Juliet

Chapter 33 #2

I walk faster, pulling Slim closer to my chest.

“Pup! Stop!”

“Man, get away from us!”

I don’t recognize my voice again.

It’s intertwined with Senior’s. I hear the same tremble that plagued his while he packed Faye’s bags in their bedroom.

Slim sobs louder.

“You need to get rid of her,” Arnez hisses. “What the fuck are you doing right now? You need to go cash out and pay on our balance.”

“Go away, Arnez!”

“What you gonna do with her? Huh? Run away with her? She’s a liability with her own fuckin problems! Worry about our problems!”

Slim squeezes her legs around my waist and clambers up my body.

“Shhh…” I mutter, bouncing her up and down while another trickle of blood flows over my eye. “Don’t listen.”

“She needs to listen! That’s the problem! She needs to hear this!”

“Go home, Arnez.”

“She’s gonna get you caught up or get you killed.

I know you. I know that look in your eyes, Rich.

If you do something to that boy, that’s it for you.

Melo’s reign doesn’t cover millionaire NFL players.

He’ll throw you straight to the wolves, and they’ll bury you under the jail.

Then all the rest of your skeletons will come out no matter what we been paying. ”

I see my truck’s tailgate through my blurry vision, and I walk faster toward it while she follows us.

“I ain’t listening to you right now.”

“Fine, Rich! I’ll entertain you. I’ll entertain this stupidity!

” she yells. “Tell me what the fuck kind of life you gonna give her? Huh? You can’t even leave the city.

If you leave, he’ll put a bounty on your head and they’ll merk you as soon as you step foot back in Houston.

She ain’t built for this life. You saw her in there!

You telling me she’s gonna sit up here with you every Sunday and watch you get your head knocked around to pay her bills?

Because you can’t quit. If you quit, what job you gonna get that’s gonna allow you to pay this man fourteen hundred dollars a week and still have money left to survive?

If you don’t pay, he’s gonna kill you. Just let her go.

Me, you, and Daddy can figure this out without all this outside noise from her and Faye.

She’s just a distraction. They’re just distractions.

Why can’t you and Daddy just let them go? ”

Every word she yells out feels like a blow to my weary body. My knees buckle and my stride slows and Slim sobs louder.

“We…we almost there…” I huff, rounding my truck and making a beeline for the driver’s side door.

I yank the door open and climb inside with her still in my arms. I slam the door shut just as Arnez runs up behind us.

She slaps the window, and her muffled voice seeps through the glass.

“If Daddy couldn’t even keep Faye, what makes you think you can keep her? Huh?”

“Rich…” Slim whispers.

“Man, get the fuck away from my truck!” I holler while that giant boulder sinks in my stomach.

“Fuck you and her!” Arnez hits the window again, backing up and stalking over to her car.

I wait for the sound of her engine before reclining the driver’s seat and staring at my truck’s roof. Slim’s soft sniffles fill the quiet air around us.

“Shhh…” I rake my fingers through her frizzy hair. “Close your eyes.”

“I can’t. I need to look at you.” She pushes up from my chest, and her soft eyes pierce my face like two daggers. “You weren’t listening to her, were you? She’s grieving, and she’s angry. She wants us to feel as bad as she feels.”

I pinch my eyes shut.

“You can keep me, Rich. I’m the only thing in this world that’s yours. Remember? You never had anybody who just belonged to you until I came.”

A sharp burn trickles through my nose, and I can’t see what’s in front of me again. I swipe my hand across my eyes to clear my vision, but all I feel is hot wetness.

I’m fuckin crying… again.

“We’re not them. We’re not Senior and Faye. I’m not leaving you,” she mutters. “I will never leave you.”

“Close your eyes, baby—”

“Rich.” She shakes her head. “You made love to me last night. You…you told me we would do this together.”

“Shhhh.” I pull her head to my wet chest and rake my fingernails across her scalp. “I know. I know. But I want…I need you to stop for a second and breathe. Did you even breathe today, baby?”

Tears well in her eyes, and her mouth falls open. “We don’t have time for this. We need to go home and figure out a plan—”

I stoop down and steal a kiss from her hot mouth before swiping my thumbs across her face. “Breathe.”

She takes a deep breath while her wide eyes roam my face. They’re the softest they’ve ever been and make me bury my face in the crook of her neck. I swipe my nose against her skin and inhale her.

I pull back.

“Come right here…” I murmur, pulling her to my chest. “Come tell me what happened today before all this. I wanna talk about you right now—not about my problems. I just wanna hear about you. I want you to be selfish right now. I…I got you so wrapped up in me you can’t even focus on yourself. That’s not how this is supposed to go.”

I wrap one hand around her hot cheeks and rake my fingers through her hair with the other.

“But Rich—”

“What did I say?”

Her mouth opens, and I feel my problems getting ready to pour out of it again.

“Be selfish, Lovie.”

“His agent showed up on our porch. Kenny called him. They want me to sign an NDA so I can’t talk about what he did to me,” she blurts.

I swipe my sweaty hands down the back of her sweatshirt while my heart races. “Keep goin. I’m listening.”

Her mouth opens again, and her words get stuck in her throat. She still wants to talk about me. After everything she’s been through today, her mind is still wrapped around me and my problems.

“Get my problems out of your head and tell it, baby. Tell me what else sent you running to me.”

“He’s the golden boy without a stain on his reputation, and I’m just the weak girl who won’t be able to fight the machine he has behind him if I tell everybody what he’s been doing to me.

His agent says he wants to work things out with me.

He says AJ begged him to come to the house too, but he advised him against it and made him stay back at the hotel. ”

I hear the exhaustion in her voice. It marries with each word she chokes out. Everything comes out in chunks with no clear beginning or end. I don’t get all the details that my brain needs—the how, when, and where.

“Talk. I need to know what you think,” she says.

I shake my head, pulling her down on my chest again. “No.”

“I don’t care about healing and hating all men right now. I need to know what you think because I can’t breathe or think without you right now…” she whines. “I need to know what to do—”

“Close your eyes.”

“Rich.”

“Shhh. You ain’t listening to me. What did I say?”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” I brush my fingers across her eyelids until they finally flutter shut.

Her head rises and falls with my chest and I drag the pads of my fingers against her scalp in lazy circles while I try to forget every word Arnez yelled at us.

It doesn’t take long for my heartbeat to lull Slim into a restless sleep with her hand clenched into a tight fist and her eyebrows bunched together.

I wrap my arms around her and rock her back and forth. “You wanna know what I think? You really wanna know what this stupid ass man thinks, baby?”

She lets out a deep murmur in her sleep.

I steal another kiss from her lips and swipe my finger across her eyebrows.

“I think…I think you better not sign a motherfuckin thing they give you and the next time they find you, you better not run. You poke your chest out, look them right in their eyes and tell them where they can find me so I can take care of it because you still have a life to live and I promise you’re gonna live it.

I want you happy and safe, and taken care of.

You gotta be the strong one, remember? Because…

because I’m the weak one out of the two of us.

I can be selfish and let you endure this bullshit with me, because I’m a stupid man, but you’re smarter…

stronger…and better than me. You know you deserve better than me. ”

I don’t remember crying so much in my life before Slim came along, but here I am at my big-ass age, swiping away hot tears again while trying my best not to stir her awake.

“I told you I wasn’t for forever,” I murmur. “But you so goddamn hardheaded. You never listen.”

I pull open the middle console and grab my phone to call Faye, but I’m so stupid and selfish that I unlock it and swipe through me and Slim’s texts so I can steal a few more minutes with her in my arms.

All of her voice messages, good morning texts, and random reminders sit pinned at the very top of my text threads because she had become my everything before I could even stop it.

All the boring shit I never thought I’d talk to a woman about consume our messages—what I ate for breakfast, how I felt about the last episode of Ozark I watched, how much longer it’d be before she could see me again, and if I really thought she was as nerdy and obsessive as Myra Monkhouse.

I pull her head closer into my chest. “You happy now? Hm? I’m not playing daddy to no other baby birds. It’s just you—only you. It’s only been you since I laid eyes on you and it’ll only be you after everything is said and done.”

She lets out another restless grumble.

“Hush,” I mutter.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and Faye’s name pops up like she knows I’m stalling and putting off the inevitable.

I stare at it until it stops vibrating and starts again. My thumb hovers over the green button while Slim takes a deep, staggered breath in her sleep. I finally answer the call, and it hurts, but it’s probably all in my head.

“Rich?” Faye mutters before I can bring the phone to my ear. “Rich? You there?”

I drag it up, letting it hover near the side of my head.

“Faye…I…” I glance down at Slim’s body curled in my lap.