I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to Duke.
The man said a few words to Duke, then stepped to the side and called out for the party to carry on and the music to come back up. The moment he said it, the tension around me dropped like someone had lifted a weight off the whole block. Duke and the man walked further down the street side by side, deep in conversation.
Everything seemed to be okay. I turned back to Jessa and Aubree.
"Have y'all been to one of these before?" I asked.
Aubree took a sip of the drink she had grabbed from one of the nearby food trucks. "Nope. I only knew about it because of you and Juelz."
Jessa and I both looked at her with the same slow smile.
"What? Why are y'all looking at me like that?"
We burst out laughing. Aubree loved to act like she and Juelz weren't what they clearly were.
"You ready to admit Juelz is your man yet?" I asked.
Aubree rolled her eyes and kept sipping while Jessa and I kept laughing.
"Worry about your own man," Aubree fired back, then stuck her tongue out at us.
Before I could respond, Vanessa walked up alongside one of the other women from the Thorns.
"How does it feel slumming it down here with our men? I knew something was off about you from the start. You don't belong here."
I looked around slowly, then brought my eyes back to her. "Who are you talking to?" I asked.
This woman had been giving me a look since I climbed off the back of Duke's bike, and I had felt her eyes tracking me the entire time we had been here. If she could have burned a hole through me, she would have.
She chuckled and looked off, then back at me. "You. Everybody around here saw you on that talk show. We know what you are, and if you ask me, this isn't your world."
I laughed.
"Funny thing is, nobody asked you," Jessa said flatly, arms crossed.
Aubree tossed her cup to the side and stepped up on my other side without being asked.
"Nobody was talking to you," Vanessa said in Jessa's direction.
"Well I'm talking to you. Find something safer to do with yourself."
Vanessa's scowl swung back to me and she pointed toward Jessa and Aubree. "There you go needing people to save you again. You can't even stand up for yourself."
I held my hand up to stop Jessa before she could say another word. "I got it, sis."
I turned my full attention to Vanessa.
"I'm not about to argue with a woman who's angry because she can't have what's mine. That's my man. Unless you plan on doing something about it, I'd suggest you and your friend find somewhere else to be."
Duke cleared his throat behind us. I hadn't even heard him walk up with Juelz and Rico.
"Aye—"
"No, I got it," I said, cutting him off without turning around. My eyes stayed on Vanessa.
"So what do you want to do? Because after I handle you, he's still going to leave you exactly where he left you before. On your knees."
Her nose flared. She raised her finger toward my face.
