Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Oh, can I have it?” Rage asks, making grabby hands in the air.
“No,” Smoke and I both answer.
I close off the part of my brain freaking out over the explosive factor of my situation and instead focus on the tiny bit of freedom aspect. I begin to dance around the kitchen, the weight of the ankle monitor making me feel freer than I have in days. Smoke watches me expressionlessly until I dance myself right into a cabinet. The monitor vibrates on impact, and I freeze, looking up to meet Smoke’s eyes.
Smoke covers his mouth, and I realize it’s to hide a smile. I’m disappointed because I would like to have seen it.
Rage leaps off the counter.
“It’s sturdy,” Smoke crosses his arms over his chest. “It won’t go off if you kick it around or knock it into things. It doesn’t work like that.”
I exhale. “Thank God.”
“No. Thank Smoke,” Rage corrects.
“Thank you, Smoke.” I say, and I mean it.
For a few moments, we just stand there, staring at one another silently until Rage clears her throat.
“I gotta go,” Smoke says. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
Smoke leaves the kitchen and heads into the back bedroom where I hear him rifling through the storage containers.
“So,” I say. “Your name is Rage.”
“Yep. It’s short for Ragina.”
“No, it’s not,” Smoke says, crossing back through the kitchen with a bag in his hand. He pauses at the door and looks at me, then Rage.
“Go,” she says to him. “No boys. No parties. No booze and no rated R movies. We got it, Pops. Now, go!”
Smoke pushes out the door, shaking his head as he leaves.
I follow Rage onto the porch where we watch Smoke fire up his bike and roll out down the path past a blue scooter parked in the yard.
Smoke could have left me cuffed. In a cage tied to a bed. Starved me. Tortured me. But for some reason, he’s given me room to run. A babysitter. An ankle monitor.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rage says.
“No, you don’t,” I argue.
“I do. You’re thinking that maybe Smoke isn’t so much of a monster after all.”
Shit.
“You’re wrong you know,” she sings.
“How so?”
Rage brushes past me back into the house. “The man did strap a bomb to your leg.”
I look down to the black box around my ankle.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I’m sitting on the front porch in one of the tattered rocking chairs looking over the landscape of the prison.
My curiosity has gotten the best of me, and I’ve been wondering something ever since Smoke left.
“That was a question,” Rage says. She turns the page of the bridal magazine she’s reading and makes a face of disgust. She rolls her eyes and closes the magazine, tossing it on top of a tall pile stacked next to her. She reaches in her bag and pulls out another, opening it and making the same face at the very first page.
“You’re very literal,” I observe.
“And Smoke was right. You’re very question-ey,” Rage gives up on the magazine, shoving it aside. She sits up in her chair and folds her feet underneath her body. “So what’s this mystical question you’ve got for me? Spoiler alert, I don’t do horoscopes.”
“How do you know Smoke?”
“It’s a tale as old as time,” she says with a sigh. “You might even say a song as old as rhyme.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re Beauty and the Beast?” I ask with a laugh.
Rage wrinkles her nose. “No, why?”
“Uh, no reason.”
Rage pauses to think. “I guess you can say that Smoke is the Mr. Miyagi to my Karate Kid, but I haven’t seen him in a long while.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Rage lifts her hand, examining her nails. “All was not well in the dojo.”
“So you guys have never…” I don’t know why I’m asking, but even I realize the question comes off as jealous when there’s no way that’s possible. Curious. That’s all I am. It’s human nature to be curious of those around you and right now those around me are Rage and Smoke.
It’s as simple as that.
“THAT is a lot more complicated. We’ve never felt that way about each other, but some shit went down where we were forced to…” she makes a finger in the hole gesture with her hands. “At gunpoint,” she adds.
I don’t know what I was expecting but THAT certainly wasn’t it.
“He felt guilty and took off. Today is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”
“Smoke felt guilty?” I ask, taken aback. I didn’t think he was capable of guilt.”
“Don’t get it twisted. That man is capable of much more than you or he even knows,” Rage answers cryptically.
She reaches behind her back, pulling out the dagger she’d thrown at me earlier. The one with the shiny crystal handle. She fiddles with it, rotating it in her hand, pressing the pad of her index finger against the tip, testing its sharpness.