Us (10 page)

"What? They don't circle around me." Did they?

J laughed. "They fucking circle. At first I thought it was more like you were a piece a meat and they were the vultures flying around, ready at any moment to swoop in and take a bite of you." J laughed and I punched him in the stomach. It did nothing but make him laugh harder, and remind me of the rock ha
rd eight pack he was hiding under his T-shirt. "Calm down, sweetheart. I quickly realized it wasn't like that. No, those guys need you, or that's what it seems like."

"Why would they need me?" I didn't do anything for them. More often than not, they were doing things for me—buying me beer, helping me change a tire on my car, going with me to get some weed, or just being my party partner for the evening.

"Your words."

I looked at J like he was crazy.

"What do you say to them?" he asked.

"Fuck, I don't know. We just shoot the shit."

"Do you tell them they're good people?"

I thought back over the many times I'd given each cook a
little pep talk in the middle of a Friday night dinner rush in the kitchen. I'd go over to them, reassure them they were doing OK, remind them it would be over eventually, and give them a pat on the back before returning to my station. I remembered...

"Fuck. I told Jesse his balls were just fine."

"Exactly." J's crooked smile had become a full on grin. "You can't help it. In your own way, you're a mom. You care about people, and they see it. They see your light. It's subconscious. Gramps would say it happens in the spirit world and leaks over to this one. He claimed most subconscious things were like that. Shit, in the spirit world, Gramps would probably see you like a lighthouse, drawing the weary sailors home. That's how bright your light shines."

"I was all good up until the weary sailors part. Then you got a 'lil poetic on me there. I didn't know you had it in you," I teased.

"Baby, I'd recite sonnets if you asked me to. I want your light just as much as them damn sailors."

"My light is all yours, dear."

I reached my arms around J's neck and pulled him down to me. I was feeling a little tipsy off the forty, and deepened the kiss between us. Pulling his lip into my mouth, I sucked on it like it was the only food I'd had in days. I wanted to chew on these lips until the end of my days on this earth.

Maki
ng out with J in a public park in Mexico, the sounds of the waterfall playing like a symphony of nature in the background, I wondered for the millionth time,
how did I get here
? Yeah, our situation was fucked up. No doubt about that. But I had this amazing man, a kid I was denying weed, and a fucking ring on my finger.

What the fuck?!

Despite the drama we'd endured the past week, I loved J, and I loved the idea of spending my life with him. He knew how to handle me, and there weren't many men I'd be comfortable saying that about. Most men "handling" me would've been a bad thing, something I'd fight. With J, it meant he knew when to hold, fold, and walk away, though I hoped he chose to hold, and never fold or walk away from me. We'd been apart for months, back together for barely two weeks, and I knew there was no way I could imagine a life without him. I just hoped we could have a life without bullets. It seemed like such an odd request, but this was our life right now. If I wanted to be with him, I'd have to wade through this swamp of bullets, MCs, and drug cartels. The knowledge that J was doing this so he could live a straight life was the only thing keeping me from running back to Missouri and hiding under my covers for a few years.

"Did you see that?" J perked up, dislodging me from the crook of his side that I'd melted into.

"What?" The tone of his voice had all thoughts of backyard cookouts and morning sex shoved to the back of my mind.

"An Escalade just rolled th
rough."

"Fuck." We hadn't seen any Escalades in
Ojo de Agua
Park. This seemed like a place people with Escalades wouldn't be frequenting. I'm sure they had fancier places to hang out.

"Hey, what's up?" Fernie came walking over, eyes red as the devil's fire, and acting like he didn't have a care in the world, which I guess he didn't for the moment.

J stood up off the bench, pulling Fernie out of the dirt road and behind him. I stood up and automatically stepped behind him with Fernie.

"You see an Escalade roll through here?" I asked my incredibly baked teenage
cub with a mental palm to my forehead.

"Huh?" Of course he hadn't seen anything. Damn. He really needed to
realize that shit wasn't gravy. I felt like it was my fault for not schooling him better. Maybe instead of lecturing him, I should've given him a lesson, or at the very least reminded him yet again why J and I were in Sabinas in the first place.

"Just stay close for second," I told him.

"Why? What's going on?"

Fernie had barely finished his sentence when I saw the Escalade coming back up the path making a second lap. I grabbed Fernie by the arm and pulled him behind
J. We were now standing in a diagonal line that started with J and ended with me, Fernie nestled between us. I squinted my eyes to see the Escalade in the distance. They were driving at a snail's speed, but I saw movement in the SUV. I followed the vehicle with my eyes as it started to speed up the closer it came. They were almost upon us when I realized what was going on.

"Get down
!" I screamed and shoved Fernie backwards into the trees behind us. Grabbing my backpack, I threw my body on his just as the sound of shot guns being cocked echoed through the park. J yelled something, but his voice was drowned out by the din of shots ringing though the air. He dove into the trees and on top of me. We were a three pile mash up.

The Escalade sped past once it was done firing. We didn't wait for it to be out of sight before J was pulling Fernie and me off the ground.

"Run!" He grabbed my hand and led me through the trees.

"Come on, Fernie. Move!"

I turned to see him running behind us.

Fuck!

Twigs and bushes that dotted between the trees scraped at my legs. I felt a branch drag across my arm, but ignored any pain that I might've felt. Instead, I ran like my life depended on it, because in that moment it did.

We came out of the mass of trees into the creek J and I had seen earlier.

"Come on. This runs the length of the road, so stay low." Fernie and I crouched as we ran, following J's orders. My Nikes became soaked with creek water, but again, I ignored it, favoring my life over my Jordans.

We came around to the other side of the mountain and continued following the path the creek flowed through. I thought we'd lost the Escalade since the road
that was one hundred feet from us was vacant of cars. After what felt like hours, though was more like fifteen minutes, J spotted a cropping of rocks jutting out from the mountain side. He ushered us behind it. The three of us huddled behind its cover, breathing heavily and sweating from running and the terror of the situation.

"Shit. Are you OK, Fernie?"

"Yeah. What was that?" He was a muddy mess, we all were. I pulled a T-shirt out of my backpack and dipped it in the crystal clear water of the stream. If my heart weren't pounding a mile a minute, if we hadn't barely missed getting shot, if we still weren't in the clear, I might've been inclined to argue the creek versus drainage ditch comment with J. As it was, all I could focus on was wetting the T-shirt, and the blood running down J's arm.

"Baby, what happened? Are you OK?" I grabbed his arm to
see a bullet had grazed his outer bicep. "Fuck!" I wrung the T-shirt out and held it to his arm. "They got you?"

"Just a little. It's nothing," he said grabbing the shirt and holding it to his arm. His voice was all business, like he'd slipped into a trance. "We need to get out of here. Shit! Get down!"

We all ducked behind the rocks as the Escalade slow rolled down the road.

"Fuck," I whispered. "Who the fuck is that? Burns again?"

"I don't know, but we gotta get out of here. Fernie, what's the quickest and least obvious way to get back to town?"

Fernie looked around to gather his bearings. "This is the only road that leads into town. You can follow this little river all the way to the edge of town. It's two miles. It gets farther away from the road as you go. Then you gotta walk another mile to get to Abuelita's, but we can't walk through town like this." He motioned to our wet and muddy states.

"Shit." J grabbed his shoulder and paced a circle behind the rocks. "Baby, I gotta make a call. Fernie's right. We can't go back to town like this. Beto or Jorge are gonna have to come and get us. What do you want to do with the boy?"

My eyes grew large. We couldn't leave Fernie here, but we also couldn't chance leaving him alone at Abuelita's. Fuck! This was exactly why I didn't want Fernie messed up in this shit. I was
trouble for him, doing nothing but bringing drama his way. I turned to face him.

"We can't go back to Abuelita's. YOU can't go back. It's not safe for you now, and I sure as hell ain't bringing that shit to your grandmother's doorstep. Fuck!" I shoved my hands in my wet hair and pulled harder than usual.

I wasn't too keen on the idea of crossing Fernie over the border, but it was time for J and me to go. It was no longer safe for us in Mexico. Two attempts on our life—my life—was two too many. I didn't want to send Fernie home to Abuelita, but I wasn't sure where to put him.

"Call the Zetas and see if they can get us home, and ask them what would be safest for Fernie."

J turned and pulled out his burner phone. I turned back to Fernie.

"What do you want to do?" Maybe he
had ideas.

He shrugged.

Apparently, he didn't have any. Of course.

"I'm
serious, Fernie. J and I have to go back. Shit's getting more and more dangerous for us here. Someone is after us, and I believe it's someone from J's club back home. We can't go back to your grandma's, and I don't think it's safe for you either. Maybe you can hide out here somewhere, or we can try and get you across the border. What do you want?"

He didn't hesitate. "I want to go back to Genesis."

Fuck.

"Think with your head, not your dick for a minute. What is going to be safest for you? I don't even know how we'd cross the border with you. Would it be more dangerous for you to cross, or stay here?"

Fernie contemplated for a moment.

"Damn, Elle. Both options are dangerous. At least if I cross, I can see Genesis and my family again. Don't make fun of me, but I miss my mom."

My heart broke a little bit with his words. Sure, he loved Genesis, but I knew it could be teenage love, the kind that can be fleeting. His mom, now that was a different story. I forgot he hadn't seen his mother in weeks.

"Jorge says w
e can stay in the
quinta
we were in, or he can get a fake passport for Fernie and we can go home. What'll it be?" J looked at us, the concern etched all over my face.

"Gimme
one minute, OK?" he said into the phone. "Baby." J wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into the folds of his body. I wanted to curl up in him and never let go. This was one of the most challenging situations of my life, one I never imagined having to deal with.

"Sweetheart we'll do whatever you want. Just say the word."

"I don't know. Taking Fernie across the border is heavy shit." I leaned into his shirt and wiped my eyes, unsure why I was so emotional. "I mean, I want him to see his mom, but it's another level of illegal from slangin' a few sacks of weed. What do you think?"

"The boy wants to go back to the States?"

I nodded.

"He wants to see his mom?"

I nodded again.

J brought the phone back up to his ear.
"Yeah, we'll take the passport. Can you come get us and we'll make a plan at the
quinta
?" J was silent while Jorge spoke on the other end of the line. "Yep. No problem."

Turning to Fernie, J passed the phone. "Can you describe to him where we are?"

Fernie took the phone and began rambling off what I assume were directions to our current location behind the rocks. My heart sunk in my chest. I kept running over in my head how this could have been avoided.

No doubt, the guys in the SUV had been watching us, and I was glad they'd come here, to the
Ojo de Agua
Park, instead of to Abuelita's. Yet, I couldn't stop blaming myself for dragging Fernie into this mess in the first place. The weight of his future, the immediate and distant future, felt like boulders in my gut.

"They'll be here in ten minutes." Fernie passed the phone back to J who slipped
it into his pocket.

One minute we're fucking against a tree, the sound of a waterfall creating the
soundtrack to our love. The next minute we're being shot at and waiting for a drug cartel to pick us up.

How
in the hell did we get here?