I started to laugh but then stopped. “You calling Pip trouble?”
“I’m saying like recognizes like.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong. They were both liabilities with apulse.
“I walked away,” I said, staring at the food left on the tray. “I knew I wasn’t good for him, so I didn’t look back. And then he walked into the Neon Reef?—”
Kieran picked up the sentence. “And you jumped in front of a bullet for him.”
What could I say? He’d made an impression. One that not even two years could dull. Hell, memories of him were what got me through some touch-and-go times.
“He slept on the floor beside the bed,” I said, heart aching at the image he’d made.
“He was worried about you.”
“Well, he can’t get away fast enough now.” Maybe I should have milked the injury. Pumped up the drama to keep him at my side a little longer.
And then what?
You can’t keep him.
“You left in the middle of the night?”
“It was almost morning.” I defended myself.
Kieran stared.
“Don’t give me that look. I told him I was leaving.”
“You didn’t say goodbye?”
Since when was he the patron saint of relationships? “I suck at goodbyes. You know that,” I muttered. “Thought the five grand would make up for it.”
A strangled sound left Kieran’s throat. “You left him five grand?”
“He was homeless.” I defended myself further. “Pulledhis fevered, sick ass out of a cardboard box.” That night was still so vivid in my mind, powerful enough to overrule some of the worst moments of my life.
And oddly, it was more painful too.
My stomach still twisted when I recalled how he’d folded his soaking wet, shivering frame into a damp, fragile box parked in a filthy alley. I’d waited, thinking maybe he’d just left something and was going to come back out. But seconds had turned to minutes. Thunder and lightning clapped overhead, and all the patience I’d learned in training was ancient history as I peered into that makeshift shelter and saw him curled into a ball.
“I couldn’t stay. But leaving him with nothing wasn’t an option either,” I confessed.
“And you never looked for him,” Kieran surmised.
I shook my head. “By the time I was stateside again, I couldn’t. I’d hoped he’d taken the money and gone somewhere warm.”
But sometimes in the darkest, quietest part of the night, when I would wake drenched in sweat with a pounding heart, I would trace the shadows with my stare and wonder about him. A song whose lyrics I never really knew but a melody that was unforgettable.
“Well, he ended up in a shitty apartment in the worst part of town.”
“Pretty sure he’s hard of hearing,” I said, snagging some bacon and shoving it between my lips. It was cold, but I ate it anyway. Grease tasted good at any temperature. “He listens for shit,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Kieran opened his mouth to reply, but I rolled on.
“I mean, what part of stay out of trouble means live in a place where they film the before footage for true crime documentaries? I’d say the streetlights there probably flicker in warning, but they already gave up the fight. Not to mention almost shot up by the fucking mob.”
“Don’t forget the drugs.”
