While Tony pulled in next to the curb farther down the street, I took another blast of liquid courage and elbowed the package hidden inside my leather jacket. All I had to do was get in, toss Slim his drugs, get out. Alive. That would be really great.
Except I had no idea who Slim was. This should be fun.
We strode toward the house with purpose, the bass beat thumping a new, louder rhythm for my heart from the party down the street. Get in. Get out. The guilt I felt for ruining lives could eat me alive, slowly, afterward.
“This won’t take long,” I said more for myself than Tony.
“Better not. Golden Girls starts at eleven.”
I glanced at him, not quite sure if he was fucking with me or not. The guy was a walking contradiction. He must’ve started lifting weights before I met him six years ago because dude had always been built like a truck. Yet he wore a light blue T-shirt with two orange kittens licking at bowls of milk plastered on each of his pecs. No one ever gave him shit about that shirt, either, or any of his cat shirts. One look at the size of his fists shut their mouths for good.
“Really? Golden Girls?” But he didn’t answer because the door to the yellow house opened.
A massive Latino guy stood there with some lady practically wrapped around the side of his hip. She giggled and hiccupped at the ceiling.
I’d seen that same glassy-eyed, lost expression in my baby sister while she tripped up the stairs at four in the morning. It twisted me up just as much now as all those times. This girl was battling a demon I couldn’t see, but I knew it by name. H, brown sugar, hell dust on the streets, otherwise known as heroin. The same thing that was hidden inside my jacket. The same thing that had nearly killed Rose.
The big guy ushered us inside, then shoved the girl at me so he could frisk Tony.
“You can’t see me because I have clear corners,” the girl whispered to me.
I faced her toward a red couch in the corner of a living room with two bottle blondes sitting on it so she’d focus on something other than the war inside her. Her pale skin felt cold and slicked with sweat, yet somehow hot at the same time. I hated how it felt, how it was like a punch to the gut because it was such a rough reminder of dragging Rose back downstairs and shoving her into the bathroom before Mom and Dad woke up to see the damage already done. When their little girl was near death, they had no choice but to see. So they swept Rose up into a tidy corner known as drug rehabilitation to forget about her while they plotted ways to keep it all a secret. We couldn’t have a U.S. senator who was incapable of running his own family become the next president, now could we?
The frisker pushed the high girl away from me then ran his hands around my waist, down my jeans, inside my jacket. When his fingers met the package, the tequila sloshed in my stomach. But he didn’t do anything other than reattach the girl to his hip.
Around us, another quieter, less crowded, party raged. It was hotter inside the house than out. Sweat poured down my back, soaking my shirt, making me even more uncomfortable. I wished like hell I could take my jacket off, but I couldn’t risk anyone other than Slim seeing the package.
Get in. Get out. Alive.
“Where’s Slim?” I asked, but the dude ignored me by plunging his tongue down the girl’s throat.
Pretty sure Slim wasn’t in her mouth.
Tony and I cut through the house, my gaze catching on a pair of grinding hips, perfect pink lips framed with flawless skin, and silky dark hair. Almost Paige, but not. The girl started toward me, her hips swaying, and all I could think about were what Paige and Riley might be doing right then.
Please, God, not fucking. Even if he did treat her right, I would lose my mind just hearing the sounds and seeing his smug expression every morning for the next six weeks. He knew how I felt about her, had always felt about her, which would explain the glee all over the stupid prick’s face when he caught me spying their full-body hug. But if they weren’t fucking, she would be living in my house for six whole weeks.
Six weeks she could spend with me. The possibilities were endless.
I needed to get the hell out of here.
“Sorry, sugar,” I said to almost-Paige. “I gotta go.”
See, that was my let-them-down-easy style, unlike Riley.
She stepped back and pouted, but within seconds had wrapped her arms around some other poor schmuck’s neck and was dry-humping him.
I scanned the room for anyone who might have a Slim nametag on. What would Slim look like? Skinny? Or fat in an obvious, ironic twist?
In the corner of the living room, a woman straddled a man who was projectile vomiting over the side of his recliner. I turned away quickly and spotted Tony next to a doorway nearby. He jerked his chin for me to follow. I gladly did, leaving the heat and growing stink behind me for a well-ventilated kitchen.
In case shit got weird, a side door opened out into a backyard where fewer people partied. Just what Tony and I always looked for at parties—an emergency exit. Ever since high school and our obsession that the zombie apocalypse was going to happen today, we’d been planning our survival down to the last detail. Old habits never died. Good thing, too, since all I cared about was getting out of here.
Tony leaned his back against a countertop. “Whose house is this?”
I shrugged. “Some guy named Slim.”
“Seriously?” He cut his gaze to me. “That’s a prison name.”
“You remember where we are, right? Half the people here have probably been in prison.” I leaned against the stove, chewing my lower lip, wishing like mad I’d brought the tequila in with me. I’d been to jail, but I still felt out of place here. Parties like this weren’t my scene. Selling drugs to repay my sister’s debt to Hill wasn’t my life goal. Shocking, I know.
“Slim’s housekeeper is going to fart a hammer when she sees this shit,” Tony said, eyeing the empty bottles all over the kitchen. “I would quit. Or ask for a raise. Maybe both.”
I closed my eyes at both Tony’s messed up logic and timing. I tell him we’re at a prison party, and he chose to talk about housekeeping? But it was Tony. Instead of judging me about why I had dragged him here in the first place, he was humoring me. Distracting me from everything. This was why he was more of a brother than Riley.
“Sexist,” I said. “How do you know the housekeeper’s a—?”
A loud crack from the backyard made us both jump. We glanced at each other with likely the same thoughts—gunshot or zombie apocalypse?—then, without a word, we sprang to either side of the back door.
A shadowy guy kneeled on a square of concrete surrounded by dying grass with a flickering lighter.
Crack.
We both jumped again, even though I knew to expect it. The sound ricocheted off a solid metal fence surrounding the yard to bounce into the open kitchen and magnify itself over the thudding bass music.
Crack. Pop.
“Fourth of July came early,” a voice behind us said with a thick Texas accent.
I turned to see a very overweight white guy flanked by two black men. The guy had about seventeen chins drooping down his blue and white checkered shirt, dark hair slicked to the side. Beady eyes that never focused on one thing for more than a second bounced around the room hummingbird-style. He and his bodyguards took up the length of the kitchen, effectively blocking the living room exit.
“Slim,” I guessed.
“I know you?” the big dude asked.
So his name was an obvious, ironic twist. No nametag needed. “I know Hill.”
“I know Hill, too, the seedy punk. He wants my territory.” His accent stretched the words into several extra syllables. “Show me this peace offering of his that he mentioned.”
I fingered the broken snap inside the sleeve of my jacket and swallowed. This was the first time Hill had ever made me do a delivery. I was usually the money guy in the week I’d been trying to pay off Rose’s one million dollar debt to Hill. What if somehow he was playing with me by sending me
here?
“Out back,” I demanded. I could hop a fence faster if I was next to one.
The two black guys shifted closer, pressing me in, faces blank.
Crack.
I was pretty sure no one jumped that time but me. A drop of sweat slid down the side of my neck.
Slim’s hummingbird stare narrowed in on me and stayed there. “Right here.”
I gave a short nod, trying to think of all the ways I could worm myself out of this if things went sour. In other words, be more like Dad. My short-lived political science major never did teach me the art of spinning lies into semi-reasonable truths. I lifted a hand inside my jacket, which made the two guards jerk their fingers to their waistbands.
Pop. Crack.
The sound sucked the air from my lungs. It took several seconds before I realized neither of them had fired a gun. Several seconds I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, even though I wanted to rush outside and kill the fucker lighting fireworks.
“Slowly,” Slim warned.
One of the bodyguards lifted his shirt to reveal the butt of his gun and stroked it like a dick. I suddenly wanted to join the projectile vomit guy in the living room.
“Easy, Sam,” Tony muttered next to me.
I glanced at him and couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him stand so still. I inched my other hand up and eased the plastic-wrapped package out of my jacket.
This had to be done. #sorrynotsorry
I flung the package at Slim with a shaky arm. One of the guards snagged it out of the air. His buddy handed him a knife, and he stabbed into it with the precision of a surgeon. With the tip of the blade, he lifted a small amount of the white powder to his nose, forehead lined in concentration. He sniffed but didn’t inhale. Once. Twice. The guy obviously knew his heroin.
“How pure is it?” Slim asked to no one in particular, his beady gaze rolling over the room.
I had no idea. Before I could answer, an uninterrupted series of cracks spiked the tension in my body to the highest level. Sweat leaked down my sides in rivers. I glanced at the back door, wanting to make a move to shut out the sound, but didn’t. Not in front of the guy who wanted to whip his gun out so he could molest it.
And behind the cracks and bass beat, a siren wailed. Far away but coming closer. The police on the way to bust up the party two houses down? Or this one?
Slim and his two bodyguards didn’t seem to notice all the noise, or were so used to it, they could ignore it.
Not me. Every explosion, every second the siren grew louder twisted my tense muscles into a frayed noose close to snapping.
Tony hadn’t moved since this whole shit storm began. I could practically hear his brain turning over every second to analyze it.
The guy with the blade of heroin darted his tongue out to taste it. When he slipped it back into his mouth, his eyes bugged out of his head and he lunged for the kitchen sink. He yanked the tap water on and spit, gagged, scrubbed at his tongue until one word fell out: “Strychnine.”
“Rat poison,” Slim growled.
Oh, shit, no.
The gun molester jerked it from his waistband and pointed it at my head.
I lifted both hands and froze. Questions lodged at the back of my throat, ready to hurl out, but they were all meant for Hill. He’d set me up. The bastard set me up. I was so dead.
The approaching siren sped on by. While staring down the barrel of the gun, I felt my chances for survival sink along with my stomach. The cops coming here could’ve been the distraction I needed to get out of here alive. To jail, but alive. Now, though, I was so fucking screwed.
Movement out of the corner of my eye, then crackcrackcrackcrackcrack. Fireworks exploded all over the middle of the kitchen floor. That time I welcomed the distraction, because for one second, Slim and his bodyguards’ eyes shifted away from me.
I didn’t think. Just moved.
I barreled into the guy with the gun and knocked it from his hand. Then, with a sharp turn into him, I smashed his nose with my elbow.
Slim, red-faced and breathing hard, rushed at the gun as fast as a three-hundred-pound man could.
Tony locked eyes with mine from inside the doorway and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the blasts. It probably had something to do with getting the fuck out of there.
I sprinted after him, the hairs on the back of my neck spiked with the threat of bullets coming after us.
4
Paige
THE ONLY THINGS I NEEDED in life were books and a glass or three of white wine. I got over my disappointment about Riley leaving pretty quickly when I curled up on his leather couch in the living room with both of my favorite things in hand.
Halfway through my second glass and a bank heist gone horribly wrong, the front door slammed open. I leaped into the air, and my book went flying sans bookmark. Wine sloshed all over my Reading is Sexy T-shirt.
“Ffffuck me,” I growled between clenched teeth.
From my view on the couch, I couldn’t see who it was, but pots and pans clanked in the kitchen. Cabinets banged open and shut. The clatter rolled over the wooden floors and hammered echoes between my ears. Why didn’t everyone have a ‘Shh’ meter built inside them?
I rescued my book and empty glass from the floor then marched toward the kitchen. “Do you think you can be any louder?”
Sam whirled around and stumbled into the countertop. His eyes, the part not swollen shut from his shiner, were bloodshot. Completely wasted, though not enough to stop his gaze from raking up and down my body.
That same pulse I’d felt earlier sparked electrical currents from head to toe and gathered at my center. I cleared my throat, trying unsuccessfully to ignore that feeling, and crossed my arms over my chest. Crap. Why couldn’t I materialize a bra under my thin, now wet, shirt? Though earlier today I obviously hadn’t minded his hungry gaze. Of course, he hadn’t been drunk then, either.
“What’re you doin’ here?” he asked. “I thought you were out with Riley.”
“He had to go to work.”
“Fucking bastard.” He turned and swayed in the direction of the refrigerator.
Shaking my head, I came up behind him and pushed him onto a stool at the island in the center of the kitchen. The guy could barely walk, and I was in no mood for his deafening culinary skills.
“Tell me you didn’t drive like this,” I said.
He slumped over the island with his hands clasped together and glared at his bandaged knuckles. His long blond hair hung in his face, and it made him somehow look defeated.
“You’re not even old enough to drink yet, are you?” I asked, mistakenly leaning toward him. Alcoholic fumes burned my nasal passages, and I jerked back with a wince. “You’re what? Twenty?”
“I had a bad day,” he said, his voice low.
I flashed back to our time in the library earlier that afternoon and wondered if he was including that in his description. It had appeared he was enjoying himself just fine then.
“So you were going to make it better by being a shit-faced idiot?” I asked.
He pinned his red-rimmed gaze on me. “What are you, my mom?”
My eyes narrowed. What the hell happened to this kid? He used to be such a little sweetie, had even been a sort of library comedian just hours before. Now he was looking at me as if I were the enemy. It hurt to see him like that, so much so that I had to look away, though I could still feel his gaze on me.
After several quiet seconds, I shoved away from the island and said, “Do me a favor and get out your phone.” He’d set out a package of bacon in his drunken haze, so to continue the quiet, I took over.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to make you a BLT sandwich.”
I’d spotted a tomato and lettuce in the refrigerator during my earlier raid, and a BLT seemed like a good thing to suck the alcohol from him.
“And you need my phone because...?”
“Because you’re going to do something for me in
return.”
He watched while I rummaged through drawers to find the aluminum foil and a shallow baking pan.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked, and I didn’t miss the husky note of curiosity in his voice.
“Program my number into your phone.” What did he think I was going to say? “If you get drunk again, you call me and I’ll call you a cab.”
“I could jus’ call myself a cab,” he said.
I set the pan down on the island a little too loudly and stared at him. If his eyes weren’t so bloodshot with an enormous bruise shadowed over one of them, I would be able to see that startling shade of baby blue a little better.
“Then why didn’t you?” I asked.
An almost smile tugged at his mouth as he reached for his phone inside the pocket of his baggy jeans. “Okay. You win.”
Damn right I did.
When my number was safely tucked away in his phone, he said, “I didn’t act’lly drive like this. A friend drove. I’m not that much of an idiot.”
“Really,” I said. A friend? It was none of my business if that friend was male or female, yet I found myself really wanting to know.
“Yeah. Really. You sound like you don’t believe me.”
I shrugged while I lined the pan with foil. “I believe you, but you’re still not old enough to drink. The law is a law for a reason, so I hear.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time, and I thought he might have passed out until I glanced at the island behind me. No, he was awake, his head propped up on his arm and a sloppy grin on his face while he stared at me. I quickly turned back around, a blush flaming over my cheeks.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Making bacon,” I said. “What’s it look like?”
“That’s not how you make bacon.”
“It’s how I make bacon. I put it in the oven to bake, and that way it doesn’t splatter everything with grease.”
“Okay.” Sam leaped from his stool—maybe fell off was more like it—with his hands out in front of him like he expected me to attack him with the box of aluminum foil or something. His legs wavered beneath him, but he caught himself on the corner of the island. “Put the bacon down and no one’ll get hurt.”
Wicked Me Page 4
