Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick 0.5)(10)

Shirleen had no comment to this.

“You find him, you bring him to me.”

“Can we play with him first?” she requested.

“Be my guest.”

“Marcus Sloan, always generous.” She was again muttering then she ended it. “Later.”

“Good-bye, Shirleen.”

He flipped his phone shut and drew in another breath.

It was then he allowed himself to envision what was on that tape.

He was interrupted in this when Brady dropped the phone he had to his ear, turned his head, and looked into the back at Marcus.

“You have a meet with Nightingale at two,” Brady told him.

In other words, in twenty minutes.

“Excellent,” Marcus replied.

Brady turned forward.

Marcus breathed.





Daisy



“Aren’t these pretty?”

I didn’t look.

I kept staring out the window of my apartment, seeing nothing.

“Daisy, hon,” LaTeesha, one of Smithie’s four women, got closer to me. (Yeah, he had four, and yeah, he worked that, and yeah, I got that—Smithie had that big of a heart, not one of them or not any of the gazillion kids he had felt what they got from him was lacking.) “You’re sweet, bein’ here with me, sugar. But I’m feelin’ the need for alone time.”

“Daisy—”

I turned to look at her, my mouth open to say something, when I stopped and stared at the huge bouquet of flowers she held in her hands.

Daisies.

“Smithie?” I asked, still staring at the flowers.

“Marcus Sloan.”

My eyes shot to hers.

“Uh…pardon?”

She smiled gently. “They’re from Marcus Sloan.”

“Marcus Sloan?”

She misunderstood me, thinking I didn’t know who he was when I didn’t. Not really. But I’d heard of him. And, of course, seen him at the club since I noticed he’d come in every once in a while after that first time I’d seen him with Ashlynn.

“He’s Smithie’s partner. Silent partner.” She said that last quickly, and I knew the way it came at me the “silent” part was very silent. “He…he’s…” She seemed to struggle before she went on, “A good man. Kind-hearted. He helped me and Smithie with some things once and I’m grateful he did. Don’t know what we would’ve done if he hadn’t. My guess is that he heard what happened and—”

Oh no.

Nononononono.

No.

My chest closed up so I had to force out my, “Please.”

She set the daisies aside and crouched down beside me, taking my hand.

The instant she touched me, I pulled my hand free.

“Darlin’ child,” she whispered, the words broken, like she was going to cry.

“I need some alone time,” I whispered back.

“Okay, baby, then you go into your room and I’ll stay right here so if you find you’re not feelin’ the alone, I’m real close so you don’t gotta be.”

“Thank you but by alone, honey, I mean alone.”

She scooted closer in her crouch and her voice dipped low and even sweeter.

“Hon, I know you think you know what you want right now but you don’t. You need me here. And I’m gonna stay here, Daisy. You need to be alone, I’ll give you that how I can. You wanna be in here, I’ll go to the kitchen. You wanna lie down in your room, I’ll be out here. But I’m not leaving.”

The tears hit my eyes and they stung.

I looked to the window, and to control the tears, my tone was ugly when I rapped out, “Do whatever you wanna do.”

“Daisy?”

“What?” I snapped.

“I could turn back time, I would, baby.”

She said that like she really meant it.

I looked back to her and hissed, “That makes two of us.”

She bit her lip, wet trembling against her bottom lashes, and nodded.

I again looked out the window.

I felt her presence leave me but it didn’t leave my apartment.

And I stared out the window knowing I was done.

My daddy beat me. Then he left us with just what he gave us when he was with us. Nothing. My momma gave not one shit about me. Every man I’d had in my life (outside Smithie, and long ago, a man I barely remembered, just his shoulders, his eyes, and his name, Stretch), had treated me like trash.

And I was finally getting it.

Finally.

They treated me like trash because that was what I was.

The kind of girl some loser you once gave a lap dance to who was ejected because the motherf*cker was way too f*cking handsy jumps you in a parking lot, lands his fist in your face until you can’t think straight, and violates you on asphalt.

I didn’t move from that chair not because it was comfortable.

I didn’t because it hurt too much to move and I’d already learned that there was nothing, sitting or lying down, that felt good on my scraped-raw back and ass.

Yeah.

That’s where trash belonged.

Thrown to the asphalt just like what it meant.

Nothing.

Miss Annamae had been wrong.

Everyone else had been right.