Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Dutch dropped his hand.
And Carlyle asked, “Why you doin’ this?”
“Because I’m the man my father made me.”
It hit him then and Dutch didn’t look away when the wet shone bright in his eyes. He kept hold on Carlyle’s gaze when the first one silently fell. And the next. And the ones after.
They stood that way, Carlyle’s back to the room, Dutch giving him his attention, until Carlyle sniffed. He lifted his hands and rubbed his face with the heels of his palms.
Then he took them away.
“I’da’ve liked to’ve known your dad,” he said quietly.
“And I’d have liked to have known yours,” Dutch replied.
“Carlyle, Georgie’s gonna take me shopping!” Christian shouted.
Carlyle sniffed again, muttered, “Definitely the shizla,” lifted his chin to Dutch and turned. “Girl, you don’t need more shoes.”
“A girl always needs more shoes,” Christian retorted.
“This is the God’s honest truth,” Tyra decreed.
“Jesus,” Tack grunted.
Georgie was smiling at Dutch, so as Carlyle headed his sister’s way, he started hers.
He felt something and looked right, to see Tamira Stephens studying him.
Seeing that look on her face, a look that he’d seen carved into his mother’s face way too many fucking times his entire life, he gave Carlyle’s mom a tight smile.
She closed her eyes slowly.
Opened them.
And returned it.
* * * *
“I told you, a couple of days. I’m on vacation. Tomorrow’s my man’s day. It’s brownie baking and snickerdoodle-rama Monday,” Georgie said on the phone to Kraken as they made their way down the mountain.
It was early evening and they were headed home.
Georgie had been sharing they got the bad guy.
She was now listening.
Dutch kept driving.
She again started talking.
“I don’t know what getting tased by Luke Stark buys you. I make a really good cheesecake with this kinda sour cream-like layer on the top. It doesn’t sound good, but it cuts the sweet of the cheesecake amazingly.” Pause then, “Listen, just come over for dinner.”
Dutch choked on his own breath.
He felt her eyes on him when he did.
“We’ll see. I’ll talk to Dutch. Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.” Pause then, “Yeah. Yalola back at cha.”
Out of the sides of his eyes, he saw her phone hand drop.
“Before you ask, ‘yalola’ means ‘catch you later,’ and I have no idea how that came about,” she shared.
“Tell me you did not invite those two men to your place for dinner.”
“They’re harmless.”
“They found, captured and tied up a six foot nine, three-hundred-pound seventeen-year-old.”
“They live on the streets so they know how to get by on the streets,” she returned. “But Kraken is a graffiti artist, and a really good one. Even at twenty years old, or maybe because he’s that young, Banga is a master of spoken verse, and his poetry is honest and sometimes hard to take, but it’s unbelievably good. They’re African American men who are members of yet another generation that has been let down by the system, so they don’t acknowledge the system in any way. Even dedicated non-conformists would think, ‘Yeesh, these two need to get a job.’ But I hope they never do. Because Kraken might become the next Banksy. And there is no one like Banga. He’s so committed to what he does and how he does it, I don’t think he’s ever written down a word of what he creates. But if someone listens, writes it down and shares it, I think his words could change the world. We might not understand everything they say when they come over for dinner, because they hate the system so much, they’ve made up a language so they don’t have to speak white man’s English. But they’ll be a fun night in.”
One thing to be said about that, he couldn’t argue it.
“What article were you writing when you met them?” he asked.
“It was about disenfranchised minority youth,” she told him. “That was a tough one. But I met those two through it, so it’s one of my favorites.”
“Hand,” he ordered.
She gave it.
He threaded his fingers through hers and put them to his thigh.
Then he said, “Right, now it’s time to share what went down with that Jackson fuck.”
Her fingers spasmed in his.
“Dutch—”
“Babe, even if he was a total asshole, I’ll only rough him up a little bit.”
Another spasm and a horrified, “What?”
He started grinning.
She yanked her hand from his so she could swat his arm.
And then she caught his hand again when she was done.
“So?” he prompted.
“So…what?”
“What’d that Jackson fuck do?”
“Well, I will preface this by saying, I do not take any responsibility for him being a lech. However, I may not have played that as I should, and it was all your fault.”
The fuck?
“My fault?”
“You’re gorgeous and you had my cat and I wanted to get to your house. So I started in asking him for information that we didn’t get from Eddie and Hank without buttering him up. He gave a little, then said something total euw like ‘you gotta pay to play’ and grabbed my breast right at the dinner table. So I told him I didn’t have to do anything of the sort, and if he didn’t want me to punch him in the throat, he could slide out of the booth where he’d pinned me. I must have looked pretty ticked, because he didn’t argue. He got out and I took off.”