After a minute, I said, “There’s something else.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “Damn. It’s one of them nights.” I chuckled as he asked, “What else?”
“Have you ever wanted to find your parents?”
He looked into the dark room. “I know where my mother is. We just don’t have a relationship.”
“You know where she is? And you just… don’t talk to her?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Ain’t shit to say.”
“And your father?”
“Fuck him.”
There was so much hate in that answer that I didn’t press right away.
After a little while, I asked, “You’re not interested in finding him?”
“No.” His hand slid higher over my stomach and rested there. “The only thing I’m interested in finding is finding out where we’re going from here.”
That quieted me because it was such a grown answer.
I reached down and laced my fingers through his.
“But I do want to know my medical history, for Cairo’s sake. I saw online that we could get genetic carrier screening.”
“Okay. We can do that.”
I closed my eyes after that, and his hand stayed on my stomach. His other kept rubbing slow over my back. The water he gave me had helped. So had the bathroom break and being held against him. My body finally started easing up enough for sleep to creep back in.
I started drifting. The last thing I really remember was him tucking the blanket around me and kissing the side of my face.
“Good night, BB,” he murmured.
My eyes opened halfway. “BB?”
I felt his smile against my temple before he said, “Bad Bitch.”
I laughed softly, too sleepy to do anything else.
Then I went to sleep smiling.
22
TARIQ “REEK” HORTON
The next night, I was walking into the Cartier’s private club. The poker table was already active, the drinks were flowing, and the air smelled like good weed.
That was how most serious nights with us started. Liquor, cards, and talking shit first. Then, once everybody got comfortable, the real reason for the link-up came out.
Icon and Legend were talking at the bar, and when I saw the lines in their foreheads, I knew they were talking strategy. Saint stood near the bar pouring himself something brown. Big A sat at the poker table with Wise, Prodigy, Vega, and their right hands, Lux and Lowe.
Lux and Lowe were twin cousins to the Street Kings. Lowe had more energy than Lux, who was the calmer, colder one, but both were menaces in the streets.
For the first half hour, we kept it light. We played a few hands of poker, got drunk, some got high, talked shit, and cracked a few jokes. We had planned the night like that. We had to feel each other out before we went to war together. You had to know how another man moved before you trusted how he’d shoot.
Eventually, Icon set his glass down and cleared his throat. That was enough to make the bullshit chatter die on its own.
