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She’s leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest and a look on her face that says she didn’t come to say hi.
“What’s up, Doc?” she deadpans.
“Hey, Q. How’re you?” I cringe at the fake cheerfulness in my voice.
It’s like I’m in high school all over again, cranking up my Southern accent and trying to play nice with the mean girls who are just waiting around to steal my boyfriend or snip off pieces of my ponytail when I’m not looking. Well, too bad for Q; the boy and the hair are already gone.
Like everything else.
“Just came to check on my future scout.” Q tosses her dreads over one shoulder as she casts a backward glance over the counter at Quint. “Looks like you been earnin’ your keep, nurse lady.” Her toxic, waste-colored eyes flick back to me. “‘Specially since you ain’t even been takin’ your share.”
The accusation in her tone tells me that I did something wrong, but hell if I know what.
“I’m sorry, my share of what?” I ask as sweetly as possible.
“Don’t give me that Southern belle bullshit. I’m talkin’ ’bout food. You know, that shit you need to stay alive? You got a stockpile around here that you ain’t tellin’ me about?”
When I don’t answer, her slimy gaze slides over the rest of the store. Searching. “You wanna live in my kingdom, Snow White, you gotta share yo’ spoils, undastand?”
I nod, swallowing hard, as Q walks past the mannequin stand where my overstuffed backpack is hidden underneath. Just before she breezes past me, she stops, so close I can smell the weed smoke trapped in her hair, and runs a long fingernail down my jaw.
“By the way”—her lip curls as she digs her razor-sharp talon into the underside of my chin—“you look like shit.”
I clamp my jaw shut and hold her stare. I’m not about to give this bitch the satisfaction of seeing me wince, but I’m not dumb enough to slap her away either.
I need this place too much.
Q finally drops her hand with a cackle and waltzes past me toward the door. “Bet that’s why ya man left.”
Rain
The mall is quiet. Quint is resting after the best day he’s had since we got here, and Lamar is sound asleep with his head on my shoulder. I should be happy. Or at least content. But I feel nothing.
I hope it lasts.
Footsteps in the hallway approach, but I’m not afraid. I’m safe here—inside this building, behind this counter. Nothing has tried to attack, shoot at, or rape me since I arrived.
Which is exactly why I’m never, ever leaving.
When the clomp, clomp, clomp of heavy feet enter the tuxedo shop, I expect to see Carter’s mop of dark curls appear above the counter—he likes to pop in while he’s doing his nightly rounds—but the face I see when I look up grabs the knife handle sticking out of my heart and twists it with invisible hands. Pain, sharp and suffocating, slices through my numbness, but I don’t show it. If I flinch, if I blink, he might disappear again forever.
Wes stares at me with that infuriatingly blank expression. The one he wears when he’s thinking.
He’s always thinking.
I can see him perfectly, even in the dark. Shiny brown hair, flipped up at the bottom from being tucked behind his ear. Soft green eyes hooded by strong, dark eyebrows. He shaved while he was gone. And washed his clothes. I know because the hibiscus on the shoulder of his blue Hawaiian shirt isn’t blood red anymore. As my eyes slide across his broad chest, I realize that all of the flowers are different now. In fact, they’re not flowers at all.
They’re hooded figures on horseback.
Yellow and orange and deep, dark pink.
I sigh, and for the first time since he arrived, I allow myself to close my eyes.
“You’re not really here, are you?”
He doesn’t reply, and I know that when I open my eyes, he’ll already be gone. Vanished like a ghost into the night. With a sigh, I look up and find Wesson Patrick Parker kneeling right in front of me.
God, he’s so beautiful.
