Limyè Kase
The stadium lot still breathed hot, even with the night sitting on it—blacktop holding the day’s heat like a grudge. Grease-smell from the concession stand hung under the lights. Sirens far off. Somewhere a band drum kept time long after the game was dead.
Ramon leaned across the hood, flicking ash off nothing, like the habit didn’t need a cigarette. E.J. had his hands tucked into his sleeves, shoulders loose. Tyree kept bouncing his heel against the bumper, restless.
“Thirty-seven to three,” Ramon said, slow, tasting it. “Them boys bat the piss out y’all niggas.”
E.J. grinned. “That’s what happens when you got too many white boys on your team. Karr got straight niggas and y’all out here with Connor at receiver and Braxton at corner.”
Tyree sucked his teeth. “Man, I ain’t got nothing to do with them sorry ass niggas. I told y’all that.”
“Shit, you was out here repping,” E.J. shot back. “Brother Tyree ass nigga.”
Tyree laughed without humor, eyes on the doors where people were spilling out. “They ain’t me.”
Caine came out alone, head up, hoodie unzipped, that same quiet like he walked with his own weather. He moved through the crowd without touching it. When he reached them, he dapped Ramon, then E.J., then Tyree.
Ramon didn’t waste breath. “Need you to ride with us, lil’ brudda. Gotta pick something up in the East.”
Caine nodded once. “Alright. But we swing by my grandma’s first. I ain’t got that pole with me.”
Tyree whistled through his teeth. “Don’t y’all Hispanic folks always got food?”
Before they moved, a shadow cut across the lot—Jay, bag dangling from his hand, jaw set like a door you couldn’t open. His eyes slid toward Caine and stuck. Mean-mug, nothing said.
E.J. tilted his chin. “That ol’ boy we seen that one time?”
Caine didn’t even look away from Jay. “Yeah.”
Tyree and E.J. threw quick hands, signs flashed low on purpose. Jay paused mid-step, weight caught between pride and sense. His head dipped, then he kept walking, mouth tight.
Ramon watched him go, unreadable. “Let’s go.”
They split up—Ramon’s car first, Caine peeling the Buick out after. Streetlights smeared across the windshield. The city breathed damp and loud and broke in all the usual ways.
…
The kitchen was lit too bright, bleach and beans in the air, a TV murmuring from the next room. Ximena stood at the stove with a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton. Sara rinsed something in the sink, sleeves shoved up, hair tied off her face. Hector and Ada were at the table in that posture that meant conversation had stalled and suspicion had taken its seat.
Ramon, Tyree, and E.J. stepped in with respectful quiet—the kind of hush boys brought into other people’s houses when they weren’t sure if they were welcome.
Hector’s eyes narrowed first, that quick scan from shoes to smile to whatever couldn’t be seen. Ada’s mouth pinched. The room tightened a degree.
Ximena beat them to words, voice warm but with a spine. “¿Quieren comer? Hay arroz. Frijoles. Pollo.”
Sara echoed, English smooth but tired. “Fix y’all a plate. It’s hot.”
“Appreciate you,” E.J. said, already peeking toward the foil pans like gratitude had a smell.
Caine barely stopped moving. “I’m gonna be right back,” he told Sara without looking up. To Ximena: “Vengo ahora, abuelita.”
“Ajá,” she said, flicking her spoon. “No te tardes.”
Outside, the backyard air felt thicker, wood damp, somewhere a neighbor’s window unit rattling its metal teeth. The shed door stuck like always. Caine leaned a shoulder and it gave with a scrape. He ducked inside, dust swollen in the light from his phone.
His grandfather’s toolbox. He knew the weight of it before he touched it, knew the wrongness before the lid came up. Empty. Not empty-empty—an open box of condoms tossed like a joke at the bottom, cardboard soft from the heat.
His jaw pressed tight. He closed the lid gently. He jogged back toward the house, heartbeat steadying into anger.
In the kitchen, plates had appeared like the room had blinked: Ramon leaning against the counter eating with a fork he’d found. Tyree posted near the doorway with a drumstick. E.J. shaking hot sauce like a prayer. Sara watched them with that mother’s split-focus—counting forks, weighing danger. Ximena’s eyes tracked Caine before he spoke.
“Where Saul at?” Caine asked Hector.
Hector didn’t answer. He lifted his chin like he was weighing whether the question deserved space in his kitchen. Ada looked away first. It felt like a signal.
Caine took half a step closer. “Hector. ¿Dónde está Saul?”
The silence wasn’t empty. History sat on it. Hector picked up his glass and drank water like that was the point being made.
“Alright, you got it,” Caine said, voice flat. He turned to the trio and said quietly. “We gotta go find my cousin.”
Ramon set the fork down without clatter. E.J. took one more bite, already sliding his plate toward the sink. Tyree licked chicken grease off a knuckle like he was clocking the room on the way out.
“Thank you,” Ramon told Ximena, and meant it.
E.J. added, “Food was hittin’, ma’am.”
Tyree snagged a biscuit into a napkin with a boy’s shamelessness. “For the road,” he said, flashing a quick smile at Sara that almost made him look his age.
Ximena waved them off with the spoon. “Vayan con Dios.”
Hector’s eyes followed the guns he couldn’t see. Ada stood where she was, arms crossed so tight they squeaked.
They stepped back into the night. Caine didn’t wait. He pulled his phone and hit Saul’s number with his thumb already hard on the glass. He walked away from the porch light until the dark thinned the noise of the house.
The city hummed like it wanted to hear.
~~~
The call died with a flat little chirp in Saul’s ear. He stared at the screen a second too long—Caine on the display, nothing else—before tucking the phone inside his hoodie pocket. Night lay warm across Trent’s block, air heavy and still, the kind that made shirts stick to backs. The grass in Trent’s front yard was patchy, bald in places where boys had cut corners all summer. A porch light buzzed over the stoop, drawing a dumb cloud of gnats that blinked in and out of the cone of gold.
“Who was that?” Zoe asked without looking at him, her bare knee bouncing, anklet flashing when it caught the light. She had one elbow sunk into Trent’s beat-up patio chair and the other arm stretched across her stomach like she was pinning down a laugh she didn’t want to share.
“My cousin,” Saul said, keeping it flat. “He ain’t say nothing’. Just asked where I was.”
Zoe gave him a look that was more punctuation than sentence. Then she let it drop. Javi kept talking, voice quick and a little high, running back the details of that party last week—whose mom was out of town, who showed up with a case of cheap beer like it was an offering, who cried in the bathroom, who started the slow songs on a phone speaker that couldn’t hold the bass.
“Nah, bruh—dude tried to do a keg stand out a paint bucket,” Trent said, laughing so hard he slapped his own thigh. “Paint bucket. I ain’t never seen nothing’ so stupid.”
Mia leaned forward on the low cinderblock wall, chin in her palm, eyes shiny like the story played across the grass for her.
“You left before the cops rolled,” she told Zoe, smirking. “They did that lil’ slow walk up the driveway, flashlights all quiet like they in a movie. Everybody scattered and somebody left they shoe.”
“Which one?” Zoe asked.
“The left one,” Javi said. “Red. I kicked it under the porch.”
They were still laughing about that when headlights slid slow along the curb and washed the yard in white. Conversation hiccupped. Gravel popped under tires. A sedan idled at the gutter and clicked into park with the lazy confidence of somebody who didn’t need an invitation.
Pedro stepped out first, door sighing as if the car itself was tired of him. Two boys unfolded from the passenger side—one tall and stringy with a hoodie up despite the heat, the other blocky in the shoulders, jaw set like concrete. All three wore the same look, the one people practiced in bathroom mirrors: we’re not pressed. We’re never pressed.
“Relax,” Pedro said before anybody could stand. His smile didn’t reach anything but his teeth. “I ain’t come for drama. Just came to hang out with my homies.”
He lifted his chin at Trent like they’d always been cool, then cut through the yard in a straight line. The grass whispered against his sneakers. Saul felt the shape of the circle tighten without anybody moving.
Pedro didn’t stop at the edge of them. He slipped his body between Saul and Zoe like he was a zipper closing—hip pressing Saul off the cinderblock ledge they shared. Saul’s shoulder rolled to keep from touching him. The tall friend sat down on one side of Mia. The blocky one took the other, knees open, claiming space that wasn’t his with his legs alone.
“What y’all was gossipin’ about?” Pedro asked. “Heard it from the street? Or from the group chat? ’Cause I know y’all be on them phones.”
Trent sucked his teeth and looked past Pedro at nothing. Javi’s mouth twitched and then didn’t. Mia’s face went.
Saul’s fingers were already moving before he thought about it. Under the hoodie, cotton rough on his knuckles, he found the hard cold of the pistol where it sat against his stomach in the waistband. He didn’t pull. he just touched—metal shocking his skin through the heat of him. The yard narrowed. He could hear his own breath, too loud, and the hum of the porch light, and the way Zoe’s anklet made a tiny sound when she crossed her legs the other way. He told himself he wasn’t scared. He told himself he was just tired of feeling small in front of boys who liked to make other people feel smaller.
Pedro didn’t look at Saul’s hands, but his eyes cut sideways, mean and curious. “Tell me the tea, mamas,” he said to Mia without taking his attention off the boys. “What y’all sayin’ out here?”
Mia blinked once. “Fuck off.”
“Damn,” the tall friend said, smirking. “She spicy.”
Blocky Shoulders laughed, short and dry. His knee knocked Mia’s calf.
Javi shifted, elbows tight to his ribs. “We was just talking’ about last week,” he said, voice smaller than he liked it to be. “That’s all.”
“Last week?” Pedro rolled the words in his mouth like he was trying to taste blame. “What y’all was doing last week? Going to pilates and shit?”
Trent pulled in a breath and let it go slow. “Chill, man. You blowing the vibe.”
“I’m not,” Pedro said. He spread his hands. “Look at me. I’m chillin’. I told you. I came to hang out with my homies.”
“Then stop crowding’,” Zoe said, finally turning her body so she angled him with just her shoulder. She didn’t give him a full look.
He smiled again, bigger. “You miss me?”
Saul’s thumb slid along the gun, sweat slicking his grip even through the fabric. He could feel the edges—the rear sight little teeth, the flat plate of the slide, the dumb, dangerous promise of it.
His fingers tightened on the metal until the edges bit him. He could feel the shape of a decision coming up the street, headlights off, slow, the way trouble sometimes did: quiet first, then everything at once.
~~~
“They right there,” Caine said, chin cutting toward the yard.
Ramon eased the sedan up and nosed it broadside in front of a scratched-up compact at the curb. Brakes whispered. Streetlight glare slid along the hood like water. The night was humid enough to chew; you could taste the heat in your teeth.
Caine was out of the car before the engine finished ticking. “Saul, ven aqui,” he said without looking back, voice made of command, not volume.
In the grass, Trent, Javi, Mia, and Zoe sat tight around the low wall like they’d been holding their breath since the phone rang. Saul was on the edge, hoodie up, leg bouncing. When he saw Caine, his body did two things at once: relief in his shoulders, panic on his face.
Ramon, Tyree, and E.J. fanned wide, footsteps soft on the dead spots in the grass, taking the far side of the circle. Nobody rushed. Nobody smiled.
Pedro pushed off the wall slow, eyes spreading their usual oil-slick grin across the scene. His two boys rose with him, one on each side, like doors swinging open.
“Who your lil’ friend is?” Pedro said, head tipping at Caine as Saul stood.
“Mind your fucking business, nigga,” Tyree said, bored, like he was telling a TV to turn itself down.
Saul took one step. Pedro’s fingers snatched a fist of Saul’s hoodie, knuckles white in the porch light. The motion was small and sharp and all the air changed. Saul’s hand dove under the cotton and came back with steel pointed dead at Pedro’s chest.
Everything froze. Sound snapped to the edges: a bug skittering against the bulb, a distant car bassline, somebody’s breath hitching and holding. Saul’s arm shook. The barrel trembled like a stutter he couldn’t swallow.
“Stop fucking with me,” Saul said. His voice trembled but it was there. “Pará ya, cabrón. Te dije.”
Caine moved before the next heartbeat. Two strides. Wrist, gun, twist—clean, violent, practiced. He ripped the pistol free and shoved Saul with his shoulder as he turned, a hard, flat push that put Saul on his backside in the grass.
Pedro laughed—a short, ugly scrape of sound—until Caine turned all the way to him.
“You the one been beating on my cousin?” Caine asked, quiet.
“Cousin?” Pedro smirked, eyes sliding up and down Caine like a scanner. “Tú un mayate.”
Caine looked at the gun in his hand like it was a question and answered it by burying it in his waistband. He peeled his hoodie off in one smooth tug and let it drop behind him. Chest up. Hands loose. Chin tucked. He stepped into open space and set his feet.
“I want my one,” he said.
Pedro’s boys twitched like they were about to grow courage. Ramon’s answer was metal: a black shape out, slide racked, clean enough to make the night listen. “Sit y’all asses down,” he said without raising his voice.
They sat. It wasn’t a choice so much as gravity.
Across the grass, Trent’s mouth had gone thin. Javi stared through the ground. Mia’s hands were locked together. Zoe’s ankle had gone still. The yard had the silence of a church when somebody stood up to confess.
Pedro’s bravado leaked from his face like heat. He tried to wave the moment away, flicking his fingers. “Man, y’all not even worth it.”
“Either you fight my brother,” E.J. said, eyes flat, “or we jumpin’ you. Either way, you gon’ be fighting, lil’ bitch.”
Pedro looked at his friends and then at Tyree like the answer might be hiding in somebody else’s pockets. Tyree laughed loud enough to bounce off the siding. He flashed a sign loose and lazy. “Don’t look at me. It’s gang shit out here now. You was real tough before.”
Caine put his fists up—not high, not low, just right. “Hands,” he said to Pedro. “Put ’em up.”
Pedro stepped back instead. Ramon’s gun-hand did a small, irritated wave in the air, like he was shooing a fly. “Betta fight,” he said. “Before this turn into something’ else.”
Another step back. Pedro’s eyes cut to the car. “We out,” he said to his boys, trying to make it sound like a decision instead of a retreat.
“I know you ain’t runnin’ now,” Caine said. It wasn’t a shout. It was disbelief made into a blade.
Pedro turned his shoulder toward the compact like he could unspool the scene by walking away from it. E.J. reached him in three long steps and came over the top with a haymaker from behind—a full-hip swing that caught all jaw. The crack sounded like a bat. Pedro sprawled sideways, palms skidding in the dirt.
Tyree was there with a kick to the stomach, sharp and mean, folding Pedro around it. Ramon never took the barrel off Pedro’s friends; he walked forward with them and started stomping, heel coming down on ribs, shoulder, thigh—a rhythm without music.
“Stop—stop, man—m—mama,” Pedro gasped, curling smaller, forearms over his head, voice reaching for somebody who wasn’t there. Dirt streaked his cheek. Spit hung from his lip. The yard smelled like sweat and iron and cut grass that had given up on being green.
Caine let the hoodie fall back over his head, the cotton damp against his neck now. He didn’t look at the pile they’d made of Pedro. He watched the friends, watched their eyes, watched their hands hovering in the air like birds that didn’t know where to land.
Trent’s voice came from somewhere far away and close. “We going inside,” he said to nobody and everybody, the words breaking the spell.
Javi nodded like a puppet. Mia stood. Zoe took her elbow. They moved toward the door in a single motion that never turned its back on the scene.
Saul scrambled to follow them, panic shaking his steps. “Zoe—” he started, and then Caine’s voice cut him in half.
“Ven con nosotros,” Caine said, not loud, not soft. It wasn’t a request.
Saul stopped. He turned back toward Caine like a magnet changing directions, eyes wide, chest heaving.
Caine walked past Pedro without looking down and spit on him, a small, contemptuous flick that hit the dirt and cheek together. Pedro’s friends jumped out of his path like they’d been yanked on strings, the gun in Ramon’s hand keeping the line around them tight.
“Don’t fuck with these kids and make us come back out here to them,” Ramon said, already backing toward the street.
The night let go of its breath. Somewhere a dog barked and then thought better of it. Caine felt the weight of the pistol at his waist and the weight of Saul’s gaze and the weight of everything else. He kept moving.
~~~
The office AC wheezed like it had asthma, blowing air that wasn’t cool so much as less hot. Concrete dust lived in everything—keyboard, chair cushion, the crease where the desk met the wall—and the tang of diesel drifted in each time a truck clattered past the open bay. Mireya kept the heel of one hand pressed against a stack of delivery slips so the fan on the desk wouldn’t lift the top page and scatter the day.
Denise’s chair sat empty, one wheel squeaking every time the building trembled from a loader backing up. The copier had a strip of blue tape with OUT OF TONER scrawled across it. Nobody had changed it in a week. Jamie’s door down the hall was shut, lights off under the crack. It was the lull between runs—phones quiet for once, the yard outside singing its usual song: reverse beepers, someone shouting measurements, a radio tinny with bounce music.
She totaled a column, checked it again. Another column. If she could stay ahead, she wouldn’t have to stay late. If she didn’t stay late, she could get Camila before her mother started in with the “you’re always—” voice. She blinked hard and read the numbers one more time, the way she always did when sleep was a rumor.
Bootsteps dragged along the hall. She kept her eyes on the invoices.
“Where’s Jamie at?” Leo’s voice came before his body, flat and lazy.
Mireya flipped a slip and wrote PAID on the line. She didn’t look up.
Leo’s shadow slid across the desk. He leaned in close enough to read her handwriting, then he kept going, walking past toward Jamie’s office. His boots thudded down the hall, stopped, then thudded back when he found the door closed and the light dead.
“Where is he?” he asked again, stopping at her shoulder this time.
Mireya lifted one shoulder halfway. Shrug. She stapled a slip to its ticket and reached for the next.
He pulled a chair from the wall and turned it crooked, thigh to the desk, body angled toward her like he was framing her with his knees. He scooted until the armrests nearly nipped her ribs. The smell of outside came with him: sweat, oil, cheap cologne that tried too hard.
“You get your nails done,” he said. “White.” He let his eyes drop. “Your toes white too? Heard that means good pussy. I already know that, though.”
Mireya pressed the calculator keys with her thumb, numbers clicking in a staccato that didn’t care.
Her jaw clicked. She kept writing—date, load number, driver initials. The pen felt heavier.
“What you want,” she said finally, low. “So, you can say it and leave.”
He gave a short laugh. “Cold. I miss our rides. You need some extra money?”
“I’m good.”
“You’re good?” He shook his head. “You mad about that cut I took? You know what it is. Slow month. Everybody takes less. You want it back up? You know how.”
Mireya wrote TICKET #1142 – J. ROBLES in a tight, neat block. “Ask Denise,” she said. “She might need it.”
He snorted. “Denise? She probably hasn’t been fucked in so long it’s dusty.”
Mireya set the pen down, finally turned. She didn’t give him a smile. “Sounds like the perfect person for you to talk to about this then.”
He blinked, not expecting the blade to come out that fast. “You’re funny.”
“I’m working,” she said, eyes already back on the paper. “You stopping me.”
He didn’t move. The fan on the desk clicked against its own cage once, twice. Outside, a truck coughed and idled, a driver calling for somebody to come sign. Leo’s thigh sat warm at her elbow, heat radiating like a threat he hadn’t said yet.
He dipped his head to see her nails again, close enough that the ends of her hair brushed his forearm. “That white does look good,” he said, softer. “Bet it looks better wrapped around—”
“Enough,” she said without volume. The word lived in the air like a stop sign. She didn’t turn. “You asked about Jamie. He’s not here. You said what you wanted to say. Go.”
He sat there a moment longer, the chair creaking under his weight. She could feel the decision rolling around in him, whether to push or pivot. Outside, the reverse beeper sang its idiot song, be-beep, be-beep, and a gull screamed like laughter above the yard.
Leo raised an eyebrow. He let his gaze linger—nails, mouth, throat—like taking inventory. “You know where I’m at,” he said, standing. The chair legs scraped the tile, a long teeth-on-plate sound. “If you need something extra.”
Mireya stacked the slips, squared the corners, slid a binder clip on with a snick. “If Jamie comes back,” she said, “I’ll tell him you were looking’.”
He left it there. Boots down the hall, slower this time, like he wanted the sound to settle. The door banged the jamb, heat bled in around the frame. Mireya exhaled through her nose, made herself small for one breath, then let her shoulders climb back into place.
She lifted her hand and looked at the white polish. A cheap home job last night at the kitchen table, Camila’s little face close to the light, trying to blow them dry. Something about the clean, bright edges made her feel like she could pass for fine if the light was bad enough. She put her hand back on the paper and went back to the numbers. Truck outside. Slips inside. Keep moving.
The AC coughed again. The fan wobbled. She wrote DELIVERY CONFIRMED and underlined it twice. Outside, the city kept working its teeth.
~~~
The car ticked as it cooled, engine heat lifting into the wet night. Streetlights made the front walk shine like it’d been licked. E.J. leaned out first, hand to the back seat, and Saul slid across the cracked vinyl, hoodie strings swinging. Caine dapped each of the boys, felt the quiet between them.
“We’ll make the run tomorrow,” Ramon said, voice even, low.
Caine nodded once. “Bet.”
Ramon’s taillights washed the curb blood-red, then turned the corner and were gone. For a half-second the block felt empty except for the bugs punching the porch light and a dog two houses over worrying at the same bark.
Saul cut for the door with his head down, steps fast, key already out like he could undo the night by getting inside. He made it three boards up before Caine’s hand closed on the back of his hoodie and yanked him clean off his feet. Saul hit the dirt and leaf bits glued to his sweater. He skidded on one palm and flipped to his back, hands up without thinking.
“Lo siento,” he blurted, breath tearing thin. “My bad, my bad—”
Caine stood over him, shadow laid across Saul’s chest, the block’s slick heat in his lungs. “You wanna play gangster so bad,” he said, voice flat, “do it now.”
Saul tried to sit. Caine’s fist sunk into his stomach, a deep, dull thud that folded him. Air left Saul with a noise that wasn’t a word. He curled, eyes blown wide.
“I just—” Saul gagged, tried again. “I just wanted him to leave me alone.”
Caine pulled the pistol, the weight of it settling against his palm like an answer. “This shit probably got bodies on it,” he said, holding it up where Saul could see, not making a show out of it. He leveled his arm—not at Saul, but close enough that the sight line cut past his cheek and through him.
“You feel that shit?” Caine asked. “You feel what it’s like to have a gun pointed at your fucking head?”
Saul’s breath hiccuped. He stared at the barrel like it was a tunnel. “You don’t—” He shook his head once, as if he could clear it. “You don’t understand.”
Caine hit him twice more, quick and clean, knuckles glancing cheekbone and collar where hoodie met skin. “You could’ve fucked it up for everybody,” he said, words steady, not loud. “Because you scared to fight.”
The noise dragged the house awake. The screen door slapped; feet scuffed wood. Sara, then Hector, then Ximena with Ada two steps behind. They came to a stop all at once on the threshold when they saw the gun in Caine’s hand. The porch light cut everyone into hard edges.
“Caine, what are you doing?” Sara’s voice snapped like a switch. She didn’t move down the steps; her hands were open, palms bare to the air, as if she could slow a thing by showing it she had nothing.
“He was out there trying to be MS-13,” Caine said without looking up. The words fell like cinderblocks, matter-of-fact. “Pointing at people.”
“Dios mío,” Ximena whispered. She turned her head just enough to Ada: “Ve, por favor. Mira a los pequeños. Que no se despierten.” Ada nodded and vanished back into the house on soft feet.
Hector’s mouth had the tightness it got when his first thought was a curse and he swallowed it whole. He pointed—not at Saul, not at Caine, but at the gun. “That’s his,” he said, anger grinding through his teeth. “It’s Caine’s gun. Saul only has it ’cause he keeps it here. In this house.”
Caine’s jaw ticked. He kept the pistol off Saul, arm angled into the dirt. “I know what I’m doing with it. He don’t.”
“Yeah?” Hector’s voice climbed and then cracked itself flat with force. “Here? With children sleeping? ¡Coño!”
He stepped off the porch like the boards threw him. He came in hot and wrong, trying to hook an arm around Caine’s neck. He couldn’t get leverage with the height. It turned into a grip and a drag, forearm across Caine’s collarbone. Caine spun on instinct, shoulders sliding free, and his elbow popped back. The blow kissed Hector’s cheekbone hard enough to make him stagger sideways into the low hedge. Leaves shook and whispered.
“Hector!” Ximena caught his elbow. Sara took one half-step forward and stopped like she’d hit glass.
Hector pushed up on one hand, eyes watery with pain and shock, blood already flowed from his nose. Caine’s gun-hand lifted, a reflex like a flinch—up, then a held breath—then stopped. He froze in the exact moment it could have gone to hell and let it pass. The muzzle drifted back down until it pointed at dirt and dandelions again.
“Caine,” Ximena said, her voice thin with fear and iron. “Bájalo. Por favor.”
Caine’s eyes flicked to her—just once—and then back to Saul. Saul had scooted to the bottom step on his ass, hands limp in his lap, face helpless with shame and a kid’s stubborn spark.
“He been on me for weeks,” Saul said to no one, to everyone. “I just wanted—” His voice shrank to a rag. “I just wanted him to stop.”
“I told you to go and fight his ass but you’re too much of a pussy” Caine said. “You definitely too much of a pussy to pull out a gun on anyone.”
“Caine,” Sara tried again, softer. “Baby, look at me.”
He didn’t. The heat braided his anger and his breath into one rope. He slid the pistol back into his waistband like he didn’t want to touch it anymore.
“Enough,” Hector rasped, hand over the cheek already rising under the skin. He stood fully now, hair a little wild, dignity grabbed back with both hands. “This is it. Last straw. He can’t—he can’t stay here. Not with guns, not with—” He waved at the yard in a broken circle that meant Ramon and the rest of the world. “No más.”
“Bet,” he said, barely above the hum.
He turned toward the steps. Saul flinched like he expected another blow, but Caine only brushed past, shoulder catching Saul’s knee and making it rock. He took the porch in two strides and then didn’t go in. He stopped in the doorway as if the threshold itself burned, then pivoted and came back down. He moved for the Buick.
“Caine!” Sara’s voice cracked into a scream you only heard when the people you loved were walking out of your body. “Caine, come back here!”
He didn’t. The pistol was a weight at his waist and the night was another one. The Buick’s door moaned open.
Ximena’s whisper barely crossed the air: “Dios, ayúdanos.”
Caine slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door. The thunk ran up the wood of the porch and into their bones. The engine turned, caught, shook once like it wanted to cough, then settled.
Sara stood on the second step with her arms out from her sides like she might corral the night. “Caine,” she said one more time, but it was smaller now.
He put the Buick in gear. For a moment, the porch light painted the side of his face and you could see the boy under the man, the scars under the hard. Then the car rolled, and the light slipped off him, and the block took him back.
