Page 67 of The Reckless Rookie

Three weeks later, my father, Ramón, and I sit on the porch with Finn and Marcus on speaker. The fight is ready enough to put on the record.

Finn and Marcus forced the complete footage through civil discovery. I documented the county complaint and the pressure on the contract. My father linked Sebastian’s filing to his firm’s access to the tape. Ramón recused from every Finn-specific decision and gave ethics counsel the original file without trimming a page.

“This doesn’t cost me the bench by order,” Ramón says. “It may cost me the easy election. An opponent can call the original placement soft on crime and use the recusal as proof I knew the arrangement was compromised. I knew that before I reopened the file.”

“Then we find another way. You’re not spending the easy race on my mess.”

“It isn’t your mess to keep me out of, m’ija. I knew what scrutiny would cost, and I chose the record over the cover. That’s the job.” He holds my eye. “Don’t feel guilty about a thing I chose.”

Finn owns his part of the fight. I own mine. Ramón owns his. We share the evidence where the lines meet. That’s the rule we should have had from the start.

One thing in me didn’t change and won’t. I don’t get surprised by what a thing costs. I count it first, always.

The part that changed is that this time I’m going to go pay it to Sebastian’s face, and I have never done that in my life, and I’m scared.

Sebastian’s car is on my gravel by noon, which is how I know the grenade’s gone off somewhere he can feel it.

Sebastian parks the German car on my gravel and comes out polished enough to make a threat look like a meeting. Control is the only tool he trusts, so he brings it even after it has stopped working.

My heart’s going before he’s out of the car. I didn’t plan for that, standing on my own ground with two judges and the truth behind me. I’ve faced a thousand pounds of horse coming through a fence without my pulse moving. This man in weekend clothes has it going like I’m about to step onto ice, because managing him I could do in my sleep, and this is the thing I’ve spent my whole life not doing.

I do it anyway.

“Catalina.” The whole name, the gavel. “You look tired. This has all gotten so much bigger than it needed to be.”

“Say what you drove out here to say.” My voice comes out level. I don’t know how. I’m holding it there with both hands.

“I think we can make this go away. The review, the unpleasantness with the county. Quietly. And in return I’d ask only that your father and Ramón let an old, cold matter stay cold.”

Three years I took offers like that because taking them was easier than this. I know to the ounce how easy it would be to take this one.

“The complete footage and the civil discovery record show what your firm held and when it held it,” I say. “The county has your complaint beside the access logs and security report. The bar can decide what withholding material footage and using an incomplete story to pressure a public contract means. You don’t get to decide the answer anymore.”

I don’t try to out-talk him. I finally understand it, standing here with my heart going. I can’t. Nobody beats Sebastian at being Sebastian. So I don’t play his game. I put the truth on the ground between us and I don’t pick it back up.

He recalculates. I watch the speed of it. And because he’s good, he goes hunting for the soft place.

“You’d burn Ramón for this. His whole career.”

“He chose it. You don’t get him.”

“And the boy…”

“He’s a man.” It’s out of me before he finishes, too fast, and I hear it, the one place my voice isn’t level, the one place I hand myself to him. I called Finn a child once, at a trough, and I’ve paid for it every day since. I won’t lend Sebastian the word. “Finish it without it.”

“…Bring this into the light and it all comes back up. The parking lot. The hospital. Your placement on every screen in Texas, right when he wants to disappear.”

“Drag it up.” My voice steadies again on Finn, of all things, because that one I’m sure of all the way down. “He’s not hiding. He did what he did in that parking lot and he’s finishing what he owes for it the long way, out in the open, the whole county watching. There’s nothing you can put on a screen that he hasn’t already stood up in front of. You’re looking for the soft place. That one we took out ourselves.”

And then the thing I priced but could not have braced for, because you can’t brace for a face.

The polish comes off. Not slips. Comes off, all at once, and what’s under it is a man I slept beside for three years and never let myself look at straight. He does not lose. He’s built his whole life so he’d never find out what he is when he does, and he’s finding out in my yard, and it goes through me even knowing it was coming.

“Keep your ranch.” Quiet, and the quiet’s worse. “Keep your criminals and your break-even second chances and your little monument to not needing anyone. I never wanted it. I wanted you, back when you were worth wanting.” He lets it sit, watching for it to cut, and it does, a little, three years’ worth. “But your judge. There’s no tape for what I’ll do to Ramón. A firm sitting on evidence is a paper trail. A soft judge second-guessing himself in an election year is a whisper, and a whisper was the only thing I ever needed. You took my firm. You didn’t take my mouth.”

It lands. Not as a surprise. I counted Ramón weeks ago, on this porch and at my own counter a dozen times since. But counting a thing and watching a man promise to do it with a smile are not the same, and my stomach turns, and I let it turn and I don’t let my face move with it.

“I know.” Short, because short is all I’ve got left that’ll hold. “I counted Ramón before I ever called my father. All of it. The whisper, the year of it, the seat. You’re not handing me a bill I didn’t already pay.” I make myself hold his eyes. “I decided you weren’t worth what you cost us. I’m still deciding it, looking right at you.”