Chapter 9 Zuri
zuri
. . .
My eyes locked onto a man strolling into our empty restaurant. Shadows danced across his eyes, the rest of him concealed beneath a tightened hoodie. Then another and another until I counted four. How could Montana fight them all?
I’d caused this! Rushing into the restaurant because I couldn’t wait to get home.
Then a lapse in judgment had me ready to strip Montana bare.
Bare inside these beautiful, exposed brick walls of the Hot Chicken & Peach Pit Maison!
Never mind the classy Creole aesthetic! A sistah had needs.
The New Year’s resolution (I’d just made up), to have fun once every decade, played double Dutch in my mind until my eyes landed on the man.
Now, Montana unlocked my clinging hold. “Get in the kitchen. Lock the door.”
Sinister chuckles followed me across the herringbone wood floors as I took off.
Inside the chrome room, after a few tries, the emerald-green door remained flush without swinging. My hand hesitated at the lock. Shouldn’t I help? I never learned to fight. Didn’t have a pop or an uncle to teach me.
Body plastered against the door, I twisted the deadbolt and glanced through the tiny circular glass.
Here I was, trembling behind a closed door, watching Montana fight through the glass panel. Like some kickboxing ESPN reel.
He moved fast. Efficient. A jab made me wince. A hook sent another man flying over a table.
But four men kept advancing on one Big Country.
“Ugh, why didn’t I bring my pepper spray? Why did I sneak an HC&PP pen into my purse and not my taser, grrrr!” I did love this pen, though. The brand was—
Does it matter, Zuri?
I bolted to the steel table, yanked open a drawer, and shoved past a meat tenderizer.
Literally no one uses those. I grabbed the biggest kitchen knife the Babineauxs owned.
Practically a machete. My hands quivered.
I almost dropped it. Almost cut myself while trying to open the swinging door.
Note to an Awkward Black Chick, a.k.a. myself: use one hand. Preferably not the weaponized hand.
Montana was holding his own. Ducking a punch. Weaving in and out.
“Hey!” I screamed, charging forward with the don’t-try-me face Taraji P. Henson incorporated into her movies. Oscar worthy.
Crap. I should’ve kicked off my heels in the kitchen. If I tripped, I’d need to give myself twenty-five stitches. I snarled, “Back up. Back the hell up!”
Before I could process it, Montana jumped back, dodging my knife. Ugh. This was for his protection.
He grabbed my wrist. Took the knife.
One man advanced. Montana thrust the knife upward. He meant business—and I mean CEO in a boardroom to my mom-and-pop show.
The guy jumped back, tripping over a fallen velvet chair.
Sniggering, they took off.
Montana’s massive chest expanded with an explosive exhale. “Welcome to the hood, Journey …” He shook his head and muttered about having a Glock in the car.
I stared at him. Pushed his chest. Good thing he gripped that machete expertly.
“Journey, hell was that for?”
“This isn’t funny.” This was … this was …
I grabbed the knife as two years ago flashed before my eyes. Since New York, I’d blown off one location after another. Last time Darius and I moved? A couple of months ago. Hell, my college friend who created new licenses had offered a punch-loyalty card. Get every tenth alias for free.
These past couple of moves? I was spooked.
Each time someone glanced at me funny, our lives in New York swung hard, full force, slapping me right in the face. Instincts had awakened when a man reached into Darius’s crib …
Warm fingertips bit through the icy dread of the moment. These hands were firm, yet kind. Rough. Callused. Soothing.
Montana took my wrists. The padding of his thumb caused my body to go limp. The knife hit the herringbone wood with a clatter. I fell into his arms.
Weak as I was, I’d never felt so strong. Those arms.
“Shhhh …” His hand dragged over my bare spine. But why’d he shush me?
Oh. His lips touched my cheek, then my mouth. I opened up. Tasted what he had—tears.
“My bad, Journey.”
“No,” I croaked. Because he’d done everything right but call me by my name.
“I’m so sorry, bébé. They were zenfan—children … teens. I knew when they came inside. They didn’t have guns. Opportunistic? Yep. Dumb as hell. I wanted to teach these young’uns a lesson. I wouldn’t have …”
I couldn’t decipher his words.
“Darius …” My voice scraped raw with emotion.
In my mind, New York still had me by the throat.
The man hadn’t stepped away from my son’s crib. Instead, he stood, spine to me. Between my child and me. Tried to assure me that Dr. Heine wanted us to come home.
Us.
Bull.
He’d spun on me …
“Journey?” Montana’s questioning tone brought me to the present.
My eyes swept around the disarray. Small mahogany tables were tossed aside.
A chair lay shattered near a trampled banquette.
I almost picked up one of the peach-colored throw pillows scattered on the floor.
Wanted to hug it to myself and find comfort, but my mind was all confusion and chaos.
Had these guys been … hired? “I gotta get home.”
Montana sighed as if he knew every tender R&B love song created wouldn’t relax me. “Lemme call first, okay? See how he’s doing?”
I dug through my purse, frantic. The restaurant pen fell to the ground. A tube of lip gloss. The old flip phone tumbled.
Montana caught it. Without a lock, he said, “I’ll call Shanice.”
Through anxious hollowed breaths and while rubbing my palms on the front of my bodycon dress, I said, “If she doesn’t answer—”
“I’ll call my brothers. We’ll call the police. Everyone within a thirty-mile—” He blinked, and someone laughed from behind his large frame.
Montana staggered into me. Hot stickiness washed over my fingers. A copper scent I knew well suffocated me. “No, no, no … Montana?”
He dropped to his knees, chuckled. Actually chuckled.
“This is some bulls—” He gasped through clenched teeth.
Wedged in his ribs sat the knife I brought to a fight where he wanted to teach these kids a lesson.
With him on his knees, my eyes clashed with the assailant.
PTSD hadn’t allowed me to understand Montana then, but now I did.
This kid stood just tall enough to meet me eye to eye.
Thighs skinnier than mine. A smedium hoodie.
Was he even fifteen yet? Chin held high, his eyes challenged me in the moonlight.
Montana growled.
The kid’s hard demeanor landed on my friend. The vengeful mask fell. He rubbed a hand over his shocked face, then ran. The kid thrust the French doors open. The glass panels slammed against the brick and shattered.
Montana reached behind him.
“Don’t!” I stopped him from removing the knife.
I called 911. As Montana knelt, panting through his mouth, he asked for my phone.
“What?” I said, ending the call with dispatch. I’d also asked her to send a unit to Shanice’s apartment.
“Your phone,” he repeated, brown skin fading to a distant gray. “Dial Ten. Gimme—gimme the phone.”
Once Tennessee answered, I blurted, “Your brother—” I cleared my throat to stop it from cracking. “Montana needs to speak with you.”
“What’s wrong?” Tennessee’s worried voice echoed as I passed the phone.
“Get to Journey’s place. Protect Darius.”
“Bruh, what the—”
“Do. It.” Montana’s voice was sharper than a blade. He let the phone drop from his hand.
I slipped to my knees, my medical training kicking in. He took my hand, his grip strong yet mindful, as if trying to avoid crushing my fingers like a pistachio.
“Relax. Don’t tighten up. Tensing causes—”
“I got it,” he forced, teeth gritted.
Okay. “We can’t remove the knife, baby. When impaled, the item must stay in place, or we risk catastrophic bleeding and damage—”
“Don’t do that to me.” He barked the words, laughing, as we kneeled in a pool of his warm blood.
“What?” I wiped away a tear. Crying again. I’d only cried after my first foster placement change, and I’d bounced around a lot. Cried during labor.
Cried when trying to get my baby and me out of the hospital, which was practically owned by Edwin.
Cried when that man almost stole Darius.
My baby was my heart.
Now, Montana had found his way inside.
Minutes later, I stumbled onto Royal Street, tears streaking my cheeks, as I held Montana’s hand. He lay on a gurney.
Frost clung to the night air, and jazz spilled faintly from some bar down the block, but all Montana’s breaths rasped. EMTs cut his shirt. Blood created tiny pools on his perfect abdomen. Metal wheels rattled over uneven pavement.
“Stab wound along the posterior rib,” I said, although nobody asked. “Likely the ninth or tenth rib. Entry depth about seven inches, based on blade length of approximately ten.” My voice trembled, even as I tried to maintain my clinical background and stoic demeanor. “Possible contact with spleen.”
The medic’s eyes flicked to me in surprise, then at his partners. “Load him. Now.”
In the ambulance, it should’ve been me sliding an oxygen mask over Montana’s face, hooking up an IV, rattling off meds. Yeah, right. I was a mess. Montana squeezed my hand. His blood connected us in a way I never imagined, and he sensed my fear of losing this small contact.
But he’d release me at the hospital. Had to. Maybe it wouldn’t sting as badly as my first caregiver switch, when heartbreak was raw and new.
At the hospital, nurses swarmed him in a blur of blue scrubs and clipped voices. One of them rounded on me, just as Montana muttered something in Creole.
“What’s he saying?” I asked as she ordered me to step back. His voice rooted me to the spot, his saying my name, a low rumble of passion and Creole. “Please tell me what he said?”
“Step back!” she growled.
“Trust me, I know.” If she weren’t so rude, I’d apologize.
Maybe explain that this pain was deeper than leaving the only foster home I knew and loved at age six.
Not that I needed to be my awkward self now.
My blood-slick hands rose in surrender, every fingerprint stained red.
My knees bore the same stains, the price of kneeling with him.
I’d prayed for him, even though I sucked at it.
I shoved one hand through my wig, and it snatched back.
“Damn!” I pushed it in place and dialed Virginia.
No answer. Called again. Nothing. Thirty minutes blurred by in a fog of disinfectant and cold tile.
A racking cough came from someone who’d wait forever in the ER lobby if other, more critical, patients kept coming in.
Tennessee called me. Cartoons buzzed from my tiny studio as his deep voice steadied me in the way I needed. Hell, he should’ve freaked out over his big brother.
Sometime later, two uniformed cops came to let me know they’d cordoned off HC&PP, and I provided my statement. Not that I’d provided a good description of the boys. Maybe they’d find them, maybe not …
Or NYPD will cuff you, and Edwin will steal what he never wanted.
“Journey?” Virginia burst into the waiting area, her hair wild, chest rising and falling with every frantic breath. “… garcon … fé mal?” Her voice cracked, Creole pouring out like a wail.
I blinked.
“Is my son hurt?”
I managed a nod, anxiety twisting my throat. “No word yet. If the knife didn’t pierce his spleen, the surgery might take two hours. If it did—”
Virginia shook her head hard, cutting me off. “Sugar, don’t you dare say it.”
I shut my mouth, pressed my bloodied hands into my lap, and tapped my feet against the polished floor. Because if Montana didn’t make it off the operating table, nothing would matter.
Even if he did … I needed to run. Truth’s weight crashed into me all at once. Compassion, fear, guilt—and for the first time, I didn’t know which would break me faster: losing Montana tonight or leaving him before tomorrow came.