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Chapter Text"Every street you walk on, I leave tear stains on the ground
Following the girl, I didn't even want around."
I Want You Back by The Jackson Five
He was shirtless out in the backyard and she watched him from the chair where she sat, just like she did most days that summer. Lucy still couldn't believe how tall he had gotten this year. He was sixteen and she was fourteen and he had grown inches the last year, while she didn't get much taller at all.
He was a man practically, his shoulders were a mile wide, his arms so strong and his hair already bleached out from the sun. Her friends at home had mooned over pictures of him all year and as she watched him starting up the dirt bike she was too aware of his body.
Mac was by far no slouch in the looks department and she knew he had a lot of girlfriends. It was understandable, he was hot as fuck. So much so that she just could not stop looking at him that summer. Always she found her eyes were drawn to his chest, flat stomach and lean hips.
Lucy watched him often doing yard work or working on the bike, usually shirtless, fuck her life. Today was no different, she was sure to keep her sunglasses on so he couldn't see exactly what she was looking at; she would die. Looking at him was her dirty little secret, not even her girlfriends both at home and in Cainville knew she did that.
There was a book in her lap and she read from it from time to time just for show, but mostly she was looking at him.
He was fair like his mother and only favored his father in temperament, he was half Mexican but looked like a true California surfer when his skin was tan. He was any teenage girl's dream, this teenage girl's dream.
As Lucy was contemplating Mac's tan skin he stopped, stood up and his jeans hung so low on his hips that Lucy could see the thin line of hair that led the trail below his belt. Fuck, that made everything inside of her stir, it was like her skin was on fire and it wasn't from the hot desert sun either.
She watched him as he took a long, sloppy, wet gulp of water from the hose tilting her sunglasses for a better view. Lucy groaned to herself while he let the water run over his head and down over his chest; why did he have to be so good looking?
"What is this shit you're reading?" Mac asked, wiping the water from his face.
"It's poetry ya jerk." She said with a sweet smile as he approached.
"Come on, I wanna teach you how to drive," He held his hand out to her.
"Really?" Her face lit up, she was just fourteen and shouldn't have been driving, and he just had his permit, but they hadn't cared much for rules all their lives anyway. Who would stop Walter's kid from driving when he wasn't supposed to anyway, the answer was nobody. Mac did what he wanted now, and rarely faced consequences, but his time with Lucy was separate, in a compartment, far away from his real life.
He was aware of what compartmentalization was, and he knew he was doing it; it was the only way he could exist. He had dropped out of high school that year, but he still continued to read, to try and find the answers to life.
"Yeah, gimme that," He grabbed the book from her hands, opened it and read a few lines. "I was always yours to have and you were always mine." He teased.
"I always loved you more," She replied, reciting the rest of the poem, and the words went right through him like lightning and landed in his gut, "We loved each other in and out of time."
Mac was rooted to the spot a few feet away from her as the wind blew through the trees, their hair and out into the canyon below. Neither of them said a word.
We loved each other in and out of time.
Why was she looking at him that way? Why was he out of breath all of the sudden? His hands shook as he held the book and he stared at her for a minute that seemed to last a lifetime; he couldn't move. Finally, he snapped out of whatever fugue state it was and silently berated himself to 'Get his shit together.' Like Walter always said, "Keep your shit together." It was his father's favorite saying and he found himself using it often to self-talk when he felt like he was losing it.
"Come on, let's do this," He tossed the book on the chair finally as if it was on fire and pulled her towards the old red truck he had recently purchased thanks to now being employed by both Walter and the garage across from the bar. He had to get away from that book with the poem that was making him so uncomfortable, "Vamanos!"
I was always yours to have and you were always mine.
/
Martin, one of his partners in crime now and one who would become, eventually, his worst enemy sat down on the steps by his back door next to him a few days later. Lucy was laying in the sun reading another one of her books and the boys were smoking, usually, she would be all up in their faces wanting to talk or tag along wherever they were going but not this day. She was sunbathing in a black bikini and Mac was eyeing Martin closely to make sure he wasn't gawking at her.
Also, he was trying to keep himself from gawking at her. When the fuck had she gotten all those curves?
Marin was acting sketchy and Mac didn't like the way he was looking at Lucy lately.
It had been months since they last killed a girl in the cave, dumped the body and cleaned up the mess, and it had been a mess that last time. It was two now, victims of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first one had been brunette and Mac couldn't touch her, but he touched the other one and that was noted by everyone.
"It ain't natural the way you two are." Martin mused as he looked over at her and then back at Mac.
"Mind your fucking business, Martin." Mac snapped and Lucy never looked up from her book, she remained on the blanket on her stomach not facing them. She had earbuds in and continued to ignore both of them, and that was unusual.
"She ain't talking to ya is she," Martin snickered.
"Nope, she's got a stick up her ass over some TV show I made fun of." Mac answered gratefully that Martin wasn't focused on looking at her and he was making conversation, "She'll get over it."
There was one TV in the house and he had been watching baseball the night before, which she usually liked to watch too. But some TV show was on now that she liked, Mac had teased her about it endlessly and wouldn't turn off the baseball game. For the first time in a long while they actually had a screaming match, which ended with her stomping off to her room, she had even slammed the door for good measure.
"Almost like ya a married couple, like I said it ain't natural." Martin made a whistle, "It is some ass though."
So much for him not being focused on her, Mac would have to watch him from now on.
"Watch your fucking mouth," Mac hissed, Martin was an A class douche bag, but pickings were slim in the area for friends. Still, he didn't want to hear about Lucy's ass from him, he had enough problems without adding her ass into the mix.
"Relax I ain't gonna touch your precious peach."
"Don't even think of it," Mac stared him down and Martin was actually afraid for a second, Mac had a look on his face he had never seen, not even when he killed that girl, "Any of you assholes go near her and I'll kill you, you understand?"
They were silent for a bit and then Martin decided to poke the snake some more, because why the hell not. Mac always got so defensive of her, and it was fun to piss him off.
"She know?"
"Know what?" Mac stared straight ahead, his eyes settling on Lucy across the yard.
"What a tweak you are for starters? About the shit you do, what you've done?"
"No, and she ain't gonna so keep your fucking mouth shut." He took a drag on his cigarette and turned to Martin.
"I ain't sayin a word, when she sees you all fucked up she'll figure it out all on her own."
"Ain't using so much when she's around," Mac replied.
"Right, let me know how that works out for you."
So far, it was working out fine since he was a still casual user, there would come a time when it wasn't so casual and killing wasn't so random, but not on this day. He had control over it and it was never going to touch her, she was never going to know. Until of course, she knew.
"Hey," Martin elbowed Mac, "Is it true she can bite her own toenails, Esmeralda said she seen her do it once." He groaned and looked in her direction, "That's some flexibility."
"Shut the fuck up before I kill you right now." Mac seethed, "You so much as breathe in her direction and it will be the last thing you do. Are we clear?" When Martin didn't answer, just smirked, Mac grabbed him by his shirt, "Are we clear?
"See what I mean?" Martin replied, " It ain't natural, just fuck her and get it out of your system already."
Martin got a fist in the face for that comment, and he had expected it. Anyone who pushed Mac too far got the fist, that was common knowledge. Lucy rolled over when she saw it out of the corner of her eye.
"What the fuck, Mac?" She said sitting up and giving them both a view of the front of the black bikini she was wearing that day.
"Mind your business Luce," He said as he stretched out his hand, and she gave him the finger, laid back down and ignored him the rest of the day.
/
Martin's words bothered him, and he wasn't the first to say it either, others said it too and his father called her heina. That was Mexican Spanish for "The Queen of a Man's World", a term of endearment in his culture, but that was a common phrase to use for a girlfriend or a wife. It was out of place for Mac and Lucy, like Walter gave a shit at all, he said it all the time to Mac. Things like "Where's your heina?"
There wasn't much Mac could do about Walter, except tell him to fuck off, but he pounded any of his friends that talked that shit. Intellectually, he knew that he and Lucy were closer than most siblings, let alone cousins, but they were all each other had. There was no other family and they loved each other fiercely, but it was more than that now and it confused Mac sometimes.
Walter was not the kind of father that you asked these things and without that positive male influence, he didn't know if what he felt sometimes was normal. Lucy was his good thing; maybe his feelings for her were different and scary, but he couldn't do without her.
And he would take all his secrets to the grave to keep her, she kept him sane.
Mac had analyzed the facts as he understood them and the facts were this, they were teenagers now and each year as they spent time together, things were changing, even if they never talked about it. Now when he slung his arm over her shoulder as they walked down the street his guts stirred and she had stopped asking to hold his hand like she always did when they were little.
Sometimes when he looked at her his heart beat faster and he had dreams about her; wild crazy dreams where he woke up sweaty, out of breath and hard as stone. He had seen her across the room more than one time, staring at him with a funny look on her face and he knew that look; confusion and he knew it because he wore it too.
There were plenty of girls looking for him to spend time with them, but he still paid little attention if Lucy was in town. He could talk to Lucy about anything still, most things, something that was lacking with other females. They didn't really 'get' him the way that she did and they had fun together.
It was true what he had told Martin if Lucy was around he didn't want or need to get high as much. He could get by with smoking pot and alcohol when she was there in the summertime. Lucy already knew about that and didn't judge and sometimes it seemed like she was the only person in the world who didn't.