That’s what Phillip had called me.
And sitting here covered in soda at a bus stop three blocks from a mansion I’d never be able to afford, waiting on a bus that would take me back to my mama’s shotgun house where I slept in my childhood bedroom.
Maybe he was right.
I heard the car before I saw it.
A low expensive purr.
I looked up.
And my heart stopped.
A black Mercedes S-Class—sleek, pristine, the kind of car that I could only imagine owning—pulled up to the curb.
Right in front of me.
The driver’s side window rolled down.
And Amai Landry looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Get in,” he said.
Not a question.
A command.
I shook my head, trying to shrink into myself, trying to disappear. “I’m fine. The bus?—”
“You’re covered in soda,” he said, his voice flat. “And you’re sitting at a bus stop in the Garden District, looking like somebody just tried to drown you. You’re not fine.”
“I can handle it,” I said, hating how my voice shook. “I don’t need?—”
The car door opened.
Amai got out.
And suddenly he was standing in front of me—six feet of controlled power in a suit customized for that fine ass frame of his, looking down at me with eyes that saweverything.
“I’m going to say this once,” he said quietly. “Get in the car, Truth.”
“I don’t want to mess up your seats,” I said, gesturing weakly at the strawberry Fanta soaking through Soraya’s sundress. “I’m sticky, and it’s?—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the seats.”
His voice was still quiet.
But there was pressure underneath it—pressure that made it very clear that this wasn’t a negotiation.
“I’m offering you a ride,” he continued. “You can accept it with dignity, or you can sit here and wait for a bus that’s not coming for another forty minutes while you’re covered in soda and crying. Your choice.”
“I’m not crying,” I said automatically.
He raised one eyebrow.
And I realized my face was wet.
Not from the Fanta.
