He tugs my panties down over my butt. “Not every roadblock.”
Chapter 22
Sam
“Kinda crazy how fast things can change in the space of like… twenty-four hours, isn’t it?” I ask Miguel, as we walk hand in hand to my old apartment. I’m hardly here anymore. My lease is up at the end of the month, and I’m thinking I might not renew it.
“It is,” he says. “Or the space, of, say… a week.”
“Or a month!” Toni says happily, holding Miguel’s hand in her left and my hand in her right. “I didn’t know I’d be with you two. I had no idea!”
Miguel meets my eyes over Toni’s little head, a silent question hanging in the air between us. What does her being with the two of us mean? This morning over breakfast, Miguel explained to her that her mom was in police custody. She took it better than we expected. She admittedly did get a little tearful, then bravely told us that she knew we were the ones that would never leave her.
“Never,” Miguel said, giving her little hand a gentle squeeze.
When she was getting dressed, he told me every child deserves a real chance, and he would do anything to give that to her. And I love him for that.
I love him for everything.
For the way he’s so good to me. He doesn’t tire of my endless chatter, my endless questions, my quirky need to have things a certain way. For a self-proclaimed grump, he’s got more patience than one would have thought. When he wants to, anyway. I still think he might murder Raul.
“You make it easy,” he said to me earlier, over toasted sourdough and steaming mugs of strong, hot coffee.
“What easy?”
“Everything.”
Aww.
“Are you calling me easy?”
A smirk. An adorable smirk that made me want to kiss him.
He might want things his way. He might be hard to please and difficult to get along with… at least for some people. But when Miguel Santiago is all in… he’s all in.
He loves me. I know this. I accept this.
And God, do I love him back.
Madison opens the door when we knock. Her hair’s still damp from a shower, tamed into twin braids, and she’s wearing a white tank and lounge pants. Despite her casual appearance, she’s all business. “Come in, come in,” she says, gesturing for us to come in. “We’ve got oh so much chatting to do.”
We walk in to see Allie sitting on the couch and Raul, who does bear a remarkable resemblance to Miguel now that I know they’re related, leaning up against the counter. He’s dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and I hardly recognize him. His skin’s a little darker and his eyes a deeper brown, but they have the same rugged, unapologetically masculine features I’m guessing come from their family line.
The guys do manly chin-lift things in greeting.
“Raul.” Miguel’s tone is curt. He’s got that tight-lipped look that makes people back away. I put my hand on his arm.
“Dude,” Raul says, palms up in surrender.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I did what you told me to. Did you talk to them?”
“I talked to Samantha.”
“And Raul talked to me,” Madison says. “And it seems like we all need to have a talk.”
Toni gleefully drinks a glass of chocolate milk Madison gives her, swinging her legs on the barstool while we all take seats and get down to the talk we need to have.
“Listen, girls,” Raul says. “When you first came in, you were in the space we wanted. We didn’t hide that fact. Now someone instructed that I do what I could to get that space for our own and neglected to mention that you’d all become friends in the meantime.”
“We were friends, too!” Madison says, throwing her hands up in the air. “Do you really expect me to believe when you ordered smoothies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that you were somehow addicted to my drinks?”
Raul’s lips twitch, he opens his mouth to speak, and Miguel gets up and smacks the back of his head.
“Hey!”
“We’ve got a kid here,” Miguel growls.
“What did I say?”
“Nothing, it was what you were thinking!”
Toni looks at me and shrugs, then reaches for the bowl of popcorn on the table. She’s taking everything better than I expected.
“You have no idea what I was thinking,” Raul says, rubbing the back of his head. “Anyway, I’m sorry.” He’s looking straight at Madison when he says it. “And I swear I know a way Miguel and I can make it up to you.”
“Oh yeah?” Miguel says, taking his chair and straddling it, like he’s about to negotiate a deal or a heist. Oh how I love when he goes all gangster. “Let’s hear this.”
Raul grins. “We merge.”
“Merge?” Miguel’s eying him warily. “There’s a catch.”
“No catch. We become business partners. Think on it. We’d have discount coupon booklets at our main desk for sales next door. They’d have specials that coincide with dinner at our place. It’s a partnership that could only improve sales on both ends.”