Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(56)

He felt her eyes on him when he did.

“We’ll see. I’ll talk to Dutch. Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.” Pause then, “Yeah. Yalola back at cha.”

Out of the sides of his eyes, he saw her phone hand drop.

“Before you ask, ‘yalola’ means ‘catch you later,’ and I have no idea how that came about,” she shared.

“Tell me you did not invite those two men to your place for dinner.”

“They’re harmless.”

“They found, captured and tied up a six foot nine, three-hundred-pound seventeen-year-old.”

“They live on the streets so they know how to get by on the streets,” she returned. “But Kraken is a graffiti artist, and a really good one. Even at twenty years old, or maybe because he’s that young, Banga is a master of spoken verse, and his poetry is honest and sometimes hard to take, but it’s unbelievably good. They’re African American men who are members of yet another generation that has been let down by the system, so they don’t acknowledge the system in any way. Even dedicated non-conformists would think, ‘Yeesh, these two need to get a job.’ But I hope they never do. Because Kraken might become the next Banksy. And there is no one like Banga. He’s so committed to what he does and how he does it, I don’t think he’s ever written down a word of what he creates. But if someone listens, writes it down and shares it, I think his words could change the world. We might not understand everything they say when they come over for dinner, because they hate the system so much, they’ve made up a language so they don’t have to speak white man’s English. But they’ll be a fun night in.”

One thing to be said about that, he couldn’t argue it.

“What article were you writing when you met them?” he asked.

“It was about disenfranchised minority youth,” she told him. “That was a tough one. But I met those two through it, so it’s one of my favorites.”

“Hand,” he ordered.

She gave it.

He threaded his fingers through hers and put them to his thigh.

Then he said, “Right, now it’s time to share what went down with that Jackson fuck.”

Her fingers spasmed in his.

“Dutch—”

“Babe, even if he was a total asshole, I’ll only rough him up a little bit.”

Another spasm and a horrified, “What?”

He started grinning.

She yanked her hand from his so she could swat his arm.

And then she caught his hand again when she was done.

“So?” he prompted.

“So…what?”

“What’d that Jackson fuck do?”

“Well, I will preface this by saying, I do not take any responsibility for him being a lech. However, I may not have played that as I should, and it was all your fault.”

The fuck?

“My fault?”

“You’re gorgeous and you had my cat and I wanted to get to your house. So I started in asking him for information that we didn’t get from Eddie and Hank without buttering him up. He gave a little, then said something total euw like ‘you gotta pay to play’ and grabbed my breast right at the dinner table. So I told him I didn’t have to do anything of the sort, and if he didn’t want me to punch him in the throat, he could slide out of the booth where he’d pinned me. I must have looked pretty ticked, because he didn’t argue. He got out and I took off.”

Dutch said nothing.

“So you see, it wasn’t that bad. It was just gross.”

Dutch still said nothing.

“Dutch.”

“Maybe I’ll rough him up a lot.”

“Dutch!” she snapped.

“That’s the kind of hardcore Chaos is too,” he informed her.

“Ohmigod, I shouldn’t have told you.”

She was right.

She shouldn’t have told him.

“Are you being serious right now?” she demanded.

“No, baby.” He gave her fingers a squeeze while he totally lied, “I’d never do something like that.”

“You’re totally lying, aren’t you?”

He decided not to field that one.

“Dutch!” she snapped.

“What would you do if some woman I didn’t want to touch my junk, touched my junk?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t rough her up,” she answered.

“Babe,” he said low.

He’d seen her go after her sister for doing a lot less just the day before.

So she couldn’t stick with that.

And she didn’t.

“Okay, if I witnessed it, I’d probably lose my mind and I would like to say I could hold my temper without it getting physical, but your junk is your junk and that is so not okay. But I’d also like to think that, given time, cooler heads would prevail.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And you know where to find this woman and you know what she did. That’d be it?”

She was silent.

“Georgie.”

She remained silent.

“Georgiana.”

His girl did not lie.

So she burst out, “Okay, Dutch! My retaliation would be more cerebral and longer lasting, and there would be retaliation. But it wouldn’t be roughing her up.”