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LANDON
“Are you sure you saw my mom?” João asked twenty minutes later.
Imani crawled up onto the couch with me and rested her head on my chest, frowning. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that she was there. I was so nervous that Ana wasn’t with her, so I went to your house. By the time I got there, they were already home. I don’t know how she got back so quickly, but …”
“But?” João asked, sticking a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it up, the way he did when he was nervous. João always brushed it off as something he did to look cool, but he had started smoking after a doctor diagnosed Ana with HIV.
“But I’m sure, João. I saw her.”
Shrugging on his coat, João grabbed his keys and walked up the stairs and out the basement door, leaving me with Allie and Imani for the night.
Allie slept on one couch in my basement, and Imani lay on my lap on the other.
With her eyes closed, she shifted back and forth, then looked up at me and frowned. “Do you really sleep on this every night?”
“Yeah.”
“How?” she asked, curling into my lap. “I need to get you a mattress or something.”
I stayed quiet, not wanting Imani to spend her money on me. She had college that she’d have to pay for soon, and if she was going to go to a big college far away from here, then she’d need it, especially if Akio’s parents and hers weren’t on good terms.
Who knew what Akio’s parents do to Imani’s?
“Are you going away for college?” I asked her, my chest tightening and my fingers curling a bit harder into her. After all the shit we’d been through and all the time we spent together, I didn’t want to lose her.
I couldn’t.
“Maybe,” Imani said quietly. “Can we not talk about that right now?”
“I want to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” she asked me, gazing up with big, wide brown eyes.
My chest tightened even more, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Ever since Mom and Dad had left me, I had been doing better. But tonight, the thought of losing Imani, of even hearing that someone had tried to kill her, it was breaking my heart.
Everyone who was supposed to love me had always walked away.
If Imani went off to college—which she would because she was the smartest, most incredible fucking human being that I’d ever met—then she might find someone better for her than me. There were so many other fucking guys out there who could give her more than I could in this run-down basement.
“Prepare for what, Landon?” Imani asked, hardening her stare. “What’re you worried about? Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” I whispered, pushing some curls off her forehead.
“Landon,” Imani said, smiling, “you’re never going to lose me. Not to anyone.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, my insecurities talking. “You might find someone—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Imani grasped the sides of my face and pressed her lips to mine, kissing me deeply. “Stop it,” she said breathily against my mouth. “You’re mine. I’m not letting you go, no matter what. And if I go to a college in another state, then I’ll bring you and all of Poison with me. We can plot the fall of Redwood from afar.”
“You promise?” I asked.
“Pinkie,” she said, holding out her pinkie.
I wrapped mine around hers, and she squeezed.
“Landon Caddell, I promise to bring you on all my college adventures, so you can slam your fist into any frat boy’s face who tries to hit on me.”
Lips curling into a smile, I pulled her back down toward me and kissed her softly.
