She stepped closer, letting her forehead press against my chest. I hesitated, then wrapped my arms around her, feeling her heartbeat against mine.
“Now you know what I am…and what I do. Understand that I would hurt you, Specs. That don’t mean that I won’t put a hurtin’ on that lil pussy though.” I smirked, trying to lighten the weight of the conversation.
She pulled back and playfully punched me in the chest.
“You play too much,” she laughed.
“Shit… I’m serious as fuck though.”
“Ok, Roman. If you say so.”
She called me by my real name for the first time and strangely the shit felt right. I’d been a Ghost, a fucking nobody for so long, I forgot what it felt like to hear my actual name. We stayed in a comfortable silence for a moment before she pulled back.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Hell yeah. A nigga ain’t ate shit since I ate yo’ pussy last night.”
“Ghost!”
“Alright,” I chuckled. “Yes, Specs, I’m hungry. You going to cook us some shit? I don’t know about ordering out cause I don’t wa?—”
“I know, I know. You don’t want nobody to know what this place, Ghost. I’m not that naïve; I get it.” She blurted, walking off towards the kitchen.
Specs got to work fixing us lunch while we chopped it up. She told me more about her life; shit I hadn’t known. She was an only child, said her parents died months apart. Her voice cracked when she spoke about her mam’s fight with breast cancer. When she told me her pops died right after her moms, basically from a broken heart, that shit hit different. You could tell losing them fucked her up deep, but even in the ways she carried her pain,there was grace. I could tell her parents where in her by the way she described them—the softness, the thoughtfulness. Her folks seemed like good people, and I could tell them being gone left a hole in her heart. By the time she finished whipping up some chicken and homemade waffles, we talked about everything under the sun. Real shit, specs had a dope ass personality that I fucked with heavy. She was smart, quirky, funny in this dry ass way that caught me off guard sometimes. What really got me was that she listened. I mean like really listened… not many people ever have. The more she opened up, the more I knew I wasn’t walking away from her. Not now, not ever.
I never had real feelings for any bitch in all my twenty-eight years, but the way my heart was trying to beat out my damn chest when she was close let me know that this shit was real. I was falling hard as fuck for this girl, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. A part of me was scared… scared of failing her and not being the kind of nigga, she needed.
“So,” she said stuffing a piece of waffle in her mouth. We’d just sat down at the table with our plates, and the food was damn near perfect and seasoned to perfection. She chewed slowly, eying me like she was weighing her words.
“I’ve got two questions for you, but promise me you’ll keep an open mind?” she said
I leaned back, brow lifted. “Mhmm. Aight, shoot.”
She set her fork down and gave me a look, one that I couldn’t decipher.
“I’ve been basically on the run and MIA for day now. No calls, no texts, no nothing. My shop’s probably on fire, and I know that Tori is losing her mind not hearing from me. I want to reach out, Ghost. Just to at least let her know that I’m not dead somewhere, you know? Maybe she can even come and keep me company while you’re out doing… you know... whatever killing stuff you be doing.”
I snorted at the way she said the last part as sat there, eating the good ass waffle that she’d made, thinking about her question. I knew where she was coming from, and I hadn’t thought about her position in this whole ordeal. Keeping her locked in this house with no lifeline to her world kind of fucked on my part. Nobody knew about this hideout spot so I knew shit was safe around here, but still… Tori was a wildcard from what I could tell by hearing them converse back at the café. One wrong move and I wouldn’t hesitate to platter her brains and eat Specs pussy through her grief. If she came here, she’d be safe. But if she blinked wrong, she’d be dead quicker than a snitch on the block.
“Let me think on it,” I finally said, locking eyes with her. “But if she comes, she got to follow my rules. No phone or anything that can track her. Ain’t no room for slip -ups Specs, especially with muthafuckas out there looking for us now. You feel me?”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“I know she your girl and shit but in my line of business, you got to follow your gut and if I feel like some shit is off, I’m murkin’ her ass.”
“I know,” she said, eye widened. “Tori not like that though. She is solid and loyal. I’d trust her with my life.”
I studied her for a seconds. She didn’t flinch when I said I would kill her homegirl, which was crazy. Most people were terrified once they realized that type of killer I was and what I was capable of. Specs just looked at me differently. Like she was trying to understand what turned me into this. She didn’t look at me and see a killer.
“And what’s the second question?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Her eyes danced a little like she was nervous now. She grabbed her fork, pushing her food around a little bit.
“Don’t laugh,” she said.
I smirked. “No promises.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was thinking maybe later… I could give you a little spa treatment.”