Trouble

My whole life went from tough and hard, with not knowing when another girl would jump me and ignoring the pain in my back from sleeping on awful mattresses, to being beautiful and waiting for the look of surprise I’d find on the other side of the door. First Alejo, then Esperanza, and finally Liam.

The expression in his brown eyes when he saw me was something I wished I could have caught on camera because it had been so innocent, so unguarded, so purely emotional, that I knew it could never be repeated. “Sol?” he breathed in shock, his hand reaching out to touch my cheek. Just like Esperanza, he looked torn as to whether he was imagining me or not.

“Hi, Liam,” I responded. I watched him carefully, expecting him to hug me. Maybe not as tightly as Alejo had, but to make some kind of display of affection to show how much he missed me.

But he didn’t.

“Do you think we could go talk?” he asked softly. “It’s safer to walk around here, so we’ll be okay. I can visit the girls later.”

I nodded and stepped onto the little concrete top stair, so close that I could feel his body heat on my arm.

For a while, we walked in silence, neither of us knowing where to start. And when he finally did say something, I could tell he was thoroughly uncomfortable with the situation. “It’s so weird. You look so much different, but you’re also exactly the same.”

“I’ve had to toughen up,” I responded, knowing that would pinpoint the exact thing he’d noticed different about me. “Jail was not what I figured it would be.”

“You had to toughen up?” He let out a sad kind of chuckle. “I can’t imagine what happens to those poor other girls that went in there being sweet and polite.”

“They get it beaten out of them,” I answered seriously. “But let’s not talk about jail. I know you don’t want to hear about it.”

“Okay.”

“I want to thank you so much for what you did for the girls. Esperanza told me what you helped her do, and I just…” I stopped and took a deep breath to keep my emotions under control. “I can’t believe you did that for people that weren’t even your relatives. It was so selfless and way beyond anything I’d expected you to do.”

“I care about you,” he replied honestly with a shrug. “It was important to me that your sisters got the best lives possible, and I could tell from the look in your eye how scared shitless you were about the possibility of them getting abused the way you had been.”

“Well, thank you. It really means the world to me, and I’m not sure what I can do to show you how much I really appreciate it.”

“Just give them the best life you can. Get a job, provide for them, be the mom they never really got to have. ‘Cause I can’t be around forever.”

And there it was. The truth laid out. He was staying in England. Which was fine. He’d done so much more than any other person on the planet would have, and he wanted to wash his hands of my situation.

“I’ll do that,” I agreed, and it didn’t escape his notice that my voice sounded strange.

“Sol, I’m sorry, but I’m just being honest. I have a girlfriend back in England, and she’s moving into my flat with me soon. We’re already talking marriage. And she’s a really understanding person, but even she would wonder why I’m basically sponsoring a Mexican family in California that just happens to be the family of a girl I used to be in love with.”

In love with. Well, that was new. But I should have known. Although my heart was sinking a little, another part of me felt validated that it was right. Liam was an attractive and sweet man, and there was no way he would sit around, waiting for someone like me to come back into his life. And I probably would have been irritated if he had done that.

Probably.

I wanted to ask what, exactly, had made him move on, but I knew. My story, my background, had turned out to be too much for him. He thought he was prepared, and he thought that he was seeing my world for what it was, but he wasn’t. He had no idea what things came with being involved with me, and the second everything hit him at once, he backed out. Which was good for him. It was so much better than sticking around in an unstable situation.

Almost as if he read my mind, he said, “You know, Sol, I really could have handled the fact that we couldn’t be intimate. I would have gotten you therapy, and we could have worked on it. I wouldn’t have pushed you to do anything you weren’t ready for. But…when you shot that guy, right there, in cold blood…I couldn’t do it anymore. You weren’t the girl I thought you were.”

I felt adrenaline pump through my veins as I stared at him. “Cold blood? Liam, he was going to kill Alejo! There was nothing else I could do.”

“You didn’t have to shoot him. You could have done something else.”

“From where I was?” I stopped in my tracks and put my hands on my hips. Clearly, this boy was not who I thought he was, either. He didn’t understand how loyal we were. What kind of a person would I have been if I had allowed Alejo to get murdered in front of me? “There was nothing I could have done, and if I could go back and do it all over again, I just wouldn’t have hesitated so long before I pulled the trigger.”

Liam shook his head, his face almost looking disgusted. “I just…the Soledad I knew would have used her brains. She wouldn’t have been so cruel as to take another human’s life.”

“I’d do absolutely anything to keep the people close to me safe. Are you really telling me that if Alejo had been your sister, and you had been me, you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

His silence and horrified look gave me all the answer I needed. No, he wouldn’t have.

Liam didn’t have the same ideas about loyalty and protection that I did. He didn’t have the hardened shell I did, the drive to do whatever it took to go through with the undesirable things in life. And, though I hadn’t realized it before the strain was put on our relationship, we really hadn’t understood each other at all. We just pretended we did, and we idealized each other. In the end, it didn’t work out.

We never would have worked. Ever. We were far too different, just as I knew from the start.

“I don’t even know why you wasted your time,” I responded, working hard to keep the bitterness out of my voice. Because even though our relationship hadn’t worked out, and he didn’t agree with my decision to keep Alejo safe without worrying about the consequences, he still had done a lot for me. And no matter how irritated I was, I couldn’t forget that.

“I didn’t waste my time,” he replied. “I kind of thought I did, in the beginning. But I think we still had a good thing going, and I still care a lot about you. We just…can’t take our relationship any further. I can’t kiss someone who I know is a murderer.”

“If that’s what you think about me,” I laughed, the sound thick with sadness and regret, “then you’re entitled. I hope you and your girlfriend, whoever she is, have a wonderful future together. And I’m sorry that I’ve burdened you so much with my life.” I almost added, I didn’t mean to give you such a reality check, but that wasn’t fair. I knew that my life was harder than most people could handle, and there was no reason I should have figured Liam was different.

I turned to leave, and he called after me, “You know, that was a lot easier, rehearsing that in my head, telling you that I thought you were a murderer. But seeing your beautiful face all twisted up with sadness just made everything harder.”

“What?” I questioned, turning to face him. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s what I thought, right after it happened. I was disgusted that you could do something like that. But the more I went over it in my head, the more I realized that you had no other options. I’d never do that myself, but I respect the fact that you think that was the right thing to do.”

Without thinking, I reached up and smacked his shoulder. “What the hell?! You just scared the shit out of me. Do you actually have a girlfriend?”

“I did for a while, but I broke up with her. She wasn’t complicated and strange and passionate and tough and mysterious like I had gotten addicted to.”

“Why the fuck did you do that to me?” I tried to scold, but I just ended up laughing. A weight had gotten lifted from my heart. After all the trials, something was finally going right.

“Dramatic effect. I wanted to see that fiery look in your eyes again, and I didn’t really know how else to get there,” he admitted, taking a few steps closer to me. “And it’s just going to make this taste better.”

He connected his lips to mine, and I’d forgotten how much I loved the feel of them. His hands wrapped around the small of my back, pulling me close against him, as my own found their way around his neck. My heart pounded erratically in my chest, and I hoped that his body was reacting just as insanely as mine was.

When he finally pulled away, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, he grinned. “God, that was so worth the wait.”

“You’re a dick. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He paused before he said, “And I’m going to move out here.”

“What? What about you and the rest of One Direction?”

He laughed and bit his lip before saying, “We broke up about a year ago. It was just all getting to be too much. And we’re still friendly, but besides my family, I have no reason to stay in England. And I figure I’ll be able to do so much good staying here instead of there.”

“Are you going to get your own place, or are you staying in the house?”

He snickered and leaned forward, kissing my forehead. “Let’s not move too quickly, huh? You’re making me nervous.”

“How do you think you make me feel?”