Queen of the South - My Season 6: Full Circle

Chapter 12, Asuntos Intimos II

The makeup did a decent job concealing the hickeys, the only problem was that she had to wear her hair down in the heat to ensure nothing was visible to someone standing close to her. She had plans of hopping on a tour bus to the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam and thought it would do them both good to get out in the open.

He took her chin and moved her head to the left, then to the right to examine her work with the makeup.

"I guess this should do", he said absent mindedly.

She had to ask and decided to cut right to the chase: "I have a suspicion why you got so upset". As he only raised his eyebrows at her, she continued: "Did Pote tell you things about ...the time when Gato raped me?"

James took a deep breath, considered speaking for a few seconds and then sighed: "Yes...he told me everything!"

"And it brought this reaction on?" she added.

"I guess...it could be...I just don't know how you freed your mind of it...and how looking like this doesn't bring the memories back." He was asking questions now, she sensed. This is what must have affected him so!

"You know...I don't think one ever forgets... or gets cured from such an experience...it becomes part of you...but you learn to live with it...as long as you don't allow it to define you and your actions...to own your mind and body!" it was the best analysis she could offer to ease his mind, the best she had come up with herself in her efforts to learn to live with the experience.

"Did this bastard hurt you...physically?" James's voice was low and menacing.

"More emotionally than physically... really", she was looking at him, but her eyes were actually looking past him in the distance, and he wondered if she was seeing herself back in the little apartment that Guero had used as a safe house where she had told him the sicarios had caught up with her. Then she added: " I didn't really fight him...one thing that Guero, pinche cabron, taught me was to not lose my wits so that I'd be able to 'recognize the moment'...that's what he called it...and I did recognize the moment...when I had the chance to shoot half of his pinche face off!"

"And forgiveness has a part to play in the process of...learning to live with it?" James said quietly, hoping that she would share more. He needed to hear the details, and he hoped she needed to share them as he was sure she had never spoken to anyone about any of it.

"Yes", she rubbed her nose looking for her words: " I have forgiven Pote for not helping me, but not the bastard who did it or the bastard who ordered it", she swallowed and went on: "...neither the bastard who put me in this situation", James closed his eyes in pain that she was still hurting from Guero's betrayal after all these years. "I wouldn't allow any memory of that...of them ...to victimize me more than it had already...once I shot him dead, I freed myself from the horror of it...I actually pity him as his soul was the one sinking in the darkness", she swallowed again and as he was looking at her with pain his eyes, she asked: "Why did Pote tell you any of this?"

"To make me angry with Camila, Epifanio, all the Vargases...to make sure I won't hesitate to shoot them if I needed to", and as she only shook her head, he added:" I despised Camila for prostituting some of the girls on the side, and I despised myself for a long time for doing nothing about it...she didn't need it...she was making more than enough money from the coke, but she was a greedy bitch...", his voice trailed off.

"I knew you didn't belong there...in this warehouse ...I knew it the first day we met", Teresa offered.

"But I couldn't save you...the same way Pote couldn't do much more ...I realize all of it, but it doesn't make it any easier!" James said dejectedly.