“There is no us.” She tried to pull my hand off her throat but I tightened my grip. Not choking her. Just holding. “Let me go, Mega.”
“You been calling me all week. Leaving voicemails talking about you miss me and want to talk. So talk.”
Her eyes flickered. I caught it. That split second of panic that told me the voicemails weren’t real. Weren’t hers. Her brothers had put her up to it and she’d made those calls with somebodystanding over her shoulder coaching her on what to say. I was right. It was a setup.
But I didn’t care. Because she was here now. And having her in front of me with my hand on her throat felt like the first thing that had gone right in weeks.
“I’m gonna let you go,” I said. “And you’re not gonna run. Because if you run, I’m gonna catch you. And I won’t be as gentle the second time.”
I released her throat and she pressed herself flat against the wall and rubbed her neck where my fingers had been. Her eyes were wet but she wasn’t crying. She was fighting the tears back with everything she had.
”I just wanna talk,” I said. I walked to the dining room table where I’d laid out a small mirror and a baggie. “Come sit with me. Like old times.”
“I’m clean, Mega. I’ve been clean for over a month. Please don’t do this.”
“One line. For old times. Just one. To celebrate being back together.”
“We’re not back together. And I’m not doing that shit anymore. I went to rehab and I’m better now. I’m different.”
“You look different.” I poured a line onto the mirror and cut it with a card. “You look good. Healthy. Put some weight on. I always liked you thicker.” I held the rolled bill out toward her. “Come on, baby. One line ain’t gonna undo all that work. One line is just a line.”
“No.” Her voice cracked on the word. “Please, Mega. No.”
I walked over to her and grabbed her arm and pulled her to the table. She fought me but she was small and I was bigger and the math was simple. I pushed her down into the chair and held the back of her head and brought her face to the mirror.
“Do it,” I said. “And then we’re leaving. Together. The way it should’ve been this whole time.”
She was crying now. Full, silent tears running down her face and dripping onto the table. Her whole body was trembling and she was shaking her head no but I held her steady and pressed the bill into her hand and closed her fingers around it.
“Serenity. Do it.”
She snorted the line. Her body jerked like she’d been electrocuted and she sat up gasping and wiped her nose with the back of her hand and the sound that came out of her mouth was something between a sob and a scream that she swallowed before it could finish. Her eyes went wide and glassy and I could see the drug hitting her system, flooding back into the spaces she’d spent thirty days clearing out.
“See?” I said. “That ain’t so bad. You remember now, right? You remember how good that feels?”
She didn’t answer. She just sat in that chair with her hands in her lap and tears on her face and stared at the mirror with the residue still on it and I watched something die behind her eyes. Something she’d been building in rehab, whatever hope or strength or clarity she’d found in those thirty days, I watched it crack and start to crumble.
Good. I needed her dependent. I needed her needing me. That’s how this worked. That’s how it always worked.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’re getting out of town. Me and you. Like we used to talk about.”
“Where?”
“I got a spot. Somewhere nobody can find us. Somewhere your brothers can’t reach.”
She stood up slow. Her legs were unsteady and her eyes were somewhere far away and she followed me to the door because the drug was already doing what it always did. Making the world soft enough to stop fighting.
I grabbed the baggie off the table, pocketed it, and led her out to the car. I grabbed her purse from her and threw herphone in one of the bushes underneath a window. She got in the passenger seat without being told and buckled her seatbelt and stared straight ahead at nothing. I started the engine and pulled out of Dante’s driveway and headed south.
I had her back. That’s all that mattered. The Banks brothers could search every house in DC and they wouldn’t find her because Serenity wasn’t in DC anymore. She was with me. Where she belonged.
I glanced at her in the passenger seat. Her arms were folded over her stomach as she cried hard. I figured the coke had her emotional. It did that sometimes. Made you feel everything at once before it made you feel nothing at all.
I turned up the music and kept driving.
22
Mehar
