I nodded, even though I wanted to lie down and not wake up for a week.
He patted my shoulder, then left to brief Floyd.
Quiad never left my side. He didn’t talk, didn’t touch, just sat so close our knees knocked together under the table. His hands, bandaged by the EMTs, were still flecked with dried blood. He picked at it, worrying the gauze until it frayed, then looked at me like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words.
“Are you okay?” I asked, voice tiny.
He shook his head. “Not until you’re home.”
I smiled, or tried to, but my lip wouldn’t cooperate.
The man in the suit came back into the room, flanked by Floyd and Dan. His face was a horror show of bruises, the nose shattered and leaking, both eyes blackened. He sat across from me, hands cuffed behind his back. Even then, he had the balls to smile.
Floyd slid a copy of the contract across the table. “You want to tell us about this?”
The man in the suit just shrugged. “It’s a free country. The boy’s mother was happy to sign.”
Floyd’s lips went thin. “That’s called human trafficking, son. You’re in deep shit.”
The man’s gaze shifted to me, and the smile sharpened. “You sure you’re not worth it, Levi? She seemed to think you were.”
I felt Quiad tense beside me. In a blur of motion, he was out of the chair and across the table, one hand wrapped around the man’s throat. Ransom and Knox tackled him from behind, pulling him off before he could do real damage.
Floyd, surprisingly calm, just watched, then said, “You done?”
Quiad glared, chest heaving, but backed down.
The man in the suit laughed, then spat a wad of blood at the floor. “This isn’t over,” he said. “You can’t protect him forever.”
Knox cracked his knuckles. “Bet you ten grand we can.”
Floyd gestured to Dan, who dragged the man out of the room. The door slammed, rattling the glass.
After that, things blurred. I sat there, hands shaking, while the brothers finished their statements and Floyd called Ma to let her know we’d survived. Bodean snuck me a Snickers from the vending machine, insisting chocolate cured all trauma.
It helped, a little.
When it was finally over, Quiad scooped me up, one arm banded tight around my waist, the other bracing my shoulders. We walked out into the night, the air sharp and smelling of ozone and car exhaust.
He stopped under a streetlight, pulled me close, and pressed his face to my hair. “No one,” he whispered, the words hot against my scalp. “No one takes what’s mine.”
I burrowed in, my fingers clawing at his shirt, needing the reassurance of his strength. We stood like that, the rest of the world spinning on without us, until my legs stopped shaking.
He kissed the top of my head, rough and desperate. “Let’s go home.”
I nodded, and for the first time since the alley, I felt like maybe we’d earned it. We walked down the steps together, his hand never leaving the small of my back.
No one ever took me from him again.
Chapter Sixteen
~ Quiad ~
It was the little things that undid me—the red sliver of dried blood on the rim of a coffee mug, the warped reflection of my face in the stainless steel faucet, the barely perceptible tremor in my left hand when I tried to twist the cap off the peroxide.
The kitchen was still and dim, except for the yellow glare of the under-cabinet lighting, which made everything look sick, jaundiced. I stood at the sink, staring at the world outside, every muscle in my jaw wound tight as an archer’s bow.
On the stove, Ma’s ginger chicken soup sputtered in a cast iron pot. It was supposed to be comfort food, the kind she made whenever anyone in the house so much as sneezed, but tonight it just sat there, an oil-slicked sea of yellow.
