45. Reeve
FORTY-FIVE
reeve
TORIN: You good, bro? Cairo said you dipped. We’re orderin’ FOOD in a bit. Are you gonna be home for dinner?
No.
That’s the only answer I want to give him, but I don’t want a text message thread of a million questions to come after it.
Cairo’s dude, this fucking investigator, can’t figure it out. He can’t find my dad. He’s as clueless as the day he was born and no one, for years, has ever had any answers for me.
And something still just doesn’t settle right with me about it.
He’s been gone since I was thirteen and the things that could’ve happened are endless.
Did South Shore finally get him?
Was he murdered by someone else?
Did he simply just leave like my mother adamantly expresses that he did?
Even though the latter is hard to accept, and I’m still not totally bought on the idea. Yet it may be something I have to swallow.
And it’s a big pill.
Bay guides me to a white-bricked house and into a decently sized backyard with a swing set and a small patio table along the backside of the home.
I faithfully follow. It’s not difficult.
My pull to her was immediate and sealed from the first night I met her. The singular moment while she was in the middle of blasting Davis Morrison in the side of the head.
The crowd was wild that night, shouts of a girl beating someone’s ass were what received my attention when Cairo and I stepped inside and into the thick throng of animals.
I’ve never seen anything more beautifully a mess than Bay Astor that night. Her black hair and those ferocious blue eyes that were murderous at the audacity of some asshole putting his hands on her.
Cairo handled Davis.
And I had no zero qualms about handling the gorgeous creature who was bleeding, a bit bruised up, and ready to take on the next motherfucker who dared cross her.
I wanted to be in that line of fire, whether I was on the right or wrong side, though I’d never touch her like that.
However, I wouldn’t have minded her touching me .
But my association is what works against me— never had that before—and I thought maybe that was why I was attracted to her.
The chase.
The want of having something I shouldn’t and couldn’t have.
And, thanks to Torin, he’s made her loathe us all with a passion alongside the fact that we’re mortal enemies and I’m screwed with ever getting a chance.
Or so I thought.
He’s had her, and he can’t deny that he’d do it again. And when she’s with him, it only makes me hard. Minus fucking Torin. It’s the fire, the wild spirit, and the stubbornness to keep her inner circle safe that draws my respect and admiration.
I want to be in that inner circle.
I wish to be that person she looks forward to and not shoot off a fucking question of why I’m there and what I want. And she’s guarded when she should be. I wouldn’t trust me, either.
“Are you afraid of heights?” She stops at a stocky tree, and I notice the janky treehouse hanging in it.
“Of this thing?” She nods. “I’m afraid of falling on my ass and hitting every stupid branch on this tree. This safe, McQueen?”
She laughs, deeper in her chest and drawing my attention back down to her. As if taking on a treehouse is the least of her worries. “Limited on brain cells?”
“Getting there.”
“How about I test it out and I’ll let you?—”
I step forward toward the several crooked steps leading up to the place she wants to visit. “There’s no universe where I’d let you bust your head off a treehouse,” I retort softly. “So, congratulations, you’re about to get a free view of my ass while I climb this thing.”
Bay, without delay, steps aside for me to ascend the ladder and gestures for me to go ahead. “I’m not going to complain about that.”
My lips heave before I scale up the crooked two-by-fours that make up the path to get up. They creak underneath my weight, however, the distance from said death trap isn’t far from the ground below so, if this thing busts from my heavy ass, it won’t be that far of a fall.
Inside, it’s a little hard to see, but I make out a few toy cars on the floor and two small chairs for toddlers as I crawl in. I’m not sure what parent would allow their kids up here without fearing for their safety, but who the fuck am I?
Testing the floors by moving my weight around on all fours, nothing protests, and when I begin to turn around, Bay’s already halfway up the ladder, staring at me.
“I think I like this position over the other one,” she says before climbing the rest of the way. Her tight light blue jeans show off her thick thighs underneath a lilac-colored tee.
“Wanna return the favor?”
Her ass hits the floor as she slides in the middle of the tiny enclave next to me. “Stick around and you might get lucky.”
“I plan on it, McQueen.”
And I do.
I’m not going the fuck anywhere.
Torin can be paranoid about her intentions, but until she shows me a sign that she’s going to fuck us over, I’m not going to convict her yet.
Something about her has me believing she’s just as adamant to break free from all the bullshit as much as my brothers and I are.
A metal case appears in her hand as she flips the top open, revealing a juicy joint and a lighter. “You smoke, Reevie?”
“You met Torin, right?”
That joyous laugh hits my chest each time she blesses me with it, flicking a lighter and bringing the rolled weed to her lips. “Unfortunately, I have.”
“He’s not all that bad.” Not sure why I’m defending him because he can be. He is now .
Regardless, my loyalty to him is strong and unbreakable. No matter how much of an attitude problem he has.
The end of the joint illuminates into a red ember as she inhales. “Are you trying to convince me of that or yourself?”
“Maybe the both of us.”
She passes me the weed, and I pluck it between her fingers, only welcoming more of a distraction to tonight’s hopeless news. “How long have you known him?”
“I don’t remember a time that I didn’t know him,” I answer because Torin and I might argue a lot, but that prick has been at my side through everything.
And I mean every fucking thing.
“That long, eh?” I nod, inhale a deep hit from her stash, and I find myself immediately examining the quality.
It’s not bad.
“I’m glad you came.” My eyes slide over to her, only making out the outline of her body.
“Got Levi Wallace on speed dial?”
“Always.”
I smile as I hand back over her joint, enjoying how straight up she is with me.
No girl I’ve ever been around—not that they’ve ever lasted long—has told me something I didn’t want to hear.
I’m in South Shore, I’m not supposed to be present, and she has no problem reminding me of that.
“He good to you?” I ask her, genuinely curious about the answer because he’s a lucky son of a bitch if her statement is true that she’s with him.
And if she is, then I may have been right when I’ve arrived at the thought that she may, indeed, be dating South Shore’s king.
“He’s very good to me.”
It’s at the tip of my tongue to ask her why she fucked Torin then, but I don’t want to fight.
I also don’t want to think about it either.
He’s a complete dickhead and I get the appeal to women. Who doesn’t love a bad boy?
Yet, I’m intrigued about why she allowed him such liberties, if she does at all.
“You want to know why I messed around with him, don’t you?”
I push my cheek out with my tongue. “Not particularly. I’m afraid it’s going to have the answers of South Shore and The Landings in it and I’m tired of those two places in one sentence.”
“Where are you from?”
“Newport. My father was one of the Titan seats a long time ago before…” She bobs her head after a brief second, already catching on to what I’m saying. Before Penn Northcott was put away with a life sentence of drug charges, murder, conspiracy, and some other shit.
“Were you close with him?”
“Yeah.” She hands me back the blunt. “Disappeared when I was thirteen.”
“That’s an impressionable age for a boy to lose his father.”
My next hit is long, causing me to cough slightly because it was more than impressionable. It was a prison sentence with my mother and her bat-shit crazy headspace.
“I lost my so-called mom a few months ago,” she freely tells me. “Took a shitload of pills and decided to hang herself in my parents’ bedroom. My youngest sister found her.”
My brows clash together. “ Shit . How old is your sister?”
“Eight.”
“Fuck…I’m sorry, McQueen.”
“Don’t be for me.” She leans back and props herself up on her palms. “I don’t miss her. We’ve never gotten along, but she treated my sisters well, thank God. I just wish she didn’t make a show of her dying for one of them to find, you know?”
“How’s your sister handling it?”
“Fine…she doesn’t show any weird signs of anything. She doesn’t act differently. She’s…just Mae.”
“And you’re just Bay who has been sucked into another world you don’t want to be in.”
She tsks, her head tilting back to look up at the ceiling. “You have no idea how true that is, Reevie.”
I thought so.
“On the flip side, you got to meet me.” I wish I could see her face when I say it, but it’s blanketed a bit with darkness. “I’m pretty cool once you get to know me.”
“I’ve noticed. However, can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“You should rub more on Torin.” I should, there’s just no amount of me that would be able to cloak such a dude with a full stick shoved up his ass all the time.
However, he has his own reasons and faults for it. I’m just the guy who brings sunshine and rainbows to our small group.
“How about we stop talkin’ about Torin and how you’re going to smile every time you see me,” I vouch. He’s the last person I want to think about and, also, the least individual I’d like her to be pondering about, too.
I hear another chuckle from her chest. “I’m not anything special other than being on the wrong side of that black line that divides us.”
“I don’t see a line when I look at you.”
Silence drapes over the small enclosure, and I feel her gaze on me even through the dark.
Everything I say feels as though it’s going to go through one ear and out the other.
But I’m not one to bullshit.
And I’m also not one to just say pretty words and expect great things.
Pussy is a dime a dozen, whether I’m in The Landings or even if I wanted to venture into South Shore. I don’t want Bay because of her bangin’ body—well, I do, but that’s not the whole reason. I’m intrigued because she doesn’t give a fuck about the Forsaken Crew, and she’s hit back as hard as the boys have.
“You see Levi Wallace’s girl?” she presses after a beat. “Someone to literally fuck him over with?”
I shake my head against that accusation, because I don’t think of him at all, nor does he play a factor in how I view her. In fact, I believe the whole thing to be bullshit the more and more someone talks about it. “Nah, I see my future girl.”
“Your future…” Girl.
Yeah.
Torin can be doing whatever it is he wants, think he can get her to bow down before us or fuck all the way off, but he’s not a total fucking idiot to believe all that. It’s why he’s gone through all the trouble he has to get her to go away.
And not even that has helped.
Regardless, I’ve warned him of the boundary that he’s getting pretty close to crossing. He’s already taken her fake boyfriend, fucked her in his library, but he can’t allow her to fully go.
No, I’m not the only person feeling this.
And I’ve never been one to have to share anything either. The only thing that Torin has working for him at this moment in time is that I understand what he’s feeling for her. And that’s mixed with a whole lot of confusion, lust, denial, and apprehension.
I have two of the four.
No need to exhaust my brain with things that I haven’t seen yet, nor do I get vibing off her.
“This the weed y’all deal out?” I ask her, taking one last hit before pawning it off again.
“I don’t deal.”
My lips hoist at her lie. “Sure, you don’t, McQueen. They didn’t find anything on you that night, right?”
A beat goes by before she says, “Right.”
“Well, whoever your dealer is grows good shit.”
“Yeah.”
I tuck my legs underneath my ass, feeling the lightness in my head beginning to take form. “Your secret is safe with me. Whether you sell dope, run the shit, just stay out of The Landings. I can’t stress it enough.”
“I’ve been told a million times,” she sighs through a tightness to her voice. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
“I am because I don’t feel as though you’re taking me seriously.” I’m not saying it because we need the money. I’m doing it to keep her protected, even though she’s not going to see it that way.
It’s not just the Forsaken Crew in The Landings now. I can tell them to jump off a cliff and they wouldn’t question me.
It’s The Void.
It’s Emilio and Ramsey’s crew that’s running around now, and I don’t want her caught in the middle of that shit.
“I heard you.”
“Your lack of hearing isn’t my concern,” I retort. “It’s the simple fact of you listening.”
“I said I heard you, didn’t I?”
“Just like Torin,” I vouch, feeling her gaze on me again. “Always quick to the gun on being told what to do.”
“I’m nothing like?—”
I steer my face to hers. “Aren’t you, though? You’re two seconds away from jumping down my throat with no tongue involved.”
A haughty little scoff emits from her lips. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
“I can be, McQueen. Just tell me when and I’ll be there in record time.”
“My ass isn’t for sale,” she mutters over the lit joint.
“I was wondering if your heart was.”
“My heart ?” She says it as though she doesn’t have one or speaking about it is literally the stupidest shit she’s ever had to endure.
I look out the treehouse, still hearing the music from the street play out. Phil Collin’s “ Groovy Kind of Love” saunters through the houses and trees. It must mean the baby boomers have taken over the tunes.
Rising to my feet to keep from scaring the shit out of her with my weird-ass intentions, I do something else and offer my hand. “Dance with me, Bay Bay.”
“I don’t?—”
“Damn, don’t tell me the famous Bay Astor doesn’t know how to slow dance. You’ll ruin this whole thing I got going on in my head about you right now.”
She tsks as if I could and accepts my challenge, pushing herself up and using my hand as leverage to stand.
She brushes her ass off with one palm, the blunt between her lips before I wrap an arm around her waist.
“Is this going to be our wedding song, too?” she mocks as if that’s so off the mark.
“If that’s what you want it to be.” I confiscate the weed from her mouth and take a hit of the remaining roach. “You’re the boss.”
“I am?” She doesn’t hide her shock at my statement as I slowly start to sway us back and forth.
My lips hoist into a smirk, loving how she feels against me. “Sure. But when we’re alone and you’re underneath me or vice versa, I’m the fucking chief, head honcho, whatever the fuck you wanna call it.”
Her palm falls to my shoulder while the other remains at her side. “There ever a sweet spot for that?”
I launch the rest of the joint out of the treehouse and find her hand, lacing our fingers tightly. “Sweet spot?”
“When I get to be in charge.”
“Tuesdays and Fridays,” I reply out of my ass, but I can’t hide the bubbling laughter in my chest.
“Deal.”
“Deal?” I repeat through my tittering. “Baby, you haven’t even seen me fuck yet. Don’t stay making a deal with the devil before you’ve tried out the merchandise.”
“You haven’t yet,” she retorts.
“I don’t need to. You’re perfect.”
“ I’m a pain in the ass,” she issues out through a small little laugh. “Ask anyone.”
“I’ll take my chances.” I lean in, smelling lavender and weed. It’s different than before and the time before that. Bay always smells, unlike the last encounter I had with her. “Even if you do break my heart in the fucking end.”