Page 16 of Mine

I squinted at him.

“Right now… you could just step out of this, out of this life, and start what you want.”

“That can wait.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

“What? Be out?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s what I want.”

“I can’t,” I assured him. “There’s no way.”

“Sure there is. You can walk away before people know your name.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“What’s keeping you?”

My eyes locked on his.

“Shit.” He shook his head because he knew. There was no way he didn’t.

When there had been nothing and nowhere to turn, there had been Gabriel.

At the time I was working three jobs just to eat and pay rent and help my mother. But I knew I was coming to the end of what I could keep asking my body to do. A change was coming, and it would not be a good one.

Utterly exhausted, I had been running for days on no sleep and barely any food because I didn’t even have a break long enough to allow me to run over to my mother’s house and let her feed me. I had no time. But my brain was still working, as was evident on the night a runner tried to shake down my boss. He came in with his collector, his muscle, and he wanted two grand. My boss said it was only one. After listening to the back-and-forth arguing for ten minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I cut everyone off, explained how my boss owed twelve hundred and not a penny more or a penny less, and told them all to shut the fuck up. The collector grabbed me for being a smartass, but I was not in the mood.

I wasn’t proud of the beating I gave the guy, but he started it. I had my boss pay the runner, and then I threw both the runner and his bleeding knee-breaker out of the diner. I was next when my boss fired me. Later that night, I was on my way home when I saw the car out of the corner of my eye. They had followed me for two blocks, so, figuring it was payback time and not wanting to postpone getting jumped, I stopped, turned, and got ready to face whatever was going to come.

“You the wiseass from the diner?” the guy asked me from the lowered back window.

“Yeah. Who the fuck wants to know?”

“Me, you little shit,” the man barked at me as he got out of the car. I noted the designer Italian suit, the Tiffany cufflinks I had seen in a magazine, and the glossy black dress shoes. He was wearing a wool and cashmere trench coat that cost more than my rent. I had never seen a more stunning man. “Come here.”

I moved fast because whatever he wanted, I was down for. Though not handsome in the way that everyone agreed on, he exuded power. You could feel it rolling off of him. And I realized in that instant that I didn’t want him, I wanted to be him.

His name was Gabriel Pike, and he had come to talk to me.

“Sure, man,” I agreed and smiled at him.

“Get in the car.”

He could have killed me—I was a lamb to the slaughter—but instead he took me to dinner. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a steak.

The questions came fast when I was done wolfing down my food.

What was a teaser bet, a parlay bet, what were the odds on a three-team parlay? If it’s Detroit and Atlanta and the spread is ten points….