Page 147 of Vega

Murder was around me. My life had never held this much death. But it had never held this much love either.

By the time we got to the hospital, my stomach was in knots of pain. Vega parked in a spot that didn’t seem legal and guided me out by the hand. We walked inside with his hand at the small of my back.

The surgical waiting room was full. Pain had filled that space from wall to wall. Lux sat hunched forward with both hands in his hair, his shirt stained with Lowe’s blood. His mother sat next to him, comforting him. His eyes were red, and his face looked destroyed. The few words that were spoken every now and then told me that the woman that stood near Lux, crying into a tissue, was Lowe’s mother. The man identical to Lux and Lowe that held her against him and stared at the floor with his jaw clenched was Lux and Lowe’s father. He looked like he was seconds away from completely breaking himself.

Any other time, I would have been salivating over how delicious and beautiful those men were.

The one I remembered to be named Saint looked at Lux, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I gotta say this before it eats me alive.”

Lux lifted his red eyes from the floor. “Say what?”

Saint pointed at him. “That scream you let out when them dogs came at you was nasty work.”

For half a second, nobody moved or said a word. Then Reek covered his mouth and turned his face toward the wall.

Lux frowned. “Man, shut the fuck up.”

“No, for real,” Saint said. “I thought Promise shot a woman in there. I looked over, and it was your grown ass screaming like a bitch.”

Big A rubbed a hand over his beard. “That pitch was crazy.”

“I ain’t never heard nothing like that from a man,” Reek added.

Lux sat up. “Two, two-hundred-pound dogs was trying to eat me, and y’all worried about how I sounded?”

Prodigy looked over. “You did sound like a bitch.”

Lux stared at him. “You too, nigga?”

The laughs that escaped them weren’t loud or truly happy. They came out broken and tired.

“Promise said, ‘Fass ihn,’ and Lux turned into somebody’s auntie at church,” Saint went on, causing more weak chuckles.

Lux scowled. “Y’all bogus as hell.”

Reek nodded. “You was screaming in German too. Them dogs had you bilingual.”

Even Lowe’s mother made a small sound that almost became a laugh before she pressed tissue to her mouth. Lowe’s father rubbed her shoulder, and for one tiny moment, the room didn’t feel full of only fear.

Lux tried to look mad, but his mouth trembled as he tried to keep from laughing at himself. “Man, if y’all had seen them dogs up close, you would’ve screamed too.”

Saint nodded. “That’s true. Them dogs wasn’t playing.”

“Exactly,” Lux said. “Thank you.”

“You still screamed like a bitch, though,” Saint added.

“Lowe said the same thing,” Vega suddenly blurted.

Everybody quieted.

Vega’s eyes stayed on Lux, but his face wasn’t blank anymore. The pain had finally fought its way through. “When we got him in the van, he was bleeding bad. He could barely keep his eyes open. Lux was losing his mind, and Lowe still tried to laugh when he said, ‘You screamed like a girl.’”

Lux’s face folded in pain so fast I had to look at my hands for a second.

Vega swallowed the lump in his throat, and his eyes shined in a way that made my heart hurt.

“He was dying on that floor, and he still tried to clown you.” He chuckled, but the sound was so painful.