Hector Read Online Free PDF Page B

probably
freak out.
    They reached their class, and Charlee decided she’d not think
about it until she absolutely had to. For now, she had the bottle of mace she’d
bought the day after the first incident, and if she was forced to use it, she
would. She sat down and thought of something much more pleasant: Hector, her
dreamy hero.
    ~*~
    It’d been weeks since Hector’s texts and emails with
Lisa had tapered off. When she first moved up north they’d spoken on the phone
a few times late in the evening, and their conversations had begun to take an
intimate feel. Hector actually thought he was really starting to feel something
for her. She even said she was going to try to come back down to L.A. and visit
as soon as she could. Normally something like that might’ve scared him a
little. He’d never done the relationship thing. He wasn’t sure if her making
such a long trip meant she thought he was getting that serious. But the thought of it had begun to grow on him.
    Then, he noticed a change. She’d say she was going to call him
and wouldn’t. The texts began to dwindle, and any talk of her visiting was
suddenly never mentioned again. That’s when he noticed a reoccurring dude in
her Facebook photos. The captions only ever mentioned his name and where they
were but not what relation he was to her. Never one to beat around the bush,
Hector asked her flat out who the guy was. All she said was that he was a
friend, but soon there were photos of them at college football games and at a
fair. The kicker was the photo of them posing in front of a movie theater, holding
hands. That’s when Hector un-friended her and stopped responding to her texts.
They were few and far between anyway. He’d already started to feel a bit creepy
stalking her Facebook photos, but he still insisted she should’ve just been
honest with him.
    The most maddening thing of all, though he was more pissed at
himself than he was with her, was that his dumb ass actually passed up hanging
out with some of his regulars in the last couple of weeks. He’d never admit it
out loud, but clearly he was secretly hoping she was doing the same thing.
    He decided not to give it another thought. He’d already obsessed
too much about her as it was, and all he’d ever done was kiss her one time. Instead,
he decided to focus on his latest challenge.
    Shaking his head, he finally admitted it. He’d screwed up. Hector
had never actually discussed college in depth with his mom and his older
brother, Abel, but apparently he was expected to go. He hadn’t even bothered
taking his SATs because he was sure that being part owner of 5 th Street he’d go straight to working full time there after high school. It’s what
Abel had done when he graduated.
    His mother, being old-school, had been fine when Abel went
straight into fighting and working at 5 th Street after high school.
Of course, it had always been his brother’s dream to be a heavyweight champ,
and the way things were looking, Abel had a damn good chance of making it.
There’d already been one alumnus from 5 th Street to make it to the
big time. Abel wasn’t far behind.
    Hector was a good enough fighter, but he did it for the same
reason he’d done just about anything growing up: because of his big brother—his hero . He almost never admitted it
aloud, especially now that he was older, but he had always been and still was
his brother’s biggest fan. Abel was the real fighter of the two and would
someday be the heavyweight champ. Everyone said he had a real good chance at
the title. Hector only really did it for the adrenaline rush fighting gave him,
and he liked what the workouts did to his body, but he’d never really been
interested in fighting professionally.
    It wasn’t just the fighting. There were a lot of other reasons
why Abel was his hero, so hearing him say he was disappointed in Hector was all
it took to get his ass scrambling. He needed to figure out a way to get into a
good school, even if