Chapter 14: Moving to Center

Calix’s eyes opened slowly. His arms were wrapped around a warm bundle. Sophia. Her breath was deep and even, a slight, near-silent snore escaping her lips.

For a moment, he reveled in her closeness. It was familiar. He always seemed to feel a bit better when waking next to Sophia.

He kept his breathing even as his mind made the familiar transition from sleep to wakefulness. He frowned. He didn’t know the time and it bothered him. He was used to being in control. Too often lately, such had not been the case.

He clenched his teeth and took a slow, deep breath, letting it out slowly and deliberately. That would have to change.

With a slight sigh of regret, Calix slowly and deftly untangled himself from the woman he held. He heard her murmur as he withdrew, but he moved his pillow against her back to give her some comfort. With a slight smile in the dark, he pulled the covers up to Sophia’s chin and made sure she was warm.

He didn’t go far. There was no need. He stretched his arms up, pulling to one side and then the other in a long stretch, before slowly dropping into a lotus position, his legs folded, sides of his feet on his knees with his back bowed. He let his arms drop, his hands coming to rest on his legs just shy of where his feet rested. With a sigh he took in a deep, cleansing breath and blew it out.

He pictured two concentric circles in his mind as Mr. Alvarez had taught him. He imagined a stunted bull’s eye. In the inner circle were the things he could control – mostly himself and his interactions with others. The middle circle were things he could influence – people around him and his environment, for the most part. Outside of those circles were everything he couldn’t control. The trick was in placing everything into the proper circle.

He had been a mess when he’d first met Mr. Alvarez. Out of control. Petulant. Raging at everything and everyone in the world around him. The man had been kind to him, a kindness that far exceeded teaching him Krav Maga.

The man had been patient. He’d let the boy rage and scream providing a method to vent his frustrations but also teaching him to re-direct those frustrations when they were too much to control.

Meditation was part of his cure. Self-hypnosis. Allowing the compartments within his mind to empty and to be processed.

He tightened each group of muscles in his body and then let them relax, all while concentrating on his breathing. Even as he held the image of the stunted bull’s eye in his mind, he pictured a square – the square of his breathing. Long breath in to form one side, holding it to form another, long breath out to form the third side and completing the square with another hold.

It was repetition. Circles. Squares. Focusing on the relaxation of his muscles and the perfection of his breathing, he felt himself drop into the hidden place within him, the place where the human and animal sides of his nature warred with each other and where all of the countless compartments of his mind resided.

He had not dealt with his cousin’s death. He had not allowed himself to feel the totality of the loss. To grieve was to acknowledge it. It made it real to him. He didn’t want it to be real – but it was firmly in the outer circle.

He could not control it. He felt the tears drip down his face and he let them come.

His cousin’s death was more loss. He felt he should be inured to loss by now. He’d lost so much. A mother he couldn’t even remember. A father. Another mother, this time with sisters. Mr. Alvarez. The Cholos. So much loss weighed on him. Some of these he’d dealt with before – many times before – but they continued to recur. Each new loss opened the wound, cutting just a bit deeper.

The Cholos loss had been the deepest cut. He’d counted them as family and they’d turned on him. Certainly not all of them – but enough.

He’d cultured Espanto to be a symbol of fear. To be a target. To take the blows which could harm his family and direct them solely at himself. To get to the Cholos, he would need to be dealt with first.

They threw it away. As a symbol he’d been too perfect. They’d feared him as much as the other gangs in the city. Jealousy. Hatred. Things which should have been absent in the hearts of his family had not only found a home but had flourished. They’d not only tossed him aside, but they’d tried to end him. The loss here was complete. He allowed the emptiness to wash over him – but he held it at a distance.

It would not swallow him.

The Confederacy was a problem of another color. It was nebulous. Tentative. He didn’t do well with nebulous. Abstract things made him edgy. There were too many pieces and he was missing far too much of the puzzle.

Aliens. Artificial Intelligences. Humans. Enemies. It was difficult to determine which was which – and how he should treat any of them.

He realized the Confederacy – the parts he dealt with, anyway – was in the second circle. It was malleable. Controllable. He could influence it. Pieces could be moved, changed. Parts could be altered as needed. He was part of it – but it was also his environment. He could bend it to his will – or break it. Time would tell.

He wondered if his breakdown from two days ago had hurt his standing with the Confederacy. With his superiors. He wondered but he didn’t worry. He was who he was. What he was. They could take him or leave him. It made no difference to him. It might even prove to his advantage. He enjoyed being underestimated – it often proved a tactical advantage. If such were the case, they’d learn the error of their folly.

He’d lost a day. That had never happened before. Of course, he’d never before gone so long without dealing with his compartmentalization. He’d really screwed up this time – but he’d have to move on.

Octavia was a mystery. She was unreadable. She was driven by a sense of equity. She could flit from being wholly professional to teasing in the blink of an eye. There were times she was unsure of herself – but he couldn’t determine the source of her insecurity or confusion. He would need to study her some more to figure her out and determine what she wanted.

His family. His new family. Would this one be any more permanent than any of his others. Was he doomed to lose them as well?

He was fairly certain Sophia wasn’t going anywhere. The thought of her brought a smile to his face. She was steady. And he loved her. A love he’d never felt before, almost didn’t recognize. Romantic love. So different than the love he felt for his father, his stepmother, his sisters. It was strange. Like he could almost feel her presence when she was near.

Of course, maybe he could. Who knew what the Confederacy was doing to them?

He was certain, however, she loved him right back. She would never willingly leave. She’d never discard him.

He couldn’t be so sure of the rest.

Brianna seemed – enamored – of him. Was it love? Probably not. The possibility existed, though. It came just as he found himself beginning to love her. Would it become love? He could only hope.

While he was certain Sophia was firmly in his inner circle, Brianna was still in the middle circle. He had influence but she was not a part of him. Not yet. She had a hidden agenda, one that seemed far more complex than the one Octavia was hiding. He knew he’d been a convenience to her. He’d been someone she liked who could save her and her sisters. Only time would tell if it grew to more than that.

Whiskey’s status was a bit more elusive. Although he liked to think there was romantic inclinations there, in truth he worried the young woman’s feelings were more gratitude than romance. Well, gratitude and fear. She’d been raped by Tomas, the usurper of the Cholos. Calix had come to her rescue – but only after the fact. He’d cleaned out the ones who’d harmed her, though for his own probably selfish reasons. So, was she romantically inclined towards him or was he just a stopgap? And was she mature enough to know the difference?

Which brought him to Alicia, much as he wished it wouldn’t. He’d known the woman was a bit high-maintenance. He’d known she could be manipulative. It was actually a quality Rico had liked – or, at least, appreciated. Calix had avoided her as much as possible because – well – frankly he didn’t care for her. As Rico’s wife, he would move the world for her. As a woman on her own merits? He’d take a hard pass on ever dealing with her.

She was already more trouble than she was worth, and he knew it was only going to get worse. He’d tried, stupidly, to placate her. It had bought him a reprieve, of sorts. As long as she got her way, she was almost pleasant to deal with. The issue was she couldn’t have her way all the time.

Calix firmly believed she felt she should be in charge – and she couldn’t. With a CAP of 5.3, she didn’t have the score to be in charge in this situation – nor was she ever likely to get a high enough score.

Putting her in charge would have been a bad idea, anyway. Beyond manipulative, she was petty, egotistical and demanding. Basically, a pain in the ass. HIS ass. And the rest of his family would have suffered.

There were no romantic feelings there and there never would be – on either side. If she were to become a non-disruptive member of this family, he needed to find a way to control her. It was a perplexing enough problem. In the world of the Cholos, he’d have just beaten her down by now. His respect for Rico – and the fact he owed his cousin a life debt a dozen times over – had stilled his hand. For now. He’d need to find a way to either get rid of her or bring her into line.

He had no idea what to make of Tamara. Soph thought Alicia’s younger sister had a crush on him – but the younger girl was difficult to read, possibly because he kept looking for traces of Alicia’s bad points hidden in her personality. He wasn’t certain how any parents could raise two such apparently diametrically opposed young women. Tamara seemed sweet and loveable and courageous and forthright – everything Alicia wasn’t. He’d need to take special care to treat her as the woman she was and not as an appendage of Alicia.

The problem was – he was attracted to her. Physically, she wasn’t too far removed from her sister, and whatever else you could say about Alicia, she was stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what Tamara’s motives were – beyond being saved. Or even if there were any motives beyond being saved.

Heather wasn’t difficult to figure out. Neither was Yolanda. The two of them had traded their lives for safety. Safety for herself, her son and her unborn child in Heather’s case and safety for her twin daughters in Yolanda’s. He wasn’t certain Yolanda cared too much about her own well-being. The much older woman seemed to subsume her own self for her children. Unfortunately, convenience wasn’t something to build any kind of relationship on in either case. He’d need to work to get to know the two women better.

Julia was a different nut to crack. Sometimes, when she thought he wasn’t looking, she looked at him – predatorily. It was reminiscent of a documentary he’d once seen of a cheetah looking for its next meal. It was disconcerting, and he wondered where her feelings stemmed from. Whatever their source, they seemed more sexual than romantic.

He didn’t mind the thought. Julia was put together very well – and he’d thought so in the hospital, while she was still hiding those huge breasts. He could only hope a true relationship grew there. If he were to nurture a relationship with the older woman, it would have to evolve beyond her sexual desires.

He let his feelings for the women – love in some cases, warmth in others and ambivalence in still others – wash over him. At the worst, they were all within his spheres of influence – even, or maybe most especially, Alicia. Definitely second circle but he hoped in most cases to move them into the first.

He sat still for a bit longer, his mind conquering and classifying, emptying the compartments he’d been holding in for some time now. There were times when tears fell down his cheeks and others when his lips curled into a smile. He let it all wash over him. He let himself feel what he couldn’t feel in the moment.

From the bed, her eyes barely open, Sophia watched him. She’d seen it before, but it had never been quite this bad. It had never taken quite this long. They’d discussed it a few times. It was one of those shared confidences between lovers. She had come to understand that it was his way of dealing with things he had to put away when he had no time to experience them in the moment. Fear, pain, anger, hatred – all of the emotions and observations and data which inundated him when he needed it least.