Page 10 of Violent Attraction

I had feelings for a boy that had been there for me and had become a pivotal part of my life.

Feelings that torture me every single day.

Feelings that for the life of me, I can’t voice.

Why can’t I voice how I feel about this individual?

Well, because Santiago Reyes, or Santos as everyone else in the world calls him, is off limits. Not because he has a girlfriend or anything but because he’s my brother’s best friend and my father has this lovely rule about boys.

No muchachos, Isabella. No muchachos hasta qué yo te diga.

Translation, no boys until he tells me otherwise.

And I’m sure anyone that my brother is friends with is high on the no boys allowed list. Even if he is the one person that has been there for me constantly since the death of my mother.

That isn’t something my father cares about.

It was my mother’s death actually, that told me exactly what my father cares about, and it’s not how his daughter feels. Or how his kids feel about anything for that matter.

Power and money are the two most important things to Ronaldo Morales, not what his kids might be going through or feeling.

I’ve actually learned a lot about my father these last few years that makes me question a number of things about him.

I asked him about it once a few months ago, and all he said was that I shouldn't worry about anything. As long as I had food on the table, a roof over my head and didn’t want for nothing, then I shouldn’t go looking for answers.

That answer piqued my curiosity even more.

Wait, how did I get into this whole tangent about my father and all his mysteriousness?

Oh right, his no boys rule.

I understand the no boys rule when it comes to some of the douchebags that are at this hoity-toity school, but Santiago Reyes should not be put in that same category.

That man should be in a category of his own.

And I say man because there is nothing boyish about this high school senior.

Everything that I have ever dreamed up in a guy, is all wrapped up nice and tight within him. He is what girls would call a wet dream, with light brown hair, eyes that have a goldish tint in them and everything opposite of your everyday Hispanic man.

You wouldn’t even know he was Mexican unless he told you. His mother is Canadian and his father is Mexican and somehow, someway, they met and created this fine specimen. A specimen that has spent his life in Mexico and Texas.

A true, and fine specimen.

If only he saw me the same way I saw him.

One could hope, right?

“You’re staring, bella.” His voice breaks the trance that I was in while he puts his things away in his locker.

Did I mention that I spend any chance I can with him while we are at school? I’m like a clingy girlfriend without the girlfriend title.

And...

He calls me bella.

Not Bella, like that girl from those Twilight vampire books or like the model, but bella, with a y sound. Essentially he calls me beautiful, okay? The Spanish language is all over the place when it comes to translating things in English.

He started calling me bella, sometime around my fifteenth birthday and every time I hear it, the swarm of butterflies come out in full swing.