Spaces Between Notes Read online

  For Jenice and Mina. You make my life brighter and my words better.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Kristina M. Sanchez

  Social Media

  Credits

  Copyright

  The last thing men in a shitty dive bar expected was to be hustled at pool by a doll-faced boy. Niko’s dad had figured that out early.

  “You’re too damn pretty to be a man. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  Niko had picked up his first pool cue before he was eight years old. His dad had dragged him into bars to hustle pool as soon as he was old enough to look like he could pass for drinking age. He knew how this game was played. There was skill in how you handled your stick, but half the game was in subtly unnerving your opponent.

  Bent over the pool table, stick gliding over his fingers as he lined up his shot, Niko tried to ignore the stranger. The man was doing that predatory dance of pacing back and forth in Niko’s vision so he couldn’t ignore his presence.

  “Face like that, some guys might get the wrong idea. You sure you didn’t wander into the wrong bar tonight? There’s a bar full of pretty boys like you just around the corner.”

  Niko stiffened, and he heard the stranger snicker. He’d struck a nerve, and they both knew it.

  The man leaned forward against the opposite end of the table. “Tell me something. Is your daddy proud of his pretty little girl?”

  Niko’s eyes darted to the dark corner of the bar as though he expected to see his father there with his arms crossed as he watched. How many times had some stupid prick come up behind Niko as he lined up his shot and ground his crotch against his ass to throw him off his game?

  A decade ago, Niko would’ve been grinning his ass off because this guy might as well have had “easy mark” tattooed in red on his forehead. Hell, even last year, he might’ve played it up for the fun of cheating an asshole out of an easy $500.

  He took a shot and grimaced as the ball went flying across the table, rebounding off the wall and sending one of the other team’s balls into the pocket. The stranger let out an obnoxious guffaw.

  “See how well we work together?” The stranger clapped Niko on the back and ignored how he shrugged him off with a violent gesture. “Tell you what. How ‘bout we go into that bar I was telling you about, and we can really work them over? It’d be too easy with a face like yours. You can distract those boys with those big, beautiful blue-green eyes and bat those pretty long lashes, and they won’t even mind you hustled them out of their pool money.”

  Well, wasn’t that ironic? The asshole had brains after all and knew an easy scheme when he saw one. The man walked around the table and gave Niko’s ass a slap, and Niko saw red. Visions of slamming the stranger’s head into the pool table played before his eyes.

  Too damn pretty for your own good, aren’t you, boy? His father had told him that more than once.

  Then again, his father had also told him he had a choice: He could be a pansy with his mother’s angelic face, or he could be a man. His father had taught him how to fight. Of course he had. Not even the biggest asshole would drag a pretty boy into a bar full of thugs without teaching him how to defend himself first.

  It didn’t matter. Niko wasn’t going to be playing anyone ever again, and he was aware he was the one being played tonight—played like Candyland. He was handing this guy the game. He rolled his shoulders and shook off his irritation as he perched on the edge of the nearby stool his jacket was slung over.

  The stranger’s eyes followed him, and he snickered before he looked back to the table.

  “So what do you think about my plan, princess?” he asked as he circled, looking for the best shot.

  When he didn’t get an answer, the stranger looked up. Niko stared back, feigning boredom. The other man’s eyes narrowed as he finally picked up on the unnaturalness of the silence that stretched on between them.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” The stranger narrowed his again in suspicion and annoyance. “What’s your problem?”

  Niko gestured at the table with impatience, but the man continued to stare. “What the hell, man? What is this? Giving me the silent treatment? What kind of bullshit is that?”

  He took a step toward him, and Niko slid off his barstool, his fists twitching at his side in irritation. The other man was getting increasingly pissed, and that was fine. Let him come. Niko was itching for a fight by that point, and while he wasn’t stupid enough to start one, he knew how to finish them.

  “Whoa. Hey. What’s going on here?”

  Niko didn’t turn toward the voice of his best friend. Jamie set down the drinks he’d gone to get at the bar and hurried to put himself between Niko and the stranger. The stranger’s pool partner, who had gone with Jamie to get the drinks, put himself in a similar position, his expression resigned.

  “This guy’s being an asshole. That’s what’s up. Freak won’t talk.”

  “Oh.” Jamie straightened up and shrugged, flashing a good-natured grin. “Niko’s a man of few words. He just doesn’t know you well enough to waste any on you. Don’t take it personally.”

  Niko wanted to snap that Jamie didn’t need to be talking for him. He knew exactly what he thought about this stranger, and he would say it to his face.

  He would… except he couldn’t.

  Grabbing his jacket, Niko turned heel and headed for the exit, ignoring the stranger’s taunts and Jamie calling his name. If he didn’t get out of there, he was going to end up breaking a pool cue over the table and jamming the splintered end into the other man’s throat.

  The night air of Southern California was cool, a world of difference from the stale air of the bar. Still, Niko’s skin was running hot, and the chill in the air did nothing to dilute the increasing need for violence. For a brief moment, he thought he was going to send his fist through the wall, but it was made of brick and the bouncer was already eyeing him suspiciously.

  Niko kept walking. It was a brisk walk that bordered on a run. He needed to get out of there. He needed to be gone before Jamie had a chance to settle their tab and come after him. Jamie meant well, but he was a damned pacifist. Niko wasn’t in the mood to be calmed down.

  Besides, he was almost as pissed at Jamie as he was with the stranger. After all, it had been Jamie’s persistent wheedling that had drawn him out of the house in the first place. Damn him to hell, anyway. Despite actually being gay, he never had these kinds of problems. Oh, no. His face was rugged, and his hair was as dark as his eyes; tall, dark, and handsome to Niko’s not-as-tall, pretty face, and hair that couldn’t decide if it was dark blond or light brown.

  A little drunk and a lot pissed, Niko walked quickly away from the main drag of downtown Fullerton. That was another thing he could blame Jamie for. Sure, he’d managed to find the only dive bar in the area. Seedy assholes Niko could handle
, but out on the street, he still had to dodge around drunken college kids. Their raucous laughter grated, and he picked up his pace. He turned down a random street, then another and another, fuming all the while. His phone vibrated in his pocket, but Niko ignored it.

  He stopped when he realized he couldn’t hear anybody nearby and the constant noise of traffic had quieted to its usual background dull roar. He was away from the main streets in a residential neighborhood.

  A familiar residential neighborhood.

  Niko laughed what passed for a laugh for him these days, but the empty, breathy sound only added fuel to the fire. He’d been clenching his jaw so hard that it ached. He started moving again. It had been years since he’d walked these streets as a stupid kid, but it was still familiar. He didn’t even have to think as he wandered. A left turn, a right turn. This street meandered into that one, and he was there in front of the house he’d grown up in.

  It had been fifteen years, half his lifetime ago, since he’d lived in this house. He stood on the sidewalk, glowering at the darkened windows. It had been at least ten years since he’d seen the house at all, and it was looking a lot worse for wear. The front lawn was overgrown, the yellowish paint was chipped, and the river rocks his mother had laid so carefully along the walkway were askew, some of them cracked. The house looked abandoned.

  Niko’s eyes swept the driveway and the windows. Hell, it might’ve actually been abandoned. He couldn’t see any signs of life.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there staring, his fists clenched at his sides. It annoyed him that the house was empty. More than annoyed, it infuriated him. He was pissed at whoever had let the house get this way. He was pissed at Jamie and that fucknut stranger who didn’t know when to shut the hell up. He was pissed at all the words trapped in his head and on his useless tongue. He was pissed at himself for not punching the stranger in the face. Just then, he couldn’t remember why he’d thought it was a bad idea. Who needed words when he had fists?

  All he knew was one minute he was standing there, staring at the house like it owed him something, and the next, the world went red. There was fire in his blood and a violent energy inside him that demanded to be spent. Spend it he did.

  Niko wanted to scream. He wanted to scream in that primal way that had little humanity in it. But he couldn’t scream. He couldn’t make that loud, horrible sound with his own voice, so he picked up a discarded rock and hurtled it toward the old house.

  The sound of the window shattering into splinters and shards was more satisfying than putting his fist through that stranger’s teeth ever would’ve been. Niko liked it. He liked it way too much.

  He picked up another rock and shattered the window next to it.

  After that, he threw rocks at random. When he couldn’t dislodge one of them, he picked a fight with the wooden arch, long overrun by the once picturesque vines his mother had planted and helped wind through the lattice. The crack of the wood wasn’t quite as satisfying as breaking glass, but he liked the solid feel of it splintering under his boots as he kicked it down.

  Destruction and chaos ruled his head. He didn’t plan his next move before he was in the middle of it.

  A light in the house came on just as Niko lost a fight with the loose rail of the three stairs that went up to the porch. He fell back and landed on his ass, panting with those pathetic little whines that passed as his voice now. He hated those whines, those barely there noises.

  What he should’ve been doing was running. The house wasn’t deserted after all, and who knew if the inhabitant was one of those gun nuts who thought their property was more valuable than a human life? But he stayed sitting on the ground as the door opened. Bring it on.

  The front door opened, and a woman stood there, brandishing a phone instead of a gun. Some part of Niko registered she was pretty; nice figure, rounded hips, great ass, long brown hair, and a hard look on her face. look on her face. “What the hell’s going on here? I called 911.” She shook her phone as though to emphasize.

  His rage subsided, and Niko was beginning to realize how much trouble he was in. He let himself fall back on his elbows, tired and resigned to his fate. Destruction of property was at least a lighter sentence than murder, so there was that.

  “Uh, hello? Excuse me?” The woman took a step away from her doorway. “Who did this? Did you do this?”

  He wanted to ask her if she was stupid because there wasn’t anyone else around. Then again, he was just sitting there, staring at her. He supposed he could’ve played it off as though he’d chased the unknown offender away and gotten knocked down in the process.

  It didn’t matter, anyway. It wasn’t as though he could tell her anything.

  “What the heck is wrong with you? Are you hurt?” She had her arms wrapped around herself, and she seemed reluctant to leave the doorway. Of course she was. It was the middle of the night, her windows were broken, and he was a strange idiot staring at her. She craned her neck so she could look him over, and her eyes widened. “Your hands are a mess. Are you hurt? I can call 911. I should call 911.”

  Niko raised an eyebrow. Hadn’t she said she called the police when she came outside? At the very least, a sane person would’ve called 911 after the second window shattered. Then again, he wasn’t a good representative for all things sanity at the moment.

  The woman was just figuring out he was, in fact, the one who had assailed her house when a car drove up. “Niko. Dammit, Niko.”

  Jamie had found him.

  Niko pushed himself to his feet, ignoring both his friend and the now understandably belligerent woman. He got in the passenger seat and closed his eyes to wait for jail or sleep, whichever came first.

  Jamie and Niko had been friends since Niko came upon a group of kids calling him Hymen, a play on his Spanish name, Jamie, when they were in second grade. Jamie hadn’t known what it meant, but he knew he didn’t want to be called that. Despite the fact he was only about an inch taller than Jamie at that point, Niko had flown at the older kids, telling them to back off. He’d been taught to think little of bullies.

  Typically, Niko would say Jamie was as good as a brother to him. Today, the thought of disowning him was more than a little attractive. Maybe he should’ve been more appreciative, but Jamie was treating him like a child. He’d insisted on picking Niko up as though he were a flight risk.

  “Don’t give me that look, man,” Jamie said. “You should be falling on your knees to kiss my feet for hauling you out of the fire. As usual.”

  Niko leveled a glare at him and cocked an eyebrow, but Jamie rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll admit there’s been some mutual pulling of asses out of fires since we’ve known each other, but this is big time. If I’d known you were going to go all Hulk on me, I’d have let you beat up that stupid prick at the bar. Guy like that has been hit before. He isn’t going to call the police. He might’ve broken your nose, but if you start beating up old ladies’ houses, you’re going to be thrown in jail.”

  Right about then, Niko would’ve preferred jail time if it meant he wouldn’t have to listen to Jamie. Shut. Up. They were such simple words, screaming on repeat in his head, yet he couldn’t even whisper them out loud. He crossed his arms and turned his head to stare out the window.

  Jamie grumbled. “Whatever, man. All I’m trying to say is you’re lucky. You’re lucky that house is crumbling to the ground, and you’re lucky we know how to fix it. And for that matter, you’re lucky I put up with you, because I wasn’t the one who decided trespassing and destruction of property were good ideas, but I’m still going to give up my free time to help you with this. I was over being free manual labor when we were teenagers. You could at least say thank you.”

  Niko’s cheek twitched as his jaw tensed in irritation. The words hung in the air like a physical presence. “I didn’t—” Jamie started to say, but he seemed to think better of it when Niko shifted in his seat as though he would turn all the way around if he could.

  A
fter a moment’s tense silence, Jamie chuckled. “But come on,” he said as though the gaff hadn’t happened. “You have to admit that I’m a smooth mother trucker. It was slick, right? There you were, tearing apart this chick’s grandma’s house, and before she can call the police, I was like, ‘Look. This place is falling apart. Our dads were construction workers together and they made us spend every summer since we were eleven learning about how to build a house from the ground up. They thought it would keep us out of trouble, and that worked for twenty years. We can fix what he broke and everything else that was broken before he came along. Come on. What’s better: throwing this drunk idiot in prison or getting thousands of dollars’ worth of work free of charge?’”

  At that, Niko turned his head again to fix Jamie with a sour look. Exactly. Thousands of dollars’ worth of work for free in that house—that same house his mother had wanted to fix up for years, but his dad was always too tired and they were too broke. The house had fallen apart almost in time with their family.

  No, he’d definitely rather be in jail.

  At Niko’s expression, Jamie’s grin fell. “I did what I had to do,” he said as he they pulled up in front of the old house. “It’s not like you were doing anything with your weekends, anyway. Maybe it’ll help to do something more productive than sit around your place and mope.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his tone was soft and tentative. “It’ll get better, you know. If you—”

  Niko didn’t hear the rest because he was already out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He paused, grinding his teeth when he realized he had to wait for Jamie to catch up. It wasn’t as though he could knock on the door without him. After all, he’d been the scary man tearing apart the dilapidated porch.

  Luckily, Jamie didn’t try to babble at him during the short walk to the front door. They climbed the steps in silence, and the woman from the previous night opened it before they could knock.