Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 136731 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136731 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
The need to ask questions is overwhelming. I do my best to come off inconspicuous, and pry where I shouldn’t. “Has he always been like that?”
Her brows narrow at me. “What makes you think I’ve known him that long?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “You guys have a comfortable familiarity thing going on. I just assumed—”
Ling cuts me off with a curious glance, leans over and stares down at my lips. “There could be other reasons for that familiarity, Alejandra,” she offers enticingly.
My heart sinks, and it does this so dramatically that my straw slips out of my fingers and falls onto the dirty floor.
Ling takes obvious pleasure in my reaction. Her eyes flash in accomplishment as she sips on her whiskey sour and says, “No, he hasn’t always been like that. Believe it or not, there was once a time when Julius smiled a whole fucking lot.”
My voice soft, I have to ask, “What happened?”
“He lost someone.” Her posture stiffens to project a certain gracefulness, but her eyes betray her sadness. “We lost someone.”
I can’t think of anything to say to that, so I simply nod in understanding. Suddenly, a thought crosses my mind, and I wonder…
Ling’s husky chuckle sounds, and she answers my silent thought. “No, sweetheart. I’ve always been like this.” She raises her glass to mine, clinks them in cheers and drinks, tipping her head back and downing the first drink, moving the one she ordered for me closer to her.
Minutes of silence pass, and having finished my first drink, Ling orders me a second. The alcohol loosens my taut shoulders, and with it, my tongue. “Have you ever been to jail, Ling?”
She snorts. “A pretty girl like me? Naw.” She smiles then, and I’m shocked to find it’s genuine. “Anyway, I’d just fuck my way out.”
A surprised laugh bubbles up my throat. “What about Julius?”
Her watchful eyes search me. “I shouldn’t tell you shit.” She tilts her head to the side and puckers her lips in thought. “But I suppose now that Julius is planning on keeping you, it changes things.”
My mouth gapes a little with that revelation.
He what now? Does that mean what I think it means?
The spark of hope I felt earlier ignites into a healthy flame and my heart warms.
“It’s all about us now.”
Is that what Julius meant? He wasn’t taking me back?
My mind implodes with the possibilities.
Ling has no idea of the shock she’s just dealt me and seeming to have a mental argument with herself, she straightens. “Meh, fuck it.” With her expression completely void, she utters, “Yes. Yes, he has. Spent all his teenage years locked away in juvie.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Eyes wide, I shuffled my stool closer to her. “What for?”
“Manslaughter. It was originally a murder charge, but his aunt got some fancy lawyer who managed to talk the charge down, saying he acted in self-defense.”
And my heart falls into the pit of my stomach.
Ling looks down at her drink a long moment. “If you caught your father raping your sister, what would you have done?”
Oh, God.
My heart stutters then races, and the blood drains from my face.
He didn’t kill just anyone. He murdered his father.
An image crosses my mind. A younger, clean-faced Julius, sitting alone in a prison cell and taking his punishment graciously, knowing that his beloved sister is safe in the world.
It suddenly makes sense, his close relationship with Tonya. He saved her. He was her hero.
Hot tears spring behind my closed lids.
How I had wished for my own Julius in my days of despair.
I realize my emotional response is somewhat unusual, but I cannot stop the intense warmth flowing throughout my torso, slowly spreading to each and every one of my limbs. Soon, I’m just about glowing.
Suddenly, Ling stands, and she does this quickly. Her eyes fastened on a man across the room, she mumbles, “Stay here.”
“Hey.” I reach out to grasp her arm, but she turns on me, eyes flashing, and then we’re nose to nose, as she hisses through gritted teeth, “Don’t fucking move from this spot, Alejandra. Do you hear me?” Something cold and metallic is pressed into my knee hard. “I will shoot you. I will shoot you right in the kneecap. Don’t move.”
She is not fucking around.
My eyes wide, I swallow hard and nod, because I’m not in the mood for a gunshot wound.
She moves across the room in no time at all, fluid and graceful, before standing by the booth, in profile, and speaking to a person I can’t see. No matter how far left or right I move, I can’t see shit.
Ling starts off smiling. After a moment, her face changes and I spot the way her hand remains clenched by her side. Soon, a tall man stands, but I can’t make out his face. He leans over Ling, speaking directly into her ear. He does this for a long while. Minutes pass, and Ling wears a stricken expression before pulling herself together and removing all emotion from her face. She responds to the man, and he grips her shoulders, as if to try and keep her there. But all this does is infuriate her. Her light expression now dark, she speaks harsher, the veins in her neck bulging with every barked word.