Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Read Online Free PDF

this point, pacing around the patio like a caged cat. I’m so used to being confined that I don’t stray from the concrete, ensuring that my cuff won’t get set off.
    6 “ Estas loca. No sabes nada de mi vida ,” I start ranting in Spanish. I’m that pissed.
    “I know more about your life than you think,” she counters. “And maybe I’m crazy, but nothing I’ve said is any crazier than what you did ! I know you were upset when the INS took your mom, but to run off and join the RH? What the hell were you thinking, Juan? Why would you do something like that?”
    And here we are, right where I never wanted to be. The place I’ve tried to avoid for seven long years. The question I simply can’t answer, because if I answer this one, the next one is the one that means life or death—to me and to my mother. No one can ever know why I allowed myself to be bought by the RH, because that’s what they did—they bought me. Paid in the one currency I couldn’t turn down, and once the exchange took place, they owned me. Beth can’t change that. No one can.
    If it were anyone but Beth, I’d do the gangster routine—make a lot of noise, say something crude and angry, then go inside the house where she isn’t allowed to follow. But it is Beth, and I just can’t do it, no matter how freaked out I am.
    I stop, standing in front of her, trying to calm my voice. “Look, linda . I appreciate the effort. But I’m a lost cause. It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter why I joined the RH. The fact is I did, and it can’t be undone. You were my family, and that’s why I can’t have you all up in my business. It’s not safe, and it’s not the right order of things, you know? Your brothers should be worrying about getting their next client for their business and which women they’re going to marry. Your mom should be taking care of her health and giving you all a bunch of crap about having grandkids. No one should be worrying about me getting a job or how I’m going to hide from the RH when I’m out of here. And not you, especially. The idea of you near this life—it makes me sick, Beth. Can you get that?”
    I see hurt pass over her face, and she turns away from me so I’m looking at her profile. She stands silently for a moment, and I try to memorize the curve of her jaw where it scoops up to her ear, the tiny bump in the bridge of her nose that I know happened when she tried to climb up to David’s tree house when she was seven, the way the breeze sends her hair feathering across her brow. I know this is probably the last time I’ll be this close to Beth Garcia, the love of my youth. I want to engrave this image of her, this feeling, this day, on my heart where it’ll keep me warm for the years to come.
    She slowly turns back to face me and what I see in her eyes stops me from uttering a single word. There is a stony determination there, an unwavering solidity, but also something else. Something that jabs at my chest and makes my palms break out in a sweat. Deep down, I know what it is, but I won’t allow even the idea to pass through my mind. The words shouldn’t be thought, much less felt.
    “I know he’s in there. My Juan. The Juan I grew up with and cared about all those years." Her voice is solid, unyielding. "I don’t know what happened, why you went to the RH, but I do know you didn’t do that drive-by. You’re not capable of shooting a little girl.”
    I swallow hard, my gut twisting and my vision growing hazy around the outside. I silently tell myself to breathe, bringing my hand up to my face and scrubbing at the stubble there so she won’t see me gasping for my next breath.
    “I haven’t held on to that many things in my life, Juan. My family, a couple of friends—that’s it. I haven’t cared enough to bother with a lot of people. As long as I had my brothers and sisters, I had what I needed. But that’s why I know, if I want to hang on to something or someone, they must really