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His eyes narrowed. “You better fucking believe I can.”
I felt my temple throb and I chose to drop back to the pillows instead of having another staring contest. I never won those anyway.
I closed my eyes and put my hand to my head.
He was right, of course, and that totally pissed me off. I had no business putting myself out there. I didn’t know what I was doing. He tried to tell me with the pepper spray incident, but did I listen?No. So I ended up on the floor of a dirty, smoky room, shielding my sister from bullets, my friends in the line of fire, Shirleen, who I barely even knew, lying unconscious out in the hall and finally with a gun to my head. A gun that went off in front of Mace, making him relive a nightmare.
Damn, shit, fuck, hell and back again.
“All right,” I snapped, opening my eyes. “I’ll be cool but you have to promise me you won’t tell Mace I told you all this.”
He dropped to his side and rolled over me, pinning me to the bed.
“No fuckin’ way. Mace and I are gonna have a talk.”
“No! You have to promise.”
“You just chose door number one, which means you chose me, which means you stayin’ in my life and my bed. I know you aren’t gonna like it,chiquita, because you look like you’re preparin’ to bolt any time anything looks or sounds serious about us, but that also means you are now officially my woman, and as such, Mace and I are gonna have words.”
I didn’t have time to freak out about being Eddie’s woman. That was worse than his girlfriend. Far worse. A thousand times worse. The W-word was to the G-word what the F-word was to the C-word. I couldn’t even say the C-word in my head!
I had to let the W-word go and tackle one thing at a time.
“He said if I told you, we were going to disappear in Mexico! You can’t tell him. It’ll break it, whatever it was for him. He wasn’t there. He’d slid into another moment. I saw it, I felt it. It just happened that I was there when he did, it could have been anyone. But it was me and that connects us, but not in a bad way. You can’t understand it, you weren’t there. But I told you what happened. I didn’t lie and I didn’t hide. Don’t make me sorry I didn’t.”
He did a jaw clench and stared at me.
“Eddie, promise me,” I pushed.
“Jet, you aren’t just anyone to those boys. Lee’s got cameras and bugs in Fortnum’s. They’ve been watchin’ you for months and likin’ what they see. I know, I heard ’em say it. When Lee told me he’d got word that Slick was on the move and he was asking for volunteers to run protection for your crew, every fuckin’ guy on his payroll volunteered. He got to hand pick a team of his best men, all of ’em puttin’ themselves on the line for you for free.”
Sweet Jesus.
He had to be joking.
“You’re joking,” I whispered.
He shook his head.
I found I was having trouble breathing. I would never process this. This was beyond processing.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m thinkin’ it’s because they’d like to be where I am right now. Lucky for me, I got there first and made it clear I was interested. That is, I made it clear to everyone but you.” He stopped and watched me closely. “Jesus, Jet, you don’t have a clue, do you?”
I found I didn’t want to chat anymore. I was done chatting.
I needed to get up. I had to get to work, go check on Shirleen, make sure my mom and Lottie were okay and process the fact that I was now “officially” Eddie’s W-word. I did not want to be having this discussion.
To communicate all of this to Eddie, I said, “I need coffee.”
He kept looking at me for a while then something changed in his eyes. The glitter went out and the warmth went back in, warmthandtenderness. I was beginning to miss the terror of having a gun held to my head.
“Chiquita, women spend a lot of time sittin’ around bitchin’ that there are no good men out there. I hate to tell you this, but there aren’t a lot of good women either. The difference is, when a man sees one, he knows it. Then he goes after her and wears her down until she’s his. Then, if he’s any man at all, he won’t let her go.”
Eek!
This just got worse and worse.
