Free Epic by Ginger Voight Page B

face, which caused his jaw to clench.
    I knew from the expression on his face that I was unwelcome there. So I slid easily from the bar stool and headed toward the door.
    I had taken precisely ten steps from the front door when Diego trotted out to meet me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded as he wrenched me around.
    What could I say? “I heard you were in a band. I wanted to see you play.”
    “Why? You want to fix that, too?”
    Maybe . “I just wanted to see you play, Diego,” I said with a sigh. “I’m sorry if that upsets you.”
    “I’ll tell you what upsets me, Sis . That you think you can show up and use my mom to polish your tarnished image for the press.”
    My eyes flew wide. “Is that really what you think?”
    He shrugged. “Isn’t that what you famous people do? Didn’t that fruit Carnevale do the same damn thing after he nearly killed a hooker? You make all these stupid ass mistakes and expect to make up for it using us little people. Well, I’m not going to let you. If you really wanted to help, you would have found us long before now. But I guess we weren’t ‘TV ready’ enough for you.”
    “I didn’t know about you both until now,” I tried to explain.
    “Sure you didn’t.”
    I didn’t know what to say. He was determined to hate me. “I’m here now,” I told him. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
    “Yeah, you’ll do some good deeds. That’s the point. It’s all a little too convenient. But tell me, Jordana . What happens when you don’t need us for your press kit anymore? Where does that leave Mama then? I’ll tell you where. Sicker and poorer… and brokenhearted. She can’t survive another disappointment, lady. You were the one thing in her life she could feel good about. What do you think will happen when you take that away?”
    I met his anger with some of my own. “First of all,” I began, “I’m not taking anything away. From Maya, from you, from anyone. Secondly, I’m not the only thing she feels good about. She loves you, Diego. Her face lights up whenever she talks about you.”
    He snorted in derision. “Yeah, right.”
    “Maybe if you were around more, you’d see that,” I suggested as gently as possible, but it still rubbed him the wrong way.
    “I’ve been here every day for the last sixteen years. Where were you?”
    I wanted to defend myself, to tell him that I had my own struggles to get through. But he wasn’t ready to hear that. “I’m here now,” I said instead. “You’re not alone anymore.”
    His eyes hardened as he stared down at me. “I’ve always been alone,” he informed me coldly. “It’s better that way,” he added before he spun on his heel and headed back to the bar.
    I wanted to chase him down, to plead my case, but I knew it was useless. We were two different people, and our struggles were not one in the same. I had been wounded and lost. He was wounded and angry.
    I would have offered him a ride back to the house, but it was clear he wouldn’t take it. Just as I had my lingering doubt they wanted something out of me, he was convinced that I w anted something out of them. Time was the only thing that could engender any kind of trust between us now. I turned back toward the parking lot, but before I could get to my car, a middle-aged man with a bald spot and a bad paunch jumped in front of me to snap my photo with his smart phone.
    “ Cruising for new blood, Jordi?” he wanted to know. I knew immediately he was with PING. He was rude, ambushed me out of nowhere and delighted in what damage he could do to me. He could belong to no other organization.
    I pushed past him and trotted to my car, fully aware he was videotaping me from his phone as I did so. I knew I looked ridiculous without a speck of makeup, my hair still stringy from the dried sweat as I cleaned Maya’s house. But nothing was more ridiculous than a shot of me running from behind. I knew every jiggle in my jeans would be front page