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He continued to kick at the mattress, lifting and moving it until he was convinced I wasn’t storing my stash beneath where I slept like he probably did. “Yeah, but you’re a cripple. That means you get the good drugs from the doctors.” He licked his lips, rubbing his nose as if he had an itch that couldn’t be scratched. “Where do you keep them?”
With him focusing on me again, I’d lost my window of opportunity for a surprise attack. Oh well, I could still take him. Or at least I thought I could, thanks to my handy bottle of whiskey. “Up my ass. Why don’t you come dig them out?” I lifted a brow and waited for his reaction.
He didn’t fall for it though. He kept his distance while continuing to furiously rub his nose. “Where are they? I don’t want to have to hurt you, but I will if you don’t tell me where you keep them.”
“You don’t want to have to hurt me?” I repeated, stalling. He was getting worked up, his whole body bouncing and shaking with that pathetic little knife aimed my way again. “If that isn’t victim verbiage, I don’t know what is. Take control of your life, Shithead. Take responsibility for your own actions. If you hurt me, hurt me. You don’t have to do anything. No more than you had to take the first step down whatever road led you to this high point in your life.”
That was when I heard more footsteps moving through the house—but these ones were louder and moving with more purpose. If I called to her, he’d know she was there and could trap her in the hall or on the stairs. If I didn’t call to warn her, she’d walk right into the middle of this stand-off shit-storm.
While I pondered an impossible decision, Josie made the decision for me. “Garth?” She had just burst into the room when she repeated my name, followed by, “Who are you talking to?”
“Fuck, Joze,” I said under my breath, shaking my head.
She’d clearly been asleep and had stripped down to what she typically wore to bed at night—when she wore anything—a tiny tank top and her underwear. Not how I’d hoped she’d come dressed when a tweaker busted into our house.
At first, her attention was only aimed at me, but when Shithead started another round of twitching, her gaze shifted to the corner of the room. Her eyes went wide as she side-stepped toward me. “What’s going on, Garth?” Her voice was a few notes high with worry, but she didn’t blink as Shithead stared at her, molesting her with those filthy eyes of his, his tongue flicking at his lips like the snake he was.
“It’s okay, Josie. Everything’s fine.” My voice might have fooled her, but I was anything but calm. “Just come stand behind me, okay?”
She kept sliding in my direction, her gaze drifting between me and the man who’d stepped out of his corner to move our way. The panic I’d felt earlier shifted into something else when I watched his eyes move over Josie. It shifted into fire that burned through my veins, making my arms shake with rage.
“You don’t have any money. You won’t share your drugs.” Shithead licked his cracked lips a few more times, tilting his head as he moved closer, his stare never shifting from Josie. “Maybe you won’t mind sharing her then?”
Her hand lowered to my shoulder when she stopped behind me, curling into me in a way that told me she was as scared as I was. The blood boiling inside me felt about to spill over.
“You better stop coming closer, and unless you want to lose your eyeballs, you’d better take your eyes off her right now, Shithead.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t glance my way. It was like he hadn’t even heard what I’d said. His eyes stayed trained on Josie as he stepped closer every few seconds.
Keeping my eyes on him, I tilted my head back toward her a bit. “I want you to run, Josie.” I indicated the doorway. “I don’t want you to stop running until you make it to one of the neighbors’ places. Understood?” I noticed her head shake, which made mine do the same. “Run,” I hissed at her.
“I’m not leaving you,” she answered, her voice returning to its normal tenor as her fingers loosened their grip around my shoulder.
Shithead kept making his tweaking, twitchy way closer.
Panic tightened my airways. “I want you to leave me.”
“Haven’t been very successful at that endeavor in the past, have you, Black?” She stepped out from behind me to stand beside me. A peaceful expression had settled on her face. “You won’t be successful this time either.”
My hand curled so tightly around the neck of the bottle it started to tremble. “This isn’t about us, Josie. This is about you. Your wellbeing and keeping you safe.” My eyes narrowed as he kept moving closer, his smile cutting higher on one side. “I’m trying to keep you alive here, Joze. A little help in that department would be much appreciated.”
“You can keep telling me to leave all you want if it makes you feel better, but I’m not leaving.” She looked at me with fear flashing in her eyes, but that peaceful expression still hadn’t crumbled. “I’m right where I belong.”
“Can you ever listen to anything I ask you to do?”
She peaked an eyebrow, still able to muster up a smile with some creep’s eyes on her. “Yeah. When you stop asking me to do stupid things.”
“Leave,” I hissed again.
“Never.”
Shithead sniffed, coming to a stop a few yards away. “She’s not leaving.”
His head bobbed violently and his eyeballs seemed to revolve in his head a few times before the tremor calmed. The guy was showing some extreme signs of withdrawal, and I knew enough from growing up on the rough side of the tracks that people like him—ones with nothing to lose—would do just about anything to get their next fix. Wherever that next fix might come from.
That his eyes hadn’t shifted from Josie since she’d burst into the room, I knew just what he had in mind to serve as a temporary substitute to the battery-acid-and-Sudafed cocktail he really wanted.
He lifted his pocketknife again, pointing at Josie with a shaking arm. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.” He gave a twisted smile right before he lunged toward her, leading with that rusty blade.
