by Jessie Cooke
His visitor was a woman…a beautiful one. I was jealous as soon as I saw her and I wanted to kick my own ass for feeling that way. She was everything that I wasn’t. She was tall and blonde and she looked like a runway model. “They didn’t hurt you? They didn’t put their hands on you?” Conan was asking her. He looked anxious and that peaked my curiosity.
“No, they didn’t touch me. They were actually very polite. They wanted to know where you were. I told them we broke up before you went to Mexico and I didn’t even know if you’d gotten a place yet.”
I heard him let a breath out and then he said, “Fuck,” and ran a hand through his hair. “Thank you for that. I’m so sorry Liz.”
She was giving him a hard look as she said, “I told you not to go there. I have no idea what you were thinking.”
“You do know. I told you many times before we finally decided to call it quits. I was thinking that I grew up a spoiled, privileged kid. Since I’ve been on my own I’ve had nothing but good things come my way. I wanted to make someone else’s life better. I wanted to try to offer some privilege to someone else for a change. I spent a year waiting for the opportunity. I wasn’t going to turn it down when it was offered to me.”
“You could have done that here, in this country, with our own people without ending up with your face bashed in and bad guys looking for you to finish the job.”
“You know I hate when you say that, Liz. I agree with you that American kids have a lot of needs…but the opportunity was to help these Mexican boys…”
“And look where that got you…and me now, apparently.”
“I’ll fix this, okay? I’ll make this right. Maybe you could go stay with your mother….”
“Or Jace,” she said in a bitchy tone. Once again I felt a surge of jealousy. I’d heard her say they broke up, but I still wanted to know that she belonged to someone else. It shouldn’t matter…no, it didn’t matter. But, it still made me happy. Judging from the scowl on Conan’s face, it didn’t do the same for him. The blonde went on to say, “They said to tell you that they’re coming for you and that there’s nowhere for you to hide. I’m scared to death for you, Conan. They said this man…Guzman…has a long reach.”
I sucked in a breath before I realized it and suddenly they were both looking at me. The look on the woman’s face at that moment told me all I needed to know about their relationship. “Who are you?” she said.
“Her name is Catalina,” Conan said before I could say anything. “She’s a friend of mine. I’m taking her to Nevada today.”
The woman made a face like she had something sour in her mouth. “Nevada? Don’t you have a fight in two days? The fight?” She was still looking at me like I was a piece of trash. I wanted to pull out a chunk of that bottle blonde hair.
“Yes, I’ll be back for it,” he said. I wondered if he really planned on taking me to Nevada…and then I realized it didn’t matter. As soon as he heard what I had to tell him, I would be like poison to him I was sure.
“Whatever,” she said with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. “Just be safe, Conan, okay?”
He smiled at her and I wanted to pull her hair out even more. “Always,” he said. She looked at me before leaning in and kissing his cheek. He walked her out and when she was gone he turned to me and said, “Now…why the reaction when you heard Guzman’s name?” I was hoping he’d missed that. Apparently not.
I shuddered. I didn’t know how to tell him. At last I said, “He’s my uncle and he’s looking for me too.”
7
Conan
Catalina was looking at me like she was afraid of me, so I smiled. She pulled her pretty brows together and said, “Guzman being my uncle amuses you.”
“No,” I said, chuckling, “I was just trying to put you at ease. You look like you’re afraid of me. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Catalina.”
“My uncle did this to you, right?”
I grinned and said, “No. He wouldn’t have come out on top in that fight. His goons did this to me with a metal pipe.”
“That’s what I meant. In my world, it’s the same thing. Uncle Arturo hasn’t gotten his hands dirty in twenty years. But he was the catalyst. Now, you find suddenly that you have a bargaining chip in your possession. Why shouldn’t I be afraid?”
“Sit down, Catalina…please.” She sat down, but she stayed about three feet away from me. I didn’t like frightening her. “I’m not your uncle, Catalina. I don’t think like that. I almost think it’s funny that the universe put the only Mexican refugee that was related to the only man on earth that wants to cut my head off, in my direct path.”
“Funny?”
“Well, not funny ‘haha.’ Funny weird.”
She nodded. “It is weird, I’ll give you that much.”
“Catalina, I was in Mexico because I wanted to do something to make the world a better place. I wanted to do something to give back some of what I’ve been handed in my lifetime. That’s the man I want to be…not the one that you’re suddenly afraid I am. The issues I have with your uncle have nothing to do with you. I’d never use any woman like that.”
“Why Mexico?” she asked.
I sighed. It was hard to explain. My mother and my trainer and my promoter all had a hard time with it. So did Liz, but that relationship was on its way down already. “It’s hard to explain, so bear with me, okay?” She nodded and I said, “We always had plenty of anything we needed…and then some. The only two bad things that have ever happened to me in my life were the death of my father and my sister becoming confused and taking off for the city, alone. My father died of an aneurysm. It was sad and we were devastated, but I came to terms with that by telling myself that although his life was too short, it was a good life. My sister went through some kind of hell in the city that she doesn’t want to tell me about…but she’s home and she’s safe. I had an epiphany one day. Maybe it wasn’t okay for me to continue to sit around thinking about what a good life I had. Maybe I needed to share some of the benefits of that good life with other people.”
“So you went to Mexico because you felt guilty about being rich?”
I laughed. “Yeah…I guess that’s a fair way to summarize it. Look, I know there are a lot of programs and things here in the U.S. that I could have volunteered for but, I had a fight in Brownsville one night. It wasn’t a real fight…it was an exhibition thing at the fair, but anyways, there was this little Mexican boy there. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. After the fight, he waited in this long ass line to get my autograph while his mom stood on the sidelines and juggled a couple more kids. When it was his turn he looked at me with big, dark eyes and he told me that he wanted to be a fighter when he grew up. I asked him why, thinking he would say the things that kids here always tell me…because they want to be big and strong or because they just want to hit somebody, but what he said stuck with me. He said it was because he wanted to fight all the bad guys that killed his Papa and made the rest of the family leave their home. I couldn’t get that kid or what he said out of my head. You know…we hear about everything that’s going on over there, the executions and the beheadings, the drug wars…but you can’t really sit here and live your good life and understand it. So I looked into programs and I finally found one I thought was good. It’s funded by this rich dude who used to be a fight promoter. He sends fighters or ex-fighters into Mexico to work with kids and train them how to fight. I thought it would be fun…” I laughed again. “I had some time off between fights and to my mother and my trainer’s chagrin, I decided to do it. It didn’t quite go as I planned.”
“You think?” she stood back up and began to pace. I watched her for a few seconds and then I said,
“Would you like to tell me why you’re running? Does he want to hurt you?”
“No,” she shook her head. “He wants to use me. To my uncle, women are only objects for men to use to achieve whatever their goals are. When my mother was eighteen, she esca
ped and came to the U.S. She lived here for a year. When he found her she was in love and pregnant. Her lover didn’t know yet that she was pregnant. My uncle told her if she told him, he would kill him. If she went back to Mexico willingly, he would let him live.”
“Your father?” She nodded.
“Yeah. He never even knew that I existed. When I was three, my mother married one of my uncle’s associates. This man oversaw a huge part of the Columbian drug trade. It was less of a marriage and more of a merger. He is a beast. For as long as I can remember I’ve watched him humiliate and belittle and physically hurt her.”
“Your uncle is okay with that?”
“Once the merger happened, Carlos was in charge of his household and his woman as far as my uncle was concerned.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No, not physically. Sometimes he wanted to, badly. He would take it out on my mother. I believe that he was never too sure how my uncle would take it if he laid a hand on me.”
“Wow…so you’ve never met your father?”
“Not yet. That’s where I’m going. He’s a politician in Nevada. I’m not sure how he’ll feel about his Mexican love child on his doorstep, but I guess we’ll find out.”
“Do you think your uncle will try to make you go back if he finds you?”
“There’s no ‘if’s’ about it. He’ll find me and he’ll take me back. Hopefully I can find my father first and establish my right to be here, and then I’ll have the government on my side.” She paused for a few seconds and then she said, “What did you do…to piss him off?”
“I was training this kid, Miguel. He was ten years old and at first he was really quiet and because of the language barrier we didn’t talk much…”
“He didn’t understand your fluent Spanglish?”
I laughed despite myself and said, “Do you want to hear the story or not.”
She giggled. “I’m sorry, please go on.”
Rolling my eyes at her I said, “Anyways, we got more comfortable with each other and he started telling me that his father worked for a really bad man. He said that his father didn’t want to work for the man, but he didn’t have a choice. I had yet to meet your uncle, so that was a hard concept for me to understand. He didn’t tell me the story all at once. It was over a couple of weeks that he opened up to me. He showed up at the gym one day looking scared out of his mind and with a shiner. It took some time but I finally got him to tell me what was going on. He was using the boy to take packages back and forth into a really bad neighborhood. He got jumped and beaten and the guys who beat him took the package…he claims he didn’t know what was in it. I might be naïve, but I’m inclined to believe him. He said when he got home and told his father that his father told him Guzman would be after them all and he had to go. I couldn’t believe it…a father telling his ten-year-old son he had to go…where the hell was he supposed to go? He said his mother cried, but she packed him a bag and gave him a blessing before sending him on his way. He didn’t know where to go, so he came to me.”
“Ay Dios Mio! You got involved.”
“Of course. I wasn’t going to let that kid be out there on his own. I went to see your uncle. I offered to pay him back for whatever the kid lost for his promise to leave Miguel alone. He laughed and told me that he knew of a way to make a lot more money. He told me to throw the stupid fight I’d agreed to take part in. I told him to go fuck himself. I took Miguel to a priest friend of mine who promised to look out for him and get him out of the city. When I got back to the gym, your uncle’s men were there. They told me that losing that fight was no longer my choice. I would do it or I would die. I agreed to do it.”
“Judging from the looks of your face, you lied.”
I grinned. “I’m usually a hell of a good-looking guy.”
She squinted and said, “I guess for a gringo you’re not bad.” I laughed and she smiled. Then sobering quickly, she said, “What are we going to do?”
I shrugged. “I’m up for a road trip to Nevada, what about you?”
8
Catalina
I wasn’t sure what to think about the gringo. I’d never met anyone that was willing to jeopardize their own safety to help someone else out…a virtual stranger. In the world I live in people would never even consider helping out a stranger if it meant going against my uncle. Most people…like the father who turned out his own son, wouldn’t even choose their own family over him because it would likely mean a slow and arduous death.
He’d given me a pair of jeans he said his sister left. I made him promise they didn’t belong to the blonde. Once I put them on I knew he was telling the truth. The blonde bimbo was at least six inches taller than me and the jeans ended nicely at my ankles. They looked a little stupid with my Converse tennis shoes and the Dallas Cowboys t-shirt he also found, but beggars can’t be choosers. I sat on the couch and watched him talking to his trainer on the phone. I could tell from Conan’s side of the conversation that the trainer was pissed about him going to Nevada. I’d already heard him talking to his mother and she didn’t sound too happy about it either. He didn’t get ruffled either time, but he stood his ground and calmly told them both that he was doing it and he would be back in time for his fight on Saturday. That was only five days away and he was supposed to be training hard apparently. It wasn’t just any fight. It was a title fight. Why the hell would he jeopardize that for the likes of me?
He put the phone down and grinned at me. He was so damned hot with his bruises and missing teeth that I wondered if I’d be able to stand it when he healed. I might just strip down and tackle him on the spot. “Are you ready?”
“Are you sure you want to do this? I mean…I can take a bus.”
“You’ll need I.D. to get a bus ticket. You have that?”
“No…”
“Okay then, let’s do it.”
“Conan…why are you doing this?”
He touched me then. He put his hand on my face and for a second my mind flashed back to the morning…making love in his bed and I shivered. “Because nobody should have to live in a place they don’t want to live in or feel like their very life is at stake because of how they choose to live their life. That’s why I helped Miguel and that’s why I want to help you.”
“It sounds like everyone is worried about your fight.”
He smiled again. “It will take us about eighteen hours to drive to Nevada. I’ll sleep for twelve after we get there and then I’ll hook up with the MMA club there and train for the next two days and take a flight back which only takes two hours. I’ll make it home in plenty of time for the fight. My trainer worries too much.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s not worried about the fight. She’s worried about me. She forgets that her little boy grew up to be six foot four and nearly three hundred pounds of solid muscle. She still looks at me and sees a skinny little boy.” I ran my eyes over his body and shuddered again. That was hard to imagine. He saw the way I looked at him and brought his mouth down to mine and kissed me hard. I melded into him and kissed him back. When he broke the kiss I was breathless and my panties were wet again. He pressed his forehead down into mine and said, “Besides, I like you. You’re fun.”
“You’ve had your fun, Gringo. Don’t count on getting any more of my sweet brown ass.” The words were tough. The fact that I was breathless and already turned on when I said it gave them no credence. He just laughed and said,
“Let’s go.”
When we got outside he threw his bag into the back of his truck. I heard his phone make a sound and he looked down at it. The look that crossed his face as he read what it said was a worried one, but he covered quickly and stuck it back down into his pocket.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him as we climbed into the truck.
He smiled. “Sure, everything’s fine.” The white boy was a terrible liar. I had to smile at that. Never in my life would I have imagined I’d be the slightest bit attracted to
not only a white boy, but one that said, please and thank you and ma’am and didn’t have the slightest clue how to lie worth a damn. I always pictured myself with one of those hot tough guys with the Mexican Militia. They weren’t bad seeds like my uncle and his crew, but they were bad ass. I’d never met a man like this one who could be so glaringly masculine and sweet and considerate at the same time. He was a walking oxymoron and I’d never been so turned on.
Seventeen hours later in a dirty pickup filled with snack food containers we crossed the state line into Nevada. I was excited to look for and meet my father, but I was sad that the trip was ending. We fought about radio stations and CD’s. We argued over food. I took every chance I found to make fun of the way he talked or his idealistic view of the world. I fell asleep with my head cocked at a strange angle on the seat and woke up with it comfortable in his lap…it was the most fun I’d ever had in my life and I didn’t want it to end. I sat up and saw that it was pitch black. There weren’t any street signs or lights.
“Where are we?”
“We just crossed the state line. We’re about forty miles from Vegas.”
I laid my head back down in his lap and when I did, I felt his cock shift in his pants. The devil on my shoulder was working overtime and without giving it too much thought, I reached for the button of his jeans. He looked down at me wide-eyed, but he didn’t make any moves to stop me. When I had them unbuttoned and unzipped, I reached my hand into his shorts and pulled his semi-hard cock out. He sucked in a hard breath as I gave it a couple of strokes. I could feel it growing in my hand as he drove. It was hot. I leaned down and slid my tongue along the tip. I could taste the evidence of his desire there and that just egged me on, not to mention the long, throaty groan he let out as my mouth descended onto it and I sucked it into my mouth.
