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He reached for my hand, and I gathered his large palm in both of mine.
“Thank you for looking for me,” he said. “I know that you’re the reason I was found so fast.”
I probably was.
I’d been looking for him for hours, calling every single person I could think of that might have seen him.
Eventually, one of the shop’s regulars had come by with a funny look on his face, told me to go check out an alley, and that was where I’d found him being carted off by an ambulance.
I’d called Marta to meet us at the hospital and had rushed back to Stratton to grab my keys and car and tell my boss I was taking my lunch break.
“I’d look for you forever if that was what it took, bro,” I teased.
When I went to pull away, though, he suddenly reversed his grip and clenched onto my left hand with surprising force.
“Don’t go searching for answers,” he ordered stiffly.
I gritted my teeth.
I wouldn’t lie to him.
I’d be finding answers whether it got my ass in the bed right next to him or not.
“Royal…”
“It’s time for you to go,” my father boomed. “They’re going to do an exam.”
I looked over to see a doctor I hadn’t seen before, Marta and my father hovering in the doorway.
I looked back over to Jimmy and said, “I’ll come by after work.”
“You’ll not,” The Judge snapped.
I sighed.
“Come see me tomorrow,” Jimmy suggested. “He’ll be at work.”
He would.
“Fine,” I said. “Love you, Jimmy Bird.”
Jimmy let me go after a small squeeze. “Remember what I said.”
I didn’t answer him.
I wouldn’t be remembering anything.
***
I stomped to the corner where it’d all gone down and took a look around.
My brother’s blood still stained the concrete where it’d happened.
And his scooter was surprisingly exactly where it was left, still turned over on the side and everything.
That was a minor miracle in and of itself.
It’d take a while for a new one to get in, so it was a damn awesome sight to see it.
Walking to it, I bent low and failed to budge it even a little.
I stood up with a muttered oath.
“Goddammit,” I growled.
I felt more than heard something coming from my right and whirled.
That was when the same man from yesterday, only much rougher looking, appeared as if out of thin air.
He didn’t stop to talk. Didn’t offer any words of hello.
Just bent down in a half squat and righted the chair as if it weighed nothing more than a feather rather than a couple hundred pounds.
“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
He grunted out something that sounded like ‘you’re welcome.’
Before I could think better of it, I touched his arm.
“You didn’t happen to see anything that happened to the man that was in this chair, did you?” I asked.
“No,” he said as he turned from me and started walking away.
I growled low in my throat.
“Coward.”
The man stopped, turned, and regarded me with his cool, glacier colored eyes.
“Sorry?” he rasped.
God, his throat sounded like he gargled with rocks and smoked a pack a day.
He looked scarier than yesterday.
I wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that he was on Eleventh Street, or because he was just scary and I hadn’t noticed it as much yesterday because I’d been in the process of choking.
Whatever the reason, I was sorry that I’d called him a coward almost instantly.
“N-nothing,” I lied.
He narrowed his eyes. “No, I think you said something. Please repeat it.”
I bit my lip and wondered if I was about to die.
It was a very real possibility at this juncture of my life.
I’d never been able to watch what I said, but most of the time, it didn’t get me into this bad of trouble.
But, with a backbone of steel, I repeated what I’d said, knowing it would get my ass in a sling.
“I said coward,” I repeated, this time more clearly.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not a coward.”
My brows rose. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Sometimes, little girl, you don’t know what’s hiding on the other side of the road. And, let’s just say, what’s hiding over there is better for you not to know about,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “That’s a fuckin’ joke.”
His teeth gritted.
“It’s not. All I’m saying is that there’s more to this than you think, and you not knowing is for the best,” he said.
“What I’m getting out of this is that you saw it happening, you know who did it, yet you didn’t do anything,” I drawled, sounding pretty evenly toned for how pissed I was.
He sighed. “Listen, Ruby…”
I narrowed my eyes. “My name is Royal.”
His eyes sparkled. “Oh, even better.”
I hated jokes about my hair. Even more, I hated jokes about my name.
I was a natural red-head.
So fuckin’ what.
“You could’ve fucking done something,” I snapped. “And since you didn’t, my brother is in the ICU recovering.”
