A Lot Like Adiós (Primas of Power, #2)

by Alexis Daria

You are part of a family, Gabriel. Families make decisions together. You need to stay here and help with the store. Pop, the store is going under. It’s only a matter of time. The store will be fine if you help— Nothing I do is going to help the store! It would if you tried! The store is your dream, Pop. I’m going after mine. To do what? Play baseball? What are you going to do, join the Yankees?

Being here was reverting him back to his teenage self, and he didn’t want that. That Gabe had been unsure of himself, worried about what other people thought of him and his choices, too afraid to act.

Damn, how could anyone resist a man who delivered such a heartfelt apology? “Apology accepted,” she said primly. “Do you want bacon?”

This was why she didn’t get close. If anyone looked too deeply, they’d see she was nowhere near as confident as she claimed to

She understood now why Gabe had been so anxious to leave the Bronx, and so angry at her for dragging him back here. She’d always liked his parents, and she could see now that while they’d been kind to her, Gabe had suffered under the weight of their expectations more than she’d ever realized. He had good reason to be estranged from them.

For her, this was the realest relationship she’d ever had. She was opening up during sex, letting down her guard and accepting the vulnerability that went with it. She was talking about how she felt instead of relying on humor as a shield for her emotions.

It’s like he’s been holding a piece of me all this time and I just got it back.”

But he was fooling himself. He’d traded his father for Powell, letting someone else roll over him and sway his decisions. So long as Powell was involved, Agility would never truly be his.

But at least this time, she’d asked for what she wanted. She hadn’t let anger get the better of her, making her say things she later regretted.

still viewed his parents through the lens of a child, interpreting their actions only in relation to himself.

Not only that, they’d all changed during the time apart. His parents seemed much more mellow than he remembered, and Gabe noticed he was better at managing his own emotional responses to them. He didn’t get as riled up as he once had.

The intersection of pain and movement, the absolute beauty of the human body’s inner workings, the ability to help people through touch, had set Gabe on this path. “Ow,” his dad grumbled. Gabe suppressed a smile. “Hurts?” “You know it does.” Now Gabe grinned. “Sorry. It’ll help in the long run, I promise.”

A massage will cure their relationship???

“Sorry.” Gabe replayed his father’s words in his head. You know how to work hard. They sounded like praise. Once, Gabe would have taken them as a dig, like he owed his work ethic to his father. But . . . maybe he did.

When a boy becomes a man

A long moment passed before Esteban spoke again, switching into Spanish. “I was hard on you,” he admitted. “I thought I knew better, and I didn’t—I didn’t know how else to prepare you for life. It was how your grandfather raised me.” Esteban rarely spoke about his own father. He’d died well before Gabe had been born, when Esteban had been a teenager in Mexico. Gabe looked at his father’s body, at the minor scars, the signs of age. Life had been hard on this man. As a father, as the head of the household, as a small business owner, as an immigrant. Gabe had only one of those responsibilities, and he felt like he was drowning most of the time. Was that how his dad had felt?

This was it. The thing Gabe had wanted for as long as he could remember. Acknowledgment and apology from his father. But it didn’t heal him as much as he’d thought it would. There was no sense of instant satisfaction, no validation balm applied to his soul. He’d wanted to show his father he was wrong. Well, mission accomplished. And so what? Gabe had still lost nearly a decade with his father due to their anger and inability, or unwillingness, to see eye to eye. Granted, maybe Gabe had needed the distance in order to take ownership of his choices and grow up. The time apart meant he couldn’t blame his doubts or his failures on anyone but himself.

They’d wanted him to stay. For the store, yes, but if the store was a symbol of familial connection, it wasn’t just to keep him on hand for cheap labor. And if he’d really had as much confidence in his choices as he claimed to have, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they’d doubted him or not. What if he was the one who doubted himself all along?

He was too enamored with his own pain to set it aside and see what was really before him.

He nuzzled her neck, and she found the courage to bring up something that had been on her mind. “What if . . . you stay with me?” He raised his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “Here in your parents’ house?”