A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth before I even meant for it to. “Well, I’ll be damned. What’s up?”
I could hear something in his voice right away. It wasn’t panic exactly, but it was close enough that I noticed it. He sounded like a man holding too much at one time and trying not to let it spill over while he talked. Then, he reminded me what I told him back in jail when we were both boxed in and dealing with our own different kind of hell. I told him if he ever needed me, he could hit my line. Apparently, he rememberedthat shit word for word because the next thing out his mouth made me sit up straight.
“Nigga, remember you told me if I ever need you to hit ya line. Well, nigga… I need you.”
I went quiet then and let him finish.
He didn’t say everything straight out, but I didn’t need him to. I listened and picked up what mattered. The trial was going bad. Then, he mentioned his wife, and the second he said she was eight months pregnant and in trouble, my fingers tightened around the glass so hard I almost heard it creak.
He didn’t tell me what kind of trouble, and I didn’t ask him to spell it out because he didn’t have to. I’d heard enough.
I heard a man on the edge trying to keep his head together for his woman and their baby. It was somebody whose whole world was twisting in real time and who didn’t have the luxury of breaking down because too much depended on him staying focused. I heard the same kind of pressure that had once sat on me when I thought everything I wanted might already be gone by the time I got out.
For a second, all I could do was stare out over the balcony while he talked and think about how the fuck I ended up here… in a luxury hotel in a city I was born in but didn’t care about, drinking alone, smoking alone, and carrying around a heartbreak I kept trying to disguise as anger.
Harlow crossed my mind first, then Bishop, then the whole damn Varrari name and everything that came with it. Money, power, private jets, boardrooms, correctional facilities, security contracts, fake ass personalities, and all the pressure in the world to become a version of myself I never wanted to be. There was nothing in Candy County pulling at me no more. Not my family, the fights, or the women. Not even the hurt, because that had started to feel less like something I needed tosit with and more like dead weight I was still dragging around just because I hadn’t found a reason to drop it.
Maybe this was that reason…
I leaned forward and rubbed my free hand over my mouth while Kay’Lo finished talking. Once he went quiet, I looked down at the blunt burning between my fingers and felt something shift in me. He needed me, and I knew exactly what that meant.
It meant Candy County was over for now…
It meant whatever little ghost I had been pretending to build a life around out here could stay right where the fuck it was.
I picked my glass up and finished the rest of the liquor in one gulp, then sat there for another second with my eyes on the skyline.
I exhaled slowly and finally spoke…
“I’m on the way.”
I was still at the station gettin’ interrogated. The longer I stayed, the more irritated I was gettin’, but I kept that shit locked behind my teeth ’cause I already knew what they was tryna do, and I wasn’t about to give these bitches nothin’ to work with.
They had been runnin’ me in circles since early this mornin’, askin’ me the same stupid ass questions in different ways like they thought I was gon’ slip up just ’cause they switched the words around, but all they kept gettin’ was the same answer, and that shit was startin’ to get on all our nerves.
“I told y’all already,” I said, leanin’ back in that hard ass chair like I was bored. “I was at the crib.”
The detective sittin’ across from me stared at me like he was waitin’ for me to crack, but I ain’t even blink. After a few seconds, he let out a breath like he was tired of hearin’ the shit.
“You expect me to believe that?” he asked, his tone tight like he was ready to snap on a nigga.
“I don’t give a fuck what you believe,” I told him, my voice calm but heavy enough to let him know I wasn’t scared of shit he was talkin’ about. “You asked me where I was, and I answered you. I’on know what else you want me to say.”
He sat there for a second like he ain’t like how I said that, then he leaned forward a lil’, pressin’ his palms on the table.
“Echo Lennox is dead,” he said, watchin’ me close. “She was shot and killed outside her residence, and you want us to believe you had nothing to do with that after everything that’s been going on with your case, Kay’Lo?”
I ain’t say shit right away, and I ain’t rush to respond either, ’cause I wasn’t about to let him feel like he had me thinkin’, so I just looked at him like he was talkin’ about somebody else.
“That sound like y’all problem,” I said after a second. “Not mine.”
His jaw flexed, and I could tell he was tryna keep his cool. That shit right there told me this nigga ain’t have shit solid.
But while he was sittin’ there tryna read me, my mind wasn’t even fully in the room no more ’cause all I could think about was Toni, my wife, and our baby. The more I sat there listenin’ to this nigga talk, the more everything in me kept shiftin’ back to them and what I needed to do to make sure they stayed protected no matter how this shit played out.
I knew exactly what kind of situation this was, and I knew how fast this shit could go left if I ain’t move right, ’cause if there was cameras outside ol’ girl’s complex, and I knew damn well it most likely was, then all it would take was one clear angle of Toni walkin’ through there with that stomach, and everything we built would come crashin’ down in one night.
And I wasn’t about to let that happen…
