Page 31 of B.D.E
I chuckled. “Sound like a funny guy.”
“He would’ve like you,” she said, quietly. “He was always about brotherhood an believe the ones that were broken with scars, where usually the ones worth listening to.” She continued parting and greasing my scalp like she hadn’t just said some off the wall shit.
“Damn, so you think I’m broken?”
She leaned in, her breath brushing against my neck. “I think you’ve been through some stuff that most people wouldn’t even survive, and your still standing strong. Despite your profession, that says a lot about your character.”
She paused, like she was holding something back. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything. I’m an open book with you.”
She hesitated, eyes flicking away for a moment. “The people you kill… the hits, are they innocent?”
I didn’t answer right away. My jaw tightened as I stared past her, trying to figure out how to word something that never had a clean answer. I was open with Specs, more than I’d ever been, but some truths didn’t come with soft landings.
“For the most part, nah. Most of them were dirty, crooked… and had blood on their hands before I ever showed up. But after a while…” I trailed off, exhaling hard. “Shit started to blur. I was taking hits just ‘cause they told me to. I stopped asking questions. And I knew… I knew not every one of them deserved it. But I pushed it to the back and did job anyway.”
She sat quietly, still parting and sectioning my hair.
“That setup that landed me in your shop?” I continued. “I knew something was off. I felt it in my bones, but I still went against my gut, and it damn near cost me my life.”
I turned and looked at her then, right in her eyes.
“Only good thing that came out of all this… was you.”
She didn’t respond and I didn’t expect her to. Everything she had learned in this short amount of time and honestly, I’d expected her to run the other way along time ago, but yet she was still here…with me. Her fingers moved with rhythm as she started to braid my hair, and her grip was tight enough that I knew she had some idea of what she was doing. We sat like that for a while, just letting the game show fill the silence between us and weirdly… it was peaceful. Like this was our fucked-upversion of normal. After she finished with the second braid. She got up and grabbed the burner phone off the table and snapped a photo from behind. She showed me the screen.
“Hmmph. Proof that I tamed the beast.”
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into my lap, her body folding against mine. I pressed my forehead to hers.
“You do more than tame me, Specs. You done fucked my head up.”
She looked up with those soft brown eyes. “Then let me keep doing it.”
“I guess since you got a nigga right and ain’t fuck my shit up, I owe you that phone call.”
She squealed and pecked my lips. “Thank you, Roman! I promise you won’t regret it.”
She jumped up from my lap and sat on the couch with her feet curled under her. She dialed a number and pressed the phone to her ear. She looked tense as fuck, like she was bracing herself for what Tori had to say.
“Tori, it’s me,” she said.
“Ivy? Girl, where the hell have you been? I’ve called you damn near thirty fucking times! Ivy, I swear?—”
“Chill, Tori. I’m ok. I just needed to get away…something happened. I can’t explain it yet, but I’m safe.”
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her try to explain to her home girl, in so many words, where you’d been. I knew she was happy to hear from her, but her face said she was overwhelmed as hell by all the questions.
“I’m with a friend. Someone I trust... and he’s taking care of me.”
Friend.
Damn. I licked my bottom lip and kept a straight face, but that word hit me in my gut for some reason. I kept quiet as she tried to calm Tori down and promised to send for her soon. Oncethe call ended, she sat there with the phone in her hand as her eyes glossed over. I pushed off the wall and walked toward her.
“So, I’m just a friend, huh?”
She blinked at me, caught off guard by my question. “What?”
