Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I suspected Toni knew I was doing this, but in that scenario, she loved me. So she didn’t push it either.
By the way, that five thousand dollars was still on my kitchen counter the first of every month, and my rent was paid, and never by me.
In fact, I had enough (actually, more than enough) to make a down payment on a house, and I was considering it because Liam was going to be in school next year—real, big-boy school, first grade. And I needed to settle into a school district that was good for him in a home he could count on.
“What ground?” Lena pushed, cutting into my thoughts.
“I’ll just…ask around,” I said lamely.
“Me too. And Tony too. He knows everybody. He’ll get the skinny,” Toni added.
This mollified Lena because I had no ground to put my ear to. My life was my job, my kid, and every once in a while, going out with Toni and/or Lena, but always getting home before nine so Mom or Dad or one of the aunties or cousins could go home after babysitting Liam.
But Toni did not lie. Her man knew everybody.
“Okay, now that I’m over that one-two punch of Eddie and Lee, um…does anyone but me think it’s weird they showed up?” Lena asked.
Again, I glanced at Toni in the rearview.
“Maybe Eddie lives around here,” Toni said, giving me guilt eyes in the mirror, since she was lying for me.
“Lee said he was home on leave,” I added.
“I kinda hope Michael’s cheating now because I sure had cheatin’ thoughts when I clapped eyes on Eddie when he grabbed me,” Lena muttered.
She was lying too. She’d fallen for Michael.
I saw in him what I saw in a lot of the attorneys who tried their cases in the courtroom I worked in.
Narcissism.
So I hoped he was cheating on her too, because I’d rather my little sister be in a bit of hurt after scraping off a cheating boyfriend, than live her whole life with a man who thought the most important person in the world was him, and everyone should agree.
“I’m hungry,” Lena declared. “Brother’s for a sandwich and a beer?”
“I could do a ticky turkey,” Toni said.
I could always do a ticky turkey.
I pointed the car toward My Brother’s Bar.
* * * *
I knew he’d come. I just didn’t know he’d come that soon.
The evening after our run-in with Lee and Eddie, I was in the sapphire blue velvet sectional Darius had bought us, on the lounge section, with a glass of wine and a book, when the door opened.
Something else I didn’t know, and had never asked, was if he had a key from the guy he knew who got me this pad, or if he picked the locks.
I was dying to know.
I was also dying to know, if he picked the locks, when he learned how to do that.
I was further dying to know how his mom was, his sisters, and if they knew about Liam.
They should know.
But if he wasn’t taking that step, I knew he wouldn’t want me to.
Something else I wished I could talk to him about, because Miss Dorothea was a lovely woman, she’d be a great grandma, and although my boy already had one, it never hurt to have two.
In fact, it was impossible to enumerate all the things I was dying to know about Darius Tucker.
But I was getting really good at burying how much I needed to know them, and ignoring how not knowing them, or being able to ask, was slowly killing me.
He showed in the living room, and he looked as good, and as scary, as ever.
This time, he was holding a large manila envelope.
Yes. I knew he’d come.
Because I needed him.
In this instance, Lena needed him, but to him, it was the same thing.
He took me in where I was stretched out on the lounge section, his body held in a weird, still way that I understood, because I was holding mine in the same way.
It’d been three years.
Three years since that kiss.
It felt like yesterday.
This happened every time he showed, both of us bracing, both of us fighting it.
Fighting the need to jump each other like crazed fuck bunnies and have at it until we couldn’t breathe.
He broke the stillness first by tossing the envelope on the lounge at my bare feet.
I put my wineglass aside, the bookmark in my book, and set it on the couch, pushed up and retrieved the envelope.
“She needs to dump him,” he said.
I pressed the metal tabs back and pulled out the pictures.
On viewing the top one, my face scrunched.
“Ew! You could have warned me,” I said, shoving the photos back in, now having seen more of Michael, not to mention his side piece, than I’d ever wanted to see.
“We made sure she didn’t have any questions.”