Buried (Hiding From Love #3) by Selena Laurence Read Free Book Online

life with you, and as long as I can remember, you were rescuing kittens and helping my little sisters with their homework, talking to toads.” He huffs out a bitter laugh. “Hell, you wouldn’t even kill a bug when you found it in the house. I can’t even begin to remember how many times I watched you catch some sort of spider or beetle and toss its ass outside instead of just smashing it the way everyone else would. You could no more shoot a child than I could hit my mother.”
    I look at him, an understanding of sorts passing between us. It might have been seven years, but David knows me—better than anyone else in this world.
    “Yeah, well, the courts said I did it, the penal system said I did it, the newspapers said I did it, so that’s all that matters now.”
    “No, it’s not, hermano .” He stands and walks to me before he places his hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eye. “There are people who care. I care. Your family cares. Don’t let this go. Fight it, man. Fight it all. If it’s too late to fight the conviction, at least fight for the rest of your life. You’re twenty-five damn years old. You’ve got sixty years ahead of you. Fight for that shit.”
    I shake my head at him, my insides aching and my stomach nauseated and cramped. “Look, Beth doesn’t understand this and I don’t want to explain it to her, but you can. The RH will never let that happen. I’m stuck in Texas for the next seven years because of the restrictions on my parole. If I get settled anywhere in the state, they’ll find me. You don’t walk away from them, bro.”
    He looks horrified. And rightfully so. His hand drops from my shoulder and he runs it through his hair, immediately messing up the stylish cut.
    “So what the hell are you going to do? You can’t go back to them, Juan. Seriously. Tell me you aren’t just going to go back to that.”
    “No, man. I’m going to try to do everything I can to stay the hell away from them. But that means I’m going to be taking whatever backroom jobs I can find, living off of cash, in out-of-the-way spots, and moving around as much as possible. There’s no fancy schools or cushy office jobs in my future.”
    I almost feel sorry for him. No civilian could ever really understand what I’m facing here. And it’s not like I’m a normal gang member. The RH knows exactly who I am and how much I’m worth. They keep much tighter tabs on me than they do a normal member.
    But I’ve forgotten how smart David is. He’s always been quicker than a whip, outsmarting teachers and coaches our whole childhood. Not always the one to shout out the answer, but always ready with it when needed.
    He’s pacing the area between the planter and the patio now, wearing out the poor grass as he goes. I can tell the wheels in his head are grinding away, and I’m scared of what he’s going to come up with.
    “Why’d you join?” he says suddenly. “You had a safe place to live. You know my parents would have let you stay forever. You’d have had a home there for as long as you wanted or needed. Why’d you run off and join the RH? I never understood what happened.”
    “I was going to get deported, ese .”
    “And we were ready to fight that. You know we were. You couldn’t prove you were born here, but they couldn’t prove you weren’t. Without a birth certificate, no one could prove anything. It would have taken years to get to the point where someone was seriously looking to deport you. By that time, all kinds of things could have happened—another amnesty act, a great lawyer, some loophole somewhere.”
    “I couldn’t take that chance,” I say, my agitation at his line of questioning increasing by the second. This is the conversation I’ve been avoiding for seven years, the one I knew would happen if Beth pushed me to keep seeing her and her family.
    “And if you were deported? Would living in Mexico with your mom really have been that much worse than sitting in a prison here?