Chapter 18 #2
“I gave him room, I forgave him, and I kept my eyes open,” he said.
“Didn’t close the door on him but didn’t drop my guard either.
Because love without your eyes open is just an invitation to get hurt.
” He paused. “What I’m saying to you is this.
Your brothers are not necessarily lost. They are damaged men who were built in a damaged house by a damaged man.
Same as you. The difference is you found your way to something better.
If there is a path where you can bring them back from where they are and everybody stays alive, then that’s the path worth working toward first. But don’t be naive about it. Keep your eyes open the whole time.”
I drove for a minute without responding.
“You’ve been dealing with this with your brother this whole time and never said anything,” I said.
“My brother was my burden to carry. I wasn’t going to make it anyone else’s. Like you said, family business, especially between brothers is sacred.”
“I appreciate you telling me now.”
“I told you because I needed you to know you’re not the only man who has had to decide what to do with the people who are supposed to be his blood but have been acting like his enemies. It doesn’t make the decision easier but at least you know you’re not out here alone with it.”
Something in my chest settled. Not all the way, not everything, but enough that I could feel the difference.
“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it in the way I didn’t say things like that very often.
“Get some rest. I hear you’ve had a hell of a week,” he said. “And answer your phone when I call you.”
“Yes sir.”
—
I sat in my car in my driveway for a minute after I hung up and thought about Savage.
Tomorrow I was going to that safe house so that I could lay eyes on him, and try to talk to my baby brother.
Grim had gotten his conversation and his opportunity and Savage deserved the same thing. They were different in how they operated, different in how they processed things, but they had come up in the same environment and been shaped by the same hands.
Savage had always been the one who felt everything the hardest and reacted to it the loudest. All that aggression and reaction had always been something else underneath it.
I wanted to help the nigga work through it.
I came from the same hell that he did, so I knew that it was possible to get past everything that he was going through.
What I needed that nigga to know, was to never cross me again though.
I still loved my brothers. That was the uncomfortable truth that sat under everything else.
I could be furious with them, could have walked away from that warehouse ready to end both of them, and still underneath all of it love them in the way that you love people who shared your worst years with you.
You didn’t choose that love. It was just there whether it made sense or not.
I didn’t want them dead.
I wanted them to get out of my way and let me live. If they could do that then we had something to work with.
I got out and went inside my house.
Showered and changed, then went straight to my office to go over the numbers.
We had drops coming up in the next few days and I wanted everything mapped and ready so that Deuce didn’t have to think about any of it.
The man had a newborn at home and a wife who had just been through some shit that I couldn’t almost imagine just to bring the baby into the world.
The business wasn’t going anywhere and I could carry it for a stretch while he just existed as a father and a husband. That was the least I could do after everything he had done for me in the last seventy two hours.
I went through everything. Routes, quantities, who was posted where and when, timing on each drop, made two adjustments to a route that had been nagging at me for weeks because something about it had always felt slightly exposed and now was as good a time as any to clean it up.
By the time I closed everything down I felt like I had done something useful with what was left of the night.
I cut the lights in the office and walked to my room.
Got in bed and laid there in the dark and let the silence do what silence did. It moved through you. Settled things that noise kept stirred up. I laid there and let it work and after a while my body started to actually relax for the first time in what felt like longer than two days.
Then my phone lit up.
After one in the morning. I looked at the screen and felt something move through my chest before I even answered.
I picked up and didn’t say anything right away.
“Hey.” Her voice was low. Barely above a whisper.
Right there in the dark I smiled and didn’t try to stop it. “Why are you whispering?”
“I’m not whispering.”
“Ivy. Yes the fuck you are. What’s up?”
Small pause. “Okay I’m whispering a little.”
“Stop sneaking on the phone before you get yourself into something you can’t get out of.”
She was quiet for a second and I could hear her trying to figure out how to say what she had called to say.
That was the thing about her. She was direct in every other area of her life, ran two businesses, made real decisions, moved like somebody who knew her own mind.
But when it came to this, when it came to what was between us, she kept arriving at the edge of it and having to work up to the jump.
“I don’t know what you did to me,” she said finally. “I don’t know what this is or where it came from but I’ve never felt like this before. I’m just being honest.”
“I know,” I said. I was smiling hard as hell. I had her ass sneaking off and calling me in the middle of the night.
“That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“What do you want me to say? Be honest. Tell me the real thing.”
Pause. “What real thing.” She asked.
“You know what I’m asking you.”
Do you want me to tell you that I fucked you like that on purpose cause I want you to be mine and mine only? You never been fucked like daddy did, huh?” I teased her.
“No,” she said quietly. “I haven’t. Not like that. Not ever.”
“See.” I shifted in the bed. “Was that hard?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying. You know what happens if you don’t follow my instructions and act right?”
“What.”
“You might not get it again. And based on what you just admitted, that would be a real problem for you.”
She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and frustration and I felt it move through me like something warm.
“Go to bed Ivy,” I said.
“I am in bed. I just snuck into the guest room to call.”
“Then go to sleep.” I paused and let what came next land exactly how I intended it to. “Go lay down with that lame ass nigga that put that ring on your finger. Get your rest.”
I heard the sound she made when I said it and I hung up before she could respond.
Set the phone down and laid there in the dark with my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling.
She had called me after one in the morning whispering from a bed inside the house that she was sharing with another man.
Had admitted out loud that she had never felt what she felt with me before.
Had bribed a florist to find my number so she could call me to tell me to leave her alone, and then stayed on the phone and talked to me like she didn’t want to hang up. And after that, fucked me again.
She was going to do what she needed to do to keep me around.
I wasn’t going to rush her timeline because I understood she had a real life to navigate and real decisions to make that came with real weight.
But she was going to make those decisions.
The engagement was already over whether she had said it out loud yet or not.
Some things ended before the announcement caught up.
I closed my eyes.
My mind went where it wanted to go which was straight to her.
What this was going to look like when all the noise cleared.
When it was just us without the complications and the sneaking and the borrowed time.
What it was going to feel like to have her in my space, in my house, in my bed, not for one night in a hotel or ten minutes in a parking lot but just there.
Present. Mine.
I thought about that until sleep pulled me under.
And for the first time in a long time I went to sleep not thinking about business or blood or the next move I had to make.
Just her.