“Yeah, Tamryn?”
“Thank you.”
A door slams in the distance, and I clamber up Rich’s arms while the howls grow louder.
“Fuck,” he hisses. “Fuck, I should’ve made you go home.”
No!
It’s the only word I want to say, but it doesn’t come out of my mouth like I want it to because I’m living inside my head. I only ever came here when AJ forgot I was his number one girl, or when Tony forgot I came from him. I can’t feel anything when I’m here.
“C’mon, Slim,” Rich mutters. “You gotta stop hollering, mama.”
Me?
Hollering?
I open my mouth to tell him it’s impossible I’m making all this noise, but nothing comes out except a silent choke that hurts.
Sweat prickles my hairline and drifts down the small of my back as the denim fabric of my dress squeezes every part of my aching body. My clusterfuck of emotions is back. I can’t differentiate between mad, sad, shame, or disgust. It’s all just a big ball that exploded out of my mouth while I dangled from Rich’s arms and now he knows another one of my secrets.
“Shhh…I get it. I understand. I been scared before too.”
It’s something no other man has bothered to tell me when I’ve gone off the deep end. His words are infantile yet validating. They feel like a cool splash of water on my overactive brain while I stare up at the city’s lights darting into the night sky.
We land against something solid, and the earthy smell of grass clings to my nose. Our bodies slide down until that earthy smell grows stronger.
“Shhh…” His hands roam against my body.
I can’t make out what he’s doing. I just feel his rough hands pressed in odd places until the zipper on one of my boots purrs and the cool night air brushes against my shin. He digs his fingers inside, wiggling my foot out and rolling my sock down. He does the same to my other foot until the night air sneaks between my sweaty toes and makes me tear my eyes from the sky while choking out a gasp.
“You! You…you?—”
“What I do?” He swipes his calloused hand over my face and down my lips.
“His…his…face! You did that!”
“Uh-huh. I did, baby. I did…” he replies gingerly, like I’m a toddler who tripped and skinned their knee.
I think the term of endearment might’ve slipped out of his mouth by mistake, but somehow it softens the ugly imagesI have of Wendell’s bloody body sprinting out of Beatrice’s backyard. AJnevercalled me “baby.” It was always some lazy variation like “bae.”
“I ain’t…I ain’t kill him, though…” Rich stammers. “I ain’t kill him.”
But I think he was going to…until he heard me on the back porch.
There was no regretful dip in his perfect eyebrows as he stood over Wendell with eyes blacker than the night sky, and for the first time since we met, he looked exactly like that chilling picture Uncle Kenny had painted of fighters.
I try to blink away my blurry vision as he shifts my body around again, being careful not to disturb my sore rib.
“I’d never disrespect B’s house in that way or…or you or Tamryn. Never,” he murmurs, grabbing my chin and twisting my face toward his. “So ain’t no need for all this.”
The blurriness in my eyes drifts off like fog clearing from a warm window and his face appears right in front of me. A stream of blood oozes over his bulging bottom lip while his chest rises and falls against my back in harsh spasms.
“So you would’ve done it if you were somewhere else then?” I finally choke out. “Somewhere like Lucky’s?”
I don’t know why I care so much, but there’s a part of me that needs to poke another hole in that dark bubble that surrounds him. I need to know if he’s capable of the one thing I can’t even fix my mouth to say out loud. It’s the thing that AJ used to keep me in check—the thing Tony gave Mama so he could have her forever.
The crickets’ quiet chirps intermingle with the loud breaths rushing through my nose as he blinks at me under the moonlight. I follow its glow until I find his bloody hand sitting on my stomach and his legs splayed out around my sore body.
