Page 33 of The Slayer
“You want to be a doctor. Stay. Doctors need to know this.” Marcos laughed as he worked on his crude drawing. “It’ll be educational.”
“Get out, Juan!” Chuito shouted at him. “Now!”
Marcos lifted his head and grinned at Juan. “I’ll show you later.”
Chuito shoved his cousin. “No.”
“Go.” Marcos waved Juan off, but Chuito could have sworn he saw him wink at Juan. “Do your homework. Go be smart.”
Sure enough, Juan left with a smile.
Chuito shoved Marcos again. “You better not fucking show him.”
Marcos rolled his eyes but went back to working on his drawing. “What the fuck do you think you’re protecting him from? He lives in the hood. He hears a lot worse than this every day. Besides, I was making out with chicas when I was eleven.”
“You’re a pervert.”
“True,” Marcos agreed. “But all muchachos are perverts. Except for you. Look at this picture, motherfucker. I’m going to teach you how to make any chica love you if you want them to or not.”
* * * *
“Chuito.”
He jerked when the hand touched his shoulder, and blinked into the semidarkness, expecting to be back in his old garage. Instead of his cousin’s light eyes, he found Alaine’s staring down at him.
Her soft hand was on his bare shoulder. Her unusual shade of light red hair, so pale it almost glinted pink in the moonlight, fell around him like a veil, and he stared at her as he fought his way back from his dream.
Chuito’s mind was still far away, making him feel fourteen again, insecure in his own skin, already too big, too mean for love, and haunted by the sins of a man he’d never met.
It was an odd memory to find its way into his dreams, except it wasn’t. It had been a long time since he’d fought the demons Alaine was churning up. These particular ones were the most terrifying, and Chuito had fought a lot of scary-ass demons in his time.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she whispered when he still lay there trying to wake up. “I was worried you were having another bad dream.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he let his gaze dip down to the V of her nightgown that exposed more of her tits than he should be seeing. Against his will, his dick started to get hard, and he rolled over, showing her his back. “Go back to your bed, mami.”
“We agreed I was going to sleep with you until you were feeling better.”
“I’m feeling better,” he lied as his hands started shaking and a fresh surge of cold sweat coated his body now that he was awake. This time he wasn’t sure if it was wholly the fault of the crash. “Go back to your bed.”
“I’m staying.” Her voice was firm, unbending in a way that didn’t seem to fit her gentle nature, but for some reason it did. “Do you want to tell me what your dream was about? I’m starting to think you need someone to talk to about all this.”
“Carajo,” he cursed and just pulled the covers over his head, hiding from her. He could be mean and tell her to get the fuck out, but the problem was he liked bossy women, and it wasn’t in him to discourage her. That would be like his cousin discouraging a woman from wearing a tight skirt when his entire life revolved around finding the next big ass. It wasn’t going to happen, but that didn’t change how loco the situation was. “This town is crazy.”
“You keep saying that,” she whispered into the darkness, sounding hurt. “Are you going to leave?”
He wanted to leave. He was in his self-imposed jail less than a week, and his resolve was already cracking. He wanted cocaine and pussy from the right kind of woman, because if the crash wasn’t leaving him desperate, Alaine certainly was.
He missed his friends.
His mother.
His cousin.
He missed Los Corredores, because while they were a gang of criminals, they werehisgang and his to protect, and he didn’t quite know what to do with having nothing else to fight for.
All he’d ever done was fight to protect what was his.
He needed to work out, but the gym was closed.
