Redemption (Reunion Book 1) Read online

  “I don’t speak Spanish,” she said.

  “Last night, you sang the hell out of that Selena song…”

  “Oh, that!” she exclaimed with a chuckle. “I can sing in Spanish, but I can’t hold an actual conversation. I memorized that song over the past few months as therapy for a bad break up,” she admitted.

  “What happened?” he inquired.

  “My fiancé got his dream job in New York City, and I didn’t want to go along with him. We said goodbye about six months ago. It was really hard on me.”

  “Why didn’t you want to move to New York with him?”

  “It’s not that I didn’t love him… I’m just…”

  “You’re just not a city person?” he finished for her.

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Is that bad? Is it horrible of me to not want to give up my entire way of living for a man I love?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think that’s horrible at all. I think it’s brave to go against years of the status quo. Society always expects the woman to follow the man wherever his job takes him, and when it’s the other way around, people always say she chose her career over her man. You have to do what feels right to you, Delilah. I’m glad you stood up for yourself. I don’t recall you doing much of that in high school.”

  “No, I didn’t, did I?” she asked with a tiny smile.

  He reached out and placed his hand over hers. “I knew you had to be thinking about somebody while you were singing that song. No woman sings a song like that unless she has some experience to connect it to. You have a really lovely voice, by the way.”

  “You really think so?” she asked.

  “Yes. I bet if you had talked more in high school, half the guys in our class would have been in love with you,” he said without thinking.

  That brief panicked look crossed her face again before she laughed off his comment. “I’m okay with the fact that they were in love with Cheryl instead of me. She was born to be adored by the masses. I was born to get things done,” she said.

  “What kind of things were you born to do?” he asked.

  “Work. Write grants. Hopefully, publish a book someday,” she said with a little shrug.

  “Are you happy where you are right now?”

  “Do you mean where I am geographically or where I am career-wise?” she asked.

  “Both,” he said. She looked down at her hands, and he realized he was leaning in too close to her again. He could see her pulse flutter in the hollow of her neck as she thought about her answer.

  “Career-wise, I have a lot to be proud of. I’ve worked with a lot of community leaders in my area, so they pretty much all know me. I’ll probably run out of community programs to consult with next year. Soon, I’m going to start branching out to other counties that have underserved, at-risk populations. Once I do that, I’ll have to decide if I want to stay where I am and travel for work or move to a completely new area. Geographically, the town I live in is okay. It’s a typical Midwestern industrialized area. I have to drive a little bit to get to anywhere worth hiking,” she explained.

  Hope blossomed in his chest; the fact that she was open to moving to a different area meant there was the chance that she might eventually find herself in Texas again someday. “So, you like hiking?” he asked.

  “Yes. That’s something that James and I used to do together quite often. Sometimes we’d go on all-day excursions.”

  “And James is your ex-fiancé?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Diego looked into her eyes and thought that James must be one of the stupidest men alive to choose a place over her. Lucky for him, she didn’t seem too bitter or heartbroken over it. She shivered, and he asked, “Are you cold?”

  “A little, but I’ll be okay,” she responded with another little shiver.

  He scooted his chair closer and wrapped his arm around her. Just like on the dance floor earlier, she melted into him and leaned her head against his shoulder. He tried his best not to overthink this moment, but it was difficult for him to keep his façade of cool when she was pressed this close to him.

  ***

  Lilah tried to breathe past the massive lump in her throat as Diego’s arms went around her. This entire night had been perfect, from the moment she had arrived all the way up until now. She would never forget the look he gave her as soon as she’d walked through the country club doors. Nerves had threatened to overtake her, because she had never been privileged enough to set foot on the country club grounds as a child. She had existed on a completely different tier of society. As a child, she had been one of the many nameless faces of poverty. And suddenly, after one look from Diego, years of inferiority had melted away under the heat of his gaze. She was sure he wasn’t pretending; the man liked her; he really liked her. That knowledge was both a source of joy and a source of crushing pain at the same time. She would never be able to effectively separate the man he was now from the boy he had been in high school. It would be unforgivable of her to forget what he had done, no matter how much she wished she could.

  She raised her head from his shoulder, and he smiled down at her. “Are you warm again?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thanks for sharing body heat with me, but I need to find the ladies’ room,” she said.

  “Let me show you where it is. The one near the entrance stays crowded, but there’s another one not far from us.”

  He led the way down a dim corridor with several closed off rooms. At the end, was a small restroom.

  “Thanks,” she said as she entered.

  She used the first stall, washed her hands, and checked her appearance. She hadn’t truly looked at herself in a long time, because she was always so busy working. Tonight, she was struck by the radiance of her own face. For the first time in a long while, she actually looked and felt beautiful. No doubt Diego’s constant attention had added to the glow she felt tonight. She was busy tucking stray curls back into place when another woman entered the restroom.

  “Delilah?” the old woman in a custodial staff uniform asked in shock.

  Lilah whirled to face the woman. She looked familiar, but Lilah couldn’t sift through her memories fast enough to put a name to the face before her.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the woman asked with a sad look.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this is the first time I’ve been back to town in ten years. Do I know you from school?” Lilah asked.

  “You used to be good friends with my daughter. I’m Mirabel’s mom,” the woman answered softly.

  And just like that, Lilah’s night came crashing back down to earth. “Oh,” she breathed, feeling as if she had just been punched in the stomach. “It’s been a few months since I’ve had a letter from you. How have you been? How has Mirabel been?” she asked.

  “Mirabel works over at the plant in Sweeny now. I don’t think I mentioned that in my last letter. Her boys are both in elementary school now. And I’ve been pretty good. I still live in the same place if you want to stop by and say hi before you leave town.”

  “I actually have to leave pretty early in the morning tomorrow to catch a flight out of Houston,” Lilah said. Tears gathered in her eyes at the thought of returning to her old home to visit Mrs. Horta. She wondered if Mrs. Horta had recognized Diego out in the hall waiting for her.

  “Well, I get up at six every morning, so stop by if you can. José would like to say hello. Do you still play chess?” Mrs. Horta asked.

  Lilah shook her head. She hadn’t played a game of chess since her senior year in high school. She had been unable to rekindle her love for the game after what happened.

  “You should go back to it. Adrian loved chess so much… I still have all the pictures from the tournaments you guys went to.” At the mention of her late son, Adrian, Mrs. Horta started to cry.

  Lilah rushed forward and wrapped her arms around the older woman’s delicate frame. “I’ll play again,” she promised as she held her for a few minutes.

&n
bsp; “Sorry, mija,” Mrs. Horta sniffed as she stepped back. “I know it’s been ten years, but it’s still hard, you know. I still think about him every day.”

  “Mrs. Horta, I’m so sorry. I think about him too, but I just don’t know what to say,” Lilah said as tears slid down her cheeks.

  “You make sure to give Mirabel a call. She would love to hear from you. I’ll let you get back to your reunion now. It was good to see you looking so beautiful. You clean up real nice,” Mrs. Horta said. With one final squeeze of Lilah’s hand, she let go and slipped into a stall.

  Lilah dried her eyes before venturing back out into the open. She thought she had done an admirable job of getting her emotions under control, but as soon as she saw Diego, she started crying again.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as he rushed to her side in concern.

  “Nothing,” she lied as she frantically wiped at her eyes.

  “Delilah, I can tell you’re upset about something. What happened?” he asked as he raised a hand to her wet cheek. He gently blotted her tears with his thumb as his eyes caressed her.

  She turned away with a quiet little sob. What had she been thinking earlier? Why had she chosen to go along with a stupid fantasy instead of dealing with reality and ignoring him?

  “Come with me,” he said softly. “I’ll take you somewhere quiet.”

  Lilah allowed herself to be led by the hand, like a child, through the empty corridor. He turned down a smaller hallway and pulled her into a darkened room filled with billiard tables and padded chairs. “No one should come in here,” he assured her.

  “Won’t we get in trouble for being in here?” she asked as she looked around.

  “I used to work here when I was in high school. Trust me, no one is going to care that we’re in here. It’s not like we’re trashing the place.” He wrapped his arms around her as he spoke, and she fought the urge to lean into him.

  She shook her head to clear her emotions and backed away from him. “You should go,” she said, her voice shaking with emotions.

  “Lilah, what’s wrong?” he asked as he closed the distance between them again. When she failed to answer, he lowered his face towards hers. She knew he had every intention of kissing her, and she knew she shouldn’t let it happen, but she did. For an infinitesimal instant, her entire being rejoiced as his lips met hers. Her initial, unrestrained reaction was one of intense pleasure. He spanned her waist with his warm, capable hands and pulled her tight against his body. There was no mistaking the barely contained passion and tension in his hard frame as he held her. There was also no mistaking the tenderness he lavished on her lips before his tongue delved into her mouth to caress hers. Head swirling, and knees weak, her mind dropped every other concern and her entire world was encapsulated in the circle of his embrace for a moment.

  He ran a trail of kisses down her neck and rasped, “You’re thinking about your ex, aren’t you?”

  She wasn’t capable of anything other than a weak little whimper as he exposed her breasts and reverently licked her nipples.

  “He’s not worth your tears, Lilah. I’ll help you forget all about him,” he promised with a smile.

  He stood up and resumed kissing her lips until she was lost in sensation again. Romantic fog kept her darker thoughts at bay, but not for long. Eventually an image of Adrian Horta popped into her head, prompting her to push Diego away. “I can’t do this, not with you!” she cried.

  His eyes were still heavy with passion as he looked down at her in confusion. “Why?” he asked quietly. “You seemed to like me earlier this evening… I don’t understand what’s changed. Are you really that hung up on the fact that I was more popular in high school than you were? Lilah, we’re both adults now. Why does the fact that I was one of the cool kids and you weren’t matter so much to you?” he demanded.

  “This isn’t about popularity or lack of popularity,” she sniffed as he looked down at her.

  “Then what is this hot and cold act all about?” he asked.

  Lilah took a deep breath and let the bomb drop. “Adrian Horta,” she said.

  He obviously recognized the name, because he looked as if someone had just slapped him in the face. He sat down hard in the chair behind him and looked up at her. “What does that kid have to do with us?” he asked.

  Lilah tried to stifle her tears and the uncontrolled trembling of her body as she lambasted him. “Your girlfriend killed him, and everyone in town knows it, but she never had a single consequence—never even lost her license. She actually ran over that poor kid, and left him in the street to die, and nothing happened to her, because her daddy was the mayor—still is the mayor. I’ll never forget the day after it happened, sitting there in Calculus class, listening to you and Ricky and Torrence make light of the fact that one of the poor kids from the projects was run over and left to die. I wanted to turn around and scream at all of you to just shut up, but I knew it wouldn’t make a difference, so I settled for hating you in silence. What you didn’t know about that kid was that he was a friend of mine. He had a 4.0 GPA, and he was the youngest kid in the chess club. He was in junior high, yet he played in the AAA division of the high school tournaments. He was also my best friend Mirabel’s little brother. You probably don’t remember Mirabel, because she was a junior, and a nobody—just like me! The night your girlfriend ran over Adrian and abandoned him to die, I listened to his mother cry all night long after the police left her apartment… The walls in the projects are very thin, Diego, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, because you grew up on the nice side of town. That was the longest night of my life, and then I had to spend the next morning listening to you and your stupid, immature friends talk about my best friend’s little brother like he was nothing! Like his life had absolutely no value because he was from the projects! His death was nothing but entertainment for you! All year, I had listened to you guys joke about people from my neighborhood, and I always tried not to let it hurt me too much. I counted the days until I could graduate and leave this place. Your group talked about people like me as if we weren’t even worthy to breathe the same air as you guys. The morning after Adrian’s death was the last straw for me; it cemented the fact that you have no redeeming qualities. I will never be able to look at your smug face and think of you as anything other than a disgusting person, a very charming and good looking one, one that I’m way more attracted to than I should be, but a disgusting person nonetheless. How does it feel now to know you’ve been flirting with a girl who grew up in the ghetto part of town? I bet you’re horrified, and you’re hoping that none of your stupid friends know where I used to live! I never should have let you touch me, you disgusting jerk.” With those words, Lilah walked away from him and left the reunion. She took a cab back to the hotel, and texted Cheryl to let her know she had decided to turn in early. She didn’t give any details on why.

  ***

  Diego felt as if the world had tilted on its axis and dumped him off as Delilah quietly left the room. He sat there for the next half hour and allowed his long buried memories to wash over him. He deserved every word that had flown out of her lovely mouth, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. He remembered responding to the terrible jokes Ricky and Torrence made that morning, but he didn’t remember starting any of his own. Of course, responding to them was just as bad as making them, and he had known that at the time. He had squelched the instinct to tell them it wasn’t cool to joke about such things, because he was supposed to be one of them. If he had criticized them in class, they might have turned against him, and he had cared way too much what all his friends thought about him back then. Now, he fervently wished he could have developed a strong moral compass a little earlier in life. He wish he had been strong enough to stand up for what he knew was right at the time, and now he might regret if forever.

  The irony of the whole situation was not lost on him. Delilah thought he would be horrified to learn that she had grown up poor, but he was far from horrified. He was
deeply ashamed for having hurt her on a daily basis. Another thing he wished he’d had the maturity to prevent. Why had he thought those comments were so funny back then? He searched his mind for an answer and couldn’t find one that satisfied him.

  His years in grad school had completely transformed his way of thinking about the world, but he never considered the fact that past actions might come back to haunt him in such a big way.

  Once he finally worked out what he wanted to say to Delilah, he left the billiards room and returned to their table. When he didn’t find her there, he made the rounds in search of her. After a fruitless search, Cheryl finally told him that she had left for the night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lilah opened the door to her small apartment with a sigh. After a weekend filled with one emotional extreme after another, she was glad to be home. She watered her houseplants and started unpacking. When she pulled out the dress she wore last night, thoughts of Diego flooded her mind. It had taken every scrap of her willpower to finally push him away. She had been right about everything she’d said to him, so why didn’t she feel better about putting him in his place? In all honesty, she felt horrible about it.

  If she had to judge him based on the past two days alone, she would have thought he was a dream come true. She probably would have been head over heels in love with him after spending just one night basking in his attention. What she felt for him last night had transcended physical attraction, and delved into something too deep for her to even consider analyzing. The sooner she forgot about him, the better.

  She removed her phone from her pocket and took it off of airplane mode. A few minutes later, her message tone sounded, alerting her that she had a new voicemail. Her heart immediately started slamming in her chest at the thought that Diego might have tried calling her to talk about last night. Conflicting emotions inundated her when James’s voice came on the line instead.