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“You can leave tomorrow if you need to.” I said the words but hoped I’d have longer. I hated the thought of her leaving, but I knew it needed to happen, regardless. Her life was in Ohio, not North Carolina.
“That’s fine.” Michelle tried to jump down, and I stopped her.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. Clearly, I was missing something.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” I lifted her chin, so that she was looking into my eyes. “What just happened?”
“Honestly, you just gutted me upstairs. Between the lovemaking and the conversations, I don’t know how to feel about the fact that you’re ready for me to go already. Maybe I just keep reading the situation wrong.”
I moved, so that I had access to the pie, and I took a spoon full, blew away the heat, and raised it to her lips to eat.
“You asked me a question, and now you’re trying to shut me up?” Michelle asked, annoyed.
“You said you were hungry, so eat.”
Michelle rolled her eyes but opened her mouth. She moaned at the taste, and I could relate to how she was feeling. Best beef pie ever.
“I don’t want you to leave. I know you have other things going on that are more important. My parents had an agreement about their lives. I’d never be unrealistic about yours. I figured we’d talk out how to make a long-distance thing work if you were interested.”
“Long distance? I’m not sure that I can handle that. Besides, we haven’t identified ourselves as anything yet, so I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Doing? Darlin’, you’re mine. I have no plans to let you go. I did that last time. It took you almost ten years to come back to me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time to be missing you. Not when we could spend the next ten years together. I may have been too busy being naïve about my feelings for you then, but now I know what I want. That’s you. You’re so perfect for me it hurts.”
“Dante…” Michelle kissed me and I kissed her back.
“Yes, darlin’?”
Michelle giggled, blushing her ass off. Those pretty brown eyes of her glistened at me. “Let’s hurry and eat so you can make love to me again.”
I tilted my head, put on my imaginary hat, and dipped it quickly. “Yes, ma’am. Anything else?” I smacked her on her ass, and she whimpered.
“No, sir. Just you, baby.”
And that was exactly what she was getting.
DANTE
“Ready to go hunting?” Tim asked.
“Yes, I am.” I cocked the gun and proceeded into the woods.
Tim knew that Jeremy’s “friends” liked to go shooting in the woods. We decided we were going to as well, the same place that they went at the same time. I couldn’t let them think they were going to get away with something as important as killing my parents. Tim, my brother from another mother, was all in. I’d decided that this was personal, and I was going to treat it. We’d come into the woods from a different angle from where all his men were. They liked to hunt for deer. We were hunting for “chickens.”
Tim brought along his friends, Russell and Adam. They had similar scores to settle with the “chickens” too. Used to hunting, we blended into the thick trees. Russell and Adam were behind us as back up because getting caught up wasn’t an option.
There was one to the right that I fired at twice. He fell to the ground quick and didn’t move. We aimed to kill because the repercussions would be the loss of one of our lives. We knew the rules before we came out here. As we moved, we heard two men ahead of us, laughing and joking. Tim moved toward them, and I followed. I kept low, using the thickest part of the woods to cover myself. Tim used the same tactic, but stayed a little higher than me as we moved.
Looking between the trees, neither of them were the guy we were looking for. Just more goons following orders. Tim took the one on the left, fighting hand to hand. I took the one on the right. After shooting him, Tim signaled me over and I delivered shots to his opponent, too. This was my hunt, my score to settle. Two more chickens down quickly. A third came from nowhere, and I shot him, too. No hesitation.
Moving back toward Russell and Adam, we continued on. We waited, listening for more chickens. They were in a clearing. The guy we were looking for was there with one other man. It was going to be tricky because who knew what he was going to do when he realized we were there? They fired shots at whatever they were shooting at, and I shot, too. The first bullet hit Slim’s man, and he fell to the floor. He looked around, trying to figure out what was going on, but he couldn’t see us. We were tucked away. With the second shot, I’d injured Slim. They both looked at each other in suspicion, then things added up.
“Where in the fuck did everybody go? Who fuckin’ shot me?” the goon asked Slim.
I chuckled to myself. The entire scene was quite ironic. I had to find humor in it, or I’d overthink this hunting trip we were on. I couldn’t think of them as people. Just chickens who killed innocent people to satisfy an insane cause: the debt of sick and confused users. People owed them for drugs, gambling, and other addictions. Getting out of business with them was impossible, and so I was taking care of them myself. Chickens. I shot the goon with him, killing him with a shot to the head.
Slim fell against a tree and started searching the trees while aiming blindly. “Come out here and kill me like a man instead of some pussy hiding in the trees!” he shouted.
