He doesn’t give me a chance to answer this time. Just yanks open the diner door and walks inside—without me.
The offer was peak Jonathan. Superior and vaguely insulting. I can just imagine Sierra’s response if I told her about his answer to my not wanting to get back together before our month apart was done.
“Oh, he is salty because you found somebody else to keep you company during that bullshit pause.”
But Sierra’s not with me as I walk home. And Jonathan’s words ring in my head along with the question that I deliberately muted when I climbed onto the criminal MC for a second time.
What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?
“You’ve got a bright future ahead of you, but you must be smart, Amira,” Mrs. Vera, my high school counselor, told me before steering me toward nursing school. She’d been a slender and permed light-skinned woman in her fifties who spoke over-enunciated English, hitting every syllable before letting her words out. She had pictures of her two kids on her desk but none of her husband, though she wore a thin gold band on her wedding finger.
“Elevate your grammar and language,” she advised. “Learn to speak like people in positions you want to achieve. Avoid criminals and other riffraff in general—with whom are you attending the senior prom?”
I’d lowered my head and admitted that I turned down a couple of boys who’d asked me because I couldn’t afford a dress.
Later I learned there were programs to solve that kind of thing. But Mrs. Vera had just beamed at me as if I’d given her the exact answer she wanted.
“Good! Good! I’d advise you to put off dating until after you get your degree. And when you do, pick smart.” She threw a disparaging glance at the picture on her desk—not directed toward her kids, I sense, but at the father she’d chosen not to feature.
“You’re pretty enough to snag a doctor,” she told me. “Keep your legs closed and act like a lady until you find a man who can elevate you to the place you want to be. If you avoid trampy behavior and play your cards right, you could end up in a nice house in Brandywine despite your unfortunate background. Remember, just because your father is a criminal doesn’t mean you have to go down that path by choosing someone like him. You can correct your mother’s mistakes if you work hard enough.”
I’d taken her advice to heart. Kept my head down and ignored advances from men who couldn’t give me the dream picture that counselor had painted for me.
But Waylon was pretty much the opposite of that advice. And opened my legs for him. Spread my legs for him, laid back for him, and got down on my knees. I hadn’t just acted like a whore the previous day. I’d called the man who’d inspired the trampy behavior I was supposed to avoid Teacher—a whole box worth of the Magnums times.
Thoughts of what I did, what I shouldn’t have done ever—especially with a biker gang criminal, dog me all the way home. And by the time I walk through the door, I’m emotional and frantic.
“Waylon, we have to talk about what we’re doing. I don’t think we should—”
I cut off when I see Waylon standing in the middle of my apartment. He’s got a gun in each hand.
And they’re both pointed at my brother.
CHAPTER 16
Not just my brother, I realize when I open the door wider. He’s got Pequeño with him. His nickname is a cliché case of what my Sophomore English teacher called “the oxymoronic instinct of high schoolers” when our five feet two inches class clown introduced himself as Stretch.
Pequeño stands over six foot five with a face as hard as nails. Usually.
Right now, he’s regarding Waylon with a split lip and scared eyes.
I don’t bother to wonder where Waylon got not just one but two guns. The bruises on my brother’s and Pequeño’s faces tell the story loud and clear, along with Waylon’s bloody knuckles wrapped around two guns I’m certain belongs to them.
“Amira, leave.”
I blink. Not just because it’s the first time I’ve ever heard Waylon say my actual name. But also because I wouldn’t have known he was addressing me if he hadn’t used it.
His eyes don’t leave my brother.
“Yeah, Mimi, leave,” my brother agrees, also not breaking eye contact. “This is between me and him.”
If by “leave,” they mean rush forward, and place myself between my brother and the guns Waylon’s holding on him, they get exactly what they want.
“You both must be out of your mind if you think I’m just going to leave you here to shoot up my place and possibly get me kicked out, so I lose my deposit.”
Waylon just stares down at me, his eyes crackling with violence over the black and nickel-plated barrels. The guns are mismatched, but I have no doubt he’s capable of shooting both with ease—even the one in his left hand.