The Gang Leader Next Door Just Claimed Me

The Monte Carlo sat in Oscar's driveway like a wounded animal, its hood gaping open to reveal the mechanical guts he'd been wrestling with for the past hour. I could hear him before I saw him—the steady stream of Spanish curses that would've made my abuela wash his mouth out with soap.

He was bent over the engine, his white tank riding up to expose the curve of his lower back where his jeans hung low. The afternoon sun painted his skin bronze, making the black ink of his tattoos seem to move across his shoulders as he shifted his weight. Saints and skulls, virgin mothers and praying hands—a map of contradictions that suited him perfectly.

I paused at the edge of his yard, watching the way his muscles bunched and released as he yanked at something in the engine. A smear of grease streaked across his left cheek like war paint, and his jaw was clenched so tight I could see the pulse jumping in his neck.

"Sounds like you're trying to kill it, not fix it," I called out, holding up the cold bottle of tamarindo Jarritos I'd grabbed from the corner store.

His head snapped up, dark eyes narrowing before recognition softened the hard lines of his face. He didn't smile—Oscar rarely did—but the corner of his mouth twitched as he wiped his hands on a rag that had seen better days.

"Car's being a stubborn bitch," he muttered, accepting the bottle. Our fingers brushed, and I felt that familiar jolt of electricity that had nothing to do with the summer heat. He took a long swallow, his throat working, and I looked away before he could catch me staring.

"What's wrong with her this time?"

"Everything." He gestured at the tangle of wires and hoses like it was self-explanatory. "Thought it was the alternator, but now she's not getting fuel. Might be the pump, might be the filter, might be I'm wasting my fucking time."

I settled against the warm metal of the fender, close enough that I could smell the mix of motor oil and his cologne. "Need help?"

His eyes flicked to me, skeptical. "You know about fuel systems now?"

"I know about handing you tools while you complain. Same thing, right?"

That almost-smile again, quick as lightning. "Pass me the 14-millimeter socket."

Our hands found their rhythm—me passing wrenches, him explaining the difference between fuel injection and carburetors in that low, rough voice that made my chest tight. He talked with his hands when he got excited about something, and I found myself watching the way his fingers moved, imagining them doing other things. Things they shouldn't do to his best friend's little sister.

He worked in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the scrape of metal on metal and his occasional grunt of effort. Then, without looking up from the engine: "Cesar's being an idiot again."

I waited. Oscar didn't talk about his brother often, and when he did, it felt like a gift he was offering—something precious and weighted. "The girl?"

"Always the girl." He yanked at a hose clamp, his jaw tight. "Thinks he's in love. Thinks that means something in our world."

"It means something to him."

Oscar's hands stilled. He turned his head to look at me, and for a moment, the mask slipped—just a crack, just enough to show the exhaustion underneath. "Yeah," he said quietly. "That's what I'm afraid of."

I didn't reach for him. I never did, not when he let these moments happen. I just held his gaze until he looked away, back to the engine, back to safer ground.

"The Prophets been active near the Martinez place," he said, changing subjects with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. "Your brother know?"

"Mario knows everything. Thinks he's the neighborhood watch."

"Someone needs to be." He finally freed the fuel filter, holding it up to the light with a grimace. "Look at this. Clogged to hell. No wonder she was choking."

"How much is a new one?"

"Too much." He set it aside and started cleaning the housing, his movements precise and practiced. "Everything's too much now. Parts, protection, peace of mind." He glanced at me again, quicker this time. "You should tell him to be careful. The Prophets don't care about neighborhood watches."

"I'll tell him you said so. That'll go over well."

The ghost of a smile again, there and gone. "Yeah, probably not."

We fell back into our rhythm—him working, me watching, the afternoon stretching warm and golden around us. He told me about a Santos member who'd gotten picked up last week, how the lawyer was bleeding them dry. I told him about my new shift at the diner, the regular who kept trying to convert me to Jehovah's Witness. He actually laughed at that, a real sound that startled us both into silence afterward.

"Your laugh is broken," I said, handing him a rag. "Like it doesn't know how to work right."

"Don't use it enough." He wiped his hands, studying the grease stains like they held answers. "Not much to laugh about, Spooky."

"You laughed at my Jehovah's Witness story."

"That was pity laughter."

"Liar."

Our eyes met, and something shifted—something dangerous that we both recognized and both ignored. He looked away first, reaching for the new fuel filter he'd had sitting on his toolbox.

"Hand me the pliers?"

I gave them to him, careful not to let our fingers touch this time. The avoidance felt like its own kind of intimacy.

By the time he finished, the sun had dropped lower, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that felt too soft for Freeridge. Oscar slammed the hood with satisfaction, the Monte Carlo's engine purring to life on the first try. He leaned against the driver's side door, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Thanks for the company," he said, which was as close as he ever got to thank you for making me forget.

"Thanks for the mechanical education."

"You're a shitty mechanic."

"I'm an excellent tool-passer. Different skill set."

That almost-smile again. I memorized it, stored it away with all the others—evidence of something that existed only in these small moments, these stolen afternoons when Oscar Diaz let himself be something other than Spooky.

I pushed off the fender and started toward the sidewalk, feeling his eyes on my back with every step. "See you around, Oscar."

"Yeah," he said, and I heard the door to his house open and close behind him before I'd even reached the corner.

I was still smiling at something Oscar had said—some dry comment about carburetors that had landed five minutes too late—when I saw Mario on our porch. He sat on the top step, elbows on his knees, watching me approach with the focused attention of a predator. Or a worried older brother. With Mario, the line blurred.

"Where you been?" he asked before my foot hit the first step.

"Nowhere. Oscar's place." I kept my voice light, casual, reaching past him for the screen door. "His Monte Carlo was acting up again."

Mario didn't move. He blocked the door with his body, and I was forced to stop, to face him. Up close, I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers drummed against his thigh. "You were there for three hours."

"So?"

"So." He stood, unfolding slowly, deliberately. At twenty-three, Mario had already perfected the posture of a man who expected to be listened to. "So I don't like you spending time with Oscar Diaz."

I rolled my eyes, reaching for the door again. "He's our neighbor, Mario. We've known him since we were kids."

"That's not the point." His hand shot out, not rough but firm, catching my wrist. "He's not the same kid who used to let us use his basketball hoop, hermana. He's Spooky now. Leader of the Santos. You know what that means."

I knew. Everyone in Freeridge knew. It meant blood on your hands and targets on your back. It meant power that looked like protection until it wasn't. It meant the man I'd spent the afternoon with—the one who'd laughed at my stupid joke about Jehovah's Witnesses—existed inside a shell of violence and reputation.

"He's my friend," I said, and the words tasted wrong, incomplete. Like describing the ocean as wet.

"Friends don't look at friends the way he looks at you."

My stomach dropped, but I kept my face blank. "You're imagining things."

"I'm not blind." Mario released my wrist, but he didn't step back. The porch light flickered above us, catching the worry in his eyes and turning it harsh. "I see how he watches you. I see how you watch him. And I'm telling you—" he lowered his voice, glancing toward the street where anyone could be listening "—getting close to him is playing with fire. You'll get burned. Maybe worse."

The unspoken hung between us: Cesar's girlfriend. The Prophets. The girls who disappeared into the Santos' world and never came out the same.

"We're just friends," I said, and this time the lie felt physical, ash coating my tongue, heavy in my chest. Because Mario didn't know about the jarritos I kept buying because Oscar liked tamarindo best. He didn't know about the afternoons I'd catalogued like treasures, the almost-smiles I'd counted like currency. He didn't know that "friend" was the smallest word I had for what Oscar Diaz had become to me, and still too large for what I wanted to be.

Mario studied my face, searching for cracks in my performance. I let him look. I'd had years of practice hiding this particular truth, and I used every trick I'd learned—steady breathing, relaxed shoulders, the careful blankness that passed for innocence.

Finally, he stepped aside. "Be careful, hermana. That's all I'm saying."

I pushed past him into the house, feeling his eyes on my back just as I'd felt Oscar's earlier. Two sets of watchful men, two versions of protection that felt like walls closing in.

In my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my hands. They still smelled faintly of motor oil from passing Oscar tools, from brushing against his in the exchange. I didn't wash them. I lay back against my pillows and let myself remember his laugh—broken, surprised, real—and knew with absolute certainty that I would go back. That Mario's warnings were already too late.

The fire had been lit years ago. I was just now feeling the burn.