Twenty Eight
León dropped Celia’s mother’s arm in disgust the second the door banged behind them. The terrible things that had come out of her mouth!
She stuttered to a halt on the wet sidewalk, her feet slapping through the shallow stream crossing the sidewalk from Incubadora’s gurgling downspout. Rounding on him in outrage, she stepped back out of the water, cheeks fiercely red. She gaped as León planted himself solidly in front of the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked, voice shrill. “That’s my daughter.”
A young Latina walking on the other side of the street, carrying a sleepy toddler, looked over as the sound carried. León caught her eye as she passed, and she moved on.
“Let me in!” Celia’s mother demanded, leaning forward, her bag nearly dragging in the wet puddle in front of her.
León checked inside through a tall window. The overcast sky reflected back, but he could just make out Kelsey with an arm around Celia’s shoulder, talking earnestly. She was in safe hands for now.
What would Celia want him to do? Get rid of her, surely.
“Celia will call you if she wants to talk,” he said, standing taller and crossing his arms over his chest.
She sneered, looking him up and down. “What are you, her bodyguard?”
He snorted. Celia needed a bodyguard, around her! She’d told him what this woman had done, breaking wooden spoons on her lost little daughter. She looked so normal; nondescript, no horns or pitchfork. Yet she had hurt his Celia badly.
“Why the silent treatment?” she railed, indignation kicking in. “I didn’t do anything! I deserve an answer! She can’t just pretend I’m not here!”
Not with that screeching voice, she couldn’t! A mustached man and his dog, clad in matching raincoats, approached from behind Celia’s mother. León wanted this scene over before neighbors started noticing Incubadora kicking angry white women out.
“Celia said no,” León said grimly. “That’s all I need to know, all you need to know.”
The man and his dog passed them, startling Celia’s mother. She waited, eyes narrowed, until they passed out of earshot.
“She didn’t mean what she said,” she hissed.
The negation flared in León’s blood. She wanted a fight, did she? “Don’t ever come back here,” he growled, eyes narrowing. “Ever! If you show up again without Celia’s personal invitation, we’ll have the police on you.”
She stiffened, meeting his glare. “It’s not illegal to come to see my own child.”
León pointed at her, fierce, his voice a snarl. “This isn’t a fucking joke!”
Her eyes bulged as she retreated a step. That shut her up!
“Go home now,” he gritted, “and don’t come back.”
He glowered as she gaped in disbelief, but faced with his immovable stance, she ran out of steam. She watched him warily as she hitched her bag higher on her shoulder, then turned and stalked away, head high.
What a bicha! Did she talk to Celia like that all the time? His mother would never dream of using guilt as a weapon. She would never call him crazy, no matter how loco he acted.
Oh, Celia.
He clenched a fist. He couldn’t fix the past, but he’d fight a hundred demons until Celia had what she wanted. It felt good—right—to fight for someone besides himself.
The wretched woman stopped halfway down the block, her bag swinging. She was a ‘last word’ type, for sure. “This isn’t right,” she shouted. “She’s my child!”
León’s blood boiled. How dare she? She had no power over Celia anymore.
“She doesn’t belong to you,” he shouted back.
He watched until she retired around the corner, his breath puffing into mist in the chilly air, his racing heartbeat gradually calming.
Of course Celia belonged to no one but herself.
Idiota.
He screwed his eyes shut and scrubbed a hand over his face. “God dammit,” he muttered, then hastened back inside.
Celia was sitting in the chair, eyes closed and arms crossed tightly around herself as if she were cold. Kelsey was bent over her, whispering. She looked up at his entrance.
“She feels guilty.”
León briskly rounded the front desk, dropping to a knee on the cold floor in front of Celia. “She’s gone. Are you okay?”
She nodded, opening eyes to him that were shadowed but not shattered. He felt deep in his chest the slight hunch of her shoulders, a curve of containment and self-protection, weary lined from past battles.
He would give anything to be allowed to put his arms around her right now. “What do you want?” he asked instead, in a low voice just for her.
“To go upstairs.” Her brimming hazel eyes swept his concerned face, the yellow overhead lights reflecting in unshed tears. “Alone.”
León and Kelsey exchanged wary glances.
Kelsey scratched her ear. “Celia, I don’t know.”
With a tiny shuddery sigh, Celia turned a sunflower face up to Kelsey, a private smile barely touching her lovely lips. “I’m okay. I’m proud of myself.”
Kelsey placed a light hand on her shoulder with a sad smile.
León stood, straightened, shoulders squared. “She wants to be alone. Can we stay down here, Celia?”
She nodded, some of the tension melting from her shoulders.
Reina.
They watched somberly as she climbed the black iron stairs. It felt uncomfortable, but she said she was okay. They had to trust her.
···
Hands shaking as the adrenaline wore off, Celia centered herself on her bed, the mattress embracing her troubled weight with a comforting sigh. She wrapped herself in the new blue comforter and exhaled a breath she’d been holding for many silent years.
The quiet of the half-furnished loft cradled her, her home-in-progress, the low buzz of the enveloping city a humming cocoon. She brought fistfuls of blanket up to her chin and stared, unseeing, across the room. She was alone here, safe. She could make the decisions she wanted and no one could judge her. She could feel guilt, or joy, or anything she chose.
Weak sunbeams breaking through the clouds reflected off the polished floor, brightening the warm brick around her. She’d said no! They’d all heard her! She had people who lifted her up now. She was happier! That was proof that she’d done the right thing…wasn’t it?
She wasn’t finished with her mother forever—she would never be truly finished. But she had chosen to protect herself in the loudest way she could. No! Like a toddler, No! It was selfish and she deserved to say it. For the first time since she was a cowering eight-year-old, Celia had the power to refuse.
It was done.
The wave of relief and empowerment receded as sorrow seeped in, a cold draft sneaking through unseen cracks, a callow trickle that traced the enormity of what she’d done. The walls around her, her safe place named for an incubator, began to crack under the pressure. Sunlight faded again behind the clouds, and sour guilt and sorrow rushed in its wake.
Why, Mom? Why did I have to burn our bridge?
I just want you to love me.
Tears flooded her, wet and messy. Her nose dripped, her eyelids swelled, her throat stuck as she drew a thick open-mouthed breath. Pain warred with pride, relief with rejection. Her gut cramped as a sob built. It burst from her, raw with power and bile and release.
The dampening comforter held her tight as she trembled, her gasps echoing off the soaring ceilings, filling the whole space. She let the storm come. She wracked with each cleansing wave, feeling and feeling and feeling.
She cried out loud. She was getting better.
···
“Dude,” Kelsey said, fingering her sticky notes. “Her mom sucks. You know about what she did?”
“I know.” León waved an offering hand at the empty office chair, and Kelsey sat, eyebrows raised and face speculative.
León looked at the high beamed ceiling as though he could look through to Celia’s floor. “She’ll be okay up there, right?”
Slim hand resting on her burgeoning belly, Kelsey nodded, lips pursed. “She’s changed, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I do.”
She gave him an appraising once-over. “You’ve changed too. You’re way nicer to her.”
Kelsey and her bluntness! León set his jaw, a slow wary fire starting in his stomach. “I was an idiot.”
“I don’t get why you quit painting.”
He looked over to the luminous blue painting, still hanging on the far wall, his fingers twitching as though he could feel a brush. Weak sunbeams breaking through the clouds reflected off the polished floor, casting the painting in a soft glow. He hadn’t had anyone to tell this to; Andrew had been off with Trevor for weeks. The blue days, the black nights of missing Celia, lying awake thinking up ways to earn a few extra minutes near her….León was near his breaking point.
“I’m an ass when I paint,” he admitted. It was tough to say, but… “I want her more than I want art.”
“You’re here to get her back, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t feel the need to answer it.
Kelsey’s voice behind him softened. “You’re going about it all wrong, you know.”
León spun on her. If she expected him to take this with good humor…he was sailing too near desperation. “Help me, then! I’m making this up as I go, and Celia’s not telling me if I’m getting through.”
“Oh, she’s telling you,” Kelsey replied.
León stared.
“Look, you’re an expressive guy. Celia responded to that, it gave her permission to be expressive too. Now you’re buttoned up, all casual. It comes off as fake, by the way. But she’s retreating to that, copying you. You’re cooling things off.”
His mouth opened, then closed. “God dammit. How do you see things like that, Kelsey?”
“I just watch,” she sighed, slumping back into the chair. “I can’t believe you guys need this spelled out! Fine, I’ll help. Go be yourself, idiot.”
“I am, though. The new me.”
“No, stop being casual and boring.” Her voice sharpened, and she fixed him with a pointed look. “The guy she fell for is all emotion and drama.”
León felt something melt in him. A warmth spread through his chest, the icy shell of his fears beginning to crack. “You think she’d take me back?”
Kelsey chuckled. “I’m not touching that one. Ask her.”