AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yep. It’s short for Ragina.”
“No, it’s not,” Smoke says, crossing back through the kitchen with a bag in his hand. He pauses at the door and looks at me, then Rage.
“Go,” she says to him. “No boys. No parties. No booze and no rated R movies. We got it, Pops. Now, go!”
Smoke pushes out the door, shaking his head as he leaves.
I follow Rage onto the porch where we watch Smoke fire up his bike and roll out down the path past a blue scooter parked in the yard.
Smoke could have left me cuffed. In a cage tied to a bed. Starved me. Tortured me. But for some reason, he’s given me room to run. A babysitter. An ankle monitor.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rage says.
“No, you don’t,” I argue.
“I do. You’re thinking that maybe Smoke isn’t so much of a monster after all.”
Shit.
“You’re wrong you know,” she sings.
“How so?”
Rage brushes past me back into the house. “The man did strap a bomb to your leg.”
I look down to the black box around my ankle.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Doyou mind if I ask you a question?” I’m sitting on the front porch in one of the tattered rocking chairs looking over the landscape of the prison.
My curiosity has gotten the best of me, and I’ve been wondering something ever since Smoke left.
“That was a question,” Rage says. She turns the page of the bridal magazine she’s reading and makes a face of disgust. She rolls her eyes and closes the magazine, tossing it on top of a tall pile stacked next to her. She reaches in her bag and pulls out another, opening it and makin
g the same face at the very first page.
“You’re very literal,” I observe.
“And Smoke was right. You’re very question-ey,” Rage gives up on the magazine, shoving it aside. She sits up in her chair and folds her feet underneath her body. “So what’s this mystical question you’ve got for me? Spoiler alert, I don’t do horoscopes.”
“How do you know Smoke?”
“It’s a tale as old as time,” she says with a sigh. “You might even say a song as old as rhyme.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re Beauty and the Beast?” I ask with a laugh.
Rage wrinkles her nose. “No, why?”
“Uh, no reason.”
Rage pauses to think. “I guess you can say that Smoke is the Mr. Miyagi to my Karate Kid, but I haven’t seen him in a long while.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Rage lifts her hand, examining her nails. “All was not well in the dojo.”
“So you guys have never…” I don’t know why I’m asking, but even I realize the question comes off as jealous when there’s no way that’s possible. Curious. That’s all I am. It’s human nature to be curious of those around you and right now those around me are Rage and Smoke.
It’s as simple as that.
“THAT is a lot more complicated. We’ve never felt that way about each other, but some shit went down where we were forced to…” she makes a finger in the hole gesture with her hands. “At gunpoint,” she adds.
I don’t know what I was expecting but THAT certainly wasn’t it.
“He felt guilty and took off. Today is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”
“Smoke felt guilty?” I ask, taken aback. I didn’t think he was capable of guilt.”
“Don’t get it twisted. That man is capable of much more than you or he even knows,” Rage answers cryptically.
She reaches behind her back, pulling out the dagger she’d thrown at me earlier. The one with the shiny crystal handle. She fiddles with it, rotating it in her hand, pressing the pad of her index finger against the tip, testing its sharpness.
“You know,” she starts. “I see the way he looks at you. A couple of years back, shit, even a year back I would never have seen it or recognized what it was. Even if I did it would only be an observation, something to mimic while I’m on a job and have to pretend to feel the same way everyone else does.” Rage spins the handle of the blade on the table between us. “But I saw it today. He looks at you like he wants to…”
“I don’t know what you think you saw—”
Rage cuts me off. “You’re a smart girl, Frankie. I can tell. But you might be more clueless to what people are feeling than I ever was because Smoke looks at you like he wants to stick a flag in you and claim you for the homeland.”
I raise my eyebrows in question.
Rage rolls hers. “I’ve been watching these emotional movies lately. It’s this therapy thing my parents want me to try. The stake a claim thing is from Far and Away with Tom Cruise. He goes out West and…” She stops. “Never mind. I’ve probably got it all wrong anyway.”
Rage looks down to the blade in her hands.
Feeling the need to lift whatever burden is sitting on her shoulders I tell her. “I like that movie.”
After a few moments of silence Rage turns to me. “Be honest. What’s your story? How did you end up Smoke’s captive?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“He told me his side. I want to hear your side.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I care about Smoke, and I need to know if I should bury you in the prison yard before he gets back,” she says.
My eyes widen.
She rolls hers. “Don’t worry, I’d totally tell him you offed yourself so he wouldn’t blame me. We’d still be buds.”
“Good to know?” I say. It comes out like a question.
There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the truth but she says it so casually, like she’s planning what to eat for dinner or talking about the weather.
I know Rage’s loyalty lies with Smoke, I don’t know if I can trust her. Actually, I know I can’t trust her.
I tell her everything anyway.
Well, ALMOST everything.
I tell her about my father and how he was negligent toward me after my mother died. About taking a false name and re-enrolling in high school to avoid the fallout from my father’s bullshit. The abduction. Smoke. Smoke. SMOKE.
I toss one truth after another at her like clothes on a laundry heap until there’s a huge pile between us to be sorted.
“Well, that was…educational,” Rage says, twisting the end of her ponytail in her hand. She pulls up her legs and sits cross-legged on the rocking chair. “But I guessed it.”
“Guessed what?” I ask.
“He named the bacon,” she whispers.
I’m not sure if she’s talking to herself or to me.
“Huh?”
“Think of Smoke like a pig farmer,” Rage starts to explain. I
