American Sun
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16793
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
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Captain Canada
- Posts: 7818
- Joined: 01 Dec 2018, 00:15
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16793
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
Maybe if he'd do that, he'd win more football games.Captain Canada wrote: ↑Yesterday, 16:34Ain't my fault Zane ignores his issues while Caine decides to stick his dick in his
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Caesar
Topic author - Chise GOAT
- Posts: 16793
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
American Sun
Suck My Dick
Sara came into the kitchen barefoot on the tile, the sleeves of her sweater pushed up past her elbows. Caine stood at the island with a cutting board pulled up against the edge of the quartz, a knife in his hand, the package of chorizo split open on the paper beside him. Sweats loose at his hips, a long-sleeved thermal pushed up his forearms. The skillet on the burner behind him held two eggs, the whites already turning opaque at the edges, the yolks trembling with the heat rising through the pan. The smell of butter cut through the air, warm and close, layered with the pork fat coming up from the paper beside the board.
She crossed the tile to him. Her palm found the space between his shoulder blades and settled through the fabric of his shirt. “¿Cómo te sientes hoy, mijo?”
Caine worked the blade through the chorizo in short even passes, the meat folding away from the edge in thick red coins. He shrugged. “Just another thing I gotta do because people want me to keep apologizing for the same shit.”
Sara looked at the side of his face, at his jaw working slow, and slid her hand down to the small of his back. “That’s part of being a man, part of being a father, a good one.” Her palm pressed flat against him. “Remember that your showing your daughters that even in these kinds of situations, when you’re facing problems, it’s better to face it then run away.”
The knife came down through the last of the chorizo. Caine set it flat against the board and gathered the pieces with the side of the blade, sweeping them into a pile at the edge of the wood. He tipped the board over the skillet and slid the chorizo in with the eggs. The grease jumped when the meat hit the pan and settled into a steady pop under the heat. The smell shifted, chili and pork fat cutting through the butter, the color of the pan changing where the fat bled out and pooled against the whites. “Como mi padre, ¿no?”
Sara’s hand tightened once at his back. “No te pareces en nada a él. He was a coward. He is a coward, wherever he is.”
Caine reached for the spatula and worked the eggs and the chorizo together in the pan, cutting through them and folding them back on themselves. He watched the pan for a stretch without saying anything, the spatula scraping the bottom of the skillet, the sound small and metallic under the hum of the refrigerator behind them.
“All I ever wanted was for Camila and Micaela to not have to be ashamed of our name, mamá. To not have to be weighed down by the shit I did. Like I had to be weighed down by the shit he ain’t do.”
Sara let out a breath through her nose. “Anyone who would punish your children for the things you did, would’ve done it whether you were a drug dealer or a homeless man begging for change on the corner or a doctor. That’s why you need to keep doing great things, mijo. So, that when they’re older, they’ll know that the man they know as their father isn’t just his worst day.”
Caine pulled the pan off the burner and killed the flame under it. He reached for the stack of tortillas on the counter and peeled the top one off, laying it flat on the quartz beside the stove. He slid the spatula under the eggs and chorizo, working the mixture off the surface of the pan in one lift, and spooned it down the center of the tortilla in a long line. He scraped the pan clean along the edge and set it back on the cold burner.
“Mireya said that I’m teaching Camila that whenever I’m in New Orleans, it’s some bad shit going on.”
Sara’s hand came off his back. She raised it and worked her fingers into his locs, easing them through the strands, her palm following the length down along his shoulders and stopping between his shoulder blades. “You are. She’s smart, perceptive. Able to read things on faces that five year olds probably shouldn’t be able to.”
Caine folded the tortilla over the eggs and lifted it in his palm. The bottom was already dark where the grease had soaked through, warm against his skin. “This summer, I want to go to Honduras. Me, you, everyone. I want Camila to see things I never dreamed of.”
A smile pulled at the corner of Sara’s mouth. “I would like that. I haven’t been since I was a kid. It would be good for Camila to see her roots.”
Caine nodded. “Yeah, good for me, too.”
Sara’s hand dropped to the counter, her fingers spreading against the quartz. “You need to take her to Mexico, too. Para Mireya.”
Caine lifted the tortilla and took a bite. He chewed once, twice. “I got plenty money. Might have to make it an every year thing, though, so Mica can do it and remember it.”
“Primero, vamos a superar este día.”
Caine swallowed. He looked over at her, the tortilla still in his hand, the grease dark on his fingers. “Gracias, mamá.”
Quentin sat at his desk with a spiral notebook open in front of him, the pen in his hand tapping once against the paper before he set it in the crease. The blinds behind him were pulled halfway up. Light came through in flat strips across the hardwood, the room still cool past the reach of the heat. On the desk beside the notebook a paperback lay face down with a Post-it clipped to the spine, and beyond that his laptop sat open on the standards page for the unit, the cursor blinking in the field where he had left off the night before. He wrote a line at the top of a fresh page, drew a small dash after Monday, and moved down the page one line at a time.
The door opened behind him. Ashley’s socks crossed the hardwood and stopped a few feet from his chair. “Bae, have you seen where I left my keys?”
Quentin kept his eyes on the notebook. He drew a second dash under Monday’s line. “If you’d put your keys on those hooks you had me put up by the door, you’d know where your keys were.”
Ashley sucked her teeth. “I didn’t ask you all of that. Have you seen them?”
Quentin’s pen moved across the page. He drew a small arrow to a note in the margin about the reading he wanted to open the week on and let the smile sit at the corner of his mouth without turning his head. “They’re where you always leave them. On the back of the sofa.”
Ashley let out a breath through her nose. “Sounds like you’re not doing your job as a husband to move those to where I think I should be putting them so I don’t lose my mind looking for them.”
Quentin shook his head and looked up. “Or I’m teaching you to stop leaving them in random places so you don’t have to look for them everytime you leave the house.”
A smile fought its way onto Ashley’s face despite her best attempts. “You lucky I love you or I’d be batting the piss out of you right now.”
Quentin laughed. He set the pen down beside the notebook and rolled his chair a quarter turn, then back. “I have an interview scheduled with the Times-Pic tomorrow.”
“I’m going to assume you don’t mean for a job.”
“I reached out to that reporter who wrote that article about Caine—”
“About Caine and about 40 other men.”
Quentin’s mouth tightened for a beat and eased. “The article was about Caine.”
Ashley held a hand up. “Alright, go on.”
Quentin turned the pen between his fingers. His eyes went to the paperback on the desk for a beat and came back to her. “I called her and told her that I was the one who’s car it was that Caine supposedly tried to steal.”
“He very much so tried to steal your car.”
Quentin laughed, a short push of breath through his nose. “As true as that is, I want to put out there that I’ve forgiven Caine and even helped him get to where he is in life. If I can do, the public has no right to assume he’s a threat to them.”
Ashley walked over to him and she settled onto the edge of the desk beside his elbow, her hip pressing against the wood, one leg swinging loose over the drawer. Her hand came to rest on the back of his chair. “You don’t have to keep trying to save everyone for years to come, Quentin. If that boy goes to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you don’t think they’re going to bring this up again?”
“You know my stance on this.”
Ashley tilted her head. “I know, but sometimes, you just have to sit it out.”
Quentin held her eyes for a beat. “What does it say to the boys I’m trying to help today if I turn my back on one I helped years ago?”
Ashley sighed, her hand dropping to her thigh. “You’re right. You are. I just don’t want you to burn yourself out with all of this.”
Quentin’s mouth pulled at one corner. “I’m a high school teacher in New Orleans. Burned out is just our normal state.”
Ashley shook her head. She pushed up from the desk, her weight coming back onto her feet, and turned toward the door. She spoke over her shoulder. “Figure out what you want for dinner by the time we get back.”
Quentin smiled to himself. He watched her cross the room, her ponytail swinging against the back of her t-shirt, and pull the door mostly shut behind her. Then he picked up the pen and went back to Tuesday.
Mireya’s feet hit the belt in a hard even rhythm, her arms pumping at her sides, the bass in her earbuds pushed high enough that it swallowed the room. The gym spread out around her in rows of machines and mirrors, the overhead lights flat and white across the rubber matting, a few bodies moving between stations in the reflection along the far wall. Two women worked the ellipticals along the near wall, their strides even, their ponytails swinging in time. A man in a compression shirt sat at the cable machine across the floor, his elbows locked, the plates rising and falling in the stack behind him. Her ponytail swung with each stride. The tank top ran dark down the center of her chest and along the low arc of her ribs, the fabric soaked through where she had been pushing herself hard for the last twenty minutes.
She looked down at the console between the speed display and the timer. The distance meter clicked over two miles. Then she reached forward and pressed the speed pad down. The belt slowed under her feet, the run pulling back to a jog and then to a walk, her breathing lengthening through her nose. Her heart rate eased in her chest. She held the pace and let her stride settle.
Her phone sat on the console beside the speed pad, the case dark against the light plastic. The screen lit and a banner pulled across the top of it, Elena’s name in bold, the first line of the message unspooling under it in gray text. Mireya’s eyes cut to it and she sucked her teeth. Her thumb reached out and swept across the notification, the banner sliding up and gone before the second line loaded. She turned the volume on her earbuds up a click and kept walking, her eyes going back to the mirror on the far wall, her stride steady.
Movement registered to her right. A body stepped onto the treadmill beside hers, tall, a t-shirt loose off the shoulders, a towel already draped over the sidebar, a water bottle standing in the cup holder. Mireya glanced over. He was dark-haired, maybe her age or a year older, a small chain at his neck. He caught her eye and smiled and reached for his own console. He tapped the pad, the belt caught under his feet, and he settled into a jog. Mireya nodded once and looked back forward, her eyes finding the mirror on the far wall again.
The minutes ran together on the console, the timer climbing and the distance ticking up in small increments, her breathing settled and slow in her chest. The music in her ears rolled forward through the queue, one track sliding into the next. The man’s belt kept its rhythm to her right, his stride even, his breathing measured. Then he reached over and tapped her shoulder.
Mireya turned her head. She raised her eyebrow and pulled one earbud out, letting it dangle against her collarbone by the wire. The sound of the gym came back into her right ear, thinner than the music, the belts, the plates, and the low hum of the ventilation running underneath. “Yeah?”
His breathing came through his mouth, the exhale timing to the beat of his belt. “I’ve been seeing you around in here and I just wanted to let you know you looking good.”
Mireya snorted a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
His mouth pulled at the corner, the smile widening on one side. “My name’s Daniel. I think that works as something you didn’t know.”
Mireya’s mouth pulled in return. “You got me there.”
Daniel’s eyes moved across her face for a beat, then down her body and back up. “I’ll be finished with my workout in about 15 minutes. If you’re not doing anything after yours, I’d love to take you out for coffee or something.”
Mireya’s thumb ran along the wire of the loose earbud, turning it slow between her finger and the heel of her palm. “I’m not a out for coffee kinda girl.”
Daniel’s eyebrow lifted and the smile tugged wider. “Oh? We can just got back to my place, too, if that’s more your speed.”
Mireya reached forward and pressed the button on the console. The belt slowed beneath her feet and pulled to a full stop, the readout ticking down and settling on the total time, the pace numbers blinking once before they held at zero. She grabbed the phone off the console and cupped it in her palm, the case cool from the plastic under it.
She looked over at Daniel. Her eyes moved across his face, dropped to his body, then came back up to his eyes. A beat sat between them. Then she shook her head. “Nah, I’m good.”
Daniel kept his stride, his belt still running, his chin dipping in a small acknowledgment. “Maybe next time.”
“If you like lottery odds, sure.”
Daniel laughed. “Damn, that’s cold.”
Mireya shrugged and stepped down off the belt onto the rubber matting, grabbed her water bottle out of the cup holder, and turned toward the front of the gym. She headed toward the locker room, the loose earbud swinging against the strap of her tank, the bass in her other ear cranking on unchecked.
Sena pushed the front door open with her shoulder and stepped into the foyer, the laundry bag swinging against her hip on the strap she had slung across her chest. The heat of the house wrapped around her at once, warm and dense. She toed her shoes off against the rack by the door and set them beside her father’s work boots. The hardwood ran cool under her socks.
Minji sat on the couch in the living room with her phone in her hand and a throw blanket across her lap. She looked up as Sena crossed the threshold from the foyer, her thumb pausing mid-scroll, her chin lifting a fraction against the pull of her reading glasses where they had slid to the tip of her nose. “I thought you were doing that at Taemin’s this weekend?”
Sena bent and set the bag on the floor beside the coffee table. The strap slid off her shoulder and she rolled the joint of it once where the weight had settled into the muscle. The bag slumped against the table leg and stayed. “I was actually going to do it at Mireya’s, but it’s a packed house over there.”
Minji’s eyebrows furrowed. She lowered the phone down onto the cushion beside her thigh, her palm smoothing the fabric of the blanket flat over her knee before it came to rest. “What do you mean?”
Sena straightened. Her eyes went past her mother to the far wall where the family photos ran in a stagger above the credenza, the frames catching a strip of light from the window, then came back down. “Her daughters’ father, Caine, is in town and he stays there because he paid for the house. And his girlfriend is with him.”
Minji’s chin dipped a fraction. Her mouth held for a beat before it opened, her eyes moving across Sena’s face for a slow measure. “The daughters’ father paid for the house?”
Sena nodded. Her hand came up and brushed a piece of hair back behind her ear. “He plays football. Remember I told you?”
Minji’s eyes went down to the laundry bag on the floor by the coffee table, then to the foyer behind Sena, then back up to Sena’s face. Her mouth pulled tight. “Sena. Don’t tell me that’s the same one that’s been in the news for being a criminal.”
Sena drew a breath and let it out through her nose. “It is, but—”
Minji shook her head and raised her hand between them. “That is too much, Sena. I don’t like you being around someone who has been to prison. Who knows what he could decide to do to you?”
Sena’s fingers curled and uncurled at her side. “I’ve never even heard him raise his voice and that’s not what he was in prison for.”
Minji’s chin came up. The blanket pulled tighter across her thighs as her legs shifted under it and her hand pressed flat against the cushion beside her hip. “It doesn’t matter. Crime is a slippery slope. Once you do one thing, everything else seems normal. And he’s done a lot so he could be capable of much worse.”
Sena’s shoulders lifted with a slow breath and settled. Her eyes cut to the ceiling for a beat before they came back to her mother. “Eomma, please. I just came to do this laundry and then I have to go do something.”
“I don’t see how you can be so calm about this. Did you read the article?”
“I read it.”
Minji’s hand came up and rested against the collar of her sweater, her fingers pressing into the knit. “Then I would hope you’re smart enough to not be around him, and your friend, too, because she made children with him.”
Sena’s jaw worked once. Her eyes went to the bag on the floor and came back. “I’ll be careful, okay?”
Minji shook her head. “You need to be more than careful.”
Sena’s fingers folded and unfolded at her side. Her weight shifted back onto the balls of her feet. “He’s going to leave again in a few days. He doesn’t live here. He’s just here for that.”
Minji picked at the edge of the blanket with two fingers and let it drop. Her mouth pressed flat, held, and then eased. “I don’t like this. And I’m disappointed you would involve yourself with such people.”
Sena’s shoulders came down. “He’s not what that article says he is, eomma. Please just trust me.”
Minji shook her head. She reached down and lifted the phone off the cushion beside her and let her eyes go back to the screen. The glow lit the underside of her chin. The reading glasses caught the light along the frames.
Sena let a breath out through her nose. She bent and picked up the laundry bag, the strap catching over her shoulder, and headed past the couch toward the laundry room off the back of the house.
Caine rolled the rental SUV through the streets of New Orleans with one hand at the top of the wheel and the other resting on the console between the seats. The light at the intersection ahead of them ticked from yellow to red and he eased the brake in until the SUV rocked back once and settled behind the crosswalk. His right hand came down to the bottom of the wheel and he leaned back into the seat, his fingers tapping the leather in a slow off-beat rhythm against the pulse of the Brent Faiyaz coming low through the speakers. A bus passed through the intersection ahead of them, the driver’s window angled dark against the low sun, the destination sign scrolling in orange text across the top. On the corner a man in a Saints beanie stood at a phone stand and lit a cigarette, the smoke breaking apart before it cleared his shoulder.
Autumn sat in the passenger seat with her elbow on the armrest, her chin in her palm, her sunglasses perched on her nose, her phone face down on her thigh. She turned her head toward him, her chin lifting off her palm. “So, tell me why we’re doing this at your old high school again?”
Caine’s fingers kept the beat on the leather. “It was Markus and Quentin’s idea. Said it would make me look like I got the school backing me and shit.”
Autumn’s eyes moved across his face, her chin turning a fraction with the motion. “And do you have the school backing you?”
Caine snorted a laugh. “I won them a state championship.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
The light turned green. Caine let the brake out and pressed the gas, the SUV rolling forward through the intersection, his right hand sliding back up to the top of the wheel. The block opened up in front of them in a run of small businesses and corner houses, a couple pushing a stroller along the sidewalk to their right, a delivery truck double-parked halfway down the block with its hazards blinking against the low sun. He worked the SUV around the truck and into the far lane, checking the mirror, cutting the wheel back straight. “As far I know. I ain’t talk to them. Quentin did. He handled all that, but shit, he a teacher over there so if he is then might as well say the school is.”
Autumn nodded, the motion small, mostly to herself. Her eyes moved to the passenger window and tracked the block sliding past, a shotgun house with the porch light on in the middle of the afternoon, a corner store with an ice chest set on the sidewalk out front, an old man walking a dog on a leash gone loose. She turned back to Caine. “And who is he again?”
Caine’s eyes cut over to her for a beat, then back to the road. “You got a lot of questions about something that’s happening in an hour and a half.”
Autumn’s mouth pulled at the corner. “Because I’m trying to make sure I know what role I’m supposed to be playing, nigga.”
Caine lifted his free hand off the console and held it up between them. “My bad. Quentin was like my mentor when I was in high school or whatever. And he was the dude who car we tried to take when I got arrested.”
Autumn’s chin dipped once. Her eyes went forward through the windshield. She held the silence for a stretch of blocks, the SUV working through a four-way stop and rolling on, an oncoming car passing them in the opposite lane and slipping into the rear window. The Brent Faiyaz worked through its bridge under the sound of the tires on the pavement.
Caine dropped his hand back to the console. His eyes cut over to her. “What you wanna say?”
Autumn shook her head. “Nothing. That’s a smart play to have him on your side. I don’t have anything to say.”
Caine’s hand went back up to the wheel. He steered around a pothole that opened up on the right side of the lane and settled the SUV back into the middle of the road. “That’s all Markus. Them two frat brothers or whatever.”
Autumn’s head tipped against the seatback. Her eyes ran over to him and stayed. “You tried to carjack your defense attorney’s frat?”
Caine’s laugh caught in his chest. “I ain’t know that when it happened. Markus told me after Quentin convinced him to take my case.”
Autumn shook her head. “Must be some Ques.”
Caine laughed. “They too enlightened for that.”
The block ran flat and empty in front of them, the sun sitting low enough over the rooftops that it caught the windshield at an angle and washed the dash white. Caine flipped the visor down and angled it against the glare. The Brent Faiyaz track worked into its outro, the bass low in the cabin, the vocal sitting somewhere behind the wheel. They passed a Baptist church with its marquee lit, then a shuttered laundromat with the security gate pulled down, then a row of shotgun houses in various stages of paint and repair.
Autumn’s eyes moved from the windshield over to Caine’s profile. Her hand settled on the center console beside his. “Bae, I hope you know that I got you. Whatever you need from me. I’m here.”
Caine’s eyes glanced over at her, then back to the road. He nodded. “I know.”
Autumn nodded. She reached over to the dash and turned the volume up, the bass climbing until it filled the cabin, the vocal coming up out of the mix and pressing against the windshield.
Mireya stood in the hallway with her hands loose at her sides, her eyes moving row by row across the wall of champions behind the glass. The case ran the length of the far wall between two banks of lockers, the shelves stacked with trophies, framed jerseys, and pennants that caught the fluorescent light along their gold trim. State championship banners hung on the wall above the case, embroidered in the school’s purple and gold, their years running back decades in a stagger of fabric that overlapped at the corners where the newer ones had been hung against the older.
Her eyes worked down through the shelves and found the football section, the state title trophy for the 2025 team standing at the front of its shelf. Behind it sat the team photo, the current roster in purple and gold arranged in three tiers along the field at the fifty yard line, and a collage of framed pictures arranged in a fan behind the photo. In the center of the fan, a picture of Caine younger, his arm extended after a release, the ball caught mid-flight above a receiver at the top of the frame. The overhead light caught the corner of the frame where it angled out from the group.
A door clicked open down the hallway. Mireya’s eyes stayed on the collage, her weight shifting a fraction as the sound reached her. Sara’s footsteps crossed the tile behind her, closing the distance between them and coming to rest at Mireya’s left. Sara pulled up beside her and turned to face the case, her chin tilting up as her eyes went to the shelves. “Caine has both of the girls?”
Mireya shook her head, her eyes still on the picture of Caine at the center of the collage. “Camila’s with him, but Sena has Mica.”
Sara nodded, her eyes moving across the shelves in a slow row-by-row pass, taking in each shelf from the top down, the years, the trophies, and the pictures behind them working past her line of sight. “It was a good choice for them to have this here.”
Mireya’s jaw worked once. Her eyes cut from the collage over to the trophy at the front of the shelf and back. “If they were going to do it at a school, they should’ve did it at Carver. Carver was where he was when he got arrested.”
“Karr is where he came when someone first took a chance on him, though.”
Mireya raised her hand and pointed at the collage, her finger stopping a foot from the glass. “Yeah, because they knew he could throw a fucking football. Look at where that got him.”
Sara let a slow breath out through her nose. “Right. No good deed, huh?”
Mireya turned to face her, her hand dropping back to her side. “¿Sabes qué es lo que más me molesta de todo esto?”
Sara turned toward her. “What?”
“Que a nadie le importa cómo le está afectando esto a Camila. They all willing to crush her just because they want to take down her daddy.”
Sara’s chin dipped. “Los pecados de mi padre.”
Mireya’s jaw worked. Her eyes cut to the glass and back, her breath drawing hard through her nose. “Fuck them and their fucking sins.”
Sara let the words sit for a beat then the line of her mouth softened a fraction. “Eres una buena mama, mija.”
Mireya’s shoulders lowered a fraction with the breath she pulled in. Her chin dipped, her eyes going down to the tile between their feet for a beat and coming back up to Sara’s face. “Gracias, mami.”
Sara’s chin lifted toward the end of the hallway. The double doors of the gym stood open past the last bank of lockers, the fluorescent light spilling out onto the tile in a rectangle that reached almost to their feet. Voices carried out of the opening, low and folded together, the sound of a crowd already seated on the bleachers. “We need to get in there and get this over with. I’m just hoping Caine doesn’t say anything that’s going to be another story that we have to deal with.”
Mireya snorted a laugh, short and dry, and let it go. The two of them turned toward the gym at the end of the hall, their steps falling into rhythm on the tile, Sara’s arm coming across Mireya’s shoulders as they moved, her hand settling warm against the top of Mireya’s arm.
Caine stood on the baseline of the basketball court with Camila’s weight on his hip, her face pressed into the side of his neck, her arm hooked around his shoulder, her legs looped loose around the side of his ribs. The half-court line ran across the floor in a strip of yellow that caught the flat gym light. Above the bleachers, championship banners hung against the cinder block in purple and gold, the years running back decades, the fabric moving faintly in the current of an overhead vent that pushed cool air down across the space.
Sara stood to his right, her hands folded in front of her hip. Autumn stood to his left, her arms at her sides, her body angled a fraction toward the reporters, the overhead light picking up the shine of her earrings against her hair. Mireya stood on the far side of Sara, her jaw set, her eyes on the reporters, her hands loose at her sides.
Off to the side of the whole arrangement, Sena stood at an angle to the crowd with Mica in her arms, the baby’s head tipped against her shoulder, one small fist wrapped in the collar of Sena’s shirt. Tatum stood at Sena’s elbow with his phone in his hand, Markus at his side in a sport coat and slacks with his own phone dark in his palm.
Along the free-throw line a semicircle of reporters had settled into place three deep, phones raised, recorders held out on shotgun mounts, camera lenses angled toward the baseline. A photographer knelt at the edge of the arc with a long lens braced against her shoulder. A boom stood at either end of the arrangement on a stand that reached up past the tops of the heads in the second row.
Caine turned his head into Camila’s hair. He spoke against the curls, his voice low, his hand pressing flat between her shoulder blades. “Te voy a dejar descansar un rato, ¿de acuerdo?”
Camila shook her head against his neck and tightened her hand in the fabric of his shirt at his shoulder blade, her fist bunching the cotton against her small knuckles.
Caine’s hand moved along her back, up to the base of her neck and back down. “Está bien, no pasa nada, mi vida.”
He lifted his chin and looked out at the reporters gathered along the sideline. Phones, recorders, and camera lenses pointed at him from the arc, dozens of red recording lights in a scatter across the front two rows. He shook his head. “Alright, let’s do this then.”
He waited a beat.
“I ain’t gonna go through all that sh—stuff trying to deflect from that article. I did some things in my past I ain’t proud of. I paid the price for all of that.”
He looked down at Camila, her hair still under his chin, her breath warm against the fabric of his collar. “It took me away from my daughter.”
His eyes moved to Sara, and then past Sara to Mireya.. “And from my family. But I did what I did for the same reason a lot of dudes from the hood do it, because I had to provide and I had to do it in a way that $7.25 an hour for 10 hours a week at Cane’s wasn’t gonna do. It ain’t no excuse. It just is what it is. I ain’t hide that I was on probation from Georgia Southern and I ain’t hide that I was on probation from USC. They said as much in their statements and I appreciate their support.”
He paused and shifted Camila higher on his hip, her legs settling around his side, her arm tightening around his neck. Her fist stayed closed in the fabric of his shirt, the knuckles pressing into his shoulder blade. Behind him and to the right, Sara’s weight shifted once and settled. “But what y’all ain’t gonna do is erase everything I’ve done to right them wrongs. I stuck to the rules for my probation for three years, got off early for good behavior. And I’m raising my two daughters to be better than me. If y’all want to drag my name through the mud forever for something I did when I was a kid, that’s up to y’all. My conscience clear.”
His eyes cut over to Tatum. Tatum nodded once.
“With all that said, after speaking with my family, my agent, Coach Riley, I’ve decided that I’m returning to USC for my senior season. We gonna win another national championship and if y’all need a bad guy, I’ll take that charge, too.”
He nodded to the reporters. “That’s all from me.”
He stepped back from the line. The reporters broke, a wall of shouted questions rolling out at once, voices layered over each other and cracking against the empty bleachers along the far wall. Names came up out of the noise. Titles came up. A camera flash flickered once at the edge of the arc and steadied. A phone tone dropped in from somewhere in the second row and got swallowed under the shouting before it finished.
Camila whimpered against his neck and pulled his shirt tight in her fist, the small sound lost under the reporters but felt against his skin where her face pressed in.
Caine’s hand pressed flat between her shoulder blades. His mouth found the top of her head. “It’s okay, mi vida. We’re done.”
Tatum stepped forward from where he had been standing with Markus and Sena, one hand coming up, his voice cutting into the noise with a call for order. The shouting held its volume. A woman in the front row leaned forward with her recorder pushed toward Caine, her mouth already framing a follow-up. A man in a Saints polo waved his phone above his head to catch the audio.
Mireya’s eyes went to Camila in Caine’s arms. Tears sat at the corner of each eye. Her teeth pressed together behind her lips. Her breath drew in through her nose and stayed. She took a step forward.
Sara turned toward her. “¿Qué estás haciendo, mija?”
Mireya shook her head. She crossed the space between them and stopped at Caine’s side, her shoulder nearly touching his. She pointed out at the reporters, her finger sweeping the arc from one end to the other. “Fuck all of you, hypocritical pieces of shit.”
Every voice cut at once, the questions ending mid-word, the noise falling out of the room in a single collapse. The recorders held in the air where they had been. The photographer at the edge lowered her camera a fraction and then brought it back up.
Autumn drew a slow breath. Her lips rolled into her mouth and pressed together, her eyes on Mireya’s back where she stood next to Caine.
Caine turned his head an inch toward Mireya, his voice barely reaching her ear, his mouth barely moving over the word. “Mireya.”
“No, no me estoy callando.”
She looked back at the reporters, her jaw set, her voice level. The recorders came back up in the front row, held out toward her now, the shotgun mics tilting a fraction on their stands. “You read that article and decided Caine was the worst one? Not the rapists, the pedophiles? Huh? He tried to put food on the fucking table and he’s the monster? Or you just decide that he was the most successful one and you had to tear him down?”
The reporters’ eyes cut between one another. A man in the front row lowered his phone an inch and looked at the woman beside him. She kept her recorder raised but her chin dipped a fraction.
“What about all of the fucking white boys who get rape charges dropped because they play sports? What’s worse? Rape? Or selling fucking drugs to a junkie who gonna buy them anyway?”
Autumn’s shoulder pressed against Caine’s arm. Her voice came against his ear, low enough that only he caught it. “You have to shut her up.”
Caine let a breath out through his nose. His hand stayed pressed between Camila’s shoulder blades, her fist still tight in his shirt.
A reporter in a khaki blazer lifted his phone higher, his mouth opening around a question. “So are you saying you justify it because an addi—”
“Y’all don’t know what it’s like to not have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.”
Her finger cut across the semicircle and stopped on a woman in the front row with a press badge on a lanyard around her neck, the badge clipped to a WGNO string. “Where you from?”
“Uh, what?”
“Where are you from?”
“Uh, Mandeville.”
Mireya’s hand moved to the man beside her, her finger settling in the air a foot from his phone. “And you?”
“River Ranch.”
Mireya snorted a laugh, short and dry. “Didn’t even fucking say Lafayette. Parents made sure you knew you were above us. So while you sit there, I want you to remember that Caine did what he needed to do to support himself, me and our daughter. If you want to look down on that, fuck you, fuck the system and fuck that racist cunt bitch Jill Babin for trying again to take my daughters’ father away from them. And when y’all go ask her if she’s racist, don’t let her say a Black man nutting in her makes her a fucking ally.”
A woman in the second row drew a sharp breath in and pressed her hand to her mouth. A man to her left pushed a laugh through his teeth and looked away, his shoulders shaking once before he caught them. A camera flash went off twice at the edge of the arc and held on Mireya’s face.
Caine rested his hand on Mireya’s shoulder, the palm settling flat through the fabric of her jacket.
“I’m fucking done.”
She turned toward the doors at the far end of the court. Sara moved after her, her steps falling into pace behind Mireya’s. Sena adjusted Mica on her shoulder and fell in behind them, the three of them cutting across the tile toward the corridor.
Tatum looked back at Caine over his shoulder. Caine shook his head, one small motion, his eyes on the corridor where the three of them had gone.
Tatum cleared his throat. He turned back to the reporters. The phones held steady in their hands but no one spoke. “So, uh, we’re not going to be answering questions at this time. Email me and we’ll get to them.”
Caine turned toward the doors. Autumn ran her hand through her hair, her fingers working through the length, and she fell into step at his side as they moved toward the corridor, Camila still folded against his neck, her fist still closed in his shirt.
Sara came into the kitchen barefoot on the tile, the sleeves of her sweater pushed up past her elbows. Caine stood at the island with a cutting board pulled up against the edge of the quartz, a knife in his hand, the package of chorizo split open on the paper beside him. Sweats loose at his hips, a long-sleeved thermal pushed up his forearms. The skillet on the burner behind him held two eggs, the whites already turning opaque at the edges, the yolks trembling with the heat rising through the pan. The smell of butter cut through the air, warm and close, layered with the pork fat coming up from the paper beside the board.
She crossed the tile to him. Her palm found the space between his shoulder blades and settled through the fabric of his shirt. “¿Cómo te sientes hoy, mijo?”
Caine worked the blade through the chorizo in short even passes, the meat folding away from the edge in thick red coins. He shrugged. “Just another thing I gotta do because people want me to keep apologizing for the same shit.”
Sara looked at the side of his face, at his jaw working slow, and slid her hand down to the small of his back. “That’s part of being a man, part of being a father, a good one.” Her palm pressed flat against him. “Remember that your showing your daughters that even in these kinds of situations, when you’re facing problems, it’s better to face it then run away.”
The knife came down through the last of the chorizo. Caine set it flat against the board and gathered the pieces with the side of the blade, sweeping them into a pile at the edge of the wood. He tipped the board over the skillet and slid the chorizo in with the eggs. The grease jumped when the meat hit the pan and settled into a steady pop under the heat. The smell shifted, chili and pork fat cutting through the butter, the color of the pan changing where the fat bled out and pooled against the whites. “Como mi padre, ¿no?”
Sara’s hand tightened once at his back. “No te pareces en nada a él. He was a coward. He is a coward, wherever he is.”
Caine reached for the spatula and worked the eggs and the chorizo together in the pan, cutting through them and folding them back on themselves. He watched the pan for a stretch without saying anything, the spatula scraping the bottom of the skillet, the sound small and metallic under the hum of the refrigerator behind them.
“All I ever wanted was for Camila and Micaela to not have to be ashamed of our name, mamá. To not have to be weighed down by the shit I did. Like I had to be weighed down by the shit he ain’t do.”
Sara let out a breath through her nose. “Anyone who would punish your children for the things you did, would’ve done it whether you were a drug dealer or a homeless man begging for change on the corner or a doctor. That’s why you need to keep doing great things, mijo. So, that when they’re older, they’ll know that the man they know as their father isn’t just his worst day.”
Caine pulled the pan off the burner and killed the flame under it. He reached for the stack of tortillas on the counter and peeled the top one off, laying it flat on the quartz beside the stove. He slid the spatula under the eggs and chorizo, working the mixture off the surface of the pan in one lift, and spooned it down the center of the tortilla in a long line. He scraped the pan clean along the edge and set it back on the cold burner.
“Mireya said that I’m teaching Camila that whenever I’m in New Orleans, it’s some bad shit going on.”
Sara’s hand came off his back. She raised it and worked her fingers into his locs, easing them through the strands, her palm following the length down along his shoulders and stopping between his shoulder blades. “You are. She’s smart, perceptive. Able to read things on faces that five year olds probably shouldn’t be able to.”
Caine folded the tortilla over the eggs and lifted it in his palm. The bottom was already dark where the grease had soaked through, warm against his skin. “This summer, I want to go to Honduras. Me, you, everyone. I want Camila to see things I never dreamed of.”
A smile pulled at the corner of Sara’s mouth. “I would like that. I haven’t been since I was a kid. It would be good for Camila to see her roots.”
Caine nodded. “Yeah, good for me, too.”
Sara’s hand dropped to the counter, her fingers spreading against the quartz. “You need to take her to Mexico, too. Para Mireya.”
Caine lifted the tortilla and took a bite. He chewed once, twice. “I got plenty money. Might have to make it an every year thing, though, so Mica can do it and remember it.”
“Primero, vamos a superar este día.”
Caine swallowed. He looked over at her, the tortilla still in his hand, the grease dark on his fingers. “Gracias, mamá.”
~~~
Quentin sat at his desk with a spiral notebook open in front of him, the pen in his hand tapping once against the paper before he set it in the crease. The blinds behind him were pulled halfway up. Light came through in flat strips across the hardwood, the room still cool past the reach of the heat. On the desk beside the notebook a paperback lay face down with a Post-it clipped to the spine, and beyond that his laptop sat open on the standards page for the unit, the cursor blinking in the field where he had left off the night before. He wrote a line at the top of a fresh page, drew a small dash after Monday, and moved down the page one line at a time.
The door opened behind him. Ashley’s socks crossed the hardwood and stopped a few feet from his chair. “Bae, have you seen where I left my keys?”
Quentin kept his eyes on the notebook. He drew a second dash under Monday’s line. “If you’d put your keys on those hooks you had me put up by the door, you’d know where your keys were.”
Ashley sucked her teeth. “I didn’t ask you all of that. Have you seen them?”
Quentin’s pen moved across the page. He drew a small arrow to a note in the margin about the reading he wanted to open the week on and let the smile sit at the corner of his mouth without turning his head. “They’re where you always leave them. On the back of the sofa.”
Ashley let out a breath through her nose. “Sounds like you’re not doing your job as a husband to move those to where I think I should be putting them so I don’t lose my mind looking for them.”
Quentin shook his head and looked up. “Or I’m teaching you to stop leaving them in random places so you don’t have to look for them everytime you leave the house.”
A smile fought its way onto Ashley’s face despite her best attempts. “You lucky I love you or I’d be batting the piss out of you right now.”
Quentin laughed. He set the pen down beside the notebook and rolled his chair a quarter turn, then back. “I have an interview scheduled with the Times-Pic tomorrow.”
“I’m going to assume you don’t mean for a job.”
“I reached out to that reporter who wrote that article about Caine—”
“About Caine and about 40 other men.”
Quentin’s mouth tightened for a beat and eased. “The article was about Caine.”
Ashley held a hand up. “Alright, go on.”
Quentin turned the pen between his fingers. His eyes went to the paperback on the desk for a beat and came back to her. “I called her and told her that I was the one who’s car it was that Caine supposedly tried to steal.”
“He very much so tried to steal your car.”
Quentin laughed, a short push of breath through his nose. “As true as that is, I want to put out there that I’ve forgiven Caine and even helped him get to where he is in life. If I can do, the public has no right to assume he’s a threat to them.”
Ashley walked over to him and she settled onto the edge of the desk beside his elbow, her hip pressing against the wood, one leg swinging loose over the drawer. Her hand came to rest on the back of his chair. “You don’t have to keep trying to save everyone for years to come, Quentin. If that boy goes to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you don’t think they’re going to bring this up again?”
“You know my stance on this.”
Ashley tilted her head. “I know, but sometimes, you just have to sit it out.”
Quentin held her eyes for a beat. “What does it say to the boys I’m trying to help today if I turn my back on one I helped years ago?”
Ashley sighed, her hand dropping to her thigh. “You’re right. You are. I just don’t want you to burn yourself out with all of this.”
Quentin’s mouth pulled at one corner. “I’m a high school teacher in New Orleans. Burned out is just our normal state.”
Ashley shook her head. She pushed up from the desk, her weight coming back onto her feet, and turned toward the door. She spoke over her shoulder. “Figure out what you want for dinner by the time we get back.”
Quentin smiled to himself. He watched her cross the room, her ponytail swinging against the back of her t-shirt, and pull the door mostly shut behind her. Then he picked up the pen and went back to Tuesday.
~~~
Mireya’s feet hit the belt in a hard even rhythm, her arms pumping at her sides, the bass in her earbuds pushed high enough that it swallowed the room. The gym spread out around her in rows of machines and mirrors, the overhead lights flat and white across the rubber matting, a few bodies moving between stations in the reflection along the far wall. Two women worked the ellipticals along the near wall, their strides even, their ponytails swinging in time. A man in a compression shirt sat at the cable machine across the floor, his elbows locked, the plates rising and falling in the stack behind him. Her ponytail swung with each stride. The tank top ran dark down the center of her chest and along the low arc of her ribs, the fabric soaked through where she had been pushing herself hard for the last twenty minutes.
She looked down at the console between the speed display and the timer. The distance meter clicked over two miles. Then she reached forward and pressed the speed pad down. The belt slowed under her feet, the run pulling back to a jog and then to a walk, her breathing lengthening through her nose. Her heart rate eased in her chest. She held the pace and let her stride settle.
Her phone sat on the console beside the speed pad, the case dark against the light plastic. The screen lit and a banner pulled across the top of it, Elena’s name in bold, the first line of the message unspooling under it in gray text. Mireya’s eyes cut to it and she sucked her teeth. Her thumb reached out and swept across the notification, the banner sliding up and gone before the second line loaded. She turned the volume on her earbuds up a click and kept walking, her eyes going back to the mirror on the far wall, her stride steady.
Movement registered to her right. A body stepped onto the treadmill beside hers, tall, a t-shirt loose off the shoulders, a towel already draped over the sidebar, a water bottle standing in the cup holder. Mireya glanced over. He was dark-haired, maybe her age or a year older, a small chain at his neck. He caught her eye and smiled and reached for his own console. He tapped the pad, the belt caught under his feet, and he settled into a jog. Mireya nodded once and looked back forward, her eyes finding the mirror on the far wall again.
The minutes ran together on the console, the timer climbing and the distance ticking up in small increments, her breathing settled and slow in her chest. The music in her ears rolled forward through the queue, one track sliding into the next. The man’s belt kept its rhythm to her right, his stride even, his breathing measured. Then he reached over and tapped her shoulder.
Mireya turned her head. She raised her eyebrow and pulled one earbud out, letting it dangle against her collarbone by the wire. The sound of the gym came back into her right ear, thinner than the music, the belts, the plates, and the low hum of the ventilation running underneath. “Yeah?”
His breathing came through his mouth, the exhale timing to the beat of his belt. “I’ve been seeing you around in here and I just wanted to let you know you looking good.”
Mireya snorted a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
His mouth pulled at the corner, the smile widening on one side. “My name’s Daniel. I think that works as something you didn’t know.”
Mireya’s mouth pulled in return. “You got me there.”
Daniel’s eyes moved across her face for a beat, then down her body and back up. “I’ll be finished with my workout in about 15 minutes. If you’re not doing anything after yours, I’d love to take you out for coffee or something.”
Mireya’s thumb ran along the wire of the loose earbud, turning it slow between her finger and the heel of her palm. “I’m not a out for coffee kinda girl.”
Daniel’s eyebrow lifted and the smile tugged wider. “Oh? We can just got back to my place, too, if that’s more your speed.”
Mireya reached forward and pressed the button on the console. The belt slowed beneath her feet and pulled to a full stop, the readout ticking down and settling on the total time, the pace numbers blinking once before they held at zero. She grabbed the phone off the console and cupped it in her palm, the case cool from the plastic under it.
She looked over at Daniel. Her eyes moved across his face, dropped to his body, then came back up to his eyes. A beat sat between them. Then she shook her head. “Nah, I’m good.”
Daniel kept his stride, his belt still running, his chin dipping in a small acknowledgment. “Maybe next time.”
“If you like lottery odds, sure.”
Daniel laughed. “Damn, that’s cold.”
Mireya shrugged and stepped down off the belt onto the rubber matting, grabbed her water bottle out of the cup holder, and turned toward the front of the gym. She headed toward the locker room, the loose earbud swinging against the strap of her tank, the bass in her other ear cranking on unchecked.
~~~
Sena pushed the front door open with her shoulder and stepped into the foyer, the laundry bag swinging against her hip on the strap she had slung across her chest. The heat of the house wrapped around her at once, warm and dense. She toed her shoes off against the rack by the door and set them beside her father’s work boots. The hardwood ran cool under her socks.
Minji sat on the couch in the living room with her phone in her hand and a throw blanket across her lap. She looked up as Sena crossed the threshold from the foyer, her thumb pausing mid-scroll, her chin lifting a fraction against the pull of her reading glasses where they had slid to the tip of her nose. “I thought you were doing that at Taemin’s this weekend?”
Sena bent and set the bag on the floor beside the coffee table. The strap slid off her shoulder and she rolled the joint of it once where the weight had settled into the muscle. The bag slumped against the table leg and stayed. “I was actually going to do it at Mireya’s, but it’s a packed house over there.”
Minji’s eyebrows furrowed. She lowered the phone down onto the cushion beside her thigh, her palm smoothing the fabric of the blanket flat over her knee before it came to rest. “What do you mean?”
Sena straightened. Her eyes went past her mother to the far wall where the family photos ran in a stagger above the credenza, the frames catching a strip of light from the window, then came back down. “Her daughters’ father, Caine, is in town and he stays there because he paid for the house. And his girlfriend is with him.”
Minji’s chin dipped a fraction. Her mouth held for a beat before it opened, her eyes moving across Sena’s face for a slow measure. “The daughters’ father paid for the house?”
Sena nodded. Her hand came up and brushed a piece of hair back behind her ear. “He plays football. Remember I told you?”
Minji’s eyes went down to the laundry bag on the floor by the coffee table, then to the foyer behind Sena, then back up to Sena’s face. Her mouth pulled tight. “Sena. Don’t tell me that’s the same one that’s been in the news for being a criminal.”
Sena drew a breath and let it out through her nose. “It is, but—”
Minji shook her head and raised her hand between them. “That is too much, Sena. I don’t like you being around someone who has been to prison. Who knows what he could decide to do to you?”
Sena’s fingers curled and uncurled at her side. “I’ve never even heard him raise his voice and that’s not what he was in prison for.”
Minji’s chin came up. The blanket pulled tighter across her thighs as her legs shifted under it and her hand pressed flat against the cushion beside her hip. “It doesn’t matter. Crime is a slippery slope. Once you do one thing, everything else seems normal. And he’s done a lot so he could be capable of much worse.”
Sena’s shoulders lifted with a slow breath and settled. Her eyes cut to the ceiling for a beat before they came back to her mother. “Eomma, please. I just came to do this laundry and then I have to go do something.”
“I don’t see how you can be so calm about this. Did you read the article?”
“I read it.”
Minji’s hand came up and rested against the collar of her sweater, her fingers pressing into the knit. “Then I would hope you’re smart enough to not be around him, and your friend, too, because she made children with him.”
Sena’s jaw worked once. Her eyes went to the bag on the floor and came back. “I’ll be careful, okay?”
Minji shook her head. “You need to be more than careful.”
Sena’s fingers folded and unfolded at her side. Her weight shifted back onto the balls of her feet. “He’s going to leave again in a few days. He doesn’t live here. He’s just here for that.”
Minji picked at the edge of the blanket with two fingers and let it drop. Her mouth pressed flat, held, and then eased. “I don’t like this. And I’m disappointed you would involve yourself with such people.”
Sena’s shoulders came down. “He’s not what that article says he is, eomma. Please just trust me.”
Minji shook her head. She reached down and lifted the phone off the cushion beside her and let her eyes go back to the screen. The glow lit the underside of her chin. The reading glasses caught the light along the frames.
Sena let a breath out through her nose. She bent and picked up the laundry bag, the strap catching over her shoulder, and headed past the couch toward the laundry room off the back of the house.
~~~
Caine rolled the rental SUV through the streets of New Orleans with one hand at the top of the wheel and the other resting on the console between the seats. The light at the intersection ahead of them ticked from yellow to red and he eased the brake in until the SUV rocked back once and settled behind the crosswalk. His right hand came down to the bottom of the wheel and he leaned back into the seat, his fingers tapping the leather in a slow off-beat rhythm against the pulse of the Brent Faiyaz coming low through the speakers. A bus passed through the intersection ahead of them, the driver’s window angled dark against the low sun, the destination sign scrolling in orange text across the top. On the corner a man in a Saints beanie stood at a phone stand and lit a cigarette, the smoke breaking apart before it cleared his shoulder.
Autumn sat in the passenger seat with her elbow on the armrest, her chin in her palm, her sunglasses perched on her nose, her phone face down on her thigh. She turned her head toward him, her chin lifting off her palm. “So, tell me why we’re doing this at your old high school again?”
Caine’s fingers kept the beat on the leather. “It was Markus and Quentin’s idea. Said it would make me look like I got the school backing me and shit.”
Autumn’s eyes moved across his face, her chin turning a fraction with the motion. “And do you have the school backing you?”
Caine snorted a laugh. “I won them a state championship.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
The light turned green. Caine let the brake out and pressed the gas, the SUV rolling forward through the intersection, his right hand sliding back up to the top of the wheel. The block opened up in front of them in a run of small businesses and corner houses, a couple pushing a stroller along the sidewalk to their right, a delivery truck double-parked halfway down the block with its hazards blinking against the low sun. He worked the SUV around the truck and into the far lane, checking the mirror, cutting the wheel back straight. “As far I know. I ain’t talk to them. Quentin did. He handled all that, but shit, he a teacher over there so if he is then might as well say the school is.”
Autumn nodded, the motion small, mostly to herself. Her eyes moved to the passenger window and tracked the block sliding past, a shotgun house with the porch light on in the middle of the afternoon, a corner store with an ice chest set on the sidewalk out front, an old man walking a dog on a leash gone loose. She turned back to Caine. “And who is he again?”
Caine’s eyes cut over to her for a beat, then back to the road. “You got a lot of questions about something that’s happening in an hour and a half.”
Autumn’s mouth pulled at the corner. “Because I’m trying to make sure I know what role I’m supposed to be playing, nigga.”
Caine lifted his free hand off the console and held it up between them. “My bad. Quentin was like my mentor when I was in high school or whatever. And he was the dude who car we tried to take when I got arrested.”
Autumn’s chin dipped once. Her eyes went forward through the windshield. She held the silence for a stretch of blocks, the SUV working through a four-way stop and rolling on, an oncoming car passing them in the opposite lane and slipping into the rear window. The Brent Faiyaz worked through its bridge under the sound of the tires on the pavement.
Caine dropped his hand back to the console. His eyes cut over to her. “What you wanna say?”
Autumn shook her head. “Nothing. That’s a smart play to have him on your side. I don’t have anything to say.”
Caine’s hand went back up to the wheel. He steered around a pothole that opened up on the right side of the lane and settled the SUV back into the middle of the road. “That’s all Markus. Them two frat brothers or whatever.”
Autumn’s head tipped against the seatback. Her eyes ran over to him and stayed. “You tried to carjack your defense attorney’s frat?”
Caine’s laugh caught in his chest. “I ain’t know that when it happened. Markus told me after Quentin convinced him to take my case.”
Autumn shook her head. “Must be some Ques.”
Caine laughed. “They too enlightened for that.”
The block ran flat and empty in front of them, the sun sitting low enough over the rooftops that it caught the windshield at an angle and washed the dash white. Caine flipped the visor down and angled it against the glare. The Brent Faiyaz track worked into its outro, the bass low in the cabin, the vocal sitting somewhere behind the wheel. They passed a Baptist church with its marquee lit, then a shuttered laundromat with the security gate pulled down, then a row of shotgun houses in various stages of paint and repair.
Autumn’s eyes moved from the windshield over to Caine’s profile. Her hand settled on the center console beside his. “Bae, I hope you know that I got you. Whatever you need from me. I’m here.”
Caine’s eyes glanced over at her, then back to the road. He nodded. “I know.”
Autumn nodded. She reached over to the dash and turned the volume up, the bass climbing until it filled the cabin, the vocal coming up out of the mix and pressing against the windshield.
~~~
Mireya stood in the hallway with her hands loose at her sides, her eyes moving row by row across the wall of champions behind the glass. The case ran the length of the far wall between two banks of lockers, the shelves stacked with trophies, framed jerseys, and pennants that caught the fluorescent light along their gold trim. State championship banners hung on the wall above the case, embroidered in the school’s purple and gold, their years running back decades in a stagger of fabric that overlapped at the corners where the newer ones had been hung against the older.
Her eyes worked down through the shelves and found the football section, the state title trophy for the 2025 team standing at the front of its shelf. Behind it sat the team photo, the current roster in purple and gold arranged in three tiers along the field at the fifty yard line, and a collage of framed pictures arranged in a fan behind the photo. In the center of the fan, a picture of Caine younger, his arm extended after a release, the ball caught mid-flight above a receiver at the top of the frame. The overhead light caught the corner of the frame where it angled out from the group.
A door clicked open down the hallway. Mireya’s eyes stayed on the collage, her weight shifting a fraction as the sound reached her. Sara’s footsteps crossed the tile behind her, closing the distance between them and coming to rest at Mireya’s left. Sara pulled up beside her and turned to face the case, her chin tilting up as her eyes went to the shelves. “Caine has both of the girls?”
Mireya shook her head, her eyes still on the picture of Caine at the center of the collage. “Camila’s with him, but Sena has Mica.”
Sara nodded, her eyes moving across the shelves in a slow row-by-row pass, taking in each shelf from the top down, the years, the trophies, and the pictures behind them working past her line of sight. “It was a good choice for them to have this here.”
Mireya’s jaw worked once. Her eyes cut from the collage over to the trophy at the front of the shelf and back. “If they were going to do it at a school, they should’ve did it at Carver. Carver was where he was when he got arrested.”
“Karr is where he came when someone first took a chance on him, though.”
Mireya raised her hand and pointed at the collage, her finger stopping a foot from the glass. “Yeah, because they knew he could throw a fucking football. Look at where that got him.”
Sara let a slow breath out through her nose. “Right. No good deed, huh?”
Mireya turned to face her, her hand dropping back to her side. “¿Sabes qué es lo que más me molesta de todo esto?”
Sara turned toward her. “What?”
“Que a nadie le importa cómo le está afectando esto a Camila. They all willing to crush her just because they want to take down her daddy.”
Sara’s chin dipped. “Los pecados de mi padre.”
Mireya’s jaw worked. Her eyes cut to the glass and back, her breath drawing hard through her nose. “Fuck them and their fucking sins.”
Sara let the words sit for a beat then the line of her mouth softened a fraction. “Eres una buena mama, mija.”
Mireya’s shoulders lowered a fraction with the breath she pulled in. Her chin dipped, her eyes going down to the tile between their feet for a beat and coming back up to Sara’s face. “Gracias, mami.”
Sara’s chin lifted toward the end of the hallway. The double doors of the gym stood open past the last bank of lockers, the fluorescent light spilling out onto the tile in a rectangle that reached almost to their feet. Voices carried out of the opening, low and folded together, the sound of a crowd already seated on the bleachers. “We need to get in there and get this over with. I’m just hoping Caine doesn’t say anything that’s going to be another story that we have to deal with.”
Mireya snorted a laugh, short and dry, and let it go. The two of them turned toward the gym at the end of the hall, their steps falling into rhythm on the tile, Sara’s arm coming across Mireya’s shoulders as they moved, her hand settling warm against the top of Mireya’s arm.
~~~
Caine stood on the baseline of the basketball court with Camila’s weight on his hip, her face pressed into the side of his neck, her arm hooked around his shoulder, her legs looped loose around the side of his ribs. The half-court line ran across the floor in a strip of yellow that caught the flat gym light. Above the bleachers, championship banners hung against the cinder block in purple and gold, the years running back decades, the fabric moving faintly in the current of an overhead vent that pushed cool air down across the space.
Sara stood to his right, her hands folded in front of her hip. Autumn stood to his left, her arms at her sides, her body angled a fraction toward the reporters, the overhead light picking up the shine of her earrings against her hair. Mireya stood on the far side of Sara, her jaw set, her eyes on the reporters, her hands loose at her sides.
Off to the side of the whole arrangement, Sena stood at an angle to the crowd with Mica in her arms, the baby’s head tipped against her shoulder, one small fist wrapped in the collar of Sena’s shirt. Tatum stood at Sena’s elbow with his phone in his hand, Markus at his side in a sport coat and slacks with his own phone dark in his palm.
Along the free-throw line a semicircle of reporters had settled into place three deep, phones raised, recorders held out on shotgun mounts, camera lenses angled toward the baseline. A photographer knelt at the edge of the arc with a long lens braced against her shoulder. A boom stood at either end of the arrangement on a stand that reached up past the tops of the heads in the second row.
Caine turned his head into Camila’s hair. He spoke against the curls, his voice low, his hand pressing flat between her shoulder blades. “Te voy a dejar descansar un rato, ¿de acuerdo?”
Camila shook her head against his neck and tightened her hand in the fabric of his shirt at his shoulder blade, her fist bunching the cotton against her small knuckles.
Caine’s hand moved along her back, up to the base of her neck and back down. “Está bien, no pasa nada, mi vida.”
He lifted his chin and looked out at the reporters gathered along the sideline. Phones, recorders, and camera lenses pointed at him from the arc, dozens of red recording lights in a scatter across the front two rows. He shook his head. “Alright, let’s do this then.”
He waited a beat.
“I ain’t gonna go through all that sh—stuff trying to deflect from that article. I did some things in my past I ain’t proud of. I paid the price for all of that.”
He looked down at Camila, her hair still under his chin, her breath warm against the fabric of his collar. “It took me away from my daughter.”
His eyes moved to Sara, and then past Sara to Mireya.. “And from my family. But I did what I did for the same reason a lot of dudes from the hood do it, because I had to provide and I had to do it in a way that $7.25 an hour for 10 hours a week at Cane’s wasn’t gonna do. It ain’t no excuse. It just is what it is. I ain’t hide that I was on probation from Georgia Southern and I ain’t hide that I was on probation from USC. They said as much in their statements and I appreciate their support.”
He paused and shifted Camila higher on his hip, her legs settling around his side, her arm tightening around his neck. Her fist stayed closed in the fabric of his shirt, the knuckles pressing into his shoulder blade. Behind him and to the right, Sara’s weight shifted once and settled. “But what y’all ain’t gonna do is erase everything I’ve done to right them wrongs. I stuck to the rules for my probation for three years, got off early for good behavior. And I’m raising my two daughters to be better than me. If y’all want to drag my name through the mud forever for something I did when I was a kid, that’s up to y’all. My conscience clear.”
His eyes cut over to Tatum. Tatum nodded once.
“With all that said, after speaking with my family, my agent, Coach Riley, I’ve decided that I’m returning to USC for my senior season. We gonna win another national championship and if y’all need a bad guy, I’ll take that charge, too.”
He nodded to the reporters. “That’s all from me.”
He stepped back from the line. The reporters broke, a wall of shouted questions rolling out at once, voices layered over each other and cracking against the empty bleachers along the far wall. Names came up out of the noise. Titles came up. A camera flash flickered once at the edge of the arc and steadied. A phone tone dropped in from somewhere in the second row and got swallowed under the shouting before it finished.
Camila whimpered against his neck and pulled his shirt tight in her fist, the small sound lost under the reporters but felt against his skin where her face pressed in.
Caine’s hand pressed flat between her shoulder blades. His mouth found the top of her head. “It’s okay, mi vida. We’re done.”
Tatum stepped forward from where he had been standing with Markus and Sena, one hand coming up, his voice cutting into the noise with a call for order. The shouting held its volume. A woman in the front row leaned forward with her recorder pushed toward Caine, her mouth already framing a follow-up. A man in a Saints polo waved his phone above his head to catch the audio.
Mireya’s eyes went to Camila in Caine’s arms. Tears sat at the corner of each eye. Her teeth pressed together behind her lips. Her breath drew in through her nose and stayed. She took a step forward.
Sara turned toward her. “¿Qué estás haciendo, mija?”
Mireya shook her head. She crossed the space between them and stopped at Caine’s side, her shoulder nearly touching his. She pointed out at the reporters, her finger sweeping the arc from one end to the other. “Fuck all of you, hypocritical pieces of shit.”
Every voice cut at once, the questions ending mid-word, the noise falling out of the room in a single collapse. The recorders held in the air where they had been. The photographer at the edge lowered her camera a fraction and then brought it back up.
Autumn drew a slow breath. Her lips rolled into her mouth and pressed together, her eyes on Mireya’s back where she stood next to Caine.
Caine turned his head an inch toward Mireya, his voice barely reaching her ear, his mouth barely moving over the word. “Mireya.”
“No, no me estoy callando.”
She looked back at the reporters, her jaw set, her voice level. The recorders came back up in the front row, held out toward her now, the shotgun mics tilting a fraction on their stands. “You read that article and decided Caine was the worst one? Not the rapists, the pedophiles? Huh? He tried to put food on the fucking table and he’s the monster? Or you just decide that he was the most successful one and you had to tear him down?”
The reporters’ eyes cut between one another. A man in the front row lowered his phone an inch and looked at the woman beside him. She kept her recorder raised but her chin dipped a fraction.
“What about all of the fucking white boys who get rape charges dropped because they play sports? What’s worse? Rape? Or selling fucking drugs to a junkie who gonna buy them anyway?”
Autumn’s shoulder pressed against Caine’s arm. Her voice came against his ear, low enough that only he caught it. “You have to shut her up.”
Caine let a breath out through his nose. His hand stayed pressed between Camila’s shoulder blades, her fist still tight in his shirt.
A reporter in a khaki blazer lifted his phone higher, his mouth opening around a question. “So are you saying you justify it because an addi—”
“Y’all don’t know what it’s like to not have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out.”
Her finger cut across the semicircle and stopped on a woman in the front row with a press badge on a lanyard around her neck, the badge clipped to a WGNO string. “Where you from?”
“Uh, what?”
“Where are you from?”
“Uh, Mandeville.”
Mireya’s hand moved to the man beside her, her finger settling in the air a foot from his phone. “And you?”
“River Ranch.”
Mireya snorted a laugh, short and dry. “Didn’t even fucking say Lafayette. Parents made sure you knew you were above us. So while you sit there, I want you to remember that Caine did what he needed to do to support himself, me and our daughter. If you want to look down on that, fuck you, fuck the system and fuck that racist cunt bitch Jill Babin for trying again to take my daughters’ father away from them. And when y’all go ask her if she’s racist, don’t let her say a Black man nutting in her makes her a fucking ally.”
A woman in the second row drew a sharp breath in and pressed her hand to her mouth. A man to her left pushed a laugh through his teeth and looked away, his shoulders shaking once before he caught them. A camera flash went off twice at the edge of the arc and held on Mireya’s face.
Caine rested his hand on Mireya’s shoulder, the palm settling flat through the fabric of her jacket.
“I’m fucking done.”
She turned toward the doors at the far end of the court. Sara moved after her, her steps falling into pace behind Mireya’s. Sena adjusted Mica on her shoulder and fell in behind them, the three of them cutting across the tile toward the corridor.
Tatum looked back at Caine over his shoulder. Caine shook his head, one small motion, his eyes on the corridor where the three of them had gone.
Tatum cleared his throat. He turned back to the reporters. The phones held steady in their hands but no one spoke. “So, uh, we’re not going to be answering questions at this time. Email me and we’ll get to them.”
Caine turned toward the doors. Autumn ran her hand through her hair, her fingers working through the length, and she fell into step at his side as they moved toward the corridor, Camila still folded against his neck, her fist still closed in his shirt.
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redsox907
- Posts: 6116
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
American Sun
everyone looking at Mireya like 
way to fuck up the bag, girl. USC gonna rescind their support with a swiftness
way to fuck up the bag, girl. USC gonna rescind their support with a swiftness