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I pulled up a garden chair and watched them together. A couple of minutes later, Darryl found me and dropped into the chair beside me. “How’s life been, kid?”
My body tensed. I hated being called kid, and he knew it. “Same old.”
He laughed. “Ain’t that the truth? Your momma’s face is a mess. You take her to get cleaned up?”
I nodded, propping my elbows on my knees and leaning forward to rest my chin on my fists.
“Good, good.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You gotta take care of her, kid. You might not need her anymore, but that little boy over there does. If you need anything—money, food—you come to me, okay?”
To the average person, it might have been easy to mistake Darryl’s words for concern, but I knew better. I didn’t reply, letting the silence stretch out before us. It didn’t take long before he said, “I got a favor to ask you.”
And there it was.
“Look, Darryl”—I sat back and met his eyes—“I already told you I’m not interested.”
“I think you’re misunderstanding me, kid. I need you to do this for me. Besides, you had no problem shifting the gear last time.”
He didn’t know I only dealt to Scarlett and her crew. If word got around that I was running for Darryl O’Hare, it would draw too much attention. Not to mention jeopardize things for me at home. For Eli.
“Fine,” I bit out. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. We gotta keep this in the family, kid, yeah?” He stood and raked a hand through his greasy hair. “Now that we cleared that up, why don’t you go and say hi to Kendall? I think she’s up in her room.”
CHAPTER7
BECCA
“I’ll see you Thursday,Cindy. Night, Rusty,” I called as I zipped up my jacket.
“Night, sugar. Stay safe.”
The cool air hit me as I stepped onto the sidewalk. Fall was slowly becoming winter, and I tugged the zipper higher, burying my face in the collar.
“Hey,” a deep voice said.
“Malachi?”
Hands jammed in his pockets, he pushed off the wall and came over to me. “How’s it going?”
I glanced around. This was… well, it was weird. Malachi had hardly spoken to me since the Scarlett-Evan thing. He didn’t go out of his way to avoid me or anything, but he was even quieter than usual.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, confusion furrowing my brows.
He offered a tight smile and nodded. “Yeah, I just thought you might need a ride home.”
“Don’t you have better things to be doing?”
Stubbing out the cigarette against the wall, he flicked the butt, and said, “Come on.”
Well, okay then. But then a thought crossed my mind. “Wait. Did Scarlett put you up to this?”
I’d caught her looking at me a couple of times today like she wanted to come over and say something, but she never did.
He gave a throaty chuckle if you could call it that. Malachi’s expressions were pretty much all the same. “No,” he replied.
“Evan?”
Malachi threw up his hands. “I come with no strings attached.”
