“How, Rich? How? He’s a coward.I’mthe tough one.” I pull his gun from my purse and hold it toward him. “You…you said I’m the tough one.”
He looks back up at the sky and swallows while Arnez belts out a painful sob and staggers back toward the porch. She collapses on the bottom step.
He looks back at me and takes the gun from my grasp, glaring at it as if it’s his first time seeing it.
“You always take care of me. I just wanted to take care of you for once.” That familiar ball crawls up my throat. “I…I just wanted to take care of you.”
He curls a hand around my face, shaking his head. “Baby…he…he could’ve killed you. Don’t youever…”
“But do you see me?” I ask. “Do you?”
He nods with tears in his eyes, and his lips parted.
“I told you I’d never ever abuse my control,” I whisper. “I know what you’d do to him, but I’m not gonna let you do it. So there’s no reason for you to know where he is. I’m not lettingyou ruin your life over somebody who doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter anymore.”
His thumb slides over my lips while a single tear falls from his eye. He blinks hard, and another one escapes.
“Now tell me where we go from here,” I mutter. “And don’t you pour sugar over shit because there’s nothing holding us back anymore. You said you’d always give me anything I want and I want us to go away and start over. So tell me. Tell me where we go from here?”
“We’re…we’re…” he stammers. “We’re gonna get on a plane and then land wherever God says we need to…just like you told me.”
He presses his lips against my forehead.
“‘Cause I think it’s okay to want different, just like it’s okay to rewrite legacies,” he murmurs against my head. “I see what you did, Slim. God, I see you, baby.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
RICH
They arguedfor hours over who would do it.
Arnez said she should do it because she was the reason we were in this shit. Slim said she should do it because Melo ain’t really know her and there was no bad blood between them besides the fact that she belonged to me. They argued while Arnez wiped the blood from Slim’s face in my bathroom. They argued while Arnez cooked that meal she said she’d cook for us, and I held Slim to my chest, pressing my lips all over the places I thought AJ might’ve hit her.
Their muffled voices floated around outside of my head all night, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what they said to each other—I just know the only thing they agreed on was that I couldn’t leave the house—not with my eyes looking the way they looked. But in the end, it had to be me. I was the man. Ithadto be me because what kind of pussy would I be to send my lady and my sister to handle my business? Senior ain’t raise me like that.
So I watched them fight their sleep on the living room couch whileOzarkplayed on the TV, and the grilled chicken and vegetables Arnez cooked sat untouched in the kitchen. Whenthey finally closed their eyes, I kissed Slim, dragged my fingers through Arnez’s tangled ponytail, then grabbed my keys off the kitchen island.
I drove the 610 loop twice with that Morgan Stanley folder in my front seat while I fought against that urge Istillhad to drive from hotel to hotel to find AJ before I went to find Melo. There were only so many five-star hotels he could stay at in the city and Icould’vefound him. I could’ve beat his ass. I could’ve killed him because old habits die hard, and God wasn’t no genie that just gave us what we wanted as soon as we asked for it—not even different ways of thinking. But then my phone rang… and I answered.
“Rich…” Slim whispered, clearing the sleep from her voice.
I opened my mouth to shush her—to tell her to go get in our bed — but she ain’t even let me get a word out.
“You’re…you’re supposed to marry me one of these days. You’re supposed to give me a baby boy. You’re supposed to grow old with me. Thirty is not the pinnacle of a fighter’s life, baby. You have so much life left to live. You have so much to see. I have so much love to give you to make up for lost time. Go give Melo Barnes what he says we owe and come home. You said you wanted different.”
By the time I make it to the Barnes’ house, a full moon lights up the sky, hovering over the city.
I pound on their front door with the folder and my gun in my hand while their sprinklers cut on and sputter against their landscaping and the backs of my legs. Somebody inside cuts on the lights, flooding their foyer with a bright light that trickles underneath the curtains hanging from their front windows, and I feel somebody watching me from their doorbell camera, but I can’t prove it.
I pound on the door again until it cracks, and a shotgun barrel eases out. I stare down the barrel just like I stared into Melo’s beady green eyes at Lucky’s.
“Go back to bed, Angela. I got it!” he calls out from behind the door.
The soft pitter-patter of his wife’s footsteps blends in with the sputtering of the sprinklers until she disappears.
“You got some nerve walking up on my porch,” Melo says, pushing the barrel out more. “Like I told Kenny’s wife—my residences ain’t no free for all. You need to leave and set up an appointment through Rasheeda if you wanna talk to me about what I told Kenny’s wife.”
