Nathan smiled. “Of course. But I grew up here, so I kind of expect it. Most people are harmless. If they realized how they came off, they’d probably be embarrassed.”
Rachel shook her head. “Tell me again how you’re not a nice guy?”
He shrugged. “You never know what someone’s going through.”
“Especially if they never talk about themselves. I’m a good listener too.” Their conversation kept pivoting back to her, but she didn’t want to keep taking the bait.
They faced off for a moment, and it slowly tipped into something dangerous. Like she was a sharp curve, and he was debating whether to accelerate or pump the brakes. Eventually he shook his head, pushed his chair back, and said, “We should probably get going. Make sure no one stole your clothes while we were gone.”
“You’re right,” she said, trying to ignore the sudden dip in her mood. She had no right to be disappointed. “It’s getting late. Someone will be looking for me.”
The feeling eased when Nathan asked for her phone number and then sent her a text so she’d have his. She started to save it and hesitated. “I don’t know your last name.”
He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “It’s Vasquez.”
Her hand froze. “Wait. Are you—” She stopped midsentence, embarrassed by the assumption. It was a common name in the area. She’d run into two distant Vasquez cousins last week.
“Am I related?” Nathan chuckled and shook his head dismissively. “I mean, in this town, isn’t everybody?”
CHAPTER SIX
Nathan hadn’t seen the inside of his parents’ home in six months. Its imposing exterior, however, was inescapable. The Vasquez estate loomed over Oasis Springs—a Spanish tiled fortress that defied every restrictive covenant the neighborhood association had passed over the years. While his father would stop short of claiming his family was above the law, Beto Vasquez had no problem saying that they predated it. Vasquez Industries was one of the largest privately held corporations in the country and had been the economic center of the town for half a century. The sprawling fruit orchard and forty-five-foot saltwater pool that technically extended over his property line were things Beto felt entitled to.
Inside, Nathan sat opposite his brother, Joe, in an almost identical position—shoulders hunched, and heads bowed over their phones. The matching wing chairs were uncomfortable for both of them, but that never seemed to bother his brother as much as it did Nathan. Joe had been the chief operating officer at their family’s company for seven years, but still used the wobbly office chair left by his predecessor. That was his brother in a nutshell—impatient with comfort, ambivalent about ironing, and constantly annoyed that he was mentally three steps ahead on every project while everyone else was just showing up to the meeting.
Nathan took his time typing a response to the photo Rachel had sent, trying to avoid as many spelling errors as he could. It was one of those annoying things about living with dyslexia. When he was alone, he could use the speech-to-text function and clean it up. But he wasn’t about to dictate a reply to Rachel’s post-workout selfie, with his very nosy and opinionated brother sitting across from him.
In the photo, Rachel wore a baggy Up in Smoke tour tank top that was soaked with sweat. Her cheeks were flushed, and clumps of wet curls clung to her neck. Her smile was an endorphin-fueled sunbeam.
Rachel: No one ever sees me like this.
Nathan: It feels good to be no one.
He paused and then sent another message.
Nathan: You look beautiful.
Rachel had been messaging him for three days now. Her timing was random and the subject matter unpredictable. But every text seemed confessional, like things she’d never admit to anyone else. That tattoo story had opened the floodgates, and now he had the paparazzi’s favorite “ice queen” whispering secrets in his ear.
Nathan leaned his head back and stared at the decorative red plates lining the wall above his brother’s head. He should be confessing too. He should tell her that no one ever saw him like this, waiting to be summoned to dinner like one of his father’s employees. He should tell her that while every other Vasquez was content to live on the estate that had been in their family for generations, being in his parents’ house for more than five minutes made him into a person he despised. The baby of the family. The troublemaker. The afterthought his parents tried to ignore.
Nathan dimmed his screen, but Joe kept typing, probably some multi-paragraph text with bullet points and footnotes. Abuelita had nicknamed his brother Apollo, because Joe was basically perfect. Grades. Sports. Table manners of the gods. He was twelve when Nathan was born, and instantly became the ideal older brother, helping with feedings, changing diapers, taking trips to the park. But at some point, Joe missed a step and brought home a B+ instead of all As. Their parents staged an intervention and took him off babysitting duty. While Joe became entrenched in high school and everything that came with it, Nathan’s favorite hobby was pushing Carla, his nanny, to the point of cursing him out in Spanish. She quit the day he hid in a toy chest for six hours and popped out like a giddy, deranged jack-in-the-box when the police started searching for ransom notes.