Devil's Punch by Ann Aguirre Read Free Book Online

after we got home. It doesn’t look fabulous, but he’s got it running like a Swiss watch.”
    â€œHe?” His brow rose.
    Surely Chance wasn’t jealous of my mechanic friend. But I could tell by his steady look, he really wanted to know who I had fixing my ride. My nights since we got home had belonged to him. Apart from the errands I ran during the day and my studies with Tia, there hadn’t been time to date anyone else.
    â€œJulio lives four blocks over. He’s fifty years old, married, and has four kids.”
    His expression eased from tension to sheepish relief, and he lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. “It’s like you said in Laredo…I don’t know you that well anymore. I don’t know your friends. I want to, but you’re different that way too. You don’t share like you did.”
    Yeah, I’d learned to be closed, self-contained—and the irony of that? I’d gotten those tendencies from him. Now it felt oddly like he was an open book, and I had figured out how to hide the lines that revealed everything about me.
    â€œI got good at being alone,” I said softly. In the old days, I’d have called him first thing instead of packing a bag on my own, ready to handle whatever came my way without asking for help.
    â€œI know.” Awkward silence.
    He needed me to make a move. So I added, “But I’m remembering how to be half of a couple. I thought we were doing all right.”
    He’d promised to tell me about his dead ex. Maybe this road trip would be a good time for that. Since our return, we’d danced around the edges of intimacy, two steps forward, one step back, a particularly self-conscious waltz.
    So far, Chance wasn’t rushing me. He didn’t push for sex or commitment. Emotionally, he was more accessible than he had been when we were together. From the vantage point of hindsight, I suspected he shouldn’t have been with me so soon after Lily died. I’d been a light against the loneliness, a body in the dark, and our jobs kept him from having to think or grieve or heal. But I hadn’t known about her. Or his loss.
    If I’d had more experience with relationships, I’d have known something was wrong sooner. Before Chance, I had only hookups, nothing real. I hadn’t understood how it should be, and I’d so desperately wanted it to work, had needed him to love me, that I hadn’t seen the problems staring me in the face. I don’t think he loved me at all in the beginning; maybe he did in the end, or he realized how he felt too late, after I’d gone. Now, I
wanted
to believe in his feelings, but I feared them too. I had such a collection of scars carved on my heart, and many of them carried his initials.
    For him to be willing to dodge out on a rescue mission at the drop of a hat, no questions asked? That boded well for our future together.
    â€œTia,” I called.
    â€œIs Chance staying for dinner?” she yelled back in Spanish.
    â€œNo. Neither am I.” I went into the kitchen, and in a few words summarized where I was going and why.
    She listened with no judgment, and then she shuffled into her bedroom. I was used to her ways, so I waited. When she returned, she had a charm bracelet in one hand. It was dull and tarnished, didn’t look special at all, but when she wrapped it around my wrist to fasten it, I felt the thrum of magick emanating from the trinket.
    â€œIt is the best charm I ever made,” she said softly. “Wear it well.”
    â€œI can’t take this. You could sell it at the market—”
    â€œCorine.” Her tone was dangerous, and though she came only to my shoulder, I knew not to cross her.
    So I yielded gracefully, thanked and hugged her. Chance joined us with my things in his hand. In shortorder, he stowed my backpack in the El Camino parked in front while I prepped Butch for travel. Most dogs would be excited at the