I can’t stop thinking about Scarlett. What she felt like. What she said. How fucking badly I wanted to take her up on the invitation she made.
No.I made my decision, and that’s it. There’s not a fucking chance in hell that I’m going to go down that road. Nothing good could possibly come of it.
My phone buzzes in the cupholder, and Bump reaches for it as I brake at the light.
“Give it to me.” I hold out my hand, and Bump’s eyes widen.
“Whoa. Holy shit.”
I grab it from him and stare down at the screen.
Unknown number: You were hard as a rock. Don’t tell me you don’t want me, because I know the truth. The real question is—are you man enough to do something about it?
Someone honks, and I jerk my head up to see that the light has turned green.
What the fuck? How did she get my number?
I shove the phone in my pocket and punch the gas, jerking Bump and Roux back against their seats.
“Sorry about that.”
“Who was that?” Bump whispers like he’s in church.
“Shut up, Bump. Whatever you think you just read? You didn’t.”
Thankfully, he goes silent in the passenger seat for a while. It’s not until we’re pulling up to the garage that he finally speaks again.
“I like her. I think Jorie would like her too.” When I stare at him in the dim light, he keeps going. “She could’ve been real mad at me before, but she still came to help. All the other people came too. We’re not going to go back to Biloxi now, right? Because I like it here. I don’t want to go back. Biloxi is bad.”
Every word out of Bump’s mouth hits me like a sucker punch.
“Why do you think we’d go back to Biloxi?”
He shrugs, reaching into the back seat to pet Roux. “If you lose all the money, we won’t have anywhere to go. But they say you can always go home. I don’t want to go home, though, Gabe. I would miss Zoe and Q and—”
Bump will keep going until he lists the name of every person in Q’s family, so I hold up a finger to silence him.
“Listen, kid. We’re not going back to Biloxi. No matter what. I promise.”
Bump’s face lights up. “Good! Because that’s why I brought her to help us. I’m so glad it worked. All the people were so happy tonight. I just wish you were happy too. That’d be cool.”
From the mouths of innocents ...
Fucking hell.
“I’m happy, Bump.” The lie comes out sounding hollow, and Bump doesn’t need to be a genius to recognize that.
“No, you’re not, Gabe. But you will be. Jorie won’t be happy until you are.”
Fuck. Me.His words aren’t like punches anymore. Now they’re slashes to my soul.
Partly because he has no way of knowing how much the guilt weighs on me, because he can’t comprehend concepts that complex anymore. Not since Moses Buford Gaspard’s crew shot him in the head, thinking he was me because he was wearing the hat he jokingly stole off me days earlier. Right before one of Moses’s guys put a bullet in Jorie and tossed them both into the floodwater, never suspecting that Bump wasn’t dead—or that he wasn’t me.
Bump managed to make it back to solid ground, but Jorie was already long past saving. Her younger brother was barely clinging to life when he made it home.
I’ll never forget the terror I felt when I realized nothing would ever be the same. We survived Katrina, riding it out in our apartment, and then I left to find us food and water because we weren’t prepared.
I never should have left them.Bump and Jorie should have stayed put. I still don’t know why they left our apartment in the first place. Bump has never been able to tell me why either.