“Fuck. I didn’t get in till five. Can’t this wait?”
“Some of us have got a lot to do today.” Like sort out another mess, not caused by a member of my family this time, which made a pleasant change.
“Couldn’t you have moved me further down your list?” Ash sank back into the soaking mattress. I’d no doubt he’d lie in his own piss right now.
“Nope. I made you a priority.”
“Thanks. Look, just punch me now, or break my nose. I don’t think it would hurt.” His eyes closed.
“Sit the fuck up. In fact, get your arse in the shower and wake yourself up.”
“No. I’ve had a hard night. I need to sleep, man.”
My hand went round his neck quicker than a striking snake, just not quite as tight. I’d already helped clear up one dead body in my life; I didn’t want to repeat that task.
“Get up. Get showered. Get ready to talk. If you don’t, you won’t be saying anything again.”
His eyes popped open, his mouth gaping.
When we were nineteen, we’d fought. Ash’d done something stupid, I forget what, and we’d ended up trying to punch the shit out of each other. It’d had stopped when I knocked his two front teeth clean out.
After that, I’d had the upper hand, when I’d used it. Until Leila.
I released my grip, turning to the window as he got out of the bed and headed for the shower. It was a grimy apartment that my family sometimes used for various people they didn’t want to impress. Ash stayed here when he was too fucked to get home, or when he was avoiding his father, like now.
I heard the shower running, trying to focus on exactly what I was going to say to Ash rather than thinking anything about last night, the part with Jameson in it.
It had been inevitable. I knew that, much in the same way it had been inevitable with Leila. She was sugar to my sour, but she wasn’t the weak to my strong.
And she’d toyed with me, pretty much like a cat would play with its prey, she’d taunted and tempted. Challenged.
The water stopped. A minute later, Ash walked out of the bathroom, looking like shit still, just wet shit this time.
A towel was wrapped round his waist, his hair sopping. He sat down on the bed, clearly not giving a fuck about soaking the mattress more.
“What do you want?”
“Full disclosure on the shit you’ve got yourself into.”
He shook his head and looked at the window. “You don’t want to know. Hell, even I don’t want to know.”
“You’re right. I’d really rather not fucking know, only in this family, you don’t get that chance.”
Another head shake.
“You’ve been dealing on someone else’s patch. I know that.”
He laughed. “I wish that was what this was about.”
I took a couple of steps back and leaned against the wall. “You said you were getting out of here.”
“I was planning to.”
“So why are you still here?”
“I thought you were going to help. One thing – we said at the gym…”
I cracked my knuckles again. “That one thing isn’t what you let us believe, because this has got nothing to do with getting your dealers set up in Santa Gertrudis, has it?”
