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Renzo slipped out of the apartment with his messenger bag on his shoulder, but not before shooting a look back at them. Lucia tried to give him a smile while she hugged a crying Diego, but she didn’t know if it felt true or not.

“I don’t want Ren to keep leaving,” Diego mumbled when the door shut.

Yeah, she knew.

Lucia hugged him a little tighter with one arm, and wiped his face with the sleeve of her sweater. “He’s always gonna come back, Diego. Ren is always gonna come back to you.”

Diego sniffled again when he stared up at her. “How do you know?”

“Because I just do.”

Maybe that was what the kid needed to know more than anything else. More than he needed stability and things that felt like home. Maybe he just needed to know that his brother was always coming back to him.

But what did Lucia know?

• • •

Lucia was sitting on the edge of the bed in the bedroom she and Renzo used when he finally got back a little after twelve. Diego had been in bed for hours, but that didn’t mean it was easy to get the kid to lay down. Slipping on the too-big T-shirt that Renzo had left hanging off the side of the bed, she eyed him in the doorway.

He leaned against the doorjamb, rocking back on his heels a bit to stare down the hallway. “How long did it take to calm him down after I left?”

“An hour.”

Renzo flinched.

Lucia figured the truth was better than a lie. Besides, it wasn’t them that was having trouble right then. It was Diego. He needed to realize that the shit they had done leading up to this point left Diego in a bad place. Emotionally … maybe mentally, too.

“We can’t run again,” she murmured. “He’s scared of that, I think. And he’s scared you’re going to leave him, maybe. It’s just been too much for him, Ren. He doesn’t know how to process what’s happening. He doesn’t understand why we had to leave, and why the little bit of stuff that he had, he had to leave behind. All that he’s got left is the things that mean the most to him—you, really. He’s probably scared the next time we go, he’s going to leave you behind, too.”

Renzo’s gaze lifted and met hers. She thought maybe he was going to come back with a rebuttal for a second—if we have to, then we have to, sort of thing. Instead, she found an agreement staring back in his eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied just as quietly. “That doesn’t change the fact that we might still have to—”

“It’s not good for him. It’s that simple. Think about him.”

“I am!”

Lucia stiffened at the tone of his voice. High, and sharp. Like she didn’t fucking understand what he was trying to tell her, even if she did understand exactly what he meant.

“I am thinking about him,” Renzo said quieter, and rougher. “All I do is think about how to keep him with me all the time, Lucia.”

“You have to start thinking about what’s best for him, too. Running isn’t, Ren. That’s all.”

He cleared his throat, and rocked back on his heels to stare down the hall again. Diego’s door was closed, and the kid wasn’t making a noise.

“What if someone comes then,” he started to say, “your father, or—”

“We’ll handle it. But we don’t run. Aren’t you fucking tired of running, anyway? I am. He is. Aren’t you?”

“It’s not that simple.”

She could hear the anxiety in his voice, even if he didn’t acknowledge it, really. The fear that he felt over someone taking her away from him, or Diego. They’d done so much already—robbed, killed, and run. How long would they have before something or someone finally caught up with them?

That was the real question.

Not that it mattered.

Her feelings remained the same.