Page 70 of Hard to Love
Chapter Nineteen
That evening, after all the artists and public had filed out of the barn, Alex was restless. The leather design he’d been working on after confronting Greer was a complete piece of shit. If he didn’t get his ass in gear, he wouldn’t have anything decent for this competition.
And now that he’d discovered Nicolás was going down the same path as his older brothers, Alex needed to figure out how to fix this clusterfuck. His first inclination after his mamá and brother showed up here was to confront Nicolás and shake some sense into him.
Then he’d remembered what he was like at that age. Already the man of the house. No one could tell him shit. He’d do things his way or die trying.
And in some ways, Nicolás had been cast in the same role after Alex sent them away. The money had come from Alex, but Nicolás was the one taking care of their mamá on a day-to-day basis.
Ego was huge for a teenage boy—trying to become a man but still struggling with a child’s constraints. Pretty much hell.
Alex descended the outside stairs from his apartment and tried not to glance in the direction of the flatbed trailer where he’d spent the best night of his life and then had the whole feeling pulled out from under him. Greer. No doubtwhatever they’d shared out there and in his bed was over. No woman liked to be backed into a corner and forced to look into a mirror.
If she wanted to keep pretending she was one thing when it was obvious her true contribution to the world was something else, that was her deal.
He wandered toward the tiny chapel. Only Greer would think of something like moving interesting buildings into her village rather than building them from the ground up. She instinctively understood people would connect with the unique Texas architecture.
The spire was sitting alone on the one-step porch, looking like a bodiless head. She’d have the whole thing in shape by the end of the week, if he had to bet. He poked his head inside the open front door.
She’d already been busy. Six short pews took up the majority of the space, and an old crucifix hung on the facing wall. As far as the crosses went, it wasn’t one of the gorier ones. Jesus was hanging by nails as always, but the blood was conservative. It took Alex back to the Sunday Masses he’d attended as a kid. He hadn’t stepped foot in a church since his papá died.
Had gotten drunk on a nine-dollar bottle of vodka the day of Javi’s funeral Mass.
In the years Alex still lived at home, his mamá had both pleaded with him and nagged him about it. She hadn’t realized how much of a stretch it would be for God to forgive him for everything he’d done. And after Javier’s murder, Alex figured God would appreciate him keeping the stain out of His house.
Tonight, something compelled him to duck inside the chapel. He skirted the pews and knelt before the crucifix, made the sign of the cross that was as automatic to him aswalking. As breathing.
But everything he needed to say, to confess, clogged in his throat. Unloading years’ worth of shit was more than he could face right now. So he relied on his memory and recited The Act of Contrition, but it didn’t lighten the heavy feeling in his chest.
How in God’s name would he get Nicolás out of this mess? Send his family away again? Appeal to the kid’s sense of right and wrong? Pay off the gang?
Holy shit.Alex cringed.Sorry, Jesus.
But maybe that was it. Foot soldiers were plentiful. Not that Alex wished that existence on any other teenage boy, but Nicolás was replaceable. The lower levels were primarily there to keep visibility and numbers up, but they were interchangeable, even in a small gang like the Tejanos.
A dime a dozen, as hisabuelaused to say.
If Alex had enough dimes, maybe he could buy Nic’s way out.
Unfortunately, his bank account was a few dollars shy of a significant enough number to tempt the gang’s upper tier. But if he won the competition, that would put him in the right territory. He needed that prize money more than ever.
Alex rose to his feet and made the sign of the cross again. Still, the chapel called to him, whispered that he should stay, that he needed to stay. He slipped into the last pew, rested his left arm along the back, and bowed his head again.
Greer found Alex,his head bowed and arms bared by a T-shirt, in her painted church. The only sounds surrounding him were the chirp of insects outside and his ownbreathing.
Then he began to speak.
“Forgive me, Father,” he said, “for I have sinned.”
Her heartbeat picked up, a nervous thump in the pit of her stomach.
Private, Greer. This is a private moment and you have no business standing here.
Almost worse than the time she’d accidentally walked into the bathroom to find her dad standing naked in front of the mirror, shaving. They hadn’t looked each other in the eye for a week after that.
But something was obviously weighing on Alex. And as much progress as she’d thought they’d made, he wasn’t sharing. How could she help make it better, convince him he was exactly where he belonged, if she had no idea what she was fighting?
“The death of Javier is on my head. Afterward, I tried to protect my family, but that protection also caused hardship. I can’t save Javi. He’s in your hands and at your mercy now. But Nicolás, he’s still here. And didn’t you teach that you help those who help themselves? I want to help Nicolás get away from the Pintados, away from Ruben, before he does things he can’t undo. Before he sinks to a place where he can’t stand to be himself.”
