Sweet Hope (Sweet Home #4)(60)
As a tear fell over my cheek at this injustice, I let Axel lead me away, staring up at his expressionless face as his fingers tightly held mine.
He was so used to being looked down upon by anyone outside his gang, that he didn’t bat an eyelid when it happened, even when it was so uncalled for. At that moment I understood this closed off man just a little more.
He didn’t know how to be in this everyday world.
He was brought up in a no good trailer park on the wrong side of town. He was the eldest son to a drunken and abusive papa who hit him and his mother regularly. He joined the Heighters as a child because that’s all that was available to him at the time… but he was a child for f*ck's sake! Conditioned to live their way... he’d made mistakes, big mistakes. I got that; still couldn’t wrap my head around most of it. But he’d served his time. He’d survived being a target, attacked in prison for abandoning his gang to save his brothers. His brothers who had no idea what he’d endured to make sure they could escape their shit lives and be free. And despite all that, this lost man life had been so unfair to, had found his calling and completely changed his life with the simple tools of a hammer and chisel.
He’d influenced so many lives already with his art… including mine. He couldn’t see it yet, but he’d completely changed my life in every conceivable way.
This man, clutching my hand like a vise to save me from getting in trouble in his defense, deserved people to give him a chance. I was enraged that he accepted so casually people’s blatant dismissive and hostile behavior toward him.
Grinding my feet to a stop, my emotions forfeiting my logic, I glanced behind and realized that the security guards were no longer trailing us. Axel had stopped too, his attention still forward focused but I could see his jaw working underneath his beard. I could see his neck muscles straining in anger.
“Why do you let people treat you that way?” I asked, hearing the cutting edge fueling my voice.
Axel’s lower neck muscles bunched, his traps and thick arms seeming to increase in size as his eyes squeezed shut. He blew a slow calming breath through his nostrils, his olive skin flushing with red.
When he didn’t say anything in reply, I added, “It’s not fair how they look at you. Because you look this way, they assume you’re a gangbanger who’s going to cause nothing but trouble. It makes me sick!” He still didn’t respond, so I stepped closer to him and made him look into my eyes. “Why are you staying silent? Say something, Goddammit! Why are you not saying a damn word?”
Axel’s hand became bruising in mine. With a frustrated grunt, he spun, dragging me along the empty hallway, until he stopped in front of a door with the sign ‘Store Room.’
Turning the doorknob, he pulled me through and released my hand. He began to pace the floor. I watched him carefully, but adrenaline was still pumping wildly in my blood.
Running a hand over my face, I asked, “Why are we in here?”
Axel stopped dead and, spinning to face me, his face contorting in rage, he reached over my shoulder to the door and snapped the lock shut.
Using his chest, he pushed me back against a set of metal shelves. “You don’t think I care?” he hissed low.
I swallowed… I’d pushed him to his breaking point.
“You don’t think every time one of those cunts, like those * guards, looks at me like I’m nothing more than trash, I don’t wanna turn around and f*ck them up? Because I do! I f*cking hate everyone. I hate people and their f*cking ‘I’m above you’ attitudes, the ‘this guy is gonna hurt me’ opinion of me when they see me walking down the street. I have an anger inside of me that I’m pretty f*cking sure will never leave, an anger if unleashed it on f*ckers like that, I’d end up killing. And I would kill them, I know it. I wouldn’t be able to stop. ‘Cause that’s what I’ve been fighting my whole life, *s like that! Judging me and f*cking wanting me to fail, to disappear so I wouldn’t be society’s problem anymore.”
“Axel, that’s not right—”
Raising his hands to the metal shelves, he hit his hand against the top one and snapped, “And I don’t need you to f*cking defend me!”
My eyes widened and any anger I was holding dissipated, only sorrow creeping in as his words took over. “I couldn’t take it. You’re not the man they see! They’re so wrong about you!”
Axel laughed in my face, but it was a dark mocking laugh. He shook his head, looking at me like I was stupid. “They’re not wrong!” he bellowed. “They’re f*cking right! I am the man they think I am! I’ve been that man for so long I don’t know how to be anyone else. You just don’t let yourself see the real me! You’re blinded by all this art, Elpidio shit!” he rushed forward and cupped my face in his hands. “Wake the f*ck up, Ally! I’m Axel Carillo. I’m bad, I’m no good for you… Jesus Christ! I’m a motherf*cking coke dealer! You keep trying to make out I’m this great guy, looking up at me with those big ol’ doe eyes like I’m your sun, but I’m the damn opposite! I’m midnight! I’m a f*cking eclipse that steals the light! I’ve done it to everyone in my sorry piece of shit life! Look at Austin! Levi! My mamm—”
Axel’s voice cut off, breaking with emotion as he tried to utter his mother’s name. He paled; even saying her name irreparably crushed him.