"Heh," he snorted, shrugging off her gratitude as if he hadn't just driven three hours for no reason other than to pick her ass up. "You called me, mija. Must mean you're in some real shit. C'mon. Let's get the fuck out of here."
Marcus didn't have a lot of contact with his mother after she'd split, but some members of her family had kept tabs on him. Given the hands-off approach his father had taken with raising him, if Marcus hadn't had some kind of support network from grandparents, aunts, and uncles, he'd probably have ended up in prison.
Not that it wasn't a two-way street. That support network wasn't foolproof, and Marcus had seen plenty of half-siblings and cousins get picked up on various charges, especially on his father's side of the family. That was part of why he'd detached. Removing the temptation of falling into the same type of trouble by putting literal distance between himself and the more withered, fucked up branches on the family tree. He lived clean, aside from alcohol... and he lived solitary. Staying absent from family events, the weddings, the funerals, the holidays... but that didn't mean he was completely cut off. There were those family members who did get notice whenever he moved. Those he'd pick up the phone for. Not his fucking father. Not his cunt of a mother. Not any of his brothers. No. He wanted nothing to do with them.
But his obnoxious brat of a cousin, all grown up with a kid of her own and dealt one of the shittier fucking hands in life... well, that was different. Kessie had issues, but she didn't deserved half the shit that had been thrown at her. There were some types of help that he wasn't going to offer, of course. He wasn't an idiot, and for the entire several-hour drive he was listening for her to ask for money. To mention whatever shit she was likely hopped up on that had made her see bears and lizards. Just because he was sympathetic didn't mean he wasn't realistic. However, he was a believer in the healing power of distance. Getting her out of Tahoe and away from whatever shit she'd gotten herself into was probably the best thing for her. It was the first step to getting a handle on the situation, so that she could get her shit together.
The second step would be uglier, letting her come down off of whatever she was on. He'd have to accept that he'd never really know what the fuck had actually happened that night to Kessie. She was an unreliable narrator, since half of her narrative was drug-fueled nonsense. So, no, he didn't ask a lot of questions and just let her talk as he drove back out to the desert. Out to his place.