I gurgle out a hiccup. “Are you gonna answer me?”
“Even if I was somewhere else—somewhere like Lucky’s, I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have killed him.”
I wait for my tense shoulders to droop from the satisfaction of his answer, but they stay hiked up to my ears at the way that word bellowed out of his mouth. It replays in my head and dances with Wendell’s screams. I can still hear remnants of his voice bouncing around in my head like I’d hear Mama’s after her and Tony fought.
“Melo Barnes?” I grate out. “Wendell said he was Melo Barnes’ brother. Is that true?”
I cut my eyes at Beatrice’s gate that swings in the wind then look back at him. He swipes his bloody lip against his shoulder instead of answering.
“What trouble did you get into with Melo Barnes, Rich?”
“I ain’t get in any trouble.”
“But Wendell said you haven’t learned?—”
“Bullshit,” he mutters. “He said a bunch of bullshit to get in your head, because that’s what men do. They manipulate women.”
“But he said you weren’t?—”
“It’s all bullshit. Fuck Melo and fuck Wendell.”
“Rich,” I hiss. “Don’t say that.”
“Fuck. Them. Lovie. Don’t no man around here put fear in my heart.”
His voice is hard, but it makes me push my body closer into his. The dangerous rasp that clings to it makes my heart gallop, and deep down I know he’s not like Zaire, Legend, or EJ. He’s not running from living up to his namesake at Lucky’s. He has to be crashing into something seedier.
I gulp. “I thought you didn’t have a heart, Tin Man?”
He snorts out a low laugh.
I swallow the rest of my questions about Wendell and Melo while Rich’s wet fingers sneak underneath the collar of my dress.They knead circles into my skin then push my collar down until my faded Target bra pops out. He pulls me to him, and the skin to skin contact makes a quiet sigh sneak out of my mouth.
“Who taught you how to do that?” I murmur.
“How to do what?”
“The way you held me earlier. Who taught you how to do that?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Oddly enough, I believe most of the things you say. So tell me.”
It’s his eyes. They never veer from mine when we talk. In fact, they chase them—like he wants to be sure I know that every word he says is the God’s honest truth.
“I…I can’t,” he mumbles.
“But I need your voice. I need you to talk to me right now.”
I suck in a breath and look out over the little creek that flows behind Beatrice’s backyard. It’s the same one that runs behind his house toward the dead end of Joliet before it trickles down into Crestwood Bayou. I try to drown out the sound of Wendell’s yelling in my head by focusing on the soft rippling of the murky water.
“My big sister, Arnez, taught me.”
Finally.
I didn’t have to pretend I knew who Arnez was anymore. He was poking a hole in that dark, mysterious bubble for me.
“She used to hold me like that because I was scared of the rain,” he says. “This was back when I was smaller than her—back when I was a lil’ runt.”
