Boost by Vi Summers
Chapter 38
-Raf-
Walking down the gangway after arriving at Portland airport, Oregon, I remained blissfully ignorant about the press release back at Landon-Michaels PR. For the next six hours, I had one goal only; locate the seller of a 1959 Cadillac Coupe deVille and negotiate a sale on behalf of my client.
The plan was bust the moment I turned my phone on. Message alerts immediately poured in as I wove my way in and out of the crowd, striding quickly to get to the terminal exit. Multiple missed calls from Greer and Colton caught my attention, and my initial surprise started to ball into dread. There was no way Colt would be calling me like a desperate hookup at three AM unless it was urgent.
Gritting my teeth and dodging people who were not fucking watching where they were walking, I pressed the phone to my ear and growled with impatience as I waited for Colton to pick up.
He sounded breathless when he did. “Fucking Christ, Raf, you sure know how to bail when shit gets real.”
“The fuck do you mean?”
Colt’s laugh was borderline deranged. “What do I mean? The fucking media practically pissing themselves with glee over a new revelation about you; that’s what I mean!”
I instantly grew physically ill. “What the fuck is going on, Colt?” I growled, trying to not draw attention to myself.
“The goddamn press release!” he exclaimed.
Instead of seeking the exit, I detoured to a quieter corridor close to the bathrooms. “Yeah, that should be over by now.”
He coughed in disbelief. “You really have no fucking clue, do you?”
“About what? C’mon, man, I don’t have time for cryptic fucking crosswords; I’m in Portland on my way to purchase a ‘59 Caddy.”
“Two words, man…”
The seconds before Colton uttered those two words felt like minutes, then time slammed home with a force that made me stumble.
“Rafferty Delgado.”
“Fuck,” I whispered, though it was involuntary and more like a final breath leaving my now deceased body.
“Fuckin’ A, fuck!” Colton hissed. “Of all the things, Raf, these are the skeletons in your closet?”
“No one was meant to know,” I stuttered.
Shock wave after shock wave rolled throughout my entire body. It hurt so fucking bad I thought my chest would explode. Each wave blinded me, squeezed my throat, numbed my limbs.
“No one was meant-” I panted, feeling a full-blown fucking panic attack creeping up.
I made it to a toilet cubicle just in time to purge my breakfast into the bowl, coughing and gagging when the rolling nausea failed to subside despite there being nothing left to give. I managed to keep a grip on my phone while bracing myself on the toilet bowl, completely forgetting that the call with Colton was still connected until his voice echoed around the stall.
“Didn’t appreciate listening to that, dude. Ring back once you’ve pulled yourself together.” The, “Jesus fuck,” was cut off as he disconnected.
Hearing that name—my name—said out loud after over fifteen years threw me back to my childhood.
The beatings, the verbal tirades that left me feeling inadequate and half-an-inch tall. The scars inflicted by ‘accidentally’ touching the tip of a cigarette to my skin. My mom’s pleas in the night, my sister sobbing… Taking my father’s life before he took the only good thing from mine and my sister’s.
“Fuck,” I whispered, and dry retched again.
Suppressed emotions and memories clawed their way over my senses. Revulsion surfaced along with the numb desperation that accompanied the fear during each ‘episode’.
My father got what he deserved—I had no regrets over that. Only now, as a grown man, I wished I had the opportunity to make him suffer the way he made our lives a living hell.
There had been flickers of light, of hope, each time my mother threatened to pack our bags and leave. But each time he managed to sweet-talk her into staying. It always ended the same though, every damn time—with empty promises and broken trust.
I didn’t know how long I spent hunched over that airport toilet bowl with my eyes squeezed shut and my head spinning, but I was thankful Colton gave me time to get a grip. The chain around my chest refused to ease, and it seemed to pull tighter when I staggered from the stall and dared to look at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Faceless men came and went after giving me dubious sideways glances. To them, I no doubt looked like a jumped up thug on the edge. And no wonder. My fists refused to unfurl against the sink top. My racing pulse hadn’t eased, and I sure as hell hadn’t managed to catch my breath.
The one fear I had—that one demon that would take everything from me all over again—had chosen a real fucking shit time to resurrect itself.
But it wouldn’t just destroy me; there was Colton’s foundation. Arlo’s budding Indy career. And Greer. There was Greer.
After splashing more water on my face, I drank from the bathroom tap and then toweled my face dry. The crisp, white paper contrasted with my brown skin and the tattoos that adored my fingers and hands. Silly really that it seemed so pure and clean until coming into contact with the darkness that clung to me.
Tainted. That’s what I was. Once an innocence was taken, it could never be restored, no matter how far or how hard you run. I was living, breathing proof of that.
Tossing the balled-up paper towel into the trash, I ran a hand over my clipped hair. Fuck me, I was at a total loss over what to do.
Did I risk going out in public? All I could imagine was everyone knowing my darkest secret after burying it in the past the day I changed my name. The fear was paralyzing.
Withdrawing my phone from my back pocket, my fingers trembled more than I was proud of. Reality rocked me to my core, and fuck if I knew what to do now. I needed to ring Greer, but first I needed to ring Colton back.
“Found your panties yet?” he immediately asked on pick up.
“Fuck you,” I snapped, then added, “You’ve got questions?”
He sorted. “Damn right I do. Starting with, how the fuck did no one already know about this?”
“You’ve always known me as Raf Ortiz, right?”
Colt huffed impatiently.
“Yeah, well, that was about a year after my name was changed. I couldn’t keep it, not with what happened. Not when I carried my father’s surname as my own…” And not when I had his blood on my hands.
Some people were straight-up evil, and he was one of them. He deserved to die the way he did, and the two times that I’d visited his grave in the last fifteen years, he deserved the wad of spit I left behind.
My hatred for him was soul deep, and that would never change.
“I have to admit, Raffie, you’ve got me unsure of what to do here. I mean, fuck, I sure as fuck don’t like my past being slapped in my face—we aren’t the boys we once were—but, I’ve already had calls from sponsors getting antsy about the foundation.”
As if I couldn’t feel any worse, shame coated me. “I’ve let you down, brother.”
“It’s true, then? That shit I googled about Rafferty Delgado?”
I hissed and ran a hand down my face. “Can’t say I’ve ever googled it, but yeah, I’m assuming most of it is true.”
Tense silence smothered our disjointed conversation as we both got drawn back into the turmoil within our heads. I opened my mouth to speak, only to shut it again. What the fuck could I say? I mean, there was literally nothing that explained the feelings so deeply ingrained in me they shaped who I was every single day of my life.
“Did your mom survive?” Colton asked in a low voice, filled with unexpected emotion.
I froze to the spot. Unable to swallow. Unable to breathe for the longest time.
“She did,” I eventually croaked.
“Is she a good person? Then, and now?”
A pang cut through my heart just thinking of her locked in a useless body and unable to be her old, vibrant self. I had to force the reply around the lump in my throat.
“She is.”
“Then you did right by her, brother. You’re lucky to have h-” He cut off with a sharp hiss through his teeth, cursed to himself, then changed the subject. “Christian and Greer are on damage control. No doubt they will tell you not to engage with the media.”
I snorted humorlessly. “Trust me, that’s the last fucking thing I want to do.”
“All I’m sayin’ is I know how hard it is to sit back and bite your fucking tongue while they have a field-day with lies and bullshit.”
Despite the situation, I let out a sinister laugh. “You’ve always had a temper.”
“So, you know not to fucking push me, Ortiz. Call me when you get back.”
I started to pace the corridor, heading toward the more private end. “Sure. And hey,” I added, before I lost the nerve. “If you need me to distance myself from the foundation…”
Colton’s huffed an exhale. “We’ll talk when you get back, Raf.”
“Yeah.”
We disconnected at the same time. There was nothing else left to say. I’d fucked up, let people down, and put futures in jeopardy.
With that sour taste in my mouth, I closed my eyes and physically braced myself on the wall for Boss Lady’s voice message. She didn’t disappoint either.
“Rafael, your ass, my office, now!”
“Fuck!” I hissed.
Now that my day had turned to shit, I didn’t have time or patience left to deal with this drama. It would have to wait until tomorrow. Although cracking a deal for the Caddy was the last thing on my mind, I at least could control that situation.
I clung to that as I bolted from the airport terminal and hailed an Uber.
Normally I’d grab a hotel for the night and drive the car back home the following day, but I didn’t have that luxury today. Driving from Portland to L.A. was a stretch—the fourteen-hour trip destined to take far longer in the ‘59 Cadillac, and I now regretted not buying it remotely and getting it trucked down.
Regardless of hindsight, I had to find the seller as fast as I could, then get my ass on the road.