Chapter 9 Rogue Wave
Chapter nine
Rogue Wave
The bass was still hitting even after I walked out the studio. The air was humid as usual, sticking to my skin and messing up my hair, but I wasn’t even tripping about it.
Beside me, my boyfriend Prez was grinning. His arm felt heavy and warm where he draped it over my shoulders. He leaned into my ear; his voice a low rumble that always made my stomach do a slow flip.
“You’re my good luck charm, Nique. I swear, the minute you walked in that studio, the words just started flowing. You’re my muse, baby.”
I laughed, tilting my head back to look at the stars over Mobile.
They were faint against the city glow, but they were there, steady and watching.
I felt invincible right then. Prez had a way of looking at me that made me believe I was more than I’d ever seen in myself.
Like I was rare. Like I was chosen. He was my first love, and back then, that felt like it meant forever.
I was just reaching for the door handle when I noticed the headlights of a car. They were too bright and too still. For half a second, I thought maybe they were waiting on someone.
Then the world cracked open.
The sound of the gunshots wasn’t like the movies.
There was no warning swell of music, no slow-motion buildup.
It was sharp, metallic, and violent. The first shot split the air so fast my brain didn’t even have time to tell my body to duck.
The second punched into me before I understood what was happening.
A hot bloom exploded in my side, searing and jagged, like something had burrowed into me and refused to let go.
The breath rushed out of my lungs in a broken gasp.
My knees buckled. The asphalt rushed up to meet me, tearing against my palms and scraping the skin from my cheek.
The sky tilted sideways, stars spinning, and I couldn’t tell which way was up. The smell of gunpowder burned the air.
I heard the distinct clack-clack of Prez chambering a round before he started bussing back.
The sound was deafening, each shot cracking through the night in violent bursts.
Muzzle flashes lit up the parking lot in white streaks.
He stood over me, feet planted, firing toward the tinted windows of the car that had come alive with gunfire.
Glass shattered. Tires screeched. It was a nightmare, but I wasn’t sleep.
Only when the car fishtailed around the corner and disappeared did Prez drop the gun.
“Nique!”
His voice didn’t sound like him anymore. It was stripped raw. He slid on his knees beside me, his hands shaking as they searched for the wound. When he hooked his arms under mine to lift me, I felt how slick his palms were. They were warm and wet, but I thought it was just my blood.
“Stay with me, baby. Look at me!”
I tried to answer him. I tried to say his name. All that came out was a shallow, wet wheeze that rattled in my chest. My shirt was soaked, the heat spreading down my hip and into my thigh. My fingers twitched uselessly against his forearm.
“Fight it, Nique,” he grunted, dragging me toward the car. “You hear me? Fight.”
He didn’t call for an ambulance. We both knew better. Sirens took too long to find this side of town. He laid me across the passenger seat, his movements frantic but focused, like if he just moved fast enough he could outrun death itself.
The engine roared and we peeled out of the lot.
He drove like a man possessed, one hand locked on the wheel and the other gripping mine so tight it hurt. Streetlights streaked past us in blurred halos of gold. Every bump in the road sent a fresh wave of fire through my side.
“It can’t end like this. You hear me?” His voice cracked, words tumbling over each other. “You’re gonna be a college girl. A track star. Go to Howard.”
His voice started sounding farther away, like he was speaking to me from underwater. My ears rang. A metallic taste filled my mouth. I tried to squeeze his hand back, but my fingers wouldn't obey. They slipped, weak and numb, sliding against his.
The car felt too small. The air too thin.
Then the strangest thing happened. It was like something inside me loosened its grip.
Suddenly I wasn’t in my body anymore. I wasn’t gasping or bleeding or trying to hold on. I was hovering weightless above the speeding car, looking down through the windshield like I was watching something happen to someone who looked exactly like me.
I saw us screech to a halt at the ER entrance.
I saw the fluorescent lights flickering above the bay, casting everything in that sickly yellow glow that makes the world look unreal.
Nurses in pale blue scrubs rushed toward the car, their shoes slapping against the pavement, and then I saw the part I wasn’t supposed to know.
When they opened the driver’s side door, Prez didn’t move.
He was slumped over the wheel, his head tilted at an unnatural angle.
His white T-shirt was soaked through, a deep crimson that looked almost black under the lights.
Blood had pooled along the console, dripping down near the gearshift.
His hand was still wrapped around the steering wheel like he was determined to keep driving.
A nurse pressed two fingers to his neck. She held them there for a long second. Too long. Then she looked up at the doctor behind her and slowly shook her head.
I saw the exact moment the light left him. Whatever had been holding him upright, whatever stubborn force had kept his foot on the gas and his hand in mine, was gone. He had been shot too. Prez had spent his last bit of life getting me to those doors.
At the same time, another team was pulling my body from the passenger seat. My head lolled back, my arms limp. Blood streaked down my side and across the seat. They shouted numbers and orders I couldn’t understand. I was watching my life end, and my love die in the same breath.
Then the hospital doors slid open, and the light from the lobby swallowed everything. The voices dulled. The world stretched thin, cold, and impossibly quiet.
Please, God, I whispered into the emptiness, the way Grandma Anne taught me when I was small and scared of thunderstorms. Please don’t let me stay here.
A jolt of electricity snapped through me, violent and blinding.
“Dominique Simmons?”
My eyes flew open. No hospital. No Prez. Just the fluorescent lights of the Mobile County Metro Jail and the stale smell of a cell that had seen too much misery.
The nightmare was over, but the headache was just beginning.
“You got bonded out,” the officer said, the jingle of her keys seeming to rattle through my head. “Come on.”
I followed her, my legs feeling like lead. My head throbbed with every step; a reminder of the vase Kel’s ex had used to sideline me. After signing for my property, a plastic bag containing a dead phone and my keys, I pushed through the heavy doors into the lobby.
Dex was there.
He was sitting in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed.
His ebony skin was smooth as velvet even under those harsh flickering lights, his beard lined up crisp despite the fact that he’d been up all night dealing with my mess.
He was easily the sexiest man I’d ever known and seeing him here made my throat tight.
I’d been giving him my ass to kiss for years and he still showed up when I needed him most.
The second the door clicked his eyes snapped open. He stood in one fluid motion and even with the exhaustion written all over him he commanded every inch of that lobby.
“You straight?” he asked, stepping into my space.
His eyes did a slow clinical sweep of me from head to toe. He wasn’t checking me out, he was taking inventory, making sure everything was still where it was supposed to be. His gaze lingered on the side of my head and I knew he saw the dried blood.
“Yeah,” I muttered, shifting the plastic bag in my hand. “I’m alright.”
He didn’t look convinced. His jaw tightened and that protective heat flared in his eyes, chasing away the exhaustion for a split second. He reached out, his hand hovering near my shoulder before he pulled it back, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch me yet.
“What happened, Nique?” he asked, his voice quiet in a way that meant business.
I looked away for a second, focusing on the scuff marks on the floor. “Kel.”
His expression didn’t change but I saw it register behind his eyes. “What she do?”
I swallowed hard, the humiliation of the whole night finally settling into my bones. “I found out she was cheating with her ex who does hair. We got into it and then her ex jumped in and hit me from behind with a vase.”
The air around Dex shifted without him saying a word. He took a slow breath, reached out, and took the plastic bag from my hand like carrying it was just his job now.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
The car ride was quiet at first. The kind of quiet that sits between two people who know too much about each other’s past to pretend the present is normal.
I leaned my head back against the leather seat and watched the streetlights of downtown pass in slow golden streaks.
The hum of the engine and the cool blast of the AC were the only things filling the space between us.
I stole a glance at Dex. His eyes were heavy. I wondered for a second if he was high. He didn’t smoke often, but on a good night when we were having real fun he liked to indulge. My mind flashed back to getting high with him in Jamaica and I shut that thought down fast.
I had to get away from this nigga.
“Dex,” I said, my voice coming out smaller than I meant it to.
“Yeah.”
“Can you just drop me off at a hotel?”
He let out a short dry laugh. “All the family you got in this city, and you want me to drop you at a hotel?”