Chapter 43
CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE
LOVIE
Back on Joliet, the world seemed to have ended in the four hours I was gone.
It’s quiet. The neighborhood dog isn’t even flouncing around, and Smitty’s front door is closed. Arnez’s car sits crookedly in front of the house with half of it pulled onto the curb like she hopped out before she could even put it into park.
I pull into the driveway while her and Rich stare at me from his porch. An empty glass dangles from his hand, and neither of them are sitting down. All the people I thought I heard laughing in the background when he called are gone.
I push the truck’s gear into park and press the button to kill the engine while avoiding their intense gazes.
Rich moves first. He narrows his eyes at me as he takes slow steps down the porch. The hazy sun beams on the veins in his forearms.
I hurry up and pull the visor down and flip the vanity mirror open.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen my mouth the color of a ripe plum and the whites of my eyes red with the memories of another fight with AJ.
I tug the collar of my sweater up to hide the imprint of his fingers, but it falls back down, and I rake my fingers through my frizzy hair, but it puffs back into a curly bush.
All the adrenaline I had at the Post Oak fizzles out of me as I push out of Rich’s truck with my purse in the crook of my arm and his keys dangling from my hand.
He staggers toward me with Arnez on his heels. As soon as they get close, his trembling lips part and her eyes balloon.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I mutter, touching my swollen lip.
The glass falls from Rich’s hand, and he hunches over, hurling his words into the grass.
“Come here, Lovie,” Arnez says, grabbing my wrist. “Let me…let’s uh go in the house so I can clean you up.”
Rich jerks upright and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. His brawny body convulses, and he tosses his head back, staring up at the bright sky as if he’s searching for the right words to say.
“Pup?” Arnez whispers.
“Go home, Arnez,” he breathes out toward the sky.
“I…I can’t leave y’all here like this. I can’t.”
He looks down at us, and the air grows still. “He did that to you, Lovie?”
“Rich,” I mutter. “It’s oka—”
“AJ did that?” He points toward my face. “That was him in the background when I called? You went to see him?”
Arnez slides her hand down to mine and curls her fingers around it, forcing a cocoon around his keys.
His chest rises and falls in slow, succinct motions. “You ain’t leave our house looking like that this morning. You…you looked…”
“I told you I can clean her up, Pup. You just need to come in the house with us,” Arnez cuts in.
Her tone is delicate, although the words attached to it are heavy.
“Where is he, Lovie?” he asks.
I pull out of Arnez’s hold and push my sore body against his, but his limp arms stay at his side.
I press my face against his chest and inhale him. “It doesn’t matter where he is.”
“Look at your face, though,” he whispers.
He pulls me from his chest and rakes his fingers down my swollen cheeks with wide, coal-black eyes. There’s more of that dark feeling in my stomach than there is light right now, and I feel the heat emanating from his body.
“Look at your face…” His hand slides down to mine, and he tugs his keys from my grip.
“You don’t need to go and do anything,” I reply.
“Look at her face, Nez,” he mutters hoarsely.
“I see her, Pup. I see. I told you I can clean her up and I’ll put her in the bed. I’ll even stay and cook—”
“Somebody needs to tell me where the fuck he is,” he chokes out. “How did this happen, Lovie? I want an answer before my head blows the fuck up.”
He tries to push past us, but I hold my arm out, bracing it against his hard stomach.
“I’ll go to every hotel in this city.”
“Wait. Look…look,” I stutter, reaching into my purse and grabbing the Morgan Stanley folder.
I yank it open, pulling the envelope from inside and letting the folder fall next to his shattered glass.
I pull two of the checks from the envelope and flash them in front of his dark eyes. “Look!”
He nudges my hand out of the way and takes another step forward, but I curl my fingers into the fabric of his shirt and Arnez grabs him from behind.
“Look at me, Rich!” I bellow out desperately. “Look at me, baby!”
His dark eyes flicker down toward me.
“I took care of it,” I gasp.
His eyebrows furrow and his mouth turns down.
“It’s over.” I let go of his shirt, placing my hand over his heart, then flashing the checks with Melo Barnes’ name printed on them in front of his face again. “It’s all here. Two million dollars to take care of our problem and a million for us.”
He blinks. “What?”
I reach into the envelope and pull the check out with his name on it. “I took care of us. I…I took care of you. I made him pay. I made AJ pay.”
He closes his eyes, shaking his head.
“He could’ve killed you.” His deep voice breaks.
“How, Rich? How? He’s a coward. I’m the tough one.” I pull his gun from my purse and hold it toward him. “You…you said I’m the tough one.”
He looks back up at the sky and swallows while Arnez belts out a painful sob and staggers back toward the porch. She collapses on the bottom step.
He looks back at me and takes the gun from my grasp, glaring at it as if it’s his first time seeing it.
“You always take care of me. I just wanted to take care of you for once.” That familiar ball crawls up my throat. “I…I just wanted to take care of you.”
He curls a hand around my face, shaking his head. “Baby…he…he could’ve killed you. Don’t you ever…”
“But do you see me?” I ask. “Do you?”
He nods with tears in his eyes, and his lips parted.
“I told you I’d never ever abuse my control,” I whisper. “I know what you’d do to him, but I’m not gonna let you do it. So there’s no reason for you to know where he is. I’m not letting you ruin your life over somebody who doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter anymore.”
His thumb slides over my lips while a single tear falls from his eye. He blinks hard, and another one escapes.
“Now tell me where we go from here,” I mutter. “And don’t you pour sugar over shit because there’s nothing holding us back anymore. You said you’d always give me anything I want and I want us to go away and start over. So tell me. Tell me where we go from here?”
“We’re…we’re…” he stammers. “We’re gonna get on a plane and then land wherever God says we need to…just like you told me.”
He presses his lips against my forehead.
“‘Cause I think it’s okay to want different, just like it’s okay to rewrite legacies,” he murmurs against my head. “I see what you did, Slim. God, I see you, baby.”