Looking down, I saw the card he’d handed me and scoffed.
Radha Lewis, Domestic Abuse Counsellor
“No thanks,” I spat, offended that he thinks I need help like this. “I’m good.”
“Just take it,” he said, stepping back. “In case. No one needs to know if you ever use it.”
He backed up and left the room. Only when my door closed behind him did I relax back into my pillows. Fuck I was hurting…everywhere. I flicked the card onto the table at the end of my bed and smiled when I saw it land in the middle of the table with just one weak flick.
Yeah, I still got it.
Closing my eyes and relaxing back, I let the morphine do its job.
“Wake up, bitch!”
My eyes opened immediately and I shot up, only to have a sharp pain rocket through my entire body with the action.
“Ah shit, fuck, sorry,” my best friend, Frankie said, easing me back into the pillows. “It was funny in my head.”
“Your head is funny,” I shot back, breathing through the pain.
“Well getting beaten to crap didn’t take away your annoying personality,” she sighed, plonking herself down in the visitor’s chair next to the bed. “So…are we going to talk about this or are we sweeping it under the rug?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Frankie rolled her eyes. She never liked Trey, even back before the bullshit he got involved in. She was my ride or die, and I was hers. Even Trey couldn’t get between that, as much as he did try.
“Bitch, your apartment is ripped to pieces, your body and face look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a boxer on death row, and Trey is nowhere to be found. Tell me it wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t,” I said, as I looked in her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, her tone now serious.
“Leave it, Frankie.”
“You know that ain’t going to happen. Do I need to call all my cousins down here, and we find the punk? No one can disappear from my family, believe me.”
I chuckled, surprised it didn’t hurt as much as I was expecting. If anyone could find someone who didn’t want to be found it would be Frankie and her cousins. I loved that woman, but she scared me sometimes when it came to tracking me down.
“Tell me.”
I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t let this go until I gave her something. “Trey’s gotten into some trouble with the Crew. They came looking.”
“And that bastard skipped out?”
“Yeah, I guess he didn’t think they would hurt me. Raf is leading the charge.”
Frankie’s face dropped. Fear wrapped around her like I’d only ever seen once before. I knew bringing her ex-boyfriend up was a bad idea, but I didn’t want her to find out any other way.
“What are you going to do, Ro?” she asked me, her earlier bravado gone.
“I have a plan,” I told her. “But I don’t know when they’re going to release me from here.”
“What is it?”
“I go to the one place they won’t ever try to get to me.”
“Ro…”
