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ALLIE
As soon as Jamal pulled up to the curb near Landon’s house, I jumped out of the car and banged the side of my fist against the door. A chilling winter wind seared my cheeks. I jumped up and down on my toes, my anxiety eating me alive.
“Poison!” I shouted toward their window. “Open the door, for fuck’s sake.”
The door opened, and the three boys stood in front of it. Someone pushed their way between them, and Imani appeared before me with wide eyes.
“Oh my gosh, what happened to you?” she asked, pushing open the screen door and tugging me into a hug.
Despite telling myself that I wouldn’t shed any more tears, I sobbed in her arms. “I—Jace … he-he’s gone. I haven’t heard from him in over twenty-four hours. When Kai dropped me off this morning, he was gone. I’m so afraid that he’s dead.”
Imani looked back at the guys. “Have you heard from him?”
Before any of them could answer, a black SUV with tinted windows skirted around the bend and screeched up to the side of the road. Kai grabbed Imani’s waist and pulled her to the ground, as if someone was about to pull up and start shooting.
The driver’s door swung open, and Jace shot out of the car toward me. My heart dropped as he scooped me up into his arms and buried his face into the crook of my neck.
“Thank fucking God that you’re okay.”
I ran my hands against his cheeks and shook my head in disbelief as blood coated my fingers. Jace looked like he had gone to hell and come back. There were so many bruises over every exposed place of his body. But … but he was back here with me.
“The fuck happened to you?” João asked, opening the screen door and nodding inside.
Jamal wrapped one arm around Jace’s torso to hold him up, and Jace flinched.
“Sorry, dude,” Jamal said, helping him inside.
Imani pulled me into her arms and ushered me inside the house and to the basement, where I had slept last night. There were beer bottles scattered around the room, an empty box of condoms on the coffee table, and bongs near the couch.
After Jamal rested Jace on the couch, I sat next to him and gently grasped his knee.
“What happened to you?” I asked, searching the room for something cleanthat I could wipe the blood up with.
João grabbed a cheap bottle of vodka from the dirty white refrigerator and held it out for Jace. Jace went to grab it, but I tore the bottle out of his hand and glared at João.
“What’s your damn problem? This is not a time to get drunk. He needs to be healed. Now.”
“We could go see my mom, but she’s, uh”—Jamal glanced down at his watch and frowned—“probably at work right about now. Her night shift starts in, like, five minutes. She leaves at ten-thirty p.m.”
“My mom should be home,” Imani said, eyeing the Poison boys. She gnawed on the inside of her lip and shook her head, as if saying screw it. “If we leave now, she’ll probably still be awake, too, but she has a surgery scheduled for early tomorrow morning, so we need to hurry.”
Imani’s mom was the most respected neurosurgeon in the entire northeast. I didn’t know if she’d be able to heal Jace or at least close up his wounds, but she was our only hope. Nobody could know about Jace’s father, not yet, especially not when we didn’t have any evidence anymore.
“Imani, are you sure?” I asked, eyeing the boys.
Imani’s mother definitely wouldn’tapprove of the three boys that Imani had been hanging around for the past however many weeks she had gone behind my back to sleep with them.
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
Before Jace could follow after Imani to her car, I grabbed his hand. “Jace, I need to tell you something first about … about your father,” I whispered.
I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. If I had stayed in the damn closet while Jace got his ass kicked, none of this would’ve happened.
But I knew that I’d do it again. I couldn’t sit back as my boyfriend was abused.
Jace froze and tightened his grip on my hand. “Don’t tell me that fucker touched you.”
I shook my head and lied to Jace. Harlan had hit me more than once, but Jace was too banged up to go back home and fight him. I didn’t want Harlan to kill him this time. I needed a couple days to gather my thoughts.
“He-he burned those papers and all the evidence in that file you told me to protect.” Tears streamed down my face. I hated myself for this. It was all my fucking fault. Everything was going to shit because of me. “I’m so sorry! I-I tried to stop him. I really did.”
Jace slumped his shoulders forward and blew out a deep breath. “Don’t fucking scare me like that. I thought he’d hit you,” Jace said, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me closer to him. He gently stroked my hair. “Don’t worry about it, Allie. Everything in that file was a copy. The real ones are somewhere where nobody will ever find them.”
“You have them?” I asked, looking up at him. “You really do?”
He gave me the smallest of smiles. “I do, but don’t say anything to my dad. We’re going to let him think that he hasn’t been caught and won’t be caught. Then … we’ll watch him burn.”
