quiet when Marco and I returned two hours later. One of Reno’s guys had come by, swept up the shattered lamp in the living room, and boarded up the broken panel of glass next to the front door. It’d be fixed in the morning, but for tonight, my gun was staying out and ready.
Marco went to his room, probably straight for the shower. That was where I was headed too.
Julien was in the hall outside my bedroom, hands on his hips. “Did you take care of it?”
“Yeah. It’s done.” I jerked my chin to the door. “How is she?”
“She was terrified, but she wouldn’t talk. Fell asleep a bit ago. She’s been quiet.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This wasn’t what Zadie needed. I’d promised her this part of my life wouldn’t touch her, and in one night, it’d touched her twice.
I hit Julien’s shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for her. I appreciate it, man.”
He dipped his chin, waving me off. I slipped into my dark bedroom, letting my eyes acclimate, finding the small lump on Zadie’s side of the bed. Her hair spilled over her pillow, only her forehead visible atop the covers.
Relief coursed through me at finding her asleep. I crept into the bathroom, shutting myself in. In the unforgiving light, I examined my hands, flexing my stiff fingers with a wince. My knuckles were swollen, a couple bloody. They needed to be bandaged, but first I had to deal with the rest of me. My white undershirt was splattered with blood, same for my dark-gray basketball shorts. I dropped them on the floor and turned on the shower, letting it heat.
Hands gripping the edge of the counter, I let my head drop forward. Tonight had been so fucked. So fucked. The only thing right about it was Zadie, and she probably wasn’t going to like me very much when she woke up in the morning.
I’d make her like me again. I’d done it once. I could do it a thousand times over. I’d make her feel safe, prove to her none of this would seep outside of my carefully insulated other life. This was an anomaly. It. Would. Not. Touch. Her.
The door behind me crept open, and Zadie’s reflection appeared in the mirror. Our eyes connected there. Hers were wide and worried. Something she saw in mine made her gasp and rush forward.
I turned my head to look at her. “You should be sleeping. Go back to bed. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”
“What happened?”
I wasn’t ready for this. The words weren’t straight in my head. “You need to go back to bed, Zadie.”
She picked up my hand, sweeping her thumb over my battered knuckles. Then her attention dropped to my clothes on the floor, the blood spatters easily visible.
“Why was he here? How did he find you?”
There was no way out of this. I could lie, refuse to answer, shut her down, but I didn’t want to. Not with her. And as sure as the sun would rise, Zadie wouldn’t accept it.
“César, the guy from the club—he thought I kept product in the house, so he followed us to find out where I live. Convinced his cousin to help him break in to steal from me while we were sleeping. They were both high off their asses, so a shit idea sounded reasonable.”
She nodded. “Are they alive?”
My heart stopped beating. Those ugly words coming from her pretty lips drained the life out of me. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. What was I doing to this girl?
“They’re alive. I’m not a killer.”
Big blue eyes rose to meet mine. They were shiny with unshed tears. She wouldn’t let them fall, not if she didn’t want them to.
“Are they walking?”
“Zadie…”
She licked her lips. “What did you do to them? Tell me what you did.” Her thumb pressed on my injured knuckle. “You have to hit someone really hard to come back with hands looking like this, don’t you? Where did the blood on your shirt come from? What part?”
I moved fast, circling my arms around her. “You don’t want to know any of that.”
“No, no!” She pushed at me hard, but I held fast. She wasn’t getting away. “Tell me. Tell me what you did. I need to know who you are. What did you do? Who are you?”
“I’m not going to do that.”
She was breaking me, this girl. My soft, sweet girl couldn’t take any of this. She felt it deeply, even though César had deserved everything he got. Jesus, he’d broken into my home, carrying a knife and rope. That wasn’t some innocent. We were lucky his cousin had been so damn bumbling, he’d knocked over a lamp and alerted Marco and Julien. Zadie too. I’d been so comfortable in bed, dreaming about my girl, I might have slept through getting my throat slit.
“Tell me, Amir. I won’t let you hide this from me.” She pounded at my chest with closed fists, fighting my hold as hard as she could. “Let me go, let me go!”
“Never. Not going to happen.”
I walked her out of the bathroom, throwing us both down on the bed and trapping her beneath me. My fingers wrapped around her wrists, cuffing them beside her head. She stared up at me like I was a stranger.
“I’m not doing this with you, mama. I took care of what needed to be taken care of. That will never happen again. You’re safe with me. This house is safe. No one is going to touch you. I know you saw things that upset you, and I’m going to make it right, but that will not be done by telling you every detail of how I dealt with the problem tonight.”
She turned her head to the side, keeping her eyes from me. I did not like that.
“Zadie.” My hands flexed around her wrists. “Fuck, Zadie, I know you’re mad, but—”
“This isn’t the first time a man broke in while I was sleeping,” she whispered to the wall. “I got used to feeling safe with you. I made a mistake.”
My sternum rendered in two. It was so painful, I couldn’t breathe. My head dropped to her cheek, eyes squeezing shut.
“You didn’t make a mistake. I took care of it. This isn’t like Drew. It’s done, Zadie. He won’t be back. No one will touch you. People in my world don’t know where I live. Helen was one of maybe three or four people, and that’s only because I know her. I don’t have product here. I don’t keep money here. You’re safe, Zadie.”
She’d stopped fighting. Her limbs were limp. Her head lolled to the side. “I’m really tired.”
Shut down. She wasn’t willing to listen tonight, and I got it. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t force her to trust nothing like this would ever happen again. And, fuck, did I want to.
“Okay. You need sleep. It’ll look different when we wake up. You’ll see I have you.”
“I’m going to sleep now.”
I pulled back, even though it went against every instinct I had, but I had no choice. As soon as I did, she tugged the covers over herself and curled up on her side. I stood there, watching her for minutes. She didn’t move or say another word. Even after I took the fastest shower known to man, she hadn’t moved.
I lay down in bed beside her, pulling her against me. She was too stiff to be asleep, but neither of us spoke. Sleep wasn’t coming for me either, not with a board on my window and the sad, scared girl in my bed.
It was going to be a long night.
I couldn’t say how, but I fell asleep sometime around sunrise. When I woke up a couple hours later, the sheets beside me were cool and empty. I shot out of bed and took the stairs two at a time, skidding into the kitchen.
Zadie was at the island, a throw wrapped around her shoulders, sipping from a mug. Julien had a hip propped on the counter, peering into the toaster. Marco was at the table, shoveling eggs into his mouth.
I strode into the kitchen and kissed the top of Zadie’s head. “Did you sleep?”
“Not really.” She raised her mug. “Hence, cup two of coffee.”
“Didn’t think I’d fall asleep.”
She knocked the side of her head into my arm. “I’m glad one of us did.”
“Wish it had been you.” Pressing on the underside of her chin with my fingertip, I tipped her head back and studied her face. “Even tired, still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
I leaned down, brushing my mouth over hers. Her lips were almost hot, and I got a taste of her coffee. Tangling my fingers in the fall of her hair, I brought her closer, taking the kiss just a little deeper. We weren’t alone, but even more, I was on fragile ground with her. Too fragile to push beyond her limits.
“I slept like a princess.” Marco dropped his plate in the sink with a clatter. “Thanks for the concern, brother.”
“Hey.” Julien’s spine snapped straight. “Were you forgetting something?”
Marco scratched the side of his head, staring at him for a beat before his eyes widened.
“Nope. I was not walking away from my dirty dishes.” He spun in a tight circle to the sink. “Just practicing my dance moves for you, Z!”
Then, my boy, who never let anyone tell him what to do, proceeded to rinse his plate clean and stack it in the dishwasher. He even went so far as to wipe out the sink.
Utterly domesticated.
Zadie blew him a kiss on his way out. He winked back at her.
“Don’t give him my kisses,” I grumbled.
She gave me the barest smile. “Would you mind taking me back to my dorm? I really could use a long nap, and I think I’ll sleep better there.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow.”
Everything in me did not want to let her go. She’d be gone for five days as it was. Things between us needed to be settled before that happened. I had to know without a shadow of a doubt she was coming back to me before I allowed her to step on that plane.
“I know, but I’m tired and my brain is fuzzy. I just need to be in my room for a while.”
“All right. I’ll take you and come back at noon to pick you up.” Taking her mug, I placed it on the island and drew her from her stool into my arms. She buried her face in my chest, hugging me tight. That made it easier to give her a few hours. Not easy. Zadie leaving me was never easy.
“I just need some sleep,” she murmured into my chest.
She wore my shorts and T-shirt on the ride back to her dorm, looking adorably disheveled. Looking like a girl who just rolled out of my bed and I wanted to toss her back in it.
I stopped at the curb. She unbuckled and leaned her body across the console, crushing her mouth to mine. Before I could say “fuck it” and drive her back to my house, she tore her mouth away and darted out the door, waving as she ran up the steps to her dorm.
We weren’t right. We weren’t fucking right at all. My girl wasn’t getting on a plane and flying away from me until we got back to where we were last night.
It was three hours later, still an hour before I was to head back to pick up Zadie. Julien and I were kicked back in the living room, both too spent from the night before to do much other than watch a movie on TV. Meanwhile, Marco was killing it at the gym. He was the most laid back of the three of us, but the kid did not take a day off from working out, even when he was running on a couple hours of sleep.
Fuck him and his eight-pack.
My head was beginning to throb. I needed to get up, swallow back some painkillers and guzzle water so it didn’t develop into the kind of headache that had me locking myself in my dark bedroom, unable to do much except ride it out. Of course, the last one of those I’d had, Zadie had helped me ride it out, and it hadn’t been even half as bad as they normally were.
My phone vibrated. I flipped it over on my leg to check the screen. A text from Zadie.
Zadie: I decided to change my ticket and fly back to Oregon today. I should have told you I was going today, and I’m really sorry I didn’t, but I thought you would force a conversation on me I am not ready to have. I need space and time to reconcile my mind with what happened last night. I know I’m not okay with it, but I can’t see beyond that and what that means for us. I’m sorry I couldn’t say this to your face. The plane is about to take off, so I have to turn my phone off. I’ll text when I land, but I really need space, so I’m asking you not to call. Xoxo
I read it, reread it, and reread it again. I couldn’t believe she’d snuck out on me. My Zadie, my sweet little Zadie, had lied to my face and snuck out like a fucking thief in the night. She wasn’t wrong, I would have forced a conversation, but god-fucking-dammit, we were adults. We needed to have a conversation.
My forehead pulsed. Shit.
“You look ready to murder your phone.” Julien craned his head to read the screen. “Who sent you a paragraph? Princess Z?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“On a flight to Oregon.”
He shook his head. “Nah, she’s leaving tomorrow. What’d she say?”
“She changed her ticket. Needs to get her head on straight.”
Julien sank back against the cushions, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Pussy move to leave without telling you first.”
There was no thought before I made my next move, whipping around and gripping him around the throat. I pressed him deep into the couch, hovering over him.
“Don’t ever disrespect my girl like that again. You hear me? That’s my fucking girl.”
His hands went up in surrender, and I let him go, falling back to my seat. The throbbing vein in my temple was more like a rope, lassoing my head as tight as it could get.
“I’m sorry, man. I love the girl. In general, she’s as high quality as they come. But I don’t like her leaving you high and dry like this.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “She hates violence.”
“She knew who you were.”
“Knowing and experiencing it firsthand are two different things.”
He clicked his tongue on his teeth. “Marco told her she was too soft for you. Her running away at the first sign things get tough pretty much proves it.”
I cracked an eye. “When the fuck did he say that shit?”
“Last night, at the club, when you were dealing with César the first time.”
“Marco needs to not run his mouth to my girl.”
“He wasn’t wrong, though. You’re not changing, we all know this. She knew this from the jump. So why get in deep with you if she couldn’t handle it?”
“Fuck.” I squeezed my temples, trying to dull the ache. “Everything is wrong.”
“Maybe this is good, though. You’ve been all up in each other’s business for months. A few days apart will put it all in perspective.”
“I don’t need perspective.”
He sighed, then the cushions shifted as he got up. “Sit your pathetic ass there. I’ll get you some meds.”
The next time I opened my eyes, I had another message from Zadie. It was hours later. I’d crashed on the couch after Julien had dosed me.
Zadie: Hey, I’m here at my dad’s. Everything smells really fresh. I had forgotten how fresh the air is here. I know you’re probably angry with me, and I’m sorry. But I wanted to let you know where I am.
Me: Send a picture.
The picture she sent was of the top of her head, massive trees towering behind her. Green and lush everywhere, and in the distance, a range of mountains.
Zadie: My backyard.
Me: I am mad at you. Really fucking mad.
Zadie: I know, but I had to go. I can’t think clearly when I’m with you. All I want is to be with you and consequences don’t matter. Give me this time, okay? I’ll text you pics, but I really don’t want to get into this while I’m here.
Me: I don’t like you taking my choices.
Zadie: I know you don’t.
Me: I really don’t like you taking my girl from me.
Zadie: I know that too. I’ll text tomorrow. Xoxo.
Me: XXX
I threw my phone down on the floor and closed my eyes. But when I did, I saw the beauty Zadie had come from. The beauty she’d run back to when things had gotten too ugly here. The conversation hadn’t happened, so why did it feel like I’d already lost her?
