“I’m on it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Slamming the END button on the phone, I spat out, “Fuck!”
A soft hand lay on my back, and I spun around to see Pix looking at me, fear all over her face. “What’s going on, Austin? Is your momma okay?”
Her voice had a slight tremble to it. I leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, surprising us both. I just needed to kiss her.
“I need to get Mamma’s pain meds to the trailer park. She’s having one of her bad spells.”
“Okay…” Lexi said, and her eyes were demanding more.
Clenching my fist, I added, “There’s been a drive-by at the Heights. I gotta go check everyone’s okay.”
Lexi’s tiny hand slapped my bicep and her fingers dug in. “No! You can’t!” she shouted.
Ripping my arm from her hand, I snapped, “Yeah, I have to, Pix. That’s my family in there, like sitting ducks to the Kings!”
She didn’t say anything in response. I brushed past her to get to the door and instantly halted my step.
“Shit!” I spat out loud, and I heard Lexi behind me.
“What’s wrong now?” she asked tentatively.
“I need Rome’s truck. I need to get there like yesterday, and I haven’t got the time to catch three buses home.”
Lexi moved closer and, reaching into her purse, pulled out the keys to her Prius. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to take the keys, but Lexi snatched them back.
“I’ll drive,” she said forcefully.
Laughing in her face, I quickly lost my humor and replied, “I don’t fuckin’ think so!”
“You need to get your momma’s meds and, right now, I’m the only one who can get you there without you having to go explain your situation to someone else. And I know you’re not gonna do that. Rome’s with Molly. They can’t be disturbed. So I’m about all you’ve got!”
My blood boiled at her stubborn attitude. So I stepped closer to her, towering above her tiny frame, and met her eyes. She needed to get this ‘situation’, as she called it, straight in her head.
“You get that this ain’t no vacation park, don’t you, Pix? You get that two street gangs are fighting for turf and you could get shot. Shot! Drive-bys are real. People die. Are you getting all that?”
I caught Lexi’s long, hard swallow, but she tipped her chin and said through gritted teeth, “I know what your home situation is like. You’ve already told me, many times. But I wanna help your momma. I like her, and I’m the only one to get you there right now. So let’s go,” she said and walked straight out of the summerhouse, leaving me standing in the middle of the room like a dumbstruck pussy.
Clenching my fists, I almost punched a hole through the glass wall. I never wanted Lexi getting anywhere near that part of my life. It was fuckin’ embarrassing. And her, a willing deer walking into a den of lions, she was taking that choice away from me.
But she was my only way there, and I had to get home.
Fuckin’ A.
This day was just getting worse by the damn minute.
As we drove slowly under the ancient and dilapidated Westside Heights sign—the shitty rectangular red metal hanging off its hinges at one side—ominous dark clouds rolled above us in the sky. Spots of rain began to splatter sporadically on the windscreen of the Prius, the wipers screeching as they automatically tried to clear them out of the way.
As I clutched my mamma’s meds in the white paper bag, I glanced across at Lexi. Her green eyes widened with horror as she took in the shitty, stunning sights of my childhood home.
A crack of thunder boomed above us, sounding like a bomb hitting the ground. Lexi jumped, her breath hitching, and, white-knuckled, she gripped onto the steering wheel with all the strength she had.
All I felt was a huge sense of shame at what she was seeing: rusting and shoddy doublewides lined up side by side, beat-up trucks in their masses, and old tireless muscle cars from the sixties up on concrete blocks. And just to finish off this dystopian paradise, used needles, syringes, and empty beer cans were strewn on the graveled ground, some floating in the muddy streams now flowing through the park. This place was a fuckin’ shithole, and I cursed myself for letting Lexi anywhere near this godforsaken dump.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Take a right up here. It’s the old cream trailer at the end, number twenty-three.”
Lexi’s eyes darted to mine in nerves, and I went back to scouring the site for any of signs of the crew. I wanted to get Lexi in and out of this place before Axel or Gio reared their ugly heads and saw she was here. It would only cause trouble. I was sure Axel had told Gio by now of the little Goth student who’d witnessed the campus deal, the rat that had been hauled in for questioning by the dean. Axel never kept vital information from Gio for long.
The usually busy east sector was a desert town—well, the outside was a desert. Several sets of curtains at the broken-down trailers’ windows were twitching with people nervously checking outside—the usual M.O. for the aftermath of a King’s drive-by. My heart was slamming in my chest as we approached my childhood home, but like everywhere else, it was silent and still.
“Stop here,” I instructed Lexi, and she pulled up alongside the trailer. Axel’s car was gone from out front. Grazie a Dio!
As the engine cut and the wipers stopped, the heavens opened and the rain began pelting down against the metal of the car. Flashbacks of my youth slammed into my mind. As a kid, I used to love being inside a car when it came to a storm. Someone had told me when I was six that the safest place to be in a storm was a car. Apparently, the tires act as an insulator from lighting, so even if you were struck, you’d be safe.
Whenever I felt scared as a kid—from the Heighters’ deals gone wrong, from the drunks littering the park and shouting angry slurs at the top of their lungs, or a drive-by—I would climb into the seats of my daddy’s old engineless Chevy out back and curl up, listening to the rain bouncing off its roof, shutting my eyes, trying to block out the pain.
It was weird being back here at the beginning of another storm, and with Lexington Hart beside me, of all people… My little emo pixie.
Wait… my emo pixie?
“Are we gonna go in or you planning to sit out here all night?” Lexi suddenly asked, pulling me back from my memories, from my shock at the possession I felt for her. Her voice was a little shaky as she tried to joke, only serving to fuel my protective instincts.
“Yeah,” I replied and faced Lexi as she sat in the driver’s seat, her face almost pressed against the glass of the door, her sleeves pulled down over her palms as she chewed nervously on the nail of her thumb.
“Take off, Pix. I’ll find my own way back,” I told her.
Lexi snapped her head to me and frowned. “No, I’ll wait for you. There’s a helluva storm happening right above our heads in case you haven’t noticed.”
Sighing at her sarcasm, I opened the car door and got out, leaning down to say, “Get out of the car, Pix. You’ll be safer inside. Out here…” I trailed off, flicking my chin in the direction of the park, leaving her to make her own assumptions about what I was trying to say.
Turning to the front door of the trailer, I heard her hurried feet behind me and smirked at how quickly she’d moved. She may’ve been sarcastic and dry just a minute ago, but all that front was gone the minute she was left alone.
As I reached for the doorknob, the door burst open. Levi stood before me, darting his wide eyes around the empty trailer park, rushing me inside with a wave.
That immediately got my hackles up. The kid was shit scared.
“Lev,” I said tightly as I pushed past him through the door. When I looked at his face, I stilled.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” I bit out, my voice sounding as fiery as hell itself. Sitting on the left side of his cheek was a fresh tattooed stidda, the small black Sicilian star of the Westside Heighters. All Heighters were Sicilian in heritage. The stidda was a nod of respect to the Stiddari. A
branch of the Sicilian Mafia.
Grabbing Levi’s shirt, I wrenched him closer, demanding, “Did the guy live or did you kill him?”
Levi swayed awkwardly on his feet and muttered, “Lived. Only got hit through his shoulder.”
Releasing Levi’s shirt, I slammed my flat palm against the wall behind his head. “Fuck!”
“That star means you’ve killed or shot someone?” Lexi’s shocked voice sounded beside me, and I almost cussed again. I’d forgotten I’d left out that part of the explanation. Forgotten she knew nothing about this life.
Staring at her shell-shocked face, I admitted, “You get it when you shoot your first member of the Kings. Don’t matter if he survives or dies. It’s about taking the shot for the crew. Proving you’re in this life one hundred percent.”
Lexi’s sleeve-covered palm lifted over her mouth and her eyes grew to the size of the moon. “Have… have you… killed anyone?” Her focus was all on the stidda on my cheek, like she could see the answer if she stared long enough.
Closing my eyes, I tried to stay calm by breathing in real slow through my nose. “I shot someone in the chest. Never knew if it woulda killed him or not.”
“You didn’t stick around to find out?” she whispered anxiously.
I glimpsed at Levi watching me for my answer too, and I shrugged. “Didn’t have to. Axe shot him between the eyes before I ever found out. He was a key member of their crew and he needed to be taken out.”
Water filled Lexi’s eyes, and I felt Levi hang his head. In shame, disappointment? I didn’t wanna know.
“Hello, you must be Levi,” Lexi said, moving on from what I’d just revealed and addressed my brother. I watched Lexi smile at him in easy acceptance. Levi blushed and nodded his head. As Lexi shook his hand, the edge of Levi’s bottom lip sucked in like he always did when he was nervous.
I bent down to Lexi and laid a grateful kiss on her head. I was thankful she was being kind to my brother, but more thankful to God that knowing another element of my fucked-up past, she hadn’t cut her losses and run.
“Yeah, I am. Who… who are you?” Levi asked Lexi quietly, and I moved out of the way to shut us in the privacy of the trailer and away from prying eyes.
As I watched my fourteen-year-old brother stumble and sputter his introduction, my chest filled with regret. This kid before me was dealing coke. This nervous, bumbling kid was out on the streets, selling snow to junkies. Putting his young life on the line so Mamma could live pain free.
Everything about his life, this life, was so fuckin’ wrong, and I had no idea how the hell to fix it for him.
“My name’s Lexi,” Pix answered and let go of his hand.
Levi looked over Pix’s head to me, then back again, that same damn blush coating his cheeks. Levi wasn’t like Axel. He wasn’t full of confidence, arrogant or rude, thinking he could take on anyone no matter how strong. He wasn’t like me, all jaded, angry at the whole fuckin’ world, and pessimistic to the nth degree. Levi was a thinker; he was quiet, barely saying a word if he wasn’t forced to. Preferred to listen and learn than be the center of attention. He had more natural athletic ability than anyone I’d ever known. And he was smart. Real fuckin’ smart. And because we needed coin for Mamma to live the rest of her days in relative comfort, he was forced to work the streets and put himself in harm’s way.
“Are you… Austin’s girlfriend?”
My breath paused at Levi’s sudden question as I waited for what Pix would say. When only silence followed, I felt my stomach fall into that empty pit of disappointment.
Levi looked to me. “Is she, Aust? She your girl?”
Walking toward the two, I placed my hands on Levi’s shoulders and said, “She’s my Pix. That’s all you need to know.”
I saw Levi frown in confusion at my answer but heard the quick inhale of Lexi’s breath behind me, and I turned to see a sweet, stunned expression on her face.
That satisfied whisper of happiness right there made my whole fuckin’ life. Chest cracked, heart exposed—whole fuckin’ life.
“Austin?” My mamma’s barely-there voice drifted from the direction of the bedroom, and as always, I instantly felt weak. I wasn’t a twenty-one-year-old gangbanger and potential NFL player at this moment. I was a helpless young kid whose mamma was slowly dying. Seeing Mamma worsen by the day was completely killing me.
“Si, Mamma. Sono qui. I’ll be through with your meds in just a minute,” I shouted back, then lowered my voice once again. “What the hell happened tonight, Lev? You’re a fuckin’ mess.”
For the first time since we walked in, I took a real look at all of Levi’s face. Gritting my teeth, I put my fingers below his chin and lifted his lowered head. His whole right cheek was red and grazed, his skin caked with dried blood.
Anger infused my body. “You were targeted at the drive-by?” I wasn’t really asking the question because I knew the answer already. He’d clearly dived to the ground and had the gravel-scratched evidence all over his face.
“At least I wasn’t hit, Aust. Seba and Carlo were. Carlo in his arm, but Seba… right through his chest. That’s where Axe is now, at the hospital with Gio, seeing if Seba pulls through. That’s why the place is so quiet.” Levi’s eyes filled with tears. “Not sure he’s gonna make it… There was so much blood and he’d stopped breathing when they all left.” Levi dropped his head again, and as I followed his eyes, I caught sight of his formerly white sneakers now coated with blood.
My fingers ached from how tightly my fists were clenched. And, turning, I had to walk away to the living room of the trailer to get some space. I had to… had to—
A gentle hand lay on my shoulder, distracting me from my anger, and I felt myself slowly exhale. I knew it was Lexi. I’d come to recognize that small stroke of her hand on my back, that reaction of calm my body adopted when she was close. That complete and utter peace you only got from someone you trusted implicitly.
“You okay, Austin?” she asked softly.
Dropping to the faded red-rose-patterned couch, I ran my hands down my face, then looked up to Lexi, looking mighty out of place is this broke down tin palace.
“My kid brother, who couldn’t speak for shyness when he just met you, just avoided being shot by what? A matter of a few feet?” My teeth instinctively gritted together at the thought, and I reiterated, “Shot, Pix. Fuckin’ shot.”
Lexi glanced down at me with sympathetic eyes and moved to sit beside me, her tiny hand wrapping around mine. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you right now, Austin. I’m out of my depth with all this. I knew the gang was bad. I naively always thought it wasn’t as bad as the news made out, but seeing Levi tonight, hearing more… of your past. Lord, it’s worse than I ever could have imagined.”
I didn’t know why, but that made me smile. She was stronger than she realized, taking on all this shit like a pintsized soldier.
Lexi frowned at my reaction. “What you smiling at?”
“Just you, Pix. Just you.”
As Lexi dipped her head, a huge flash of lightning lit up outside, illuminating the tail end of the trailer. I was thankful for that two-second bolt of neon yellow right then, as it allowed me to catch the contented blush flooding her flawless cheeks.
I couldn’t stop staring at her beauty and, for once, wished she didn’t wear so much makeup. The only time I’d ever seen her free of heavy-trimmed kohl eyes, dark-red lips, and pale gothic foundation was that day in the locker room when she witnessed me breaking down. She’d been beautiful, all rosy cheeks and freckles, and it destroyed me that she couldn’t see it too.
As if feeling my eyes watching her, Lexi looked up at me through long black lashes, and I felt as though my chest had ripped open and my heart was on display. It was that moment people talk about. That moment where you look at the same set of eyes you’ve gazed upon thousands of times before, only this time you see something more within their depths. This one time, it’s as if you are looking down the lens of a sp
yglass and you can see into another’s soul… and it seems to solder itself to yours.
“Austin? Mamma’s calling for you.” Levi’s timid voice ripped me from fixating on Pix, and I lifted my annoyed eyes to him.
My brother, at least, looked apologetic about the interruption.
Levi rocked nervously on his feet and muttered, “She’s in a lotta pain.”
And just like that, my bad mood evaporated and all I felt was sadness.
“Can you… can you give her the pills this time, Aust? I think I’ve taken about as much as I can bear today… It’s been a tough one for Mamma… and for the crew… for me…”
Lexi, on seeing my baby brother about to break, reached out her hand, and Levi looked down upon it like it was an unknown object. His gray eyes flitted to Lexi’s face, and she smiled in encouragement, nodding for him to take her outstretched offer of support.
At that point, I felt like the worst brother on the planet as I watched Levi’s reaction toward this unfamiliar gesture of comfort. The kid didn’t really know love. He was only seven when Mamma was diagnosed, and I suppose he missed out on seeing Mamma when she would sing and dance with us for hours, distracting us from the messed-up world just outside the trailer door.
By the time Levi was old enough to understand anything, Mamma was almost unable to stand unsupported, and her energy had begun to fade. There was no more singing from Chiara Carillo, former Italian soprano. No more dancing to make us feel alive.
Levi’s reality was harsh; he had no idea what a healthy Mamma was, and he looked at Lexi like she was Mary, Mother of Christ, appearing before him. Like she was the living embodiment of hope. And at that moment, I didn’t see a fourteen-year-old Heighter with a newly awarded stidda below his left eye. I saw a lost little boy who’d had to fight adversity his entire sorry life, knew no other life but heartache, violence, and pain, and had no idea what to do with unconditional affection.
Levi swallowed and, with a shaking hand, lifted his fingers to hold on to Lexi. The scene before me went blurry. It was then I realized tears had filled my eyes as I watched my little brother take comfort in a stranger’s touch.