“No, not at all, I want you to tell me everything.”

He wouldn’t tell her that he was glued to her every word now and felt willing to pull an all-nighter with her if that’s what it took to get every detail of her past relationships. He was dying to know how those guys blew it. It was scaring him now that it sounded as if one thing she’d learned from her past experiences was to not put up with shit from any guy. Felix was bound to blow it with her.

“Well, long story short, I found out he was back in contact with the guys he used to run with. He tried denying it at first but then finally admitted he had a few times, so I broke up with him.”

“Just for hanging with them a few times?” Felix asked, even more alarmed now about her no-nonsense attitude.

There was so much that could go wrong with all the shit he dealt with on a daily basis. The paparazzi were just waiting for him to screw up in any way. As soon as it was announced that he and Grecco would be having a rematch, they’d dig up everything and anything that would make headlines about him regardless of how long ago the stories were. He’d never given a flying fuck what they said, but this actually had his blood thrumming good and hard. His ass would get dumped in a heartbeat.

“I didn’t need that in my life, Felix. I made the right decision too. Less than two weeks later he and his brother were arrested for grand theft auto. The only reason he didn’t go to jail was because he was still a minor at the time. I knew immediately that what I’d begun to think, that I might be in love with him, was wrong. It was the weirdest thing.” She stopped as if to ponder. “It was as if the betrayal of it just sucked whatever feelings I had for him right out of me. It didn’t even hurt, and I was so relieved I hadn’t given up my V card to him.”

Felix stopped his pacing. V card? Was she saying she was still a . . .?

“After I graduated . . .” she went on.

Felix stood there in the middle of his room, barely able to catch his breath. Either she was still a virgin or this just made her keeping in touch with Grayson that much harder to tolerate.

“I was so busy with my job, school, the neighborhood watch, and trying to be what my dad called me, ‘the little woman of the house,’ I didn’t have time for a social life. Then Sonia was raped.”

She stopped talking, and Felix wasn’t sure if he should say anything or give her a moment. He decided to wait, with the maddening thoughts of Grayson very possibly being her first still buzzing around in his head. Finally, she spoke up again.

“I look back now, and it’s hard to decide what was harder, losing my mom or going through that and the fear of my brother possibly being charged for murder. At least when my mom died we had time to prepare for it. When Sonia was raped and the guy my brother beat up died from his injuries, it felt so much more devastating especially because I was trying so hard to hold us all together. Memo was losing his mind over what happened to his girlfriend, my dad was beside himself because his son might go to jail for years, and that’s when Grayson came into the picture.”

Felix remembered her mentioning this that first night at Barros when Drew had first brought up the cop who visited her at the gym. He also remembered Drew’s grating comments about what an interesting and romantic way to meet a guy and what great stories these two could tell their kids someday. Most irritating now was Drew’s comment about their breakup being a temporary fizzle.

“He arrested your brother the night of the . . . incident,” Felix said, letting her know he remembered the conversation that night.

“Well, technically, my brother was never arrested, but, yes, he was the officer who took him in for questioning when he was detained that night. It wasn’t until later when we got the news that the guy he’d beaten had died of his injuries that Grayson really stepped up and put us in touch with a great attorney friend of his. He was really like a blessing that came out of nowhere when we most needed him. He kept us all calm at a time when we all felt like our world might come crumbling down on us and assured us from what he knew that Memo would walk away from it without so much as having to go to trial. And he was right.”

Felix could almost hear the grateful smile on her face. Great. The guy was a family hero too.

“Of course, there was still a full investigation,” she went on. “But Grayson assured me it was a mere formality. He said under the circumstances this was a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide, but we still couldn’t help worrying. Hold on,” she said suddenly.

“Is that him again?” Felix asked, feeling every muscle in his body go taut.

“No, Larry’s at my window.”

Felix’s head jerked up; then he glanced at the clock. It was past midnight. “Who’s at your window?”

“C’mon,” she said. “Get in here.”

Felix stood there, stunned. She was letting this guy in her bedroom window? Then she heard the whiny meowing and he exhaled roughly.

“Larry’s a cat?”

“Yeah,” she said then laughed. “Did you think I was letting some dude named Larry in my window right now?”

Now he laughed, releasing a bit of the tension that had built up so quickly. “I didn’t know what to think. You’d mentioned your cat before, but I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned his name. Larry, huh?”

She told him about naming the cat after the caregiver at the hospice where her mother spent her last weeks. He’d been a heavyset cheery fellow who kept her mother’s spirits up even on her worst days. The guy died suddenly of a heart attack shortly after her mother passed.