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IMANI
Not wanting to go back home, I had driven down a couple streets to Landon’s house. All day, I had been wanting to see him again. He had left this morning without saying good-bye or waking me, and I kinda, sorta missed him.
After taking a deep breath, I knocked on the basement door. I didn’t know if Landon was even home, but staying all day with João had been kinda weird. He had other stuff to do, and I had barely talked to Kai since our little thing last night.
A moment later, the house door flew open. Landon stumbled out before his drunk-off-his-ass father staggered out after him. Landon stood in front of me, pushing me back and telling me to run as fast and as far as I could.
“Get the fuck away from her, you son of a bitch,” Landon’s dad slurred.
Confusion shot through me. I furrowed my brows and glanced around Landon toward his father. My eyes widened, my feet suddenly heavy. He held a gun in his hand, waving it around at Landon. My Landon.
I grasped Landon’s hand and pulled him back, heart pounding. “Landon …”
“Go, Imani,” Landon said through gritted teeth, voice tense. “Now.”
“Not without you,” I said to him, tugging him harder.
He stepped back a couple paces and pulled his hand away from mine. “Please,” he whispered over his shoulder, making sure to keep distance between me and his father. “I can’t lose you, Imani. You have to go.”
Instead of running away, I stood behind him and kept my gaze on Landon’s father, who was approaching us quickly. Landon couldn’t lose me, but I couldn’t lose him either. It was so damn stubborn of me to stay, but I wouldn’t leave and let his father kill Landon.
I loved Landon.
“Don’t defend the slut,” Landon’s dad said. “You know she’s whoring herself out to those boys you hang around with. She’s like your mother. They all are, boy. Let me fucking finish her too.”
“Stop it,” Landon said through gritted teeth. “Your problem is with Mom, not Imani.”
“I’ve always known your mother was a whore, even when I married her. You can’t see that your friend is one too. So, let me show you.” He stepped closer to us, and Landon pushed me farther into the yard, toward the barbed wire fence.
Landon balled his hands into fists. “Leave her alone. She’s not a whore.”
“Is that what you think?”
Instead of continuing to back away, Landon stepped forward toward his father and met him eye to eye. Landon’s mother stood at the door with another man, scowling at her husband—or maybe she was looking at Landon like that.
“I told you to leave, Landon,” his mother scolded, looking absolutely disgusted with everyone and everything right now. “You didn’t listen to me. You’re going to get everything that you deserve.”
My heart broke into a thousand pieces. How could … how could someone say that to their child? How could a mother want their own child to hurt physically? But … part of me knew why. People in this town were selfish pieces of shit, like my mom.
I had known Landon didn’t have a good home life, but this …
His father stepped closer to Landon, not backing down, waving his gun. “You’re a worthless piece of shit. I thought I raised you fuckin’ better than this.” He smacked the gun against Landon’s chest. “You can let your whore walk all over you if you want.”
The vein in Landon’s neck twitched, like it did right before he was about to snap at someone in that abandoned warehouse or in the school hallways. “Call her a whore one more time.”
“She’s a fucking who—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Landon punched him square in the jaw, as if he didn’t have a gun in his hand and could shoot him at any moment. My eyes widened, and adrenaline rushed through me.
His father stumbled back, and Landon moved faster toward him, punching and kicking and letting out all his damn aggression on his father. Smashing in his face. Kicking out his teeth. Kneeing the asshole in the balls.
“Landon,” I said nervously.
Landon might’ve had the upper hand, but he didn’t have the gun.
“Stop hurting your father!” Landon’s mother shouted, hurrying toward them and trying to wedge herself between them.
His father took one hand and shoved her back, then tightened his grip on the gun, a sea of fuck you and asshole tumbling out of his mouth.
“Landon!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me. “Stop it! Please!”
I wanted to rush into the chaos and pull him away, run down the street with him and never turn back. But everything was happening so quickly that I barely had time to react when the gun went off and rang out through the night.
My entire body seemed to shut down, and I found myself collapsing to my knees. Landon and Landon’s mother both stopped struggling with his father. Landon’s mother grasped her arm, and Landon clutched his stomach, stumbling back on the grass and smacking his head against the earth.
Unable to stop myself, I crawled over to him and pulled him into my lap, tears flowing down my cheeks. “No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” I pressed my hand to his side, where blood gushed out, and held him tight to me. “Someone, help him!”
Landon’s father dropped the gun and widened his eyes at his wife and son, as if he couldn’t comprehend what he had just done. I held him even closer. Landon looked up at me one last time and pushed some hair out of my face with a trembling hand.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I never told you, but I love you so much, Imani.”
