Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
Please.
Memphis, please.
Don’t go…
Chapter Forty-One
Crew
One year later
If someone would have asked me three hundred and sixty-five days ago where I’d be a year from then, I have no fucking idea what I would have said.
I might have knocked the person out in a fit of rage because that’s all I felt that night.
White-hot rage from the bottom of my shoes to the hairs on top of my head. Some might say that night, in a busted-ass, makeshift ring in the middle of nowhere, late at night, changed my life, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
My life did change, thanks to a twisted fucking promise from a thug I wish I never met, but if the option to go back in time to change it all existed, I’d hit the reset button in a heartbeat, even if it meant I wouldn’t be standing where I am today.
The life I lived before that night may have been one of simplicity and struggle, but I never needed easy, and I worked my ass off for the little I did have.
The girl included.
Davis was the drive behind the dreams. She was the reason I kept pushing for more, for better, for bigger.
Was, is, always will be.
My Sweets, my girl, my future wife—if she says yes to me tonight, and she will.
Young or not, it’s been hard to wait when I’m damn near desperate to claim her completely, but I found a way to be patient for her, the need to paint today’s memory a different shade deeper than any desire I might have.
No matter what I do, pain will always settle into her bones when this date rolls around, especially as the memories weaken with time, but I’ll be here to love her through it. It’ll be my privilege to patch up the pieces as they wear. That’s what she’s done for me my whole life, dry up the tears, glue the gaps, while trying to convince me I could hold my head high on my own, so long as I believed it.
I didn’t, but I do now.
I see now.
I’m proud now.
Of me.
Of her.
Of us.
But most of all of him.
Davis
The sun shines down on the balcony, warming my skin as I point my chin to the sky, eyes closed.
I always did like to soak in the sun. I’ll admit, I’d prefer a soft patch of grass beneath my back to a four-inch pair of heels planted on a cement slab fifty floors high, but the latter is pretty damn awesome too.
Crew picked them out, a glittery, bright baby blue.
A familiar blue, like the sky at noon when it opens up above the ocean, or the blue rings on my candy necklaces.
The blue of my brother’s eyes.
My hand subconsciously lifts, touching the sugared jewelry around my neck.
It was Memphis who bought me my first one.
We were at the party store, getting things for his eleventh birthday party that I wasn’t invited to. It was his first boys-only event, and every item we got that day was a girly girl’s nightmare, and I may or may not have pouted the entire time, and the entire week leading up to that moment at the store.
But the second we got home, Memphis told me to close my eyes, and when I opened them, my wrists and neck were covered in candy jewelry, they were the girliest thing he could find, he teased.
How he convinced my mom to buy me a dang thing, I don’t know. She wasn’t one to cave to fit throwing.
Now that I think about it, Memphis might have stolen them.
“What are you laughing about over there, girl?”
My eyes open and I turn to Layla, ignoring the fact that I’m totally giving her a quick crotch shot when I bend down, opening my arms and calling my favorite little human to them.
Evie’s little palms slap along the hardwood floor as she crawls to me, pulling herself up on my hands. Swooping her in my arms, I lift her, kissing her chubby little cheeks, but she’s stolen from my arms as fast as she’s in them.
“Nope. Nu-uh.” Julius shakes his head. “I am on ‘don’t fuck with Davis’ duty, and even pretty little baby puke doesn’t make the list of ‘Davis dos.’”
“Baby puke isn’t cute.” Remy steals the baby, stolen from me, and doesn’t look back.
“Hey, you don’t get dibs. I’m her uncle!” he shouts after her.
“And I’m her favorite!”
I gape at her, my frown meeting Layla’s the moment Julius’s does.
My friend laughs but doesn’t clear up for me or for J who Evie’s favorite actually is. She simply loops her arm in mine and drags me to the door.
She looks at me, pulls my glasses over my face and gives a curt nod.
“Ready?”
Shaking my hands out, I nod. “Ready.”
Julius tugs the door open and out we go.
Flash after flash threatens to blind all of us—thank God for Julius’s genius idea of full-face lenses, the side of the sunglasses work as blinders to the lights.