“Don’t say that. Don’t say no shit like that. You don’t mean that, Lovie.”
Her lips tremble, and I swear I feel her tears before they even fall because I’ve inhaled them so many times. I feel their warmth and heaviness.
“I don’t care that you don’t regret what you did because if he was anything like AJ, then he deserved it.” Her voice cracks. “I just want us to go home and eat dinner together. I…I wanna lay on you while you watchOzarkand then I wanna make love in our bed. I just want some sort of normalcy for once in my life. Please take me home with you, Rich.Please.We can figure it all out tomorrow. We can figure this out together.”
I don’t know what this feeling is swirling inside of me, but it feels like a giant boulder sitting in my stomach while she begs for me…for us.
She reaches out, swiping her hand across my cheeks. “I don’t have to go back to Uncle Kenny’s. I don’t care what he thinks or what Arnez thinks. They can’t control us.”
“C’mere. Let me see you,” I mumble, backing her against the building. “Let me…let me clean you up.”
“Rich…do you hear me? Take me home with you.”
Warmth buzzes off her body as I reach out and swipe my forearm across her mouth. Our eyes dance together while I wipe the remnants of her throw-up across my shorts.
“C’mere, baby,” I mutter, hooking my hands under her armpits and lifting her light body off the ground.
“Take me home…” she rasps breathlessly, curling her legs around my waist.
She buries her head in my neck and takes a deep breath before letting out a sob that makes my ears ring. “I…I know I didn’t listen. I’m supposed to be putting myself back together. But…but then I found you in your kitchen. You didn’t find me. I found you. It was meant to happen.”
I rock her back and forth, and up and down, and side to side, even though Primo had punched the feeling out of my body. “Shhh…what you doing here, baby? Why’d you come here? Why didn’t you listen to me? I…I need you to start listening?—”
“He came back like you said he would…” she mumbles between sobs. “He sent his agent to Uncle Kenny and Aunt Faye’s to get me—to hurt me again. So I left to find you because you said you would protect me.”
It pours out of her like she had been waiting to crawl into my arms before she could tell any of it, and I don’t even have to ask who “he” is.
“Because I will,” I rasp blinking away the wetness in my eyes. “What I always tell you?”
“That…that I belong to you.”
I spin in a circle with her in my arms. “Uh-huh.”
I don’t even know where to take us.
I step over her throw-up and into the parking lot. I can’t even see what’s in front of me because AJ Boyd is in my head—running around and pointing out that he stepped foot back inmycity and weaseled his way back inmybaby’s life.
“You straight, Pup?” somebody yells from across the parking lot.
I glide through the rows of parked cars, ignoring the strange voices I hear.
“Pup!” Arnez yells from somewhere behind us.
I walk faster, pulling Slim closer to my chest.
“Pup! Stop!”
“Man, get away from us!”
I don’t recognize my voice again.
It’s intertwined with Senior’s. I hear the same tremble that plagued his while he packed Faye’s bags in their bedroom.
Slim sobs louder.
“You need to get rid of her,” Arnez hisses. “What the fuck are you doing right now? You need to go cash out and pay on our balance.”
“Go away, Arnez!”
