Chapter 29

The sound of the heavy steel door echoed with a loud clank as it swung open and Calvin stepped back into the bleached light of one of the holding areas, his heeled sandals clicking on the concrete. His semi-permanent eyeliner and lip stain remained flawlessly where normal makeup would have been smeared beyond repair from his recent activities. While he stood up tall, added by the corset his mind felt broken. Stepping in his head was held high, shoulders back and chest out just like he had been trained, but his eyes still showed at least a fraction of his trauma. They were puffy and bloodshot thanks to the couching and crying. ‘It over… I did it... It's over because of me.’ He tried to tell himself not to focus on what exactly he did to get the gears turning to get freedom but the lingering taste in his mouth wouldn’t let him forget.

Maria was off the metal bench she sat on the instant she saw Clara. The oversized hoodie swallowed her frame as she rushed forward, her dark eyes wide and bright with desperate hope. She closed half the distance between them in a heartbeat, her mouth opening to ask if the lawyer had finally arrived to save them. But the teenager stopped short, the worn soles of her sneakers squeaking against the floor. The excitement and relief from seeing the young woman that was so kind to her drained from her face as she took in Clara’s face. How the redness rimmed her vacant, traumatized looking gaze.

Shoulders slumping, Maria's tough-guy facade returned as a shield against the coming disappointment. "I take it things didn't go well?" she asked, her voice cracking slightly in the quiet cell.

While not normally a hugger, the way the teen ran up to him, arms out, he was expecting an embrace and when it didn’t come, Maria stopping short of him, he longed for that comfort after what he had been through... was still going through. Calvin swallowed, suppressing a wince as his raw throat protested. The lingering taste of the interrogation room still coated his mouth, though it was at least now cleaned off his chin, it made his stomach churn. He looked at the stoic teen girl he had just sold his dignity to protect, knowing he couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't tell her what the actual cost of their freedom was.

"It's... it's complicated," Calvin managed, forcing the breathy alto of Clara's voice through his bruised vocal cords. He took a slow, deliberate breath, trying to steady the shaking in his manicured hands. "But I did it… Trust me, Maria. We are going to get out of here tonight."

“Yeah? Maria said skeptically, her dark eyes searching Clara’s near perfect, tear-streaked face.

Wincing, Cal nodded, pulling the girl in for a hug that he felt he probably needed more than her. “I worked out a deal.” He said glancing over at the others in the room and feeling guilty that he couldn’t do more for them. It was a mental turn he didn’t care one way or the other about ICE here in California till today.

“What kind of deal?”

Holding the girl tight, Calvin closed his eyes trying to hold back another wave of tears. “Men… A crying woman is their kryptonite. It was the kind of deal where after some paperwork the two of us get to leave.”

Disentangling herself from the hug, though done slowly, Maria gave them an inquisitive glare. “You didn’t answer my question.”

After the accusation, Cal gave the girl a weak smile taking her hand into both of his and walking her back over to the bench. “You know you sound almost exactly like a friend of mine… The two of you even share a name though she is Ana María and goes by just Ana at work.”

Leaning into the taller young woman at her side, Maria rolled her eyes remembering what she was told about her own name. “My… My full name is Miryam Lucía Pérez. My abuela says Miryam is the real name for Jesus’s mother.”

“Oh.” Cal said his thin eyebrows going up, he was never much for religion, he wasn’t even a believer and didn’t want to say something insulting. ‘Why do I care?’ He thought, wrapping an arm around the teen leaning into him.

The wait stretched on, every minute grinding against Calvin's frayed nerves like coarse sandpaper. The harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights of the holding cell offered no sense of time, leaving him to wonder if he had been sitting on the freezing metal bench for twenty minutes or two hours. Miryam’s breathing eventually slowed, the exhausted teenager falling into a fitful sleep with her head resting heavily against his corseted shoulder.

Not daring to move. He just sat there, staring blankly at the scuffed concrete floor, desperately trying not to swallow. Every time he did, the phantom taste of the interrogation room flared in the back of his throat, threatening to mentally send him back to that room, his knees. He focused entirely on the rhythm of the girl’s shallow breaths, his eyes finding their way back over to the phone in the room, wanting it to ring for him.

Finally, the heavy deadbolt echoed with its familiar, mechanical clack. The steel door swung outward, and a different guard, a tall, lanky man with a buzzcut that couldn’t hide the fact he had bright red hair stepped into the doorway. "Bent. Pérez. Front desk. You're being released."

Maria jerked awake, her dark eyes wide and disoriented before anything other than her last name registered. She looked up at Clara, a breathless, wondrous disbelief washing over her face. "You... you really did it!"

Along with the girl sounding grateful he felt her squeeze him tightly. "I told you," Calvin whispered, his breathy voice completely devoid of its usual forced cheer. He gently nudged her to her feet, ignoring the shooting pain in his body he stood and shifted his weight back onto the dirt-caked stilettos.

They were escorted down the long, bleak corridor in silence, Cal surprised when the girl held his hand as they made their way back to the scratched plexiglass of the intake counter. The heavy-set officer who had processed Calvin earlier was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a bored-looking woman who slid a manila envelope and Clara’s tan purse through the slot.

"Sign here," she droned, pushing a clipboard under the glass. "Pending further review. You're both free to go."

Not bothering with reading the paperwork. He picked up the pen and scrawled a shaky approximation of Clara's signature. The moment the pen left the paper, his hands practically tore into the purse. He bypassed his phone and a compact mirror, his frantic fingers finding a half-empty pack of cinnamon gum. He popped three pieces into his mouth at once, chewing them aggressively, desperate for the artificial spice to burn away the sickening coating on his tongue.

The heavy, reinforced exit doors hissed open, spilling them out into the cool, pre-dawn California air.

The shock of the cold hit Calvin’s bare legs, raising goosebumps across his smooth skin and surprisingly causing his nipples to become firm and more prominent.

Maria walked a few steps ahead into the mostly empty parking lot before turning back. In the pale light of the streetlamps, she looked incredibly small, the tough-guy facade nowhere to be seen. To her Clara was a beautiful, battered young woman that could have been her guardian angel standing there on the curb, the smeared dirt on her pale blue dress, the rigid, protective way she held herself. She didn't know the specifics, but she wasn't stupid. She knew the system didn't just let people walk out into the night because of a few tears and she hadn't seen a lawyer.

"Clara," Maria said softly, her voice trembling. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms tightly around Clara's waist, burying her face in her chest. "Thank you. I don't know what you had to do, but... thank you. For everything."

Accepting the hug, Calvin stood frozen for a few seconds, the gratitude hitting him harder than a physical blow, but in the best possible way. Slowly, his slender arms came up to return the hug, resting his chin gently on top of her messy bun. "You are a good kid, Miryam," Calvin whispered, his voice cracking. "You finish school, keep getting those A’s and you don't ever let a place like this tell you what you're worth. If you ever need a job come to the hotel Ahuva Bahyeet. I will make sure you are taken care of."

The teenager pulled back, swiping a tear from her cheek with the sleeve of her oversized hoodie, offering one last, watery smile before she turned and jogged toward the dimly lit street to find a bus stop or a payphone.

Left alone on the curb, the adrenaline that had been keeping Calvin upright finally faltered. The sheer weight of the night crashed down on him. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, staring blankly at the cracked asphalt. He was Calvin David Bennent. He was supposed to be a titan. Instead, he was just a broken girl waiting on the side of the road.

Headlights swept across the parking lot, nearly blinding him. A familiar, heavy black SUV pulled up to the curb, the engine idling with a low rumble. The passenger side window rolled down, revealing Sidney Larson leaning across the center console. The head of security had his jaw set tight, his eyes narrowed, fully braced for a hurricane of high-pitched screaming, threats of termination, and a barrage of flying purses. "Get in," Sidney grunted, bracing for the impact.

But the explosion never came. Calvin didn't yell, but he did point a manicured finger in the bigger man’s direction. He did want to yell but right now he couldn’t even look the man in the eye. The world feeling like everything was moving in slow motion, Calvin opened the door and pulled himself up into the bucket seat. The moment the door clicked shut, sealing them inside the warm, leather-scented cabin, Calvin reached down and unbuckled the straps of the filthy stiletto sandals. He kicked them off, letting them tumble onto the floorboard.

Without a single word, Calvin pulled his bare, aching feet up onto the leather seat, wrapped his arms tightly around his knees, and pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the passenger window. He curled himself into the smallest ball his his body would allow, staring blankly out into the dark. “What happened to you?”

Unclenching his jaw, Sidney froze, taking in his feminized boss's body language. “Finding you and wrangling your slimy lawyer Mathews took longer than I would have liked. The good news is he got you free. The bad news is you are expected to be in immigration court on Monday, but Matews is going to delay that for you and will get you a work visa so you won't have to go through this again.” He said, amused at the fact he was both fixing the mess and in doing so getting Clara a work visa to be in the states.

His large hands gripping the steering wheel. The tirade he expected didn’t come, only a hollow silence emanating from the passenger seat that was somehow far more terrifying than any screaming fit the arrogant hotelier had ever thrown. Sidney looked at the trembling person… The girl curled up against the door.

"Clara?" Sidney asked, his voice dropping its gruff edge, replaced by a hesitant, profound concern. "What happened in there?"

Calvin didn't turn his head. He just squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear slipping free down onto and down his cheek. "Just drive," Calvin whispered, his breath fogging the cold glass. "Please. Just take me home."

The horrific events of being arrested, the threat of being deported away from his home country were at an end at least mostly. Sidney talked about things to make the problem go away but Calvin didn’t have the mental bandwidth to take it in. While he wanted to go home to his real home he was happy to at least be in the safety of his small apartment. Though as he lay there in bed wearing a light blue spaghetti strap night gown on his side facing the wall he couldn’t sleep. The man who had gotten him away from that place laid next to him in nothing but his boxers snoring, though softly, but taking up most of the small bed. Sidney had said something about being too tired to drive.

‘Sid had contacted my lawyer…’ the thought went through Calvin’s mind as he listened to the sounds of the man snoring… practically bragging that he was able to sleep while Calvin was trying to come to grips with the fact that he didn’t have to give a blow job. Closing his eyes desperately wanting and needing sleep he thought of the teen's smile before she ran off into the night ‘Miryam Lucía Pérez… Maria, at least I saved her.’