by Roan Parrish
Rafe catches her upper arms and moves her behind him, nudging her toward the car.
“You.” Rafe stabs a finger at the guy, and I can tell the moment that he notices how huge Rafe is through the haze of intoxication. Rafe stalks up to him, radiating murderous fury.
“That girl is fifteen years old, you piece of shit,” he snarls. “You fucking touch her, that’s statutory rape. You know what they do to rapists in prison, you little prep school fuck?”
The guy is curled up in a ball in the face of Rafe’s fury. It looks like Rafe’s about to beat the crap out of him. Totally deserved, too. But he smiles instead and it’s chilling.
“The next time you see a pretty girl, I want you to remember me. Remember this moment and think about what happens when you mess with shit you shouldn’t.” He gets right in the guy’s face. “Got it?”
The guy nods convulsively, his hands up in a pathetic don’t-hit-me pose, desperate to get away from Rafe. Rafe spits at his feet and then comes back to the car, shaking his hands like he can dispel his anger that way instead of through a punch.
“These entitled white boys see you as a hot Mexican girl they can take something from,” he says to Cam. His voice is fierce. Poisonous. “Okay? You can’t trust them. I’m sorry.” She nods and buries her face in his chest. He puts her in the backseat and gets in with her. “This is my friend Colin.”
“Hi,” says Camille miserably. “I’m sorry, Uncle Rafe! I just didn’t know—”
He shushes her and pulls her against him as he gives me directions. The roads deteriorate as we get closer to Cam and Luz’s, the space between streetlights measured in blocks rather than feet.
In the rearview mirror, Rafe looks intensely relieved, his hand running absently through Cam’s long curls. I pull up where he tells me. It’s not a street I’d ever stop on in the middle of the night if I could help it, and I make a mental note to lock the car doors behind them.
“Come inside for a minute, okay?” Rafe says. “I don’t want you sitting out here by yourself.”
Yeah, that’s not humiliating in front of his niece or anything.
“Uh, I’ll be fine, man.”
Camille says something in Spanish under her breath, and Rafe gives her a warning look.
“Please,” he says, and he gives me that look. I roll my eyes because it’s a combination that basically makes me incapable of not doing whatever he says.
The building is run-down and smells like mold as we trek up the stairs to Cam and Luz’s third-floor apartment. Cam stops at the door, turning a pleading look on Rafe. She bats her eyelashes.
“Thank you so much, Uncle Rafe. You’re a lifesaver. Maybe I should just go in by myself, though. Mom’ll be tired when she gets home from work and she probably won’t want a lot of people around, you know?”
She smiles a brilliant smile. It’s a valiant effort and I can tell Rafe’s the tiniest bit amused by her antics. Before he has a chance to say anything, though, the door bursts open.
“Camille!” the woman who must be Luz yells, then claps a hand over her mouth, like she’s just now realizing how late it is. She looks terrified as she grabs Cam and hugs her roughly. Over Cam’s shoulder, she looks up at Rafe worshipfully.
She lets go of her daughter and hugs Rafe.
“Thank you,” she says over and over, wiping tears on Rafe’s shirt.
When she pulls back, she notices me for the first time.
“Hi,” she says, giving me a wobbly smile. Her voice is friendly, though, and she shakes my hand. “I’m Luz.”
She’s just gotten off work, she’s clearly been worried about her daughter, and it’s nearly four in the morning, but Luz is beautiful. She looks a lot like Rafe. She’s tall and has the same strong, clean cheekbones and chin, and the same charmingly crowded teeth.
“Colin,” I say, feeling awkward as hell.
Her expression changes and she looks at me more carefully. “Well, aren’t you handsome,” she says, and I’d think she was flirting with me if she didn’t turn to Rafe and wink at him. Rafe snorts and I feel my face heat up.
Rafe’s expression turns immediately serious, and he focuses back on Cam, who is currently trying to tiptoe through the open apartment door while the adults are all distracted with each other. She freezes when she feels Rafe’s eyes on her and tries a smile.
“We’re going to talk later, Camille,” Rafe says. “After you’ve told your mother what happened.” Cam opens her mouth, but Rafe glares at her and she snaps it shut. “You and I are going to have a conversation about drugs.” He steps so close to her that she has to tilt her head way back to see him. “In case you’ve forgotten,” Rafe says, his voice gentler now, almost vulnerable, “I ended up in prison because of them.”
Camille looks ashamed, but before she can say anything, Rafe leans down and kisses her on the cheek.
“Always call me,” he tells her fiercely and kisses the top of her head before he pushes her inside.
He lets out a sigh and turns to Luz.
“Rafe, I—”
Rafe holds up a hand to stop her. He leans down and kisses her on the cheek too. “I can’t right now, sis. I love you.”
And he takes my hand and leads me away.
As we’re driving back to my place, Rafe leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.
“Thanks,” he breathes. When he turns to look at me, his eyes are warm.
“Man. I thought you were going to beat the crap out of that guy. He was so fucking scared of you he was practically shitting himself.”
“Yeah, well.” After a few minutes of silence, Rafe says, “I can’t get in fights. It’s, um, it’s what I went to prison for.”
“Wait. I thought you went to prison for drugs.” I realize, though, that Rafe’s never told me the story of what happened exactly.
“Yeah, well, I got in a fight because I was high.” He sounds so tired. “Bar fight. Idiotic. I was there with guys from the neighborhood. We were drunk, messing around like idiots. I was high so I thought we were hilarious.”
Every time Rafe talks about drugs, it’s like he’s forcing himself to say that he used them. I wonder if that’s an NA thing.
“There was a guy there. He was hitting on some girl who wasn’t interested and he was being a total jackass about it. Showing off for his friends. Embarrassing her.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I threw the first punch. I don’t remember that much of the actual fight. But I… man, I hurt him really bad.”
Rafe runs both hands through his tangled hair. “He—I broke a bunch of ribs and one of them collapsed his lung. He had to get his spleen removed. Knocked out a few teeth. Broke his nose.” He’s reciting it like some horrible grocery list, his voice flat and choked, like he’s forcing the words out through sand. “Cracked his skull. Fuck.” His fists are clenched against his chest.
I pull up outside my house and turn off the car, turning to look at Rafe. He’s holding himself carefully, like he doesn’t trust himself not to bolt.
“Well, look,” I try, “he was acting the fool, got in a bar fight. You do that, you deserve what you get, right?”
When Rafe turns to me, he looks miserable. He shakes his head. “No. He didn’t deserve that. I was out of my mind, Colin. I was a fucking monster.”
I can tell he truly believes that. He’s pushed himself against the door, as far away from me as he can get. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be let off the hook.
“You served your time,” I say. “You quit using.”
For me, there’s nothing else to say. Rafe is the best man I’ve ever met, and finding out that he’s made mistakes… well, it doesn’t change that.
He pulls himself together and nods, but he doesn’t touch me as we walk inside.
“What was it like?” I ask, not sure he’ll answer. He hasn’t told me much about his time in prison. I know he doesn’t like to think about it.
He sighs, toes his shoes off, and sits down on the bed. “It was boring. And terr
ifying. Almost always one or the other. Boredom—having nothing to enjoy, feeling like there’s nothing to look forward to—it’s dangerous. Makes people do… things they wouldn’t, otherwise. Half the violence was just boredom, just blowing off steam.”
He’s looking at the floor as he talks and he trails off for a minute, watching as I get undressed.
“I was a kid,” he says. “Twenty-one. When the sentence got handed down and it actually sunk in that I was going to prison….” He shakes his head, eyes distant. “You have no idea how fucking terrified I was. I wanted to cry and hide at my mother’s apartment. I’m not kidding. I wasn’t rational. All I could think was that I had to run away somehow.”
It’s so unlike the Rafe I know that I can only imagine how scared he’d have had to be to consider leaving his family.
“And, of course, the idea that I might not be able to use whenever I wanted… that was almost as scary.” He sits on the side of the bed and wiggles his fingers at Shelby, who bats at them halfheartedly until Rafe picks her up and cuddles her. Then she takes a swipe at his hand and jumps off the bed. Rafe sucks on the scratches she raised.
“The first night I was there—shit, the first week—I didn’t sleep. I was so damn scared, Colin. Honestly, I only got clean because I was too scared to try and score in prison. You could do it, but I just wanted to keep my head down. Didn’t want to owe anyone any favors, step on anyone’s toes. Shit, I barely even talked to anyone. Anyway, it was…. You know, you just… you can get used to almost anything, if you have to.”
He sits up straighter and holds out a hand to me, pulling me so I’m standing between his knees. I put my hands on his shoulders.
“Listen,” he says, leaning his cheek into my arm and looking up at me, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But can we be done for now?”
“Yeah, course.”
He stands and strips for bed.
“But if you swore off fighting, then why did you help me that night? The night we met. I—I mean, I was out of it, but I saw you. You took those guys apart.”
Rafe steps close to me and leans in until his mouth is close to mine. “I couldn’t help myself,” he murmurs. “I saw you sitting at the bar earlier.” He kisses my throat and I lean into him. “You looked so nervous. Miserable. And—fuck, I don’t know what it was.” He kisses my shoulder. “But I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.” My heart starts to hammer, and I wrap my arms around his waist. “When I saw you were in trouble, I just—” He pulls me hard against his chest and holds me. “I just ran after you. Didn’t even think about it until it was all over.”
He runs his hands through my hair, then pushes me down onto the bed and crawls on top of me.
“I just knew I had to get to you.”
When I get to the YA parking lot, no one’s there. I find everyone in the basement. Rafe catches my eye immediately and he gives me an apologetic look. When I get closer, I can see he looks tired. Stressed. Mikal, Carlos, Mischa, and DeShawn are in a tight huddle, and everyone is talking at once. And what they’re huddled around is Anders. And he’s shaking.
Ricky’s standing off to the side, rocking back and forth as Dorothy tries to calm her down and keep an eye on Anders at the same time.
“I hate your dad!” Mikal yells, clenching his glitter-polished fingers into a fist and snarling. The others echo his sentiment, but Anders just keeps looking at the ground like he doesn’t know what to do with his friends’ anger. And when he does look up, it’s Rafe he looks to. Rafe, who’s standing still, whose shoulders are set tight, and who’s holding his hands behind his back like a bouncer.
Carlos is the first of the kids to see me. His “Hey, Winchester” is subdued. I’ve never seen him look so serious.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but I can tell Anders isn’t going to talk with everyone staring at him. “Hey, guys,” I say to the kids. “Let’s go outside and I’ll let you, um… hit our car with a tire iron?”
Rafe’s head jerks up and I shrug at him. Anders’ lip starts to tremble a little more, and I gesture the kids toward me. They’re reluctant, but I herd them out with promises that vehicular violence will help them get their aggression out. I know I guessed right when, at the door, I turn back and see Anders slowly dissolve into tears, shaking in Rafe’s arms the second his friends aren’t there to see.
Rafe’s swing of the tire iron is so powerful that he almost busts through the top of the trunk.
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
Mikal, Carlos, and Dorothy went to town with the tire iron before they dispersed, everyone agreeing they weren’t in the mood for a workshop, but they were timid and didn’t do much real damage. Mischa left right away. DeShawn just stood, bulging muscles tensed beneath his spotless white button-down, and watched the action, arms crossed like he was holding himself in check. Ricky watched out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t participate either.
Rafe thought I was kidding when I handed him the tire iron, but since he said he didn’t want to go to his boxing gym, I figured it’d help him get some aggression out. He seems almost surprised at his own power and looks at me nervously.
“Go for it,” I say. Not like we need to open the trunk for anything.
He looks around to check that no one’s going to see, then proceeds to beat in the trunk of the car until it’s totally concave. He’s breathing heavily, but he doesn’t look quite as tense as he did. He clears his throat and hands me back the tire iron, staring at the damage he just inflicted.
“Hey, now it’s an El Camino,” I tell him, tossing the tire iron in the backseat since I definitely can’t get it back in the trunk.
“You want to run?” Rafe asks, drifting close to me but not touching.
“Yeah. By my house?”
Rafe nods. I keep offering, but Rafe never wants to run by his apartment and never wants to hang out there. I get the feeling he doesn’t spend much time there, period. He’s started leaving running clothes at my house.
He walks to my car with me and sinks into the passenger seat, keeping his eyes closed as I drive.
“Is he okay?” I ask. “What’s up?”
Rafe sighs deeply. “No. Not really.” He rubs his eyes. “His dad found out he’s been coming to YA and he’s furious. The kids need parental permission since they’re minors and Anders didn’t have it, so he can’t be here. He started coming with Mikal, and it was right after Javi died. With everything that was going on, I… I must’ve forgotten to check. Fuck, I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“So, what, you just kick him out?”
Rafe glares. “I don’t have a choice!”
“But would his dad even have to know?”
“That’s not how it works, Colin. YA serves a lot of other youth. We can’t risk it.”
“But what if—”
“Look.” His voice is tight with anger. He’s definitely done with this conversation. “It sucks. I know it does. But that’s just how it is.”
“I guess it’s just one more year,” I offer.
“What?”
“One more year. Until Anders can move out and then his dad won’t have control over him anymore.”
Rafe looks at me sharply. “Fathers can have control over you at any age, don’t you think?”
Rafe runs until he nearly exhausts himself, keeping up with me for the first five miles and then only dropping back a few blocks. Even though it’s a chilly day, we’re both soaked with sweat by the time we collapse on my porch.
“Goddamn, you’re fast,” Rafe mutters, like he always does. He turns to me and his gaze is intense, his cheeks flushed. “Take a shower with me?” he asks, running a hand through my sweaty hair. We’ve never done that.
I nod and Rafe pulls me up, our legs shaky.
Rafe’s presence makes my small bathroom feel even smaller as we peel off our sweaty clothes. Rafe steps under the hot water and reaches for me, finally relaxing a little when he pulls me against him. I don’t know if I’
ll ever get used to this—the feel of him against me, around me. It’s overwhelming and I shut my eyes against the overstimulation and concentrate on the water.
Rafe’s hands are gentle, but I can practically feel the energy vibrating off him, and when I look up at him, he’s looking right at me. I smile, self-conscious, but Rafe uses his thumb like an eraser to scrub the smile away and kisses me as the water pounds down around us. After a minute, though, he just holds me to him, arms tight around me, clearly still upset.
Rafe sighs and washes his hair with the bar of soap. I really should get some shampoo for him.
He strokes a soapy hand up and down my spine, but his hand lingers on my lower back and I tense automatically, realizing that he’s probably seeing my tattoo in the light for the first time. Not an accident on my part.
“Can I look?”
He says it like it’s nothing, but I’m so immediately furious it makes my head spin.
Rafe kneels down behind me. He holds my hip and traces a finger over the tattoo, and I struggle to hold still.
“Have to say, you don’t really seem the butterfly type,” he says.
I spin away, my temples pulsing. I hate the fucking thing. I’ve hated it for years. I was drunk when I had it done—hell, they should never have let me get tattooed, but it was a piece of shit hole in the wall and they didn’t give a crap that I’d stumbled in off the street reeking of liquor and clearly angry and upset.
“Fuck off,” I say.
“Hey.” Rafe’s tone is sharp. “What’s the problem?”
Shit. It’s not even him I’m pissed at. It’s Daniel, who called the other day and made it clear he knew about the tattoo. It’s Ginger, Daniel’s big-mouthed friend. I went to her to try and have it covered up and she clearly told him all about it. Shouldn’t there be some kind of client confidentiality or something? I only went to her because she was the only female tattoo artist I knew of and I sure as hell wasn’t going to show some dude that I had a butterfly tattoo. Fuck her. And I’d gone because I didn’t really want Rafe to see it. It had never come up before.