No, there was no last time.

I was just not funny.

“What’s funny about me?” I asked with curiosity.

He shook his head and brought me even closer so my body was deep in his, his arms were around me tight and my hands had to slide up to his shoulders.

“It’d take too long to explain and we got more important shit to talk about.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed because I still kind of wanted to know what was funny about me. “Okay.”

All of a sudden, he switched the subject. “What made you go out the back last night?”

I shrugged again. “Some bartender came up to me, handed me a note. It said it was from my Mom, she’d been looking for me, finally found me and she was out back and I should meet her. I figure Harvey paid someone to give it to me.”

Instantly and inexplicably, the air in the room changed. A current ran through it, strong and dangerous and Hector’s arms tightened further.

My body tensed.

“Are you f**king shitting me?” he asked, enunciating every word clearly from between his teeth.

“No,” I whispered because the change in him was kind of scaring me.

All of a sudden, he let go. I felt the loss of his heat like a blow and watched him walk away, tearing his hand through his hair. He stopped at the window, yanked the curtain back and looked at the street.

I stared at him, unsure what to do. One second he seemed to be kind of mellow but amused. The next he seemed anything but mellow and amused and his body language was saying to stay well away. Because of that, my head was telling me to run away.

Instead I called hesitantly, “Hector?”

“Give me a minute, Sadie,” he said to the window.

I felt it prudent to give him a minute seeing as, for some bizarre reason, he seemed a tad bit upset (which was an understatement). Then after what felt like about a hundred minutes, he spoke.

“I’m losin’ patience with this.”

“With what?” I asked.

He kept looking out the window. “Usin’ your f**kin’ mother to get at you. How f**kin’ low. Fuck!” he exploded.

Again, I was confused. In my experience people could do things a lot lower than that.

“This is Harvey Balducci we’re talking about,” I told Hector as if that explained everything which, to me, it did.

Hector’s eyes turned to me.

“I mean, he’s a jerk,” I went on. “And he’s crazy. And, well… he’s a jerk.”

“People don’t do that shit,” Hector told me.

That’s when I laughed. I mean, seriously, people did that “shit” all the time.

“Oh yes they do,” I replied sagely.

Hector dropped the curtain, turned fully to me, his face hard and he said, “Sadie, no. They don’t.”

Instantly, my laughter died. “You know they do, Hector, you lived amongst us. My kind of people sell drugs and guns and kill people and kidnap them and rape them –” I stopped because Hector started toward me.

I lifted my hand to stop him, finally realizing what I had to say, it all came to me in a flash. I was going to tell him we were different, this would never work. I didn’t belong in his world.

Simple as that.

But it was like Hector didn’t see my hand. He kept coming at me until he was right there.

My hand hit his chest, he pulled me into his arms again and said, “Those aren’t your kind of people.”

“Yes, they are. Don’t you remember –?”

“I remember you feeding me information on your father.”

My body went rigid and I gasped (not, I belatedly realized, the kind of response to have when I was trying to keep my clandestine informant status a secret).

I tried to cover. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sadie, I saw you do it.”

I blinked at him.

Oh my God.

Did he see me do it? How could he see me do it? That was just crazy. It was also impossible.

I kept lying. “You must have been mistaken.”

He shook his head. “Mamita, I walked right up to the door and watched you do your thing and for some crazy reason you did it while you kept your father’s office door wide open.”

“That was so I could hear if someone was coming!”

Oh no!

How stupid could I be? I’d given it away.

Blooming heck!

He pulled me closer and the dangerous current slid out of the room and he looked like he was fighting a grin again.

I stared at him. I mean, really, it was hard to keep up with his mood swings.

“Your plan didn’t work. You didn’t hear me coming.”

Oh darn.

I watched his face and realized, indeed, he did see me do it.

Now what did I do?

I put my other hand to his shoulder, this time to try to push away. It didn’t work.

I gave up and my eyes slid to the side. “Oh well, then, you knew.” I tried to act like it was nothing.

“Helluva risk you took,” he said.

I shrugged.

“Anyone could have seen you do it. You were lucky it was me.”

He certainly wasn’t wrong about that.

He went on, “You could have got yourself killed.”

I bit my lip because he wasn’t wrong about that either.

“Why did you do it?” he asked softly.

I pulled in both my lips, bit them, let them go and answered simply, “He was not a nice man.”

“No,” Hector agreed and my heart lurched.

I ignored the lurch and looked at him.

With his easy agreement, he’d given me my opening. My father always said you should never waste an opportunity. So I didn’t.

“There you go. That’s why this, you and me and everyone else and your Mom and all of it, everything, isn’t going to work,” I told him.

His chin jerked back after I finished talking then his face went dark in another mercurial mood swing. “You wanna explain how you came to that conclusion?”

“Yes,” I told him truthfully, my back going straight. “I’m not like you and your people. I’m Sadie Townsend. My father is Seth Townsend. I don’t belong with your people, I never will.”

His arms got tight again, the scary current came back into the room and his face got close. “Mamita, I think you’re a little crazy.”

I shook my head. “Not crazy. I just know who I am, what I am and where I belong. All your family and friends are very sweet and nice and everything but you know, they know as well as I know, I don’t belong. I think it’s best for all concerned if this just ended here.”