Page 177 of Rules of Association

“Ox,” I whispered, not seeing the humor in any of this.

He just gave me a little smile before pushing off from the desk and coming to sit in the chair beside mine. Reaching a hand out, he patted my shoulder gently then gave it a little shake. “All will be fine. I’ll take care of this.”

“How?” I asked, but I couldn’t deny there was a crashing feeling of relief spreading through me. Ox didn’t really beat around the bush. If he said things would be okay, that meant he truly believed they would be.

“Why don’t we talk about it over lunch? Hmm?” He peeked up, his gaze falling over his shoulder just as the door to his office opened and in came a beautiful reminder of the man who just left me.

His sister, dressed in a long sundress and the slightest bit of flour under her chin. I don’t know why, but I wanted to hug her. So I did, getting up and curling myself under her tall, lithe frame and getting long skinny arms around me in return. I don’t know if it was because being next to her made me feel closer to her brother or because this was the only comfort I could take from her about the matter without spilling all of our secrets out on the floor, but it was just the hug I needed at that time. Just the right one.

In the end, I think it was just because I missed her. And I was tired of sneaking around the fact that I loved her brother. Loved him in more ways than I’d been willing to admit. But how did I tell her now, when he’d already run away?

“What’s going on in here?” Fergy asked as we finally pulled away.

Ox stood and floated around his desk to grab his suit jacket and his keys. “What's going on is we’re going to lunch, and Ceci has just agreed to tell me every last detail about the day you two became friends. As payment for my help, of course.”

All I could do then was laugh.

* * *

It was later.

After a lunch spent cracking up over Ox’s permanently scowling face—seriously, I don’t know how we didn’t tell him the origin story of Ferg and I’s friendship sooner—we said goodbye to Fergy and Ox brought me back up to his office to plan.

It seemed I had three options.

One was to let them close the shelter and see if the city or some other philanthropic group picked it up. Neither of us were crazy about door number one.

The second was probably the best one, or at least I thought so. Ox explained to me that Fernandez Inc and our family personally allocated a lot of funds toward the political parties of our interests. This funding was national, going as deep as being one of the biggest donors to the last presidential campaign, but it also ran locally. Ox assured that with a little pushing and the threat of the Fernandez name pulling their backing and funding, the city could probably be persuaded to take a “harder look” at the needs of the local women’s shelter.

This was my favorite, but my brother disagreed.

The last option was the scariest and yet, Ox seemed to think it was the best out of three. He was crazy.

“Ox, a couple of months ago I didn't even know what I wanted for lunch. Do you really think I’m the right person to be acquiring an entire organization? One that has hundreds that would depend on me.”

“I’ve never known you not to be dependable Ceci...or not to know what you want for lunch,” he said. I threw something at him. He just laughed as he caught it. “And, unbeknownst to us, a couple of months ago, youknewyou wanted this. You just weren’ttellinganybody about it.”

He was serious again, and he was looking at me in a way that made me itch. Expecting things of me. I turned away from him and paced his office. “Apá was very clear. He gave me a time limit and messing around with this isn’t going to help me with meeting it.”

“Apá gave you a time limit to spook you into choosing adirection. None of us knew you already had one.”

“I have other things I want to do now.” I groaned. Images of a fighting gym for women flashed in my head. With things like childcare and free self-defense education and advocacy programs and a plethora of other preparation training from simple awareness to the most intricate styles of fighting flashed in and out of my head.

The idea had only started to form weeks ago when my brain simply couldn’t process yet another rerun of Connor staring at me as I walked away from him on the beach. It was only a thought, but it was one that had wrapped around my heart in a way that all the things I loved did. Instantly, and with claws that dug in deep and wouldn’t release without tearing away a part of me in the departure.

I liked to protect women. Whether it was through a shelter that helped a certain group of them, or through a sport I’d fallen in love with. That’s what I loved to do. That’s what I wanted to fight for. I could do both I suppose…But was any of it enough?

“Isn’t it… Isn’t it pretty different from what you all do?” I said, my voice getting quiet. “Abuelo never really understood non-profit organizations.”

Ox stiffened. “Abuelo is not here, he isn’t Apá, and most importantly he has nothing to do with you. You are free to do whatever you want, that asshole’s opinion be damned.”

I should have known not to bring him up. It was a sore subject for Ox, seeing that his wife was our abuelo’s wife first. And that he’d done some less than perfect (or even decent) things leading up to his death. But the fact still remained that he’d started from nothing and had given our family the opportunity we had now from the work off his back. Even if Apá hadn’t trained the rest of us like he did Ox to take over the company from an early age, he had instilled that history in us from the beginning. Who was I to veer from the path of family success?

Ox was like a mind reader sometimes. Call it a first child superpower or just the fact that he always had to be right, but somehow he knew exactly what I was thinking without even voicing it aloud. “It’s not what you do, Ceci. It’s how you do it. I think Amá and Apá would be just as worried if you chose something that matched the rest of us but made you miserable for the rest of your life.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a finger and continued.

“And as for us? Your boring pencil pushing spreadsheet reading brothers and sisters, no. It isn’t anything like what we do. It’s better,” he said. “We’ve got money for the rest of our lives, Celestia. Abuelo, Apá, and even I have made sure of it. You’ve never needed to worry about that. But you’ve always,alwaysstood up for those you choose. You’ve chosen that shelter and the women that need it, presently and in the future. Are you really just going to leave them in someone else’s hands?”

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