Page 21 of The Slayer
“Are you okay?”
Chuito nodded and sat down on the mat in the center of the cage. The construction in the old rec center was making his head throb worse, and he was sweating like crazy. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “I need another cup of coffee.”
“You’ve had like eight cups of coffee today,” Clay said as he sat next to him. “I guess everyone has their vices.”
Chuito laughed, a horrible, pained laugh that he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to. God, he almost told him. He really did, because he felt like shit. The crash was a thousand times harder than he’d anticipated, and he had known it was going to be difficult.
He could barely keep his eyes open, and that wasn’t the worst of it.
It was as if the blow had simply been borrowed happiness from a nasty, vindictive loan shark who was taking it all back with triple the interest. He’d been living in an alternate reality, hiding behind a cloud of anger and cocaine, and now that the cloud was gone…he was just really sad. Horribly, unbearably, want-to-eat-his-Glock sad.
He’d never mourned his brother and Tiá Camila. He’d hidden from all those emotions because he couldn’t afford them. In their family weakness wasn’t an option. Even now, sitting there with agony crushing in on him so intensely he could barely breathe, he didn’t know how to express it.
Motherfuckers with as many demons as Chuito were not supposed to come down off cocaine. They were supposed to snort that shit until life took them out.
Fuck, maybe heshouldeat a bullet. Just because he’d left his guns at home didn’t mean he couldn’t find one. Jules Conner had told him several times she packed heat.
If his mother hadn’t brainwashed him with all that weakness bullshit, he would have. No crying. Don’t let the world hurt you. It had been pounded into his head since the day he was born. Someone should give his mother a clue. The reason the world hurt him wasn’t for being soft. It hurt him because he’d been born hard. That was the reason it hurt all of them.
The soft ones were dead.
God spared the good ones and left Chuito, his mother, and Marcos behind to pay for their combined sins. It was like the apocalypse, Latino style.
“Is there a Catholic churchanywherein this place?” Chuito found himself asking Clay, because he couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at God or desperate for his help. “Anywhere?”
Clay frowned at him. “Why?”
“I’m Catholic.” Chuito gestured to himself, pointing to the cross tattoo over his heart that had the names of his brother and aunt branded in his skin along with the date they had been taken from him.
“You go to church?” Clay looked thunderstruck.
“Sometimes.” It was essentially a lie. Chuito hadn’t gone since the day they’d buried his brother and aunt. “I’m thinking of picking it back up. Don’t you go?”
Clay shook his head. “There’s one church in this town, and they fucking hate my ass.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I do,” Clay said. “They think we’re all heathens. Maybe we are. I wouldn’t know. We weren’t exactly friends before I started fighting professionally either.”
“Wow, no shit?” Chuito mumbled as he thought about it. “Do they hate the Conners too?”
“Fuck, yes, they hate the Conners.” Clay laughed at him. “They have been trying to get someone to run against Wyatt since he got elected. Who’s gonna take on Wyatt as sheriff? He’s the only name on the ballot. Most folks in this town know he’s a good sheriff. It’s just a small group of crazies who ain’t never approved of him because he used to be a fighter. Even the fools going to church every Sunday approve of him. It’s just Reverend Richards and his little pack of cronies who don’t like him.”
“What about Jules?”
“Jules?” Clay laughed. “Carries-a-gun, businesswoman, doesn’t-take-shit-from-any-man Jules. They hate her most of all, especially since the preacher’s daughter has been living over her office since she was eighteen.”
Chuito turned back to him at that, feeling his breath catch in his chest. “She’s a preacher’s daughter?”
“Alaine, yeah?” Clay frowned. “I guess y’all live next door to each other now. I didn’t think ’bout that.”
“She baked me cookies,” Chuito said with a smile. “They were good. Like, spice or something.”
He’d actually eaten them for dinner. The sugar seemed to help when he’d started to crash, and he was sort of mourning not having them anymore.
“Iwould notfuck with Alaine,” Clay warned him. “That girl is Jules’s prodigy. Jules even pays for her college. She will bury you for that shit.”
“Yeah, she communicated that.” Chuito dropped his head to his folded arms resting on his knees as he took a deep breath. “Why does she pay for her college?”
