He was here in retaliation for me going back there? For Grandma Genie’s funeral? Was he for real?
This terrible sensation of dread hit me right then.Should have gotten you outside of your fucking place.Something clicked inside of me, and I looked down at my cousin and wanted to kick him in the balls as hard as I could. I didn’t want to believe it, but this was him. Them. None of this should be surprising.
“Rudy, did you break into my house?”
I saw his hand jerk. Saw him flinch.
“Did you break into my house?”
“Am I gonna get kicked again if I answer that?” he had the stupid nerve to ask.
He’d done it. This little asshole, sack of shit had done it. It hadn’t been random burglars.
It wouldn’t even be the first time I’d overheard about him going into someone’s house to rob them. He’d been doing stuff like that since we had been kids.
I was too busy staring at him to look and see who kicked him again, but I knew it happened because he cried out again, “Goddamn it!”
He had been the one to break into my house.
He’d gotten onto private property to jump me. To hurt me. And it wasn’t the first time.
If I had thought things had gone red a minute ago, I would have been mistaken, but things definitely went red then. Anger surged through me. So strong, so piercing, I couldn’t breathe.
But somehow, some way, it also calmed me to know it had been him.
It calmed me to know I knew exactly what I was going to do.
And so it wasn’t so hard to stand there, staring down at him. It wasn’t hard to say, “Rudy, my dad never told me not to go back to San Antonio. He told me never to go back home. If you want to play the specifics game, he never said San Antonio.”
Because it was true.
Maybe my cousin hadn’t come to kill me, but he had come back to wreck my life. To wreck me. To hurt me.
I wasn’t okay with that. I was never going to be okay with that.
A Miller never went back on their word, and maybe I was an Allen now, but I had been a Miller first. My cousin reminded me of that. Unfortunately for him.
“Fuck off, you stupid bitch,” Rudy kept venting, stupidly.
But I was past it.
“Do you remember what I told you at the funeral?” I asked him, calmly, knowing I wasn’t going to get a response. He didn’t let me down. So I crouched by him, not close enough to be within striking distance if he was dumb enough to try and get another shot in, but close enough so I could speak more quietly, so he would know I wasn’t talking irrationally. Rip had taught me how much more effective that was than yelling.
And just in case he had forgotten, I answered my own question. “You came and you tried to hurt me, and I’ll live with that. But I told you at the funeral if you ever put your hands on me again, I was going to break your hand.”
His entire body froze, and I heard a noise from Miguel, but I didn’t turn to look at him. I was too focused. I was in this zone I had forgotten how well I was familiar with.
“And you know what that means, don’t you?” I asked him again.
“Oh, fuck,” I heard Miguel mutter.
But I didn’t look away as I asked my boss and my friend, “Will one of you hold him for me?”
Miguel didn’t hesitate. He dropped to my cousin and kneeled over his curled legs, pressing his hands down on the arm Rudy had closest to the ground. If he was a little too good at that, I was going to ask him later about it.
Just as I reached for Rudy’s hand, another one landed on my shoulder, and Rip’s voice was clear as he asked, “Let me do it.”
I didn’t look at him. Instead I took in my cousin’s face, pained and angry and furious—a reminder of a time in my life I never wanted ever again after this. “I can do it,” I told Rip.
