When I woke up, those lights had me thinking I done crossed over. I squeezed my eyes shut again. No way heaven got this many heart monitor beeps and whispered side conversations.
“He’s awake,” Zuri murmured, her voice thick with emotion as she came to my side, eyes red-rimmed. Momma flanked my other side, and I glanced around at my brothers.
“Tex, you made it?”
“You know me.” Texas shrugged.
Please. He didn’t miss free food, and he wasn’t there last night. But I let it rest, since Tennessee sat at his side, a disappointed dad at a parent-teacher conference. Either he was gonna light up Texas or harp about me not waiting at the hangar.
My left arm was as numb as a streetcar conductor after Fat Tuesday and encased in a cast. “You gone give me my status, Doctor Sweet Cheeks?” I chuckled. “Will I live?”
Her eyes rolled. “Excuse me, I’m nearly a Babineaux.”
“She’s on to something there.” Washington nodded. “I was just telling Zuri, the Feds cleared her. Took them a couple weeks, but they also confirmed whatthis other onesuspected?—”
“Run that back,bébé.” Texas grinned wide. “Add some diaphragm in it. Some seasoning.”
Tennessee nudged his twin so hard, he nearly swallowed his ego.
Washington didn’t pay him no mind. “The perp shaking down Dr. Heine—now on the Fed’s Most Wanted List—wasn’t following cartel orders.”
“Like. I. Said!”Texas channeled Denzel Washington in Training Day. Too damn loud, and too damn proud.
But at Washington’s mention of the FBI’s Most Wanted, me and Zuri swapped a glance. I hoped the trash mounds in Queens treated dude like family. Let the seagulls eat.
Washington said, “The perp cooked the books. What Heine owed him was more than the cartel realized. And he kept bleeding Heine too.”
Before explaining about my exit wound, Zuri held my IV’d hand and gently kissed my forehead. She then asked, “I guess … I just want to know if you’ll stick around NOLA?” She scrubbed a hand through her locs as if nervous. Woman almost had me ready to turn around and see what was behind me.
Her nervous?
Not acceptable, she was marrying a man with too much identity for that.
Momma strolled out into the hallway, and Zuri whispered, “I’ll nurse you back to health. Let’s go to Arizona next Friday?”
“Chère,wegoing to Arizona today! I’ma need my back rubs. Besides, I gotta show my son how real men step up to bat.” I pushed a button. The railing descended, and I got up.
“NO!” The twins shoved me and my busted arm back into the bed. In creepy twin harmony, they hollered, “The only ass we tryna see?—”
“Better be your own, ya gremlins.” Auntie Peaches slid into the room, her smile messier than my wildest parties as Big Country. “With the way y’all momma rolls,” she said, glancing out of theopen door for her sister, “I don’t know how y’all boys didn’t pop up after one of my wild nights on Frenchmen Street.”
“Um …” Zuri said, “can you tell us how the kids are doing?”
“Just fell asleep. Them crumb-snatcherssnatchedthe last of the king cake.”
“Where’s Genèse?” I asked while giving Zuri a told-you wink.
“She and her husband are lying Thumbs up, Seven Up on a table inside the tent. Ain’t the only ones, either.”
“Heads Up, Seven Up,” Zuri quietly corrected.
“Sugah, if it ain’t my Sock It to Me, 7Up cake, I don’t give a damn.”
“Listen”—my voice was smoother than jazz on Royal Street—“now that Zuri’s seen the hospital she’s gonna give me babies at, y’all gotta bounce. So, she cansock it to me,you feel me?”
Momma strolled into the room with extra blankets and clutched them tighter than pearls. “Montana!”
Auntie Peaches chuckled. “Sis, let the boy practice his dad jokes.”
