After the Before (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Alex

I cannot believe Jasmine. Even though I
knew the mierda flying out of her mouth was a lie, her words still crushed me. As much as I try to convince myself that her words mean nothing – that I could care less what she thinks about me, or anyone else in my family, it isn’t working. She wounded me, and she saw it written plain as day on my face.

To keep my mind occupied, I gather
the gang and set out to look for trouble. I know I’m on my last chance, and I know what the punishment is if I find the trouble I am looking for, but right now, that means zilch. Jasmine’s words are eating me alive. Does she also blame me somehow for that night? Or does she not want to talk to me because of my father’s involvement? Her rejection bothers me more than I care to admit.

We roll up to a club that’s a halfway point between my gang and our rival gang. We usually keep a truce at this place, but tonight, I’m not interested in keeping the peace
– I’m looking for a fight, and by the looks on my gang’s faces, they are down for whatever I want to throw their way.

I step off my bike, tilting it so it stands on its own.
It’s an old bike, but I worked my ass off to make the money to buy it. The seven members of Infiernos Guerreros I brought with me tonight follow my lead, knowing I came here for nothing but trouble. They all stretch out their limbs, getting ready for the brawl we are no doubt about to engage in. I may not be able to figure out what or how I am feeling about Jasmine, but I can figure out how to slam my fist into someone’s face.

I push through the front door of the club, scanning the room until I spot the poor sap that is going to get the brunt of my anger
; he is second in command of our rival gang. I walk right up to him without saying a word and smash my fist into the side of his temple, causing him to tumble to the floor. Ten people around him jump up while he peels himself off the floor to face me.

“What the fuck is your problem, Alex?” He spits
out.

“Your ugly mug is my problem, gilipollas.” My gang approves of the
fight; they
flank my back without saying a word.

“You really want to do this, hombre?” He gives me a chance to back out
, but he doesn’t know me – once I start something, I do not back down… I stand my ground.

“You want to take it outside?” I give him the option of
where they want to get their asses kicked. I’m being generous, if I do say so myself.

“Fuera.” He says
, and flicks his head toward the door.

We meet outside and circle around each other, each person tense, waiting for someone to make the first move. I am no longer willing to wait,
so I lunge for number two, punching him twice before he gets a couple of slugs in himself.

We are going at it a couple of minutes before I start to notice my people gaining ground
. Number two notices about the same time, so he ups the ante by pulling out a knife.

I hardly register the gleaming weapon in his hand when I lung
e for him again, punching him square in the face and breaking his nose, but not before he slices a deep gash down my right arm. I barely feel the fiery pain as I climb on top of him and continue to punch his face in.

I lose track of everyone around me. The only thing I can
feel is the pleasure of releasing my pain, the feeling of my knuckles cracking against bone, and the fire lancing up my arm from my knife wound.

Hands start to pull on me, breaking me out of my trance. “Come on, Alejo. Cops!”

The word
cops
slams me back to reality. Being busted again is not an option. It would mean jail time for sure.

I drop number two
’s shirt and get to our bikes, rocketing out of sight.

Within seconds, we are safe. No one from the other gang
would go public on us… they know better. I will expect retaliation, and be more than ready for it. The more I fight, the more I push my feelings for mi Hermana and mi padre far away from my heart. Even now, I’m lying to myself, denying that the person I want to keep my mind off of the most, is continuing to creep in, no matter how many people I go out and fight with. How can one day of seeing her cause me to feel… whatever the hell it is I’m feeling? I have every intention of pushing her out, but I have a feeling that she’s not going anywhere.

Once w
e reach my house, everyone notices the slice on my arm.

“Holy shit, Alex! You’re bleeding.” Carlos, my closest friend
, says to me. “You want to go to the hospital?”

I’m shaking my head before he can finish speaking. “Hospitals ask questions.” I pull off my shirt to get a better look at the damage.

The cut starts at the top inner side of my bicep, traveling down to about an inch above my elbow. Lightly cut on the outer edges, while cut just deep enough in the middle to need sutures. Moving my arm causes blood to gush from the wound – I need to get this cleaned up and taken care of.

I place my shirt against my arm to try to stunt the bleeding. “Get me some peroxide and the stapler.” I tell Carlos
. He stares at me for a moment in shock, his eyes telling me he thinks I’m crazy.

“Ahora!” I yell at him.

He jumps and rushes from the room to collect the supplies, then returns a few minutes later with everything I asked him to gather.

“You want me to help you?” He asks timidly.

I look at him and only see worry in his eyes, so I decide not to be a dick. “Yeah, dump this shit on my arm.” I hand him back the peroxide.

Again,
he hesitates and looks at me for approval to continue.

I nod and grit my teeth, knowing this is going to
hurt like hell.

Carlos dumps about half the bottle on my arm. It burns
like acid, but I refuse to let a sound pass my lips. I have a tough as nails image to protect, I can’t be wining like a little girl over a small cut. Okay, the cuts not that small, it would be hospital worthy if I had not been trying to avoid the court system. All gunshot and knife wounds involve the local authorities eventually. That’s the last thing I need.

“I brought this too, amigo.”
He holds up a small tube of super glue.

“Good.” I tell him.
That will seal the wound before we staple it together.

“¿Estás listo?” Are you ready?
He asks.

I nod, but he’s already getting to work.

First comes the easy part
– holding the wound together. Most of the bleeding has stopped, so we hold the two sides of skin together and wipe the area, stopping the bleeding completely.

Carlos squeezes the contents of the tube onto my skin. The glue is cold where it touches
, but dries shortly after.

“Keep holding it together.”
He says as he grabs the stapler with his free hand.

He glances at me, as if he’s giving me one more
chance to back out. I meet his gaze steadily, and he knows what I’m saying, so he returns his attention to my arm, placing the staple gun next to my skin.

I put my shirt in my mouth and bite on it as Carlos starts to punch the staples in my arm
, working fast to get them in. I have had staples before, but doing it without numbing drugs is on a completely different level. We’re lucky that one of my guys stole the gun from the hospital. We have all had enough staples done to know how to use the thing by now.

When Carlos stops, I look down and see a straight line of newly inserted staples,
and blood trickling down my arm. Carlos hands me a damp cloth, and I begin running it softly over the wound, cleaning off the blood.

I breathe out heavily, relieved that the stapling is over. I swipe my hand through my hair and Jasmines image dances across my closed lids.

I start cussing a string of English and Spanish curse words, frustrated that everything I went through tonight, everything I did; the fighting, cutting, and stitching up my arm, touched nothing of my thoughts of her. She remains plain as day.

Mierda
!

Now I have to try to find a way to explain this to
mi Madre. Lucky for me, she usually stays out of my dealings, taking the
‘less I know, the better
,’ route, but she knows that the only way I can blow off steam is to fight. The other way is with sex, but that’s something that is not shared with my mi Madre.

Ever since the accident, I have been trying to numb my emotions by fighting, and when that solution
fails, a different girl every couple of weeks will do it. After a while, before any attachment could form, I would break it off. I’m a pretty big asshole when it comes to relationships. Most of the girls I mess with now know this and don’t expect anything but a good time.

Later that night
, when mi Madre returns home from work, she says that she heard about what had happened from some of the girls at the diner. Seeing my wound, she calls the school and leaves a message that I’ll be out sick the next day.

I’m t
rying not to analyze all the reasons behind missing tomorrow, telling myself that staying home has nothing to do with Jasmine.

Instead of school,
I decide I’ll squeeze a day of work in. Mi Madre told me about finding close to six hundred dollars in our mailbox a little over a week ago. We thought of asking around – maybe it was dropped in the wrong mailbox – but you go around asking that kind of question about that kind of money, everyone would claim it as theirs. I think if someone was expecting it, we would have known about it by now, so I think I’ll tell her to spend it on herself. She’s been too afraid to do anything with it, thinking that someone would show up asking for it, but to hell with that. She deserves to do her whenever she can.

But as for me, I
call Juan, my friend in construction, to see if they have a low impact job for the day. I explain the cut, and he tells me that they have some board cutting they need done, so I accept and set my alarm for six o’clock in the morning.

Chapter Nine

Jasmine

Alex missed the second day of school.
The second day!
There are rumors of him being strung out on drugs, eloping with a girl he’s been dating, or that he’s in jail. I may not have talked with Alex in a long time, but none of these things seem true. Well, maybe the jail part, but from what is being said about his last chance to stay out of jail, I’m hoping he won’t risk it.

During
biology, where only
my
partner is absent, the teacher assigns a project due three days after our trip from Hawaii, so either we have to bust this thing out before we leave, or do a rush job when we return. If I want to have any hope of graduating early, we will have to do the project before we leave. I refuse to turn in a half-assed project.

I’m irritated with him. How could he miss the
second
day of school? I mean, really. Even I made it to day two, and I got more shit yesterday than he did. Well, maybe before I said the worst thing I could have ever said to him.

I want to say I’m sorry
– a word that’s always wasted on me, but I can’t think of a better one to express my regret. Maybe that’s what everyone else thought too when they said it to me – maybe they couldn’t think of anything else to say either.

I
make up my mind before the last bell rings… I’m going to his house. I know the neighborhood is bad, but I have been there a few other times. Yes, I admit that those were drive-by’s, and I didn’t get out of my car, but I could do this. The neighborhood couldn’t really be
that
bad, could it?

I rush to my car, the 67 mustang my
dad and brother restored together. Jace had named it Blue Lightning, after its color, and now it’s a small piece of them both that I take care of and cherish.

I
make the drive to Alex’s, hoping he’s home. I’m riddled with anxiety over talking to him face to face. When I arrive, I have to park across the street because there are too many cars around his house to get a closer spot. Surveying the area, I notice people out on some of the porches nearby. They all seem to be a part of the same group, talking to each other from across their yards.

I take a deep breath, steadying myself to get out of the car. Some of the people at the neighboring houses have already taken notice, tapping their friends with the back of their hands and pointing in my direction.

I hurry and open my door before I lose my nerve. Once I’m out, I hit the remote lock on the car and set the alarm. As soon as the car door slams shut, the catcalls begin.

“
Hey, baby. Usted es caliente. Venir aquí!”

I try walking with my head down
and ignore them. I don’t understand why they’re yelling at me in the first place. I’m not watching what’s going on around me, so before I can reach the safety of the porch, three guys intercept me.

“Nice car
, mamacita. You need me to teach you how to handle it?” A tall guy asks in a Mexican accent.

Tattoos
cover all their bodies; two look older than me, but only by a couple of years. The other one I recognize from school, but he acts as if we’re strangers.

“No, thank you.” I offer politely
, hoping they’ll walk away.

“Oh, querida, you have a sexy voice
,” another one says next to my ear, causing a small amount of panic to take hold of me. “And by the looks of it, you have a lot more that’s sexy about you too.” Their eyes are devouring me, as if I’m their main course and they are a pack of hungry wolves.

“Why don’t you give us a taste of some of that?” The tall one from school circles behind me, placing his hard body against my backside
. He pulls me into him by my hips, making sure I can feel him against me. His breath is blowing my hair across my cheek, sending shivers throughout my body.

The only thing I can do is close my eyes.
My anxiety is growing by the second. If I cry out, who will help me? If I run for it, they will only catch me, so as far as I can see, my only option is to wait it out and hope they decide I’m not worth it and walk away. My body’s bold status is failing, their intimidation is beginning to make me shake uncontrollably.

I
breathe in and open my eyes, preparing to fight my way out of this. His hand creeps up from my hip, gliding along my waist and up toward my breast. When he’s almost there, I ready myself to run, but that is when a fist flies past me and slams into the guy’s face, along with a slew of Spanish accompanying the blow.

“
Qué chingados?”Alex’s voice is so angry that I flinch.

He knocks
out the classmate who had his hands on me with one punch. Lying on the ground, his eye is already beginning to turn purple. Alex steps in front of me, shielding me with his body, and glares daggers at the two remaining brutes.

“Sorry, Alex, we didn’t know she was with you.”

They are both visibly scared of Alex. Their gazes wander between Alex and their friend on the ground, probably thinking that they’re about to receive the same treatment for being complete assholes. I also wondered if the guy on the ground should go to a hospital.

The look on Alex’s face
is his warning, unspoken. They collect their friend and carry him by his arms and legs, taking him back to the house they came from.

Alex turns to me, his eyes still blazing. “What are you doing here?” His voice expresses more than anger. He seems… worried?

“You were gone.” I squeak out, my voice cracking around the words. My body is still shaking and tears start to sting my eyes… the start of a break down. I cannot do this, not here! Not in front of him, but what just happened scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

He looks around, noticing all the people still staring at us and takes hold of my hand, leading me into his house. I follow behind him in a trance. My legs begin to give out on me
as I continue to tremble.

Helping me sit on the couch, he brushes a stray hair out of my face. “You’re alright now
, it’ll be okay. No one will touch you, I promise.”

He
remains quiet after that, letting me collect myself, understanding what it means for me to cry in front of him.

‘
A moment of weakness.’

I
will make sure that it never happens again.

For the first time
, I take in the small living space. The living room is small, but homey, with the kitchen splitting off to the side. The smell is remarkable, just like I remember… spices, tortillas, and the smell of a nice, home cooked Mexican meal. It’s been ages since I’ve eaten an authentic cooked meal. I guess some things never change. A small smile plays on my lips as I close my eyes and breath in deep, letting the memory of this smell invade my mind.

When I open my eyes, I find Alex watching me. “Are you alright?” He asks, concern in his eyes and on his face.

“I am now.” I whisper.

The earlier events outside
are their own kind of hell, but I would go through it again to get to Alex. This situation is beyond explaining, but his home feels safe to me…
he
feels safe to me. He’s the only person who understands what I’ve gone through, because he’s gone through it too.

He leans closer to me, drawing my eyes up to his. “You still didn’t answer me
, mujer. What are you doing here?”

I gather my thoughts
and try to focus. I can’t think when he’s this close. “We have a project.” I hear myself say. I can’t admit that I just wanted to see him. “You weren’t at school today, and we need to start on it before we leave. I need a good grade so I can graduate early.”
And because I’m pathetic and wanted to see you again.

Studying me, he
asks, “What’s this project?” His deep, husky voice, with a hint of a Spanish accent mixed in, makes my body shiver involuntarily.

“Um
… we have to collect edible plants in one of the approved areas around school. We have to identify them, and then for extra credit, we can make an entrée out of them.”

He leans closer, if that
is even possible, and says to me, “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me?”

Alex has a confidence he never used to possess, so sure of himself.
I’m not an idiot, I can see what he’s doing. He knows he’s good looking, and he’s trying to use it to his advantage now. I’m not going to let him, or at least that’s what I will keep telling myself.

“I don’t.” I tell him. His eyes flash
with a hint of darkness. “I also wanted to, um… I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” I pause, watching his reaction. “I should never have said that about your dad because I didn’t mean it – not a word of it. It’s easier to stay away from you, ya know? Being around you brings up memories I would rather forget. I thought that if I could stay away from you, that I wouldn’t have to deal with the past.”
Shit!
Stunned, I stop talking. I can’t believe I just spilled my guts to him. Panic is seizing me, constricting my breathing.
Run! Run!
My entire being seems to be screaming.

I think he can see the panicked look in my eyes
, and he says, “I understand what you mean. I have to admit, I was avoiding you for the same reason… A lot of good that has done.” he says. Then, he begins to laugh, and I find myself laughing with him – something I haven’t truly done since Jace.

“I’m sorry.” I tell him again, wanting him to know how much I regret saying those words. The last thing I want to do is hurt him
. He’s not the person that made me angry.

“Apology accepted.” He
says. “Now, do you want to talk about this project?”

I remain silent. I’m still devouring every inch of him. He looks and acts different, but to me, he’s still the same old friendly Alex I used to know
, except now, he’s a way hotter version of himself.

“Yeah, sure. I’m not in any hurry to get back out there.” I point over my shoulder to the door, wondering how I would ever set foot out there again.

Alex’s face turns to stone again, remembering what occurred outside. “Next time, you need to call me first so I can meet you. I never want you to be outside alone again, comprende?” He says. When he realizes I don’t understand, he speaks in English, “Understand?”

“Yes.” I assure him a little too breathlessly.

All my brain keeps repeating is, ‘
next time?’
Is there going to be a next time? Would I be at his house again? Excitement is screaming through my veins; a hard emotion to ignore. I don’t want to have these feelings for him because he reminds me too much of the past. I want to put the accident behind me, but it seems impossible to do with Alex Navarro in my face constantly.
…Next time.

“Good.” He slouches down on the couch, giving me
space. “So, have you chosen an area yet?”

I sit up next to him, noticing our proximity is closer than I was hoping for, but not making any effort to move away.

“I did. I chose down by the river. There are more plants to work with there, and here’s a list of the edible ones that grow in the area.” I hand him the folded piece of paper I’ve had in my back pocket since biology.

When he reaches out to take it,
I see an inflamed gash in his arm. It’s peeking out of his shirt with staples, lining up like shoelaces. My eyes go wide when I see it, then I search his expression.

“Construction work.
It got caught up on some wood.”

“Oh, Alex.” My hand unconsciously reaches out to comfort him before I realize what I’m doing
, and I retract my hand with a start.

He plays off the wound and changes the subject, which makes me think that construction is
n’t the real cause. “When do we need to start the project?”

I let him change the subject, considering I would do the same thing
. “Tomorrow after school would work for me. What about you?”

He answers with a straight face, “I can move some things around
… tomorrow should be fine.”