“And I told you she don’t fuck with me like that. Never have and never will. She ain’t gonna just give me no money.”
“But what about that rich cracker you said she foolin’ with? She could get it from him!”
“Maybe she could, but she ain’t gonna do that for me. I told you that, Blue. We ain’t close like that.”
“So what I’m supposed to do now? Ricky coming down on me hard. He got to have his money.”
“I told you about smokin’ his shit up.”
Blue looked at her as if he hated her. Then he leaned back and punched her so hard that it made her teeth rattle.
When he did that, Juanita held her face and then began hurrying to the front door.
“Nita, I’m sorry,” he said, regretting his action immediately. He was in love with her. She was the most beautiful woman in the world to him still. “Nita!”
He hurried behind her because he also knew she would drop him like a bad habit if he wasn’t careful. “Nita, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hit you. Baby, I’m so sorry.”
He grabbed her before she could open the door, and he held her. “Please don’t leave me. I’ll do anything. You know how I love you. Please don’t go.”
And like all those other times before, she stayed. She couldn’t stand his ass, but at least he kept a roof over her head. She was still a beautiful woman and she knew it, and she still had many men lining up to get next to her. Blue had a house. That was the only reason she stayed with him.
But now that Joy wasn’t going to help them, she knew she had to figure out what sucker she could get to fall in love with her this time. Or see if she could convince Joy to give up some of that cash. Because Blue, she decided, ain’t cuttin’ it.
But as she held Blue and allowed him to kiss all over her again, and beg her to stay with him again, she knew Joy’s stubborn ass wasn’t gonna help her either. She was in that same vicious cycle she’d been in all her life: Running from man to man and back to Blue again. And that was getting old even to her.
Then Blue thought of something. And looked at her. “If your daughter is with a rich man like you say, then you know what that mean?”
“What it mean?”
“It means she could be worth more to you dead than alive.”
At first Juanita looked at him like he was nuts. But then, like always, she warmed to the idea. “But how?”
“How do you think? We snatch her. If he really loves her, he’ll pay to get her back.”
“And if he don’t pay?”
Blue looked at her as if she knew what that answer was.
Juanita didn’t dismiss him out of hand the way any other mother would have. But even Blue knew she hadn’t been a true mother ever in her life. Why would she start now?
And Juanita began to smile. “You may be on to something,” she said. “It’s not like that bitch gives a damn about me. Why should I be all worried about her?”
“You just might be on to something that just might work this time, Blue.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Joy had that fireplace poker in her hand and her nerves as steady as she could make them when she opened that bedroom door and peeped out. But she didn’t see anybody.
But when she heard William’s voice again, and it was still as distressed as ever, and he once again started crying outnoandstop, she took off toward the sound of his cry.
The sound came from the bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was closed, but his voice still resonated. Only now he was yelling out in even more distress:Don’t do it,”he pleaded. “Please don’t do it. Let it be me. Please take me instead. Please take me. Stop! No! Stop!”
Joy, by now her heart hammering, opened that door as gently as she had opened her bedroom door, and looked inside. When she saw that William wasn’t under attack as she had expected him to be, she exhaled with a collapsing relief.
But then she looked at him again. He was lying in his huge bed, his covers already kicked off of his naked body, and he was tossing and turning and still yelling out. He was having what Joy could only describe as a horrific nightmare.
She knew she should just leave him to come out of it on his own. But he seemed in such dire distress that she couldn’t leave him that way. Instead she hurried to his bed and began shaking him. “William? William, wake up. Please wake up. William?”
