“Navy!” Lev’s voice reached me before his face did.
He ran into view with the gun still in one hand with rage and terror across his expression as he dropped beside me. His handshovered over my body. “Don’t move,” he said, though his own voice shook. “Don’t try to move.”
I opened my mouth, but blood and saliva had gathered inside it. “Lev…”
“I’m here.”
He slid one hand carefully beneath my head and lifted it from the pavement, placing my shoulders against his lap without moving the rest of me. The warmth of him surrounded me. I wanted to tell him Marv attacked me. I wanted him to know Rome had done this on purpose. I wanted to ask whether my legs were still there because I couldn’t understand why one of them felt so far away from the rest of my body.
None of the words made it past the pain. Lev pressed his palm against the side of my face. “Look at me.”
I tried and his features were blurred, then sharpen for half a second, then dissolved again. “Stay with me, Navy.”
Sirens wailed somewhere beyond the complex. They might have been close or miles away. I couldn’t tell anymore as my eyelids grew heavy.
Lev tightened his hold around me. “No, don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”
“I’m tired,” I whispered.
“I know, but you gotta stay awake.”
Lev’s mouth continued moving, but his voice sounded farther away with every second. “Hold on,” he told me, cradling my face as though he could keep me there through the force of his hands alone. “You hear me? Hold on. I got you.”
I wanted to believe him, but the darkness closed around me before I could answer.
CHAPTER 24
Jerome ‘Rome’ Jackson
Day Eleven ‘Late Afternoon’
The car pulled hard to the right every time I let up on the steering wheel, but I kept my foot buried against the gas, forcing that old bucket down the street like I could put enough distance between me and what I’d done to make it disappear. Wind pushed through the holes in the windshield where the bullets had torn through, carrying tiny pieces of glass across the dashboard and into my lap. The whole inside of the car smelled like hot metal, burnt rubber, and my flesh mixed with blood.
It had already soaked through the sleeve of my shirt and was running down my arm, gathering at my wrist before slipping over my hand and making the steering wheel slick beneath my fingers. I tightened my grip anyway, clenching my teeth as another sharp pain through my shoulder.
A car sat on the horn when I drifted into the next lane. I jerked the wheel back and nearly clipped the car beside me. Thedriver leaned over his horn and threw his hand into the air, but I didn’t slow down long enough to see his face. I couldn’t hear much over the rattling beneath the hood and the sound of my own breathing. Every inhale came short and uneven, like my lungs hadn’t caught up with the rest of me yet. I could still hear the gunshots too. They weren’t behind me anymore, but they kept going off inside my head, loud enough to make me flinch every time another piece of gravel struck beneath the car, but I had my Glock on my lap ready to use my good hand if needed.
I looked into the rearview mirror, expecting to see Lev’s truck cutting through traffic behind me. There was nothing but headlights, yet my body stayed braced for another bullet to rip through the back glass. That nigga had been trying to kill me. He probably would’ve too if I hadn’t gotten the car into reverse when I did. I hadn’t even seen him pull up. One second I was staring through the windshield at Navy, and the next the glass beside my face had exploded.
The thought of her made my stomach hurt, but the anger rushed in before I could sit think about shit else. This bitch had filed for divorce like the years between us meant nothing. She had moved into that apartment and started running around with niggas who wanted me dead. Lev kept showing up around her. Marv had been at her door too and I’m wondering how the fuck that worked when they were cousins. Everybody had found a place in my wife’s life while I was left watching from the outside, and she expected me to believe none of it had anything to do with me. Fuck that, she was trying her best to pay me back.
I had been sitting in her parking lot since the sun was high enough to turn the inside of the car into an oven. The air conditioner only blew cold when the car was moving, so I kept the windows cracked and wiped sweat from my face with the bottom of my shirt whenever it rolled into my eyes. I’d chosen a spot near the back of the lot where the tree brancheshung low enough to break up the view through the windshield. From there, I could see her building, the stairs, and most of the cars coming through the entrance without anybody paying much attention to me. People had moved around the complex all afternoon while I waited. I stayed there because Navy wasn’t answering me, and I was tired of being ignored. I had already decided I wasn’t leaving until she stood in front of me and explained why she thought she could throw our marriage away. Maybe I had fucked up, I knew I had, but there was a difference between being angry and being done, and I didn’t believe she was really done with me. She had loved me too long and she had forgiven too much. A few papers and a change of location weren’t supposed to erase that.
When she finally pulled into the lot, she looked worn out from work but happy at the same time. I almost got out then, with my hand was already on the handle, but she moved too quickly, heading up the stairs without ever looking in my direction. I told myself to wait. Let her shower, let her settle down, and then I’d go up there and make her listen.
Marv’s car rolled in the complex before I got the chance. I recognized it as soon as he turned into the lot. The anger that had been simmering inside me all day came alive so fucking fast I sat forward in the seat. I watched him park crooked near her building and climb out looking like he hadn’t slept in days. He kept rubbing at his nose as he headed toward the stairs, moving with the restless energy of somebody who was high. He didn’t hesitate at the building or look around for an apartment number. He knew exactly where he was going.
The steering wheel creaked beneath my hands. I didn’t know what business Marv had with Navy, but I knew it wasn’t anything good, and I knew I was tired of niggas connected to Lev walking in and out of her life like I didn’t exist. By then I wasn’t even thinking about going upstairs to talk. I eased the car out ofthe shaded space and moved it across the lot, lining the hood up with the walkway that led from her building. The engine revved when I pressed the gas, then dropped back into a rough idle as I held my foot on the brake.
I waited for Marv to come back out because that was who I meant to hit. I could still remember the way I sat there watching the building, with my palms against the wheel while the old engine vibrated beneath me. I pictured Marv stepping into the lot and looking up one second too late. I pictured the front end catching him before he could move. After that, I’d keep driving. That was the plan I’d built in my head during those few minutes.
Then Navy came running out and she moved so fast she almost missed the last step. One of her shoes was gone and her shirt hung torn from her shoulder, and blood covered the side of her mouth. She was screaming for help, looking back toward the stairs as Marv came after her. Doors were opening above them and people were stepping outside. Everything in front of me should’ve told me that she was in danger, that whatever Marv had come there for had nothing to do with her choosing him over me, but when I saw her, all I saw was everything she had taken from me.
The papers she filed, the home she left, the way she looked at me in that garage after I put my hands around her throat, not with love or fear, but like she had finally seen exactly what I was. Then I thought about Lev and about his truck at her apartment and about another man being close enough to protect what was mine. The anger got there before any of my common sense did and I pressed the gas.
The car jumped forward so hard my back slammed against the seat. I heard people shouting before I hit the speed bump, but I didn’t lift my foot. The undercarriage scraped the pavement when the car came down, and for a second the steering wheel bucked beneath my hands. Navy turned towardthe sound, and I saw her face change when she recognized me. I saw her body twist as she tried to get out of the way, but the distance between us disappeared too fast.
The impact had been louder than I expected as the metal folded and glass cracked as the front of my car drove her into the vehicle behind her. My head snapped forward, and my chest struck the steering wheel. When I looked up again, she was trapped between both cars with her hands spread across the hood of the crackhead’s car that I paid to borrow, as she fought to hold herself up. She looked through the windshield at me, and that was the part I couldn’t stop seeing.
