CHAPTER 11 JORGE—STANDING UP
Jorge clocks it before Shawn does. Always does. Three guys peeling off the handball wall with that particular unhurried walk that means somebody's about to learn a lesson the hard way.
He's moving before he decides to. Legs already carrying him across the yard while some slower part of his brain is still asking if this is his fight.
It's not. He makes it his anyway.
By the time he's close enough to hear it, a hand's already on Shawn's shoulder, and something in Jorge goes white and simple, the way it always does right before it gets loud. Not thinking anymore. Just moving toward the one thing in the world that needs fixing.
"He's with me."
Words out of his mouth before the plan behind them fully forms. Doesn't matter. Been running on instinct instead of plans since the day he found out about Rubén, and instinct's never once needed his permission.
The guy holding Shawn doesn't let go right away.
Jorge reads the calculation happening behind his eyes, sizing up whether this is worth the trouble, and some old, ugly part of Jorge almost wants him to decide it is.
Wants somewhere to put this. Been carrying it since Ch.
1, since before that, and a body in front of him right now would be as good a place as any to set it down.
"Let go of him."
The hand comes off. Slow, deliberate, faces already backing away toward whatever this cost them in the group's eyes rather than Jorge's.
Jorge doesn't feel relief. Feels the opposite, something coiled tight and unfinished, adrenaline with nowhere left to go now that the threat's stepped back.
He's shaking a little, has been the whole time, controlled enough that nobody else would catch it.
Shawn might. Shawn's been catching things nobody else does since day one.
He walks off toward the fence line because if he stays standing in that spot one more second he's going to do something to somebody who didn't even touch Shawn, just for being close enough to it.
Shawn follows. Jorge hears his footsteps behind him, quicker, uneven, still catching up from the fear that hasn't drained out of him yet.
"You're shaking," Shawn says, once they're far enough that nobody else can hear it.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
Jorge stops at the fence, grips it with both hands, knuckles going pale. Doesn't turn around right away. "You don't know what almost just happened back there."
"I know you stopped it."
"I know what I would've done if he hadn't let go." Jorge's voice comes out lower than he means it to, rawer. "Know exactly what I'm capable of when it gets loud enough in my head. Done it before. Done it recent enough that it's the reason I'm in here at all."
Shawn doesn't say anything to that. Just stands close, closer than the yard's unspoken rules would call safe for either of them, and doesn't flinch away from whatever Jorge just admitted.
"You scared of me now," Jorge says. Not really a question.
"No."
"Should be."
"Maybe." Shawn's voice stays steady, steadier than Jorge expects. "Don't think I am, though."
Jorge finally looks at him. Whatever he's searching Shawn's face for, he doesn't find fear in it. Finds something else instead, something he doesn't have a name for yet and isn't sure he's ready to.
A guard's whistle cuts across the yard, calling everybody back in.
Jorge breaks first, steps back from the fence, already walking. "Move. Before they write us both up for lagging."
Shawn catches up to him at the door, falls into step close enough that their arms brush once, twice, neither one adjusting to fix it.
Neither one says anything about it either.
But something's different walking back in than it was walking out, and both of them know it.