Page 77 of Enzo

My breath stuttered. The chair scraped inside, the door opened, and I scooted to one side, so I didn’t fall in as Robbie slipped out to sit opposite me.

“You don’t have to tell me it all,” he whispered.

“I do, I need you to see all the bad bits of me, of who I am, so you can see that however we got here to Redcars, not one of us had a journey as bad as yours. Okay? I want you to see how strong you are for surviving whatever happened to you, how far you’ve come, how much more you could do.”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze and then he shrugged.

“Mateo called me and said he and Luis needed help, that they were backed into a corner. What could I do? I couldn’t leave them hanging; when I found them, things were bad. There was this fight between the Stone Cross and some startup MC shit who called themselves the Devil’s Drift for God’s sake, and this one asshole biker—Spider—was beating on Mateo, and Luis was in a standoff with a gun at his head. Everything happened so fast. I tried to pull Mateo out of the fight to get him away, y’know, to regroup and shit, but Spider came at Mateo with a knife, and we both grabbed Spider’s wrist and turned it on him,” I whispered. “I felt it too late. One second, I was trying to help; the next, Spider was bleeding out on the ground, and everyone except for Mateo and Luis ran. Him and Luis had already done time, seen trouble. I made them leave, I told them to run.”

“You took the fall.”

Silence stretched between us. Robbie wriggled forward until our knees touched, and then he held out a hand, and we laced fingers.

“I took the fall, yeah, feeling like a goddamn hero. Hell, I wiped off the knife, then held it so it was just my prints.” I sighed; some of the weight of what I was telling him eased. “I was charged, and the photos they had, the blood, and what I’d done…” I rubbed my hands down my face. “Self-defense didn’t hold up, not with my brother’s record and who he ran with, and despite how many lies the Alvarez family told about how I wasn’t gang-affiliated. Fuck knows why they were telling the cops lies because I wasn’t a good guy. The law dealt with me as connected with the gang, and the DA offered me a plea deal—ten years reduced to five if I pleaded guilty. With a public defender who barely looked at me and no real way out, I signed the papers, and that was it. I never admitted shit, but I never named Luis or Mateo.”

Robbie shifted, pressing his lips to my shoulder. His voice came out choked, thick with emotion. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I let out a breath. “Me too.”

“Mateo is still in the Stone Cross?”

Robbie’s question was innocent, but it hit like a punch to the chest. My breath caught, and I swallowed hard and forced the words out. “Mateo was a legacy, his dad led the gang, still in and running the whole show now his dad is gone.

“And Luis?”

“He was killed a month after I got put away, drive-by shooting. Retaliation ‘cause they couldn’t get to me I guess, or maybe it was other shit my stupid big brother thought was cool.”

Robbie let out a soft sound, tears in his eyes, but he didn’t pull away. He held my hand, stayed close—that was strength, too. Then he moved into my lap and kissed me, slow and sure. I kissed him back, letting the chaos in my head settle.

When we broke apart, the silence between us felt steady, not heavy. I thought of Luis—my brother, my protector—already lost long before he died. But my family was here now. In Robbie. In Redcars.

Robbie had earned his place. He trusted me, even with the worst of my past. His strength wasn’t loud—it was in staying, hoping, refusing to let pain close him off. That kind of bravery? It was fierce in its own way. Certainly braver than ours.

Robbie settled against my chest again, making my heart ache with how right it felt. He was warm and snug in my arms, his breath slow and steady. I wanted to wrap myself around him, sink into this moment, and never let go. He shifted off me, took my hand and tugged me up to the apartment, then waited for me to sit on the sofa before climbing onto my lap.

I pulled a blanket over us, tucking it around his shoulders, sealing us into this small, safe space. He sighed in contentment, his fingers drawing lazy patterns on my skin. His touch made me forget anything outside this room existed.

I could stay here forever, my hand running up and down his back in slow, soothing strokes. Just the two of us, locked away from the past, nothing but warmth and quiet between us. He shifted slightly, pressing in closer as though he could burrow beneath my ribs and stay there.

“You okay?” I asked, wondering if this was the calm before the storm and if he’d walk away as soon as he processed what kind of man I was. “You’re very quiet?—”

“How did you end up here at Redcars?”

That was the easy part of my story. “Tudor took me in.”

“Yeah, but… how did you meet Tudor?”

I let out a dry laugh. “Momma and Papa Alvarez never gave up on me. They genuinely saw good in me, tracked down this man in Echo Park who took in ex-cons with a knack for learning, and they told him about me. Told him I worked hard in prison and that I had a gift for engines. They said I deserved another chance.”

Robbie lifted his head, looking at me in the dim light. “They were right.”

I huffed. “Did you forget the part where I killed someone?”

He smiled, pressing his forehead to mine. “No.”

“Yeah, well, when I stepped out after five years, I was a different man, new tattoos over the Stone Cross, new anger, the weight of doing my time was dirty and hard. The world had moved on without me, and I didn’t know where I was supposed to fit or where I’d go. But there he was. Standing by an old truck, hands stained with oil, white hair curling slightly at his temples. Tudor Barrera.” He’d seen beyond the tattoos, the prison stink, and the fight that still drove me. Almost as if he understood what five years locked up could do to a man.

“What happened then?”

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