three days after the crash.

"Give me your iPad," I said.

Peg handed it over. "Password's the bird's birthday."

Bella's account was public. Bella's account was always public.

I scrolled back through September, August and July.

It was all yachts and brunches and a fundraiser with my mother.

June.

There was a photo from a hotel balcony, the city behind her, morning light.

Bella in a white men's dress shirt and nothing else, bare legs tucked up on a chair, holding a coffee.

The caption said, "Someone finally let me steal his shirt."

I pinched the screen and made it bigger.

The cuffs were monogrammed in navy thread. G.A.

I'd had them stitched myself, for his birthday, the March before last.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend