Chapter Twenty-Eight. Holden
TWENTY-EIGHT
Holden
“Man, I thought you’d gone and forgot about me,” Leo says as he bumps my fist, glances over his shoulder, and then peers at me through the open window of my SUV.
“Nah. Just busy with work and … stuff.”
“It’s been a few weeks since you came to the baseball game. I figured you … I don’t know. That you weren’t coming back.” He sniffs like it’s no big deal but I can hear the worry in his voice.
“I’m here. A lot of shit has happened.” I thrum my thumbs on the steering wheel. “But Audrey took care of you for helping paint the back fence, right? She said you talked to her the other day.”
He nods and glances behind him again like he expects someone to be there. “Yeah, but she ain’t you, man. She’s…”
“Scary?” I ask and laugh.
“That’s the right word.”
“Looks like you’ve been doing some good work,” I say. The grass has been edged and there is new bark in the planters. All things I approved Audrey to get him the supplies for.
“Thanks,” he says, and looks over his shoulder yet again.
“You good, man?” I ask.
He puffs his chest out in a way I used to know all too well—false bravado at its finest—before smiling. “Yeah. I’m good. It’s just—”
A backfire sounds off somewhere down the block and we both jump at the sound, but Leo is visibly shaken.
“Hop in? Go for a ride?”
He hesitates. “My mom. She says I can’t go with anyone. She has rules.”
“Those aren’t the rules.”
“But Mom’s not here, right?” He makes a show of looking around. “It’s not like she’d ever know if I went outside by myself for a few minutes.”
The memory hits me out of nowhere. Mason. Me. My throat burns with the clarity with which I hear Mason’s voice when it’s seemed so dim for so long.
“You should obey your mom’s rules,” I say.
“You okay?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.
“Fine.” I glance around, knowing there are always eyes on you in this town and right now is no different. “You want to climb in here, sit, and just talk?”
“I don’t know if that’s smart either.”
“Because people will think…”
“You’re my drug supplier. You’re my pimp. You’re a gang leader. You fucking name it, Three-Piece,” he says, his voice sounding tougher with each and every word.
Something is going on here.
“We’ll do whatever you want.”
“Meet me at the baseball field in five?”
“Okay.”
I pull away from the curb and hate that he’s going to walk the distance himself. Don’t look now, Holden, but your God complex is showing. Leo walks these streets every day just like Mason and I used to. My being here isn’t going to save him from shit.
Clearly my presence didn’t help my brother at all.
And yet while I drive to the field, as I sit in the dugout, I look around every few seconds in the hopes that I see him.
When I do finally spot him, I hate how relieved I am. He glances around before he ducks into the cinder-block dugout that has as many layers of paint on it as I have years since I left this fucking place.
For the briefest of moments, I wonder if I’ve been set up. If Leo asked me here so we were out of sight, so that I could be jumped.
It’s a fuck-all feeling that has me looking over my shoulder and asking why the hell did I allow myself to be in this situation. I know better than this.
The streets may have hardened me but the fucking eight-hundred-thread-count sheets I sleep on every night have clearly dulled those edges.
“You setting me up, Leo?” I ask the minute he’s within earshot.
His expression—shock, disbelief, hurt—tells me what I need to know. He isn’t.
“What the fuck, man? Now why’d I go and do that when you’re the only fucker in this whole town who thinks I could be more than this shit?”
My heart—the one that doesn’t exist—twists in my chest and reminds me it does in fact beat.
I nod slowly. “I do believe that and you are more than this shit.” I pat the bench beside me. “Now you gonna tell me why you don’t want to be seen talking to me?”
“It’s not nothing—”
“It’s not anything,” I correct and earn an eye roll of teenage proportions.
“There’s just a lot of bad shit going on right now. Everybody’s on edge with the murders that happened. We have two dealers who got a beef with each other and I don’t want no one to think you’re part of it and in turn, I’m part of it.”
“Fair.” I nod and glance to the outfield where two kids are riding their bikes beyond the fence. “Someone say shit to you?”
“Nah.” But he averts his eyes and I know he’s lying.
“What did they say?”
“Just that you must be either my daddy or my daddy and, like, how much money you be giving me for either.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Leo—”
“I set them straight though, but like, if I climb in the car with you and then you drop me off twenty minutes later, it looks like—you my daddy if you get what I mean.”
“I do.” My stomach churns at the thought.
“People talk here. Why is Leo’s mom buying more groceries than normal at the corner market? Why does she have gift cards instead of the EBT card? Like … everybody is watching everything ’round here.”
Nothing’s changed, has it?
“I got you, man. We’ll figure something out.”
“I mean, they see me working outside. The painting, the scrubbing, the grass mowing, but no one puts two and two together and assumes the extra money coming from that. The people who do things the right way here are the ones who usually get the most taken from them.”
“I understand that.”
“But you still thought I had a crew and was going to jump you.” He stares at me like a kid who’s wise beyond his years. And like a man who just had his feelings hurt and integrity questioned.
“I didn’t think you were going to jump me.
I thought maybe someone threatened to hurt your mom or you in exchange for access to me.
” I shrug like it’s no big deal when it is.
It’s a huge fucking deal that I should have thought of way before now.
“I know how things work here, and I wouldn’t fault you for giving me up to save your mom. ”
I watch him process the truth in what I just said; his nod is slow and his innocence tarnished like the graffiti does to these streets. “We need a code word.”
“What?” I bark out a laugh.
“A code word. Something I say if I think you’re in danger or if I’m put in that situation.”
I stare at him, wanting to refute him and his idea—more like refute the notion that a thirteen-year-old even has to think this idea—but end up only nodding. “Smart thinking.”
“What’s the word?”
“Monarch.” I don’t know why that’s the first word on the tip of my tongue—maybe because no matter how much I research the damn name and its connection to Rhett I can’t find anything—but it is.
“Monarch?” He laughs for the first time since he sat down. “You think you a damn king or you girly, like a butterfly?” And once the words are out he laughs even harder. I let him have the laugh at my expense because it doesn’t hurt shit to let a thirteen-year-old be a thirteen-year-old.
“We can change it.”
“No, we ain’t. We keeping it.” He fist-bumps me and then pretends to straighten a crown on his head. “Monarch Holden, it is.”
“Fine. Monarch.”
The laughter fades and we fall silent as we both stare at a trail of ants coming out of the broken concrete beneath our feet and moving toward a broken chip at the far end of the dugout.
There’s something else he wants to ask about, I can sense it, so I wait out the silence and let him build the courage to do so.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
“Are we going to lose our house? Like, with all this election talk about tearing down Fairmont.” He clears his throat and refuses to look at me. “I mean, I know it’s not much, but it’s our home, you know?”
There is a pride there, a dignity that I feel like cleaning up the complex helped him realize.
“Here’s the thing about politicians, Leo. They promise a lot and never deliver on most of it.”
“He’s making promises from the same alphabet yours are made from.”
Kid’s got a point.
“You’re not going to lose your house, Leo. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Yeah, but that dude is rich.”
I laugh. It’s low and has so much more meaning in it than he’ll ever understand. Every part of me wants to lean in closer to him, lower my voice, and tell him, I’m richer, but after this conversation about being bait for the guys around here, it’s best to keep that close to the vest.
“I told you I’ll make sure of it, and I’ll make sure of it. Have I gone back on any of my promises yet?”
He angles his head to the side and studies me. He doesn’t say anything but just nods—his only acknowledgment that I haven’t gone back on anything—as he stands up. “I have to go. My mom will be freaking out soon.”
“Okay.”
He smiles and then begins to walk away.
“Hey, Leo?”
“What up?”
“Where’s your bike?”
“Got stolen at school. It wasn’t anything special.”
“But it was yours.”
“Yeah.” He nods. It was his little slice of freedom. His only way to escape faster than on foot if need be. It was his. “Later, Three-Piece.”
“Later, Leo.”
I stare after him long after he’s gone, knowing I should get the fuck out of here and stop making myself a sitting duck.
As I climb behind the wheel, the concern in Leo’s voice owns my head.
Can I ask you something?
And here I thought he was going to ask for more money or more gift cards. A new glove or bat. Nope. The damn kid just wanted to know if he’s going to lose the roof over his head.
Fuck you, Rhett and Chad. For being the guys you always were. For being such goddamn pricks.
You are not better than anyone on this side of the river.
Not Mason.
Not Leo.
And sure as shit not me.
Just, fuck you.