“Thinking about it.”
She reached over, resting her hand on my arm. “Can you wait? At least ’til after I eat. While I’m carrying this baby, I just wanna be happy. Stress-free.”
I softened, turning toward her. “You gon’ have that regardless,” I said. “I’ll take out the whole world if it starts stressing you.”
She laughed, digging in her purse, but I caught the relief in her smile.
I kept my eyes on the road lost in my thoughts because love made me gentle, but the streets never stopped watching.
Chapter
One
STORMI
The first thing I felt wasn’t pain, it was quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your eardrums, heavy, like the world was muted. I should’ve been screaming, begging, fighting, instead I was floating.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in Jo’s kitchen anymore. No flashing lights, no blood. Just space. Endless space and soft like the air itself were holding me up. And then I saw her… a little girl in pink barrettes, skinny legs and eyes too big for her face. My eyes, my legs, my everything.
She tilted her head at me squinting. “You look tired.”
I laughed, a weak, shaky sound. “That’s what happens when you grow up.”
“You’re me,” she whispered, like she already knew. “But… Old.”
“Older,” I corrected, sinking down so we were eye to eye. My heart thumped painfully, not from the bullets, but from looking at the pieces of me. I thought I buried. The scared girl who wanted somebody to love her. The girl who prayed every nightthat her mama would get clean, that her brother wouldn’t grow up too fast, that maybe just maybe she’d make it out.
“I came to tell you something,” she said her voice catching.
My brows scrunched. “What’s that?”
She reached for my hand, the same way I used to clutch at my blanket when the shouting in the house got too loud. We walked together toward the part of my past I’d tried for years to bury. The night I thought I wouldn’t make it out alive, I was thirteen. Just a kid trying to keep a baby alive while my mother slept her life away. The clock on the stove glowed1:15 a.m.I had the burner turned high, a pot of water boiling with Noah’s bottle floating inside. Our microwave had been broken for months, and I’d read somewhere that heating bottles that way weren’t safe anyway. So, I did what I could with what I had.
Jo had “called it a night” hours ago. Said she wasn’t feeling well. Translation: she’d shot up and passed out.
Noah was only two months old, still waking up every couple of hours, crying for milk, needing to be changed. Those two months had aged me years. I learned more about motherhood at that time than any teenage girl should. After that, I swore off the idea of ever letting a man get close enough to ruin my peace.
Every night was a loop: feed him, rock him, change him, and somehow squeeze in homework before the sun came up. I’d be lucky to get three hours of sleep before school. That night, I remember walking out of the kitchen, cradling Noah against my chest. His little cries softened as I changed his diaper on the edge of the bed. When he finally went quiet, I laid back just for a second, I told myself. But exhaustion took me fast. We both drifted off, side by side.
A few hours later, the sound that ripped through the room wasn’t Noah’s crying. It was the smoke alarm. My heart stopped before my body moved. The smell hit next to burning plastic, and there was heavy smoke. I’d left the bottle on the stove.
“Shit.”
I snatched Noah up so fast he started screaming again. The air was thick, heat crawling across the ceiling. I ran for Jo’s room.
“Jo! Jo, wake up! We gotta go!”
She was laid out with a cold needle still hanging from her arm, and an empty bottle on the pillow beside her. For a second, I froze. I’d seen this scene too many times. But never with flames coming down the hallway.
“Jo!” I yelled again, shaking her, trying to ignore the tears burning my eyes. “Please, get up!”
Nothing. Just Noah crying and the crackle of fire in the next room. I yanked the needle out, tossed it on the dresser and splashed water from the bathroom over her face. She coughed and stirred a little. I prayed harder than I ever had in my life. When she finally blinked awake, her first words cut deep.
“Stormi, what the fuck did you do now?”
Her voice was hoarse but full of venom.
“The bottle. I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I forgot.”
